Low-Power Wearable ECG Monitoring System for Multiple-Patient Remote Monitoring

Many devices and solutions for remote electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring have been proposed in the literature. These solutions typically have a large marginal cost per added sensor and are not seamlessly integrated with other smart home solutions. Here, we propose an ECG remote monitoring system that is dedicated to non-technical users in need of long-term health monitoring in residential environments and is integrated in a broader Internet-of-Things (IoT) infrastructure. Our prototype consists of a complete vertical solution with a series of advantages with respect to the state of the art, considering both the prototypes with integrated front end and prototypes realized with off-the-shelf components: 1) ECG prototype sensors with record-low energy per effective number of quantized levels; 2) an architecture providing low marginal cost per added sensor/user; and 3) the possibility of seamless integration with other smart home systems through a single IoT infrastructure

Phytobenthonic Population

Con il presente studio si vuole fornire un'analisi della composizione della componente vegetale sui substrati artificilai (piramidi di cemento) presenti sul fondale della zona del Dosso di Santa Croce (Golfo di Trieste – Alto Adriatico). Le osservazioni sono state condotte durante immersioni in ARA a partire da luglio 2004, con cadenza stagionale. I campioni sono stati acquisiti tramite erborizzazioni e grattaggi di aree significative su tutte le piramidi. Sono state analizzate la diversità biologica e la composizione dello strato di alghe calcaree. L'importanza dell'analisi vegetale non riguarda solo la caratterizzazione biologica dell'ambiente in esame, ma fornisce preziose indicazioni sullo stato di alterazione\equilibrio ambientale. Le alghe sono organismi sessili e pertanto in grado di "registrare" e riflettere, attraverso lo sviluppo e la composizione dei popolamenti, le caratteristiche ecologiche dell'area. Nel caso delle alghe calcaree incrostanti, appartenenti in particolare all'ordine delle Corallinales, il lungo ciclo di vita e la struttura del tallo ne fanno dei preziosi sensori-indicatori biologici. L'analisi ha permesso di rilevare 72 taxa algali di cui una componente preponderante costituita da Rhodophyceae (75% - 54 taxa), seguita da quella delle Phaeophyceae (14% - 10 taxa) e infine quella delle Chlorophyceae (11% - 8 taxa). I tre gruppi mostrano fluttuazioni stagionali che si riflettono in particolare in un picco per le Rhodophyceae nel mese di novembre, un incremento delle Phaeophyceae da febbraio a maggio e un picco in febbraio registrato per le Chlorophyceae. E' stata elaborata la lista floristica delle specie in cui vengono riportati anche l'elemento fitogeografico di appartenenza e l'ecologia della specie

Last-Meter Smart Grid Embedded in an Internet-of-Things Platform

The customer domain of the smart grid natu- rally blends with smart home and smart building systems, but typical proposed approaches are “distributor-centric” rather than “customer-centric,” undermining user acceptance, and are often poorly scalable. To solve this problem, we propose a detailed architecture and an implementation of a “last-meter” smart grid—the portion of the smart grid on customer premises—embedded in an internet-of-things (IoT) platform. Our approach has four aspects of novelty and advantages with respect to the state of the art: 1) seamless integration of smart grid with smart home applications in the same infrastructure; 2) data gathering from heterogeneous sensor communication protocols; 3) secure and customized data access; and 4) univocal sensor and actuator mapping to a common abstraction layer on which additional concurrent applications can be built. A demonstrator has been built and tested with purposely-developed ZigBee smart meters and gateways, a distributed IoT server, and a flexible user interface

Derailment detection and data collection in freight trains, based on a wireless sensor network

We report the development of a network of wireless ultralow-power sensors to be deployed on freight railway cars, with the main purpose of detecting derailment events and alerting the engineer in the cab of the leading locomotive. Because no power bus is available on freight cars, we plan to rely on energy scavenging from vibrations; therefore, minimization of the power consumption has been one of our main priorities. We have, therefore, focused on ultralow-power hardware and strived to reduce the time intervals during which it is in active mode, achieving an average power consumption of ~0.5 mW with an active cycle of ~20 ms every 2 s. We discuss the overall concept that we propose, including the self-initialization protocol and the communication strategy that we have developed, and present the results of measurements on a prototype network that we have implemented

Joint Power Control and Structural Health Monitoring in Industry 4.0 Scenarios using Eclipse Arrowhead and Web of Things

The integration of legacy IoT ecosystems in Industry 4.0 scenarios requires human effort to adapt single devices. This process would highly benefit from features like device lookup, loose coupling and late binding. In this paper, we tackle the issue of integrating legacy monitoring systems and actuation systems in an industrial scenario, by looking into the Web of Things (WoT) as a communication standard and the Eclipse Arrowhead Framework (AHF) as a service orchestrator. More specifically, we propose a general architectural approach to enable closed-loop automation between the above mentioned legacy systems by leveraging the adaptation of the WoT to the AHF. Then, we develop a rule-based engine that enables the control of the actuation based on sensor values. Finally, we present a proof-of-concept use case where we integrate a Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) scenario with a power control actuation subsystem using the developed component

On Quantum Effects in Soft Leptogenesis

It has been recently shown that quantum Boltzman equations may be relevant for leptogenesis. Quantum effects, which lead to a time-dependent CP asymmetry, have been shown to be particularly important for resonant leptogenesis when the asymmetry is generated by the decay of two nearly degenerate states. In this work we investigate the impact of the use of quantum Boltzman equations in the framework ``soft leptogenesis'' in which supersymmetry soft-breaking terms give a small mass splitting between the CP-even and CP-odd right-handed sneutrino states of a single generation and provide the CP-violating phase to generate the lepton asymmetry.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures. Replacement to match published versio