Modeling eating disorders of cognitive impaired people

Millions of people all around the world suffer from eating disorders, known as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, pica, and others. When eating disorders coexist with other mental health disorders, eating disorders often go undiagnosed and untreated; a low number of sufferers obtain treatment for the eating disorder. Unfortunately, eating disorders have also the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, upwards of 20%. This paper focuses on monitoring eating disorders of cognitive impaired people as patients with the Alzheimer’s disease. The proposed approach relies on the application of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) technologies and a new method for the detection of abnormal human behaviors in a controlled environment

Locking-free curved elements with refined kinematics for the analysis of composite structures

A new class of refined curved beam elements is proposed for the accurate stress analysis of composite structures. The element possesses three-dimensional capabilities and it is suited for the study of curved laminates and fiber-reinforced composites at the microscopic scale. The numerical issues associated with membrane and shear lockings are overcome by means of assumed interpolations of the strain components based on the mixed interpolation of tensorial components method (MITC). Higher-order expansions with only displacement unknowns are employed for the cross-section assumptions at the component level, enabling the computation of component-wise stress fields. For this purpose, a hierarchical set of Legendre functions is implemented, which allows the user to tune the kinematics of the element through the polynomial order input. The detrimental effects of locking in composite modeling are investigated and the robustness and efficiency of the beam element is assessed through comparison against solutions from the literature and refined solid models

Bulk viscosity in 2SC and CFL quark matter

The bulk viscosities of two color-superconducting phases, the color-flavor locked (CFL) phase and the 2SC phase, are computed and compared to the result for unpaired quark matter. In the case of the CFL phase, processes involving kaons and the superfluid mode give the largest contribution to the bulk viscosity since all fermionic modes are gapped. In the case of the 2SC phase, ungapped fermionic modes are present and the process u+d u+s provides the dominant contribution. In both cases, the bulk viscosity can become larger than that of the unpaired phase for sufficiently large temperatures (T >~ 1 MeV for CFL, T >~ 0.1 MeV for 2SC). Bulk viscosity (as well as shear viscosity) is important for the damping of r-modes in compact stars and thus can potentially be used as an indirect signal for the presence or absence of color-superconducting quark matter.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, contribution to the proceedings of QCD@Work 2007, Martina Franca (Italy

Wave propagation in compact, thin-walled, layered, and heterogeneous structures using variable kinematics finite elements

The article investigates wave propagation characteristics for a class of structures using higher-order one-dimensional (1D) models. 1D models are based on the Carrera Unified Formulation (CUF), a hierarchical formulation which provides a framework to obtain refined structural theories via a variable kinematics description. Theories are formulated by employing arbitrary expansions of the primary unknowns over the beam cross-section. Two classes of beam models are employed in the current work, namely Taylor Expansion (TE) and Lagrange Expansion (LE) models. Using the principle of virtual work and finite element method, the governing equations are formulated. The direct time integration of equation of motion is carried through an implicit scheme based on the Newmark method and a dissipative explicit method based on the Tchamwa–Wielgosz scheme. The framework is validated by comparing the response for the stress wave propagation in an isotropic beam to an analytical solution available in the literature. The capabilities of the proposed model are demonstrated by presenting results for wave propagation analysis of a sandwich beam and a layered annular cylinder structure. The ability of CUF models to detect 3D-like behavior with a reduced computational overhead is highlighted

The heuristic strategies for assessing wireless sensor network: an event-based formal approach

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are increasingly being adopted in critical applications. In these networks undesired events may undermine the reliability level; thus their effects need to be properly assessed from the early stages of the development process onwards to minimize the chances of unexpected problems during use. In this paper we propose two heuristic strategies: what-if analysis and robustness checking. They allow to drive designers towards optimal WSN deployment solutions, from the point of view of the connection and data delivery resiliency, exploiting a formal approach based on the event calculus formal language. The heuristics are backed up by a support tool aimed to simplify their adoption by system designers. The tool allows to specify the target WSN in a user-friendly way and it is able to elaborate the two heuristic strategies by means of the event calculus specifications automatically generated. The WSN reliability is assessed computing a set of specific metrics. The effectiveness of the strategies is shown in the context of three case studies

Charm physics prospects at the Belle II experiment

Belle II is a major upgrade of the Belle experiment and will operate at the B-factory SuperKEKB in Japan. Here we discuss the expected sensitivity of Belle II for D0 - D¯ 0 mixing and CP violation measurements in the charm sector, which will benefit from a factor 50 increase in statistics and an improved vertex detection. The impact on the determination of CKM parameters from the measurements of purely leptonic D mesons decays is discussed. A novel method of flavour tagging to substantially increase the sample of D0 and D¯ 0 is also presented

Non-collinear quasi phase matching and annular profiles in difference frequency generation with focused Gaussian beams.

We present and experimentally test a simple model for difference frequency generation (DFG) in periodically-poled crystals with gaussian pumping beams. Focusing of input beams originates several non-collinear quasi-phase-matching configurations of the interacting wavevectors, which contribute to the idler output field. In this picture, we accurately describe a number of effects, such as the occurrence of annular idler intensity profiles and the asymmetric trend of DFG power vs temperature. Finally, we quantitatively test the model by means of an indirect measurement of the crystal poling period

Secondary Baryon Asymmetry in pi(+-)p Collisions

The process of secondary baryon production in pi(+-)p collisions at high energies in the central and forward fragmentation regions is considered in the framework of the Quark-Gluon String Model. The contribution of the string-junction mechanism to the baryon production is analysed. The results of numerical calculations are in reasonable agreement with the experimental data on the Lambda/bar(Lambda) and p/bar(p)$ asymmetries.Comment: Contribution to the Proceedings of QCD@Work 2007, International Workshop on Quantum Chromodynamics, Theory and Experiment, Martina Franca-Valle d'Itria, Italy, June 16-20, 2007 (6 pages and 4 figures

Congruences of lines in P5\mathbb{P}^5, quadratic normality, and completely exceptional Monge-Amp\`ere equations

The existence is proved of two new families of locally Cohen-Macaulay sextic threefolds in $\mathbb{P}^5$, which are not quadratically normal. These threefolds arise naturally in the realm of first order congruences of lines as focal loci and in the study of the completely exceptional Monge-Amp\`ere equations. One of these families comes from a smooth congruence of multidegree $(1,3,3)$ which is a smooth Fano fourfold of index two and genus 9.Comment: 16 page