Delay and disruption management in local public transportation via real-time vehicle and crew re-scheduling: a case study

Local public transport companies, especially in large cities, are facing every day the problem of managing delays and small disruptions. Disruption management is a well-established practice in airlines and railways. However, in local public transport the approaches to these problems have followed a different path, mainly focusing on holding and short-turning strategies not directly associated with the driver scheduling. In this paper we consider the case of the management of urban surface lines of Azienda Trasporti Milanese (ATM) of Milan. The main issues are the service regularity as a measure of the quality of service, and the minimization of the operational costs due to changes in the planned driver scheduling. We propose a simulation-based optimization system to cope with delays and small disruptions that can be effectively used in a real-time environment and takes into account both vehicle and driver scheduling. The proposed approach is tested on real data to prove its actual applicability

Keep Rollin' - Whole-Body Motion Control and Planning for Wheeled Quadrupedal Robots

We show dynamic locomotion strategies for wheeled quadrupedal robots, which combine the advantages of both walking and driving. The developed optimization framework tightly integrates the additional degrees of freedom introduced by the wheels. Our approach relies on a zero-moment point based motion optimization which continuously updates reference trajectories. The reference motions are tracked by a hierarchical whole-body controller which computes optimal generalized accelerations and contact forces by solving a sequence of prioritized tasks including the nonholonomic rolling constraints. Our approach has been tested on ANYmal, a quadrupedal robot that is fully torque-controlled including the non-steerable wheels attached to its legs. We conducted experiments on flat and inclined terrains as well as over steps, whereby we show that integrating the wheels into the motion control and planning framework results in intuitive motion trajectories, which enable more robust and dynamic locomotion compared to other wheeled-legged robots. Moreover, with a speed of 4 m/s and a reduction of the cost of transport by 83 % we prove the superiority of wheeled-legged robots compared to their legged counterparts.Comment: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letter

