Surgical treatment of a rare case of bilateral ptosis due to localized ocular amyloidosis

We describe a rare case of a 31-year old woman with bilateral ptosis due to localized amyloidosis. She referred a nine-year history of ptosis and surgical treatment with frontalis suspension three years previously. Following complete ophthalmological examination and evaluation of the ptosis we carried out tarsal and fornix biopsy, which revealed accumulation of a weakly eosinophilic amyloid positive substance. We performed surgical correction using the levator aponeurosis–Müller’s muscle complex re-adaptation technique and amyloid substance debulking in all the palpebral layers in the left eye. The material obtained was stained with hematoxylin–eosin, Congo Red, PAS and alpha-actin, which confirmed amyloid deposition. Successively, the right eye was operated in the same manner and entropion was managed by dissection and removal of amyloid from subconjunctival layers. Five years following surgery, the corrective procedure for ptosis was still effective. Surgical treatment of ptosis is very complex and requires precise indications. Appropriate management depends on the etiopathogenesis, accurate diagnosis, and clinical findings

Energy and mechanical aspects on the thermal activation of diaphragm walls for heating and cooling

Underground geotechnical structures, such as deep and shallow foundations, diaphragm walls, tunnel linings and anchors are being increasingly employed as energy geostructures to exchange heat with the ground by installing absorber pipes into the structural elements. This paper focuses on the application of this technology to reinforced concrete diaphragm walls used for construction of underground car parks, basements and metro stations, with the purpose of heating and cooling the adjacent buildings. Preliminary numerical modelling allowed optimising the geothermal plant design of the diaphragm wall. Then its energy efficiency is investigated through finite element thermo-hydro coupled analyses together with the effects of the thermal activation on the surrounding soil. Finally, finite difference thermo-mechanical analyses are used to study the mechanical effects induced by the thermal activation

A Cross-Entropy Approach to the Estimation of Generalised Linear Multilevel Models

In this paper we use the cross-entropy method for noisy optimisation for fitting generalised linear multilevel models through maximum likelihood. We propose specifications of the instrumental distributions for positive and bounded parameters that improve the computational performance. We also introduce a new stopping criterion, which has the advantage of being problem-independent. In a second step we find, by means of extensive Monte Carlo experiments, the most suitable values of the input parameters of the algorithm. Finally, we compare the method to benchmark estimation technique based on numerical integration. The cross-entropy approach turns out to be preferable from both the statistical and the computational point of view. In the last part of the paper, the method is used to model death probability of firms in the healthcare industry in Italy

Testing for Asymmetries and Anisotropies in Regional Economic Models

This paper develops a new methodology for estimating and testing the form of anisotropy of homogeneous spatial processes. We derive a generalised version of the isotropy test proposed by Arbia, Bee and Espa (2013) and analyse its properties in various settings. In light of this, we propose a new approach that allows one to estimate and test under mild conditions any form of anisotropy in homogeneous spatial processes. The power of the test is studied by means of Monte Carlo simulations performed both on regularly and irregularly spaced data. Finally, the method is used to analyse the soybeans yields in the US

Rapid Prototyping of Digital Controls for Power Electronics

The process for designing digital controls for power electronics is typically quite convoluted and affords many opportunities for errors to occur. We present here a new and complete, method for rapid prototyping of digital controls that allows rapid realization of new designs. The approach uses a collection of tools that include both software (the virtual test bed (VTB) and Matlab/Simulink) and hardware (dSpace DSP). An example application of the methodology completes the discussion

Challenge:NOWiSeNets: A Network of Wireless Sensor Networks for Internetworking the Physical World

Wireless Sensor Networks(WiSENets), in which several tiny, wireless sensor nodes are connected in a multi-hop fashion have been subject of intense research in recent years. In a year future, it is expected that several WiSeNets will actually be deployed for environments, instrusion detection systems, factory monitoring, and so on, and the issue of how to deal with interactions between different WiSeNets will naturally arise. In this paper, we propose a version of our future WiSeNets-instrumented world, in which WiSeNets (each of which composed of up to several thousands of sensor nodes)are networked together. This Network of WiSeNets (NOWiSeNets) can be seen as extending the concept of internetworking to the physical world. The goal of this paper is to describe our view of the NOWiSeNets paradigm, to provide examples that show the potential advantages of interconnecting WiSeNets, and to discuss the many research challenges that must be solved to realize this paradigm

Predictability of public transport usage: a study of bus rides in Lisbon, Portugal

This paper presents a study of the predictability of bus usage based on massive bus ride data collected from Lisbon, Portugal. An understanding of public bus usage behavior is important for future development of personalized transport information systems that are equipped with proactive capabilities such as predictive travel recommender systems. In this study, we show that there exists a regularity in the bus usage and that daily bus rides can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy. In addition, we show that there are spatial and temporal factors that influence bus usage predictability. These influential factors include bus usage frequency, number of different bus lines and stops used, and time of rides

Taxi-aware map: identifying and predicting vacant taxis in the city

Knowing where vacant taxis are and will be at a given time and location helps the users in daily planning and scheduling, as well as the taxi service providers in dispatching. In this paper, we present a predictive model for the number of vacant taxis in a given area based on time of the day, day of the week, and weather condition. The history is used to build the prior probability distributions for our inference engine, which is based on the naïve Bayesian classifier with developed error-based learning algorithm and method for detecting adequacy of historical data using mutual information. Based on 150 taxis in Lisbon, Portugal, we are able to predict for each hour with the overall error rate of 0.8 taxis per sq. km