Wearable Platform for Automatic Recognition of Parkinson Disease by Muscular Implication Monitoring

The need for diagnostic tools for the characterization of progressive movement disorders - as the Parkinson Disease (PD) - aiming to early detect and monitor the pathology is getting more and more impelling. The parallel request of wearable and wireless solutions, for the real-time monitoring in a non-controlled environment, has led to the implementation of a Quantitative Gait Analysis platform for the extraction of muscular implications features in ordinary motor action, such as gait. The here proposed platform is used for the quantification of PD symptoms. Addressing the wearable trend, the proposed architecture is able to define the real-time modulation of the muscular indexes by using 8 EMG wireless nodes positioned on lower limbs. The implemented system “translates” the acquisition in a 1-bit signal, exploiting a dynamic thresholding algorithm. The resulting 1-bit signals are used both to define muscular indexes both to drastically reduce the amount of data to be analyzed, preserving at the same time the muscular information. The overall architecture has been fully implemented on Altera Cyclone V FPGA. The system has been tested on 4 subjects: 2 affected by PD and 2 healthy subjects (control group). The experimental results highlight the validity of the proposed solution in Disease recognition and the outcomes match the clinical literature results

WSN-Based Near Real-Time Environmental Monitoring for Shelf Life Prediction Through Data Processing to Improve Food Safety and Certification

This position paper aims to support a control technique in the perishables goods supply-chain through a combination of near real-time wireless sensor network (WSN) for environmental monitoring and further data processing to predict the shelf life of the product. This approach returns a low cost, versatile and efficient tool that can significantly improve the safety and food certification through the organoleptic qualities control using three different sensors, i.e. temperature, light and humidity. In this article, therefore, the advantages of the proposed technique are explained and a case study is presented to support this approach, as well as an example of processing algorithm for shelf life evaluation

Wireless Shelf Life Monitoring and Real Time Prediction in a Supply-Chain of Perishables Goods

This paper discusses the huge potential of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) as a tool for real-time monitoring in a perishable goods supply chain according to the pressing need of security and food certification. The combination of an appropriate monitoring system and further data processing create a tool that can provide the most useful information for each application. In this paper we propose a case study

Gait analysis and quantitative drug effect evaluation in Parkinson disease by jointly EEG-EMG monitoring

This work addresses the rising need for a diagnostic tool for the evaluation of the effectiveness of a drug treatment in Parkinson disease, allowing the physician to monitor of the patient gait at home and to shape the treatment on the individual peculiarity. In aim, we present a cyber-physical system for real-time processing EEG and EMG signals. The wearable and wireless system extracts the following indexes: (i) typical activation and deactivation timing of single muscles and the duty cycle in a single step (ii) typical and maximum co-contractions, as well as number of co-contraction/s. The indexes are validated by using Movement Related Potentials (MRPs). The signal processing stage is implemented on Altera Cyclone V FPGA. In the paper, we show in vivo measurements by comparing responses before and after the drug (Levodopa) treatment. The system quantifies the effect of the Levodopa treatment detecting: (i) a 17% reduction in typical agonist-antagonist co-contractions time (ii) 23.6% decrease in the maximum co-contraction time (iii) 33% decrease in number of critical co-contraction. Brain implications shows a mean reduction of 5% on the evaluated potentials

Wild birds of the Italian Middle Ages: diet, environment and society

Wild birds are intrinsically associated with our perception of the Middle Ages. They often feature in heraldic designs, paintings, and books of hours; few human activities typify the medieval period better than falconry. Prominent in medieval iconography, wild birds feature less frequently in written sources (as they were rarely the subject of trade transactions or legal documents) but they can be abundant in archaeological sites. In this paper we highlight the nature of wild bird exploitation in Italian medieval societies, ranging from their role as food items to their status and symbolic importance. A survey of 13 Italian medieval sites corresponding to 19 ‘period sites’, dated from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, reveals the occurrence of more than 100 species (certainly an under-estimate of the actual number). Anseriformes and Columbiformes played a prominent role in the mid- and late medieval Italian diet, though Passeriformes and wild Galliformes were also important. In the late Middle Ages, there is an increase in species diversity and in the role of hunting as an important marker of social status

Hydrogen and Carbon Nanotubes from Pyrolysis-Catalysis of Waste Plastics: A Review

More than 27 million tonnes of waste plastics are generated in Europe each year representing a considerable potential resource. There has been extensive research into the production of liquid fuels and aromatic chemicals from pyrolysis-catalysis of waste plastics. However, there is less work on the production of hydrogen from waste plastics via pyrolysis coupled with catalytic steam reforming. In this paper, the different reactor designs used for hydrogen production from waste plastics are considered and the influence of different catalysts and process parameters on the yield of hydrogen from different types of waste plastics are reviewed. Waste plastics have also been investigated as a source of hydrocarbons for the generation of carbon nanotubes via the chemical vapour deposition route. The influences on the yield and quality of carbon nanotubes derived from waste plastics are reviewed in relation to the reactor designs used for production, catalyst type used for carbon nanotube growth and the influence of operational parameters

ALICE: Physics Performance Report, Volume I

ALICE is a general-purpose heavy-ion experiment designed to study the physics of strongly interacting matter and the quark-gluon plasma in nucleus-nucleus collisions at the LHC. It currently includes more than 900 physicists and senior engineers, from both nuclear and high-energy physics, from about 80 institutions in 28 countries. The experiment was approved in February 1997. The detailed design of the different detector systems has been laid down in a number of Technical Design Reports issued between mid-1998 and the end of 2001 and construction has started for most detectors. Since the last comprehensive information on detector and physics performance was published in the ALICE Technical Proposal in 1996, the detector as well as simulation, reconstruction and analysis software have undergone significant development. The Physics Performance Report (PPR) will give an updated and comprehensive summary of the current status and performance of the various ALICE subsystems, including updates to the Technical Design Reports, where appropriate, as well as a description of systems which have not been published in a Technical Design Report. The PPR will be published in two volumes. The current Volume I contains: 1. a short theoretical overview and an extensive reference list concerning the physics topics of interest to ALICE, 2. relevant experimental conditions at the LHC, 3. a short summary and update of the subsystem designs, and 4. a description of the offline framework and Monte Carlo generators. Volume II, which will be published separately, will contain detailed simulations of combined detector performance, event reconstruction, and analysis of a representative sample of relevant physics observables from global event characteristics to hard processes