Strategy Guideline. Application of a Construction Quality Process to Existing Home Retrofits

The Home Innovation Research Labs developed a construction quality process for new and existing high performance homes (HPH) in which high performance goals are established, specifications to meet those goals are defined, and construction monitoring points are added to the construction schedule so that critical energy efficiency details are systematically reviewed, documented, and tested in a timely manner. This report follows the evolution of the construction quality process from its development for new homes, to its application in the construction of a high performance home with enhanced specifications, and its application in a crawlspace renovation

Shear wave splitting changes associated with the 2001 volcanic eruption on Mt. Etna

The time delays and polarizations of shear wave splitting above small earthquakes show variations before the 2001 July 17–August 9 2001 flank eruption on Mt Etna, Sicily. Normalized time delays, measured by singular value decomposition, show a systematic increase starting several days before the onset of the eruption. On several occasions before the eruption, the polarization directions of the shear waves at Station MNT, closest to the eruption, show 90◦- flips where the faster and slower split shear waves exchange polarizations. The last 90◦-flip being 5 days before the onset of the eruption. The time delays also exhibit a sudden decrease shortly before the start of the eruption suggesting the possible occurrence of a ‘relaxation’ phenomena, due to crack coalescence. This behaviour has many similarities to that observed before a number of earthquakes elsewhere

2nd CapHaz-Net Regional Hazard Workshop: Social capacity building for Alpine hazards

The Alpine Space is a trans-national territory inhabited by 13 million people and comprising the territory of 8 countries, 83 regions and about 6,200 communities. It is characterised by a great variety in terms of natural hazard exposure. Floods, avalanches, debris flows, landslides, forest fires threaten the entire Alpine Space and are triggered by both natural and anthropogenic factors. The work described in this report focuses on this space and aims at bringing together and confronting different perspectives on the theme of social capacity building. It summarises the results of one of the work packages (WP8) of the CapHaz-Net project, which aims at identifying social capacities that contribute to making European societies more resilient to the impacts of natural hazards. More precisely the work presented here links previous project findings (related both to central topics and specific social capacities) to the practice of alpine hazards management in Europe, underlining potentials for enhancement of resilience both in this region and in Europe as a whole. This report is based on the preparatory work and the results of the Alpine Regional Hazard Workshop that took place in Gorizia (North Eastern Italy) on 4th and 5th April 2011. The main objectives were to provide an overview of existing institutional frames and the respective policy context at the regional scale, to better understand how social capacity building and preparedness strategies for Alpine hazards work in practice and to foster interdisciplinary and cross country dialogue between scientists and practitioners. This was done by taking into account strengths and weaknesses of existing tools and approaches and by analysing the potential for transferring best practices to different regional and hazard contexts. To bridge the gap between research and practice both theoretical knowledge and practical experiences were taken into account. The workshop started from a description of the main characteristics of alpine hazards. Then the focus shifted on operational risk management in four different countries of the alpine arch (Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia and Italy) and finally on practices for risk mitigation in two Italian case studies (Vipiteno/Sterzing in the Trentino Alto Adige region and Malborghetto-Valbruna in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region). The SWOT methodology was used as a heuristic tool for organizing the available insights and the participants' discussion. Natural sciences, historical perspectives as well as legal analysis have contributed to broadening and detailing the social capacity concept and more precisely to characterising and further specifying each particular capacity. Practitioners in the field of alpine hazards in different countries and residents of the two case study area also contributed by presenting and discussing their views and perspectives about prevention, mitigation, emergency management and recovery from natural disasters

Shear wave splitting time variation by stress-induced magma uprising at Mount Etna volcano

Shear wave splitting exhibits clear time variations before the July 17th – August 9th, 2001 flanK eruption at Mount Etna. The normalized time delays, Tn, detected through an orthogonal transformation of singular value decomposition, exhibit a clearincrease starting 20 days before the occurrence of the eruption (July 17th); the qS1 polarization direction, obtained using a 3D covariance matrix decomposition, shows a 90°-flip several times during the analyzed period: the last flip 5 days before the occurrence of the eruption. Both splitting parameters also exhibit a relaxation phase shortly before the starting of the eruption. Our observations seem in agreement with Anisotropic Poro Elasticity (APE) modelling, suggesting a tool for the temporal monitoring of the build up of the stress leading to the occurrence of the 2001 eruption at Mt. Etna

Observation of coda signals from regional and local earthquakes recorded from a downhole-uphole couple of broad-band sensors at Mt Etna