Dapsone Hypersensitivity Syndrome In An Adolescent During Treatment Of Leprosy

A 12 y old girl was admitted 24 days after start a WHO multidrug therapy scheme for multibacillary leprosy (dapsone, clofazimine and rifampicin) with intense jaundice, generalized lymphadenopathy, hepatoesplenomegaly, oral erosions, conjunctivitis, morbiliform rash and edema of face, ankles and hands. The main laboratory data on admission included: hemoglobin, 8.4 g/dL; WBC, 15,710 cells/mm3; platelet count, 100,000 cells/mm3; INR = 1.49; increased serum levels of aspartate and alanine aminotransferases, gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase, alkaline phosphatase, direct and indirect bilirubin. Following, the clinical conditions had deteriorated, developing exfoliative dermatitis, shock, generalized edema, acute renal and hepatic failure, pancytopenia, intestinal bleeding, pneumonia, urinary tract infection and bacteremia, needing adrenergic drugs, replacement of fluids and blood product components, and antibiotics. Ten days after admission she started to improve, and was discharged to home at day 39th, after start new supervised treatment for leprosy with clofazimine and rifampicin, without adverse effects. This presentation fulfils the criteria for the diagnosis of dapsone hypersensitivity syndrome (fever, generalized lymphadenopathy, exfoliative rash, anemia and liver involvement with mixed hepatocellular and cholestatic features). Physicians, mainly in geographical areas with high prevalence rates of leprosy, should be aware to this severe, and probably not so rare, hypersensitivity reaction to dapsone.466331334Aldday, E.J., Barnes, J., Toxic effects of diaminodiphenylsulphone in leprosy (1951) Lancet, 2, pp. 205-206Andrade, Z.M.V., França, E.R., Teixeira, M.A.G., Santo, I.B., Síndrome sulfônica: Relato de um caso (1999) An. Bras. Derm., 74, pp. 59-61Barbosa, A.M., Martins Jr., E., Fleury, R.N., Opromolla, D.V.A., Mais um caso de síndrome da sulfona (2000) Hansenol. Int., 25, pp. 159-162Bluhm, R.E., Adedoyin, A., Mccarver, D.G., Branch, R.A., Development of dapsone toxicity in patients with inflammatory dermatoses: Activity of acetylation and hydroxylation of dapsone as risk factors (1999) Clin. Pharmacol. Ther., 65, pp. 598-605Bocquet, H., Bourgault-Villada, I., Delfau-Larue, M.H., Syndrome d'hypersensibilité à la dapsone. Clone T circulant transitoire (1995) Ann. Derm. Vénér., 122, pp. 514-516Brasil, M.T.L.R.F., Opromolla, D.V., Marzliak, M.L.C., Nogueira, W., Results of a surveillance system for adverse effects in leprosy's WHO/MDT (1996) Int. J. Leprosy, 64, pp. 97-104Chalasani, P., Baffoe-Bonnie, H., Jurado, R.I., Dapsone therapy causing sulfone syndrome and lethal hepatic failure in an HIV-infected patient (1994) Sth. Med. J., 87, pp. 1145-1146Frey, H.M., Gershon, A.A., Borkowsky, W., Bullock, W.E., Fatal reaction to dapsone during treatment of leprosy (1981) Ann. Intern. Med., 94, pp. 777-779Gallo, M.E.N., Nery, J.A.C., Garcia, C.G., Interconências pelas drogas utilizadas nos esquemas poliquimioterápicos em hanseníase (1995) Hansenol. Int., 20, pp. 46-50Johnson, D.A., Cattau Jr., E.L., Kurltsky, J.N., Zimmerman, H.J., Liver involvement in the sulfone syndrome (1986) Arch. Intern. Med., 146, pp. 875-877Kaluarachchi, S.I., Fernandopulle, B.M., Gunawardane, B.P., Hepatic and haematological adverse reactions associated with the use of multidrug therapy in leprosy: A five year retrospective study (2001) Indian J. Leprosy, 73, pp. 121-129Kumar, R.H., Kumar, M.V., Thappa, D.M., Dapsone syndrome: A five year retrospective analysis (1998) Indian J. Leprosy, 70, pp. 271-276Lastória, J.C., De Mello, M.S., Putinatti, A., Souza, V., Síndrome de hipersensibilidade à dapsona (2004) Diagn. Tratam., 9, pp. 19-21Leta, G.C., Simas, M.E.P.A.S., Oliveira, M.L.W., Gomes, M.K., Síndrome de hipersensibilidade à dapsona: Revisão sistemática dos critérios diagnósticos (2003) Hansenol. Int., 28, pp. 79-84Lowe, J., Treatment of leprosy with diamino diphenylsulphone by mouth (1950) Lancet, 1, pp. 145-150Mandell, G.L., Petri Jr., W.A., Drugs used in the chemotherapy of tuberculosis, Mycobacterium avlum complex disease and leprosy (1996) Goodman & Gilman's Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics. 9. International Ed., pp. 1155-1174. , Hardman, J.G.Limbird, L.E.Molinoff, P.B.Ruddon, R.W. & Gilman, A.G., ed. New York, McGraw HillOpromolla, D.V.A., Fleury, R.N., Sindrome da sulfona e reação reversa (1994) Hansenol. Int., 19, pp. 70-76Prussik, R., Shear, N.H., Dapsone hypersensitivity syndrome (1996) J. Amer. Acad. Derm., 35, pp. 346-349Rao, P.N., Lakshmi, T.S., Increase in the incidence of dapsone hypersensitivity syndrome: An appraisal (2001) Leprosy Rev., 72, pp. 57-62Reeve, P.A., Ala, J.L., Hall, J.J., Dapsone syndrome in Vanuatu: A high incidence during multidrug treatment (MDT) of leprosy (1992) J. Trop. Med. Hyg., 95, pp. 266-270Risse, L., Bernard, P., Brosset, A., Syndrome d'hypersensibilitȩ a la disulone® (1994) Ann. Derm. Vȩnȩr., 121, pp. 242-244Saito, S., Ikezawa, Z., Miyamoto, H., Kim, S., A case of dapsone syndrome (1994) Clin. Exp. Derm., 19, pp. 152-156Santos, M.E., Leta, G.C., Oliveira, M.L.W., Dapsone hypersensitivity syndrome (DHS): Not so rare to be minimized in endemic countries (2002) International Leprosy Congress, 16 (PART 16). , Salvador, Brazil. Book of abstractsThong, B.Y., Leong, K.P., Chng, H.H., Hypersensitivity syndrome associated with dapsone/pyrimethamine (Maloprim) antimalaria chemoprophylaxis (2002) Ann. Allergy Asthma Immunol., 88, pp. 527-529Tomecki, K.J., Catalano, C.J., Dapsone hypersensitivity. The sulfone syndrome revisited (1981) Arch. Derm., 117, pp. 38-39(2004) Leprosy Elimination Project. Status Report, 2003, , http://www.who.int/lep/Reports/s20042.pdf, WHO, Genev

Delay Management in Public Transportation: Service Regularity Issues and Crew Re-scheduling

In this paper, we propose a decision support tool to assist a local public transportation company in tackling service delays and small disruptions. We discuss different ways to assess and improve the regularity of the service, and we propose a simulation based optimization system that can be effectively used in a real-time environment taking into account both vehicle and driver shifts. In particular, we describe a tabu-search procedure for the online vehicle scheduling optimizing the regularity of the service and a column generation approach for the consequential crew re-scheduling minimizing the driver extra-time. As a case study, we analyze the management of urban surface lines of Azienda Trasporti Milanese (ATM) of Milan. In the last part of the paper we report a detailed analysis of the experimental phase showing the effectiveness of the proposed approach

Neutron Tomography at INES: First experimental results

A neutron tomography apparatus has been designed and installed at the Italian neutron experimental station (INES) at ISIS (UK). The instrument has a double aim: an additional opportunity for the INES users and a “bench test” for an instrument component that will be proposed for installation on some of the new neutron scattering instruments of Target Station 2 (TS2) of ISIS. Here, we present the first experimental results achieved with this apparatus

