Processing and Communication Delays in EWS: On the Performance of the Earthcloud Prototype

A Seismic Alert System (SAS), also called Earthquake Warning System (EWS) or Earthquake Early Warning System (EEW or EEWS), represents one of the most important measures that can be taken to prevent and minimize earthquake damage. These systems are mainly used to detect P-waves and the faster seismic waves and to subsequently trigger an alarm about the incoming S-waves, the slower and most dangerous seismic waves. In some cases, distributed systems are also able to alert some locations before the impending P-waves strike them. This paper presents Earthcloud, a cloud-based SAS that aims to provide all the former capabilities while retaining financial accessibility. Earthcloud first results, generated from four months of data acquisition, are compared with those coming from other systems. In particular, the paper focuses on processing and communication delays, showing how the Earthcloud new detection strategy may minimize delays. Although a thorough test campaign with more sensor nodes is needed to assess performance reliably, especially for highly dense urban scenarios, initial results are promising, with total latencies for Earthcloud always kept under the 1-second mark, despite being at the expense of solid magnitude estimation

Support of Safety Services through Vehicular Communications: The Intersection Collision Avoidance Use Case

Cooperative systems are based on the periodical exchange of standardized information, thanks to which vehicles can advertise their presence, position and the direction they are moving to, and execute sophisticated C-ITS applications that can detect potentially dangerous situations and properly react. The technological pillar, which must enable a Vehicular ad Hoc Network (VANET), is now being debated: the candidates are the traditional WiFi-based approach and the upcoming cellular one. The application effectiveness, however, depends not only on the technology, but also on how fast it is adopted and becomes widespread, i.e., the so-called technology Penetration Rate (PR). In this paper, simulation is used to evaluate the Intersection Collision Avoidance (ICA) application for both candidate technologies, and evaluated as a function of the technology PR.This work was partially supported by FCA through the DiVe project, by the C.A.R.S. center at Politecnico di Torino, and by the H2020 5G-TRANSFORMER project (Project ID 761536

Recent structural evolution of forni glacier tongue (Ortles-Cevedale Group, Central Italian Alps)

Structural glaciology yields important details about the evolution of glacier dynamics in response to climate change. The maps provided here document the occurrence and evolution of brittle and ductile structures on the tongue of Forni Glacier, Ortles-Cevedale Group, Central Italian Alps, between 2003 and 2014. Through the remote sensing-based analysis of structures, we found evidence of brittle fractures such as crevasses, faults and ring faults, and ductile structures such as ogives at the base of the icefall in the eastern glacier tongue. Although each of the three glacier tongues have evolved differently, a reduction in flow-related dynamics and an increase in the number of collapse structures occurred over the study period. Analysis of the glacier structural evolution based on the numbers and the locations of different structures, suggest a slowdown of glacier flow on the eastern tongue. The recent evolution of the glacier also suggests that the occurrence of a disintegration scenario is likely to worsen over the next decades

Contamination of a high-cell-density continuous bioreactor

Continuous fermentations were carried out with a recombinant flocculent Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain in an airlift bioreactor. Once operating under steady state at a dilution rate of 0.45 h−1, the bioreactor was contaminated with Escherichia coli cells. The faster growing E. coli strain was washed out of the bioreactor and the recombinant, slower growing flocculating S. cerevisiae strain remained as the only species detected in the bioreactor. Flocculation, besides allowing for the realization of high-cell-density systems with corresponding unusual high productivity, may be used as a selective property for controlling some contamination problems associated with prolonged continuous operation.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia -PRAXIS XXI/BD/11306/97

A nanoporous surface is essential for glomerular podocyte differentiation in three-dimensional culture.

Although it is well recognized that cell-matrix interactions are based on both molecular and geometrical characteristics, the relationship between specific cell types and the three-dimensional morphology of the surface to which they are attached is poorly understood. This is particularly true for glomerular podocytes - the gatekeepers of glomerular filtration - which completely enwrap the glomerular basement membrane with their primary and secondary ramifications. Nanotechnologies produce biocompatible materials which offer the possibility to build substrates which differ only by topology in order to mimic the spatial organization of diverse basement membranes. With this in mind, we produced and utilized rough and porous surfaces obtained from silicon to analyze the behavior of two diverse ramified cells: glomerular podocytes and a neuronal cell line used as a control. Proper differentiation and development of ramifications of both cell types was largely influenced by topographical characteristics. Confirming previous data, the neuronal cell line acquired features of maturation on rough nanosurfaces. In contrast, podocytes developed and matured preferentially on nanoporous surfaces provided with grooves, as shown by the organization of the actin cytoskeleton stress fibers and the proper development of vinculin-positive focal adhesions. On the basis of these findings, we suggest that in vitro studies regarding podocyte attachment to the glomerular basement membrane should take into account the geometrical properties of the surface on which the tests are conducted because physiological cellular activity depends on the three-dimensional microenvironment

LAKE SHOREZONE FUNCTIONALITY INDEX (SFI) A tool for the definition of ecological quality as indicated by Directive 2000/60/CE

www.appa.provincia.tn.it/binary/pat_appa/pubblicazioni/IFP_Manual_english_ver2.1310115028.pd

Intrauterine versus post-mortem magnetic resonance in second trimester termination of pregnancy for central nervous system abnormalities

Objective: To evaluate if limiting factors of intrauterine magnetic resonance imaging (iuMRI) performed in the early second trimester of pregnancy (19\u201323 weeks) affect its accuracy in comparison to post-mortem MRI (pmMRI) in fetuses that underwent termination of pregnancy (TOP) for central nervous system (CNS) defects. Study design: This is a secondary analysis of a 10 years prospective observational study. Cases of TOP < 23 weeks for CNS malformation that had undergone neurosonography (NSG), iuMRI, pmMRI and autopsy were included. The agreement between iuMRI and pmMRI was calculated. The autopsy represented the gold-standard. Results: Overall, 143 TOPs for fetal congenital anomaly underwent the post-mortem diagnostic protocol. Of these, 31 cases underwent iuMRI and pmMRI for CNS abnormality. Three cases were excluded due to brain autolysis at autopsy. Corpus callosum defects were the most represented (16/28; 57 %). In only one case of posterior fossa defect, pmMRI identified the presence of vermian hypoplasia not diagnosed at iuMRI. In 2 cases (7%), iuMRI added clinically relevant additional findings to NSG, that were posteriorly confirmed by pmMRI. Conclusions: The study shows that, at 19\u201323 weeks and for CNS defects, limiting factors that might influence the performance of iuMRI have little influence on iuMRI accuracy. This finding is particularly important for professionals who work in countries with legal bound for TOP in the early second trimester