Seismic coda of regional and local earthquakes recorded at a couple of broad band seismometers located at the bottom of a 125 m deep borehole and up-hole at surface show interesting spectral features. We observe strong similarity between the waveforms recorded from up- and down-hole sensors at low frequency (0.1 -3 Hz) and measurable differences in the higher frequency limit. We interpret this observation assuming that at high frequency the up-hole coda is produced by body-tosurface wave scattering in the near surface. We compare the experimental results with numerical simulations done using the Monte Carlo scheme of Yoshimoto et al. (2000) carried out in the assumption of velocity and scattering coefficient which smoothly vary with depth, with the addition of a body-to-surface wave conversion for the energy particles which reach the surface. The comparison of the experimental coda envelopes with those obtained through numerical simulation allow for a quantification of the turbidity parameter at surface

How the Cathedral Embraced the Bazaar, and the Bazaar Became a Cathedral

Peer reviewe

The Cardiovascular Effects of a Meal: J-Tpeak and Tpeak -Tend Assessment and Further Insights Into the Physiological Effects.

Meal intake leads to a significant and prolonged increase in cardiac output to supply the splanchnic vasculature. A meal is associated with sympathetic activation of the cardiovascular system, and food ingestion is correlated with an increase in heart rate, an increase in cardiac stroke volume, and QTc interval shortening for up to 7 hours. Given the complexity of the system, one or several of many mechanisms could explain this observation. The shortening of the QTc interval was correlated with a rise of C-peptide following food ingestion, but the mechanisms by which C-peptide may be involved in the modulation of cardiac repolarization are still unknown. This shortening of the myocardial action potential caused by the ingestion of food was further investigated in the present study by measuring the QRS, J-Tpeak , and Tpeak -Tend intervals in search of further clues to better understand the underlying mechanisms. A retrospective analysis was conducted based on data collected in a formal thorough QT/QTc study in which 32 subjects received a carbohydrate-rich "continental" breakfast, moxifloxacin without food, and moxifloxacin with food. We assessed the effect of food on T-wave morphology using validated algorithms for measurement of J-Tpeak and Tpeak -Tend intervals. Our findings demonstrate that a standardized meal significantly shortened J-Tpeak for 4 hours after a meal and to a much lesser extent and shorter duration (up to 1 hour) prolonged the Tpeak -Tend and QRS intervals. This suggests that the QTc shortening occurs mainly during phase 2 of the cardiac action potential. As there was no corresponding effect on Tpeak -Tend beyond the first hour, we conclude that a meal does not interfere with the outward correcting potassium channels but possibly with Ca2+ currents. An effect on mainly Ca2+ aligns well with our understanding of physiology whereby an increase in stroke volume, as observed after a meal, is associated with changes in Ca2+ cycling in and out of the sarcoplasmic reticulum during cardiac myocyte contraction

Phenotyping neuroblastoma cells through intelligent scrutiny of stain-free biomarkers in holographic flow cytometry

To efficiently tackle certain tumor types, finding new biomarkers for rapid and complete phenotyping of cancer cells is highly demanded. This is especially the case for the most common pediatric solid tumor of the sympathetic nervous system, namely, neuroblastoma (NB). Liquid biopsy is in principle a very promising tool for this purpose, but usually enrichment and isolation of circulating tumor cells in such patients remain difficult due to the unavailability of universal NB cell-specific surface markers. Here, we show that rapid screening and phenotyping of NB cells through stain-free biomarkers supported by artificial intelligence is a viable route for liquid biopsy. We demonstrate the concept through a flow cytometry based on label-free holographic quantitative phase-contrast microscopy empowered by machine learning. In detail, we exploit a hierarchical decision scheme where at first level NB cells are classified from monocytes with 97.9% accuracy. Then we demonstrate that different phenotypes are discriminated within NB class. Indeed, for each cell classified as NB its belonging to one of four NB sub-populations (i.e., CHP212, SKNBE2, SHSY5Y, and SKNSH) is evaluated thus achieving accuracy in the range 73.6%-89.1%. The achieved results solve the realistic problem related to the identification circulating tumor cell, i.e., the possibility to recognize and detect tumor cells morphologically similar to blood cells, which is the core issue in liquid biopsy based on stain-free microscopy. The presented approach operates at lab-on-chip scale and emulates real-world scenarios, thus representing a future route for liquid biopsy by exploiting intelligent biomedical imaging

Study of microstructure and magnetization reversal mechanism in granular CoCrPt:SiO2 films of variable thickness

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