An Efficient Requirement-Aware Attachment Policy for Future Millimeter Wave Vehicular Networks

The automotive industry is rapidly evolving towards connected and autonomous vehicles, whose ever more stringent data traffic requirements might exceed the capacity of traditional technologies for vehicular networks. In this scenario, densely deploying millimeter wave (mmWave) base stations is a promising approach to provide very high transmission speeds to the vehicles. However, mmWave signals suffer from high path and penetration losses which might render the communication unreliable and discontinuous. Coexistence between mmWave and Long Term Evolution (LTE) communication systems has therefore been considered to guarantee increased capacity and robustness through heterogeneous networking. Following this rationale, we face the challenge of designing fair and efficient attachment policies in heterogeneous vehicular networks. Traditional methods based on received signal quality criteria lack consideration of the vehicle's individual requirements and traffic demands, and lead to suboptimal resource allocation across the network. In this paper we propose a Quality-of-Service (QoS) aware attachment scheme which biases the cell selection as a function of the vehicular service requirements, preventing the overload of transmission links. Our simulations demonstrate that the proposed strategy significantly improves the percentage of vehicles satisfying application requirements and delivers efficient and fair association compared to state-of-the-art schemes.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables, accepted to the 30th IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposiu

The Energy Improvement of School Buildings: Analysis and Proposals for Action

The objective of this research is to identify a tool of analysis applicable to school buildings that, through simple input information, can make immediate assessment reduction of energy consumption for heating and associated reduction of CO2emission, as a result of improvements.The definition of a methodology of analysis allows to evaluate preliminarily the energy performance of the whole school building identifying the most problematic buildings and dividing into groups based on the construction and geometry. In the first phase all buildings have been filed through information obtained from survey and documentation of archives, then two analyses were performed to compare the energy performance of the whole sample.For the initial analysis it was applied a methodology proposed by ENEA (Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic development) and designed specifically for school buildings; in the second analysis it was calculated the energy performance index for winter heating and compared with the appropriate limit value.Subsequently a sample of buildings was well selectedafter splitting the school building into homogeneous groups. The buildings have been translated into a mathematical model of the building system calibrated on actual energy consumption and dynamic conditions were simulated in order to accurately quantify the impact of the various proposed actions.The results of all combinations of intervention, obtained from the latter analysis, have been used to develop a tool that identified the type of building and construction technology in order to estimate the immediate reduction of consumption and the CO2emitted.The methodology was applied to the school building of the municipality of Castelfranco Veneto, simulating two scenarios: the first plan to interventions under the PAES (Action Plan for Sustainable Energy) for public buildings while the second considers the possibility of performing all the improvements recommended by the instrument in relation to the entire academic heritage of the city

The Comparative Exploration of the Ice Giant Planets with Twin Spacecraft: Unveiling the History of our Solar System

In the course of the selection of the scientific themes for the second and third L-class missions of the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program of the European Space Agency, the exploration of the ice giant planets Uranus and Neptune was defined "a timely milestone, fully appropriate for an L class mission". Among the proposed scientific themes, we presented the scientific case of exploring both planets and their satellites in the framework of a single L-class mission and proposed a mission scenario that could allow to achieve this result. In this work we present an updated and more complete discussion of the scientific rationale and of the mission concept for a comparative exploration of the ice giant planets Uranus and Neptune and of their satellite systems with twin spacecraft. The first goal of comparatively studying these two similar yet extremely different systems is to shed new light on the ancient past of the Solar System and on the processes that shaped its formation and evolution. This, in turn, would reveal whether the Solar System and the very diverse extrasolar systems discovered so far all share a common origin or if different environments and mechanisms were responsible for their formation. A space mission to the ice giants would also open up the possibility to use Uranus and Neptune as templates in the study of one of the most abundant type of extrasolar planets in the galaxy. Finally, such a mission would allow a detailed study of the interplanetary and gravitational environments at a range of distances from the Sun poorly covered by direct exploration, improving the constraints on the fundamental theories of gravitation and on the behaviour of the solar wind and the interplanetary magnetic field.Comment: 29 pages, 4 figures; accepted for publication on the special issue "The outer Solar System X" of the journal Planetary and Space Science. This article presents an updated and expanded discussion of the white paper "The ODINUS Mission Concept" (arXiv:1402.2472) submitted in response to the ESA call for ideas for the scientific themes of the future L2 and L3 space mission

Benthic foraminifera as tracers of brine production in the Storfjorden "sea ice factory"

Abstract. The rapid response of benthic foraminifera to environmental factors (e.g. organic matter quality and quantity, salinity, pH) and their high fossilisation potential make them promising bio-indicators for the intensity and recurrence of brine formation in Arctic seas. Such an approach, however, requires a thorough knowledge of their modern ecology in such extreme settings. To this aim, seven stations along a north–south transect across the Storfjorden (Svalbard archipelago) have been sampled using an interface multicorer. This fjord is an area of intense sea ice formation characterised by the production of brine-enriched shelf waters (BSW) as a result of a recurrent latent-heat polynya. Living (rose bengal-stained) foraminiferal assemblages were analysed together with geochemical and sedimentological parameters in the top 5 cm of the sediment. Three major biozones were distinguished. (i) The "inner fjord" zone, dominated by typical glacier proximal calcareous species, which opportunistically respond to fresh organic matter inputs. (ii) The "deep basins and sill" zone, characterised by glacier distal agglutinated fauna; these are either dominant because of the mostly refractory nature of organic matter and/or the brine persistence that hampers the growth of calcareous species and/or causes their dissolution. (iii) The "outer fjord" zone, characterised by typical North Atlantic species due to the intrusion of the North Atlantic water in the Storfjordrenna. The stressful conditions present in the deep basins and sill (i.e. acidic waters and low food quality) result in a high agglutinated ∕ calcareous ratio (A∕C). This supports the potential use of the A∕C ratio as a proxy for brine persistence and overflow in Storfjorden

BepiColombo Science Investigations During Cruise and Flybys at the Earth, Venus and Mercury

The dual spacecraft mission BepiColombo is the first joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to explore the planet Mercury. BepiColombo was launched from Kourou (French Guiana) on October 20th, 2018, in its packed configuration including two spacecraft, a transfer module, and a sunshield. BepiColombo cruise trajectory is a long journey into the inner heliosphere, and it includes one flyby of the Earth (in April 2020), two of Venus (in October 2020 and August 2021), and six of Mercury (starting from 2021), before orbit insertion in December 2025. A big part of the mission instruments will be fully operational during the mission cruise phase, allowing unprecedented investigation of the different environments that will encounter during the 7-years long cruise. The present paper reviews all the planetary flybys and some interesting cruise configurations. Additional scientific research that will emerge in the coming years is also discussed, including the instruments that can contribute

Mobility-aware handover strategies in smart cities

none8siSupporting the Internet of Things and Smart City applications is one of the most important goals in the ongoing design process of 5G cellular systems. Another trend is an increasing focus on data-driven optimization and Self-Organized Networking, in order to automate network deployments and increase performance and efficiency. This approach, however, does not fully take advantage of the data generated by the Smart City. In this work, we propose to process and use the information flowing through the network from the city sensors to increase the awareness of the network itself, improving the communication performance. We exploit vehicular traffic data from the Traffic for London (TfL) sensor network to infer mobility patterns and improve the efficiency of LTE handovers.noneDalla Cia, Massimo; Mason, Federico; Peron, Davide; Chiariotti, Federico; Polese, Michele; Mahmoodi, Toktam; Zorzi, Michele; Zanella, AndreaDalla Cia, Massimo; Mason, Federico; Peron, Davide; Chiariotti, Federico; Polese, Michele; Mahmoodi, Toktam; Zorzi, Michele; Zanella, Andre

Recurrent Pituicytoma with Pseudoaneurysm: Report of a Challenging Case

Background Pituicytoma is a rare tumor originating from glial cells of the adult neurohypophysis and infundibulum. Surgical removal is the treatment of choice for this neoplasm. In recent years the endoscopic endonasal approach has proven to be a viable and effective alternative to standard craniotomy. Case Description We report a case of a patient submitted to surgical treatment for a recurrence of pituicytoma, which was operated on transcranially at another hospital approximately 5 years previously. After transcranial surgery, the patient developed a symptomatic recurrence and an undisclosed intrasellar pseudoaneurysm that were treated with an endoscopic endonasal approach, but still required an intracranial approach to complete the resection. Conclusions An intrasellar pseudoaneurysm can endanger the endoscopic removal of the pituicytoma, forcing the surgeon to reevaluate a microscopic transcranial approach or to consider a staged procedure