The Impact of COVID-19 on Plastic Surgery Residency Training

Abstract: Nowadays didactic and surgical activities for residents in the surgery field are less and less due to an increasing burden of documentation and \u201cnon-educational work.\u201d Considering the current lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it has never been so important to find different ways to allow residents to improve their knowledge. We asked all plastic and esthetic surgery residents in our country to fill out a questionnaire to investigate changes in their didactical activity and analyze problems about their professional growth in the last few months. From the results of such questionnaires, we found that most of the residents feel the decrease in surgical activities during this time is a detrimental factor for their training and that even if all the schools have changed their didactical activities no school has introduced the use of virtual simulators to compensate for the decrease in surgical practice. Actually, the majority of residents use webinars to keep updated, stating that such technologies are useful but not sufficient to analyze plastic surgery topics in depth during COVID-19 lockdown. Virtual interactive tools are well known in different clinical and surgical specialties, and they are considered as a valid support, but it seems that in plastic surgery they are not so used. According to the most recent studies about residents\u2019 didactical program, we have investigated the potential of Anatomage Table in combination with Touch Surgery application as physical and mental aids to bypass the decreased number and kind of surgical interventions performed in this particular time. Anatomage is an academic user-friendly touch screen table; it is used by both medical students and residents to learn human anatomy and to master surgical anatomy. Touch Surgery is an application available on smartphones and tablets that gives the possibility to watch real and virtually designed surgical videos, accompanied by explanatory comments on the surgical phases; they are interactive and give the possibility to check what you have learned through tests administered after virtual classes. In our opinion, these tools represent reliable solutions to improve plastic residents\u2019 training, mostly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Level of Evidence V: This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266

Normative and validation data of an articulation test for Italian-speaking children

Objectives: As a standardized instrument to assess speech sound development in Italian-speaking children is currently lacking, norms used to diagnose speech sound disorders (SSD) are mainly based on studies including English-speaking participants. This application may result in misidentification of SSD due to linguistic differences. The aims of the study were to establish normative data on speech sound development of Italian-speaking children and to evaluate psychometric properties of Rossi's articulation test, the picture-naming test selected to assess speech sound development. Methods: A cross-sectional study including 694 normally-developing Italian-speaking children aged from 3 to 7 years was conducted. Children were administered Rossi's articulation test, and percentages of speech sound correct production were calculated. To evaluate inter-rater reliability of the test, audio-recordings of 50 children were scored by an additional examiner. The same rater scored the audio-recordings of 50 children twice with an interval of at least 1 week. To evaluate test-retest reliability, 144 participants were re-tested after 1-3 weeks by the same assessor. Scores were compared through Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC). To assess construct validity, the developmental progression of total scores across age groups was verified by the estimation of the reference range for the test, using a regression procedure. Results: Almost all Italian children in the sample produced vowels and approximants correctly. Singleton consonants were acquired before consonant clusters. Ages of acquisition of each consonant were presented: plosives and nasals were early mastered by Italian children, while dental affricates, alveolar fricatives and the palatal lateral were the latest acquired segments. All ICCs were superior to 0.9 (reliability). A statistically significant improvement in test score with age was found (construct validity). Conclusions: The paper provides normative data for speech sound development of Italian-speaking children; preliminary psychometric analysis of Rossi's articulation test revealed satisfactory reliability and construct validity. Clinicians are recommended to use Rossi's articulation test to assess speech sound development in Italian children

Changes in serum levels of TNF-α, IL-6, OPG, RANKL and their correlation with radiographic and clinical assessment in fragility fractures and high energy fractures

Stages of bone turnover during fracture repair can be assessed employing serum markers of osteoblastic and osteoclastic activity, inflammatory cytokines, clinical evaluation and imaging instruments. Our study compare the fracture healing process in fragility fractures and high energy fractures by evaluating serum changes of interleukin-6 (IL-6), tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), osteoprotegerin (OPG) and receptor activator of the nuclear factor-kB ligand (RANKL) in combination with radiographic (Radiographic Union Scale for Tibial fractures, RUST) and clinical (Lower extremity measure, LEM) assessments. We enrolled 56 patients divided into four corresponding groups: group A with high energy trauma fracture (tibial/femoral shaft); group B with low energy trauma fracture (femoral fractures); healthy (control A) and osteoporotic subjects (control B). Blood samples were collected before surgery (T0) and after 10 weeks (T10). Serum concentrations of IL-6, TNF-α, RANKL and OPG were quantified using commercial enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kits. Our results show that RANKL values are significantly higher at T10 than at T0 in low energy trauma fractures (group B). OPG is significantly lower in each control group than that of the respective fractured group and its concentration at T0 and at T10 is significantly lower in high than in low energy fractures. RANKL/OPG ratio is significantly higher in both controls than in fractured groups, and significantly increases after 10 weeks. IL-6 and TNF-α concentrations significantly decrease during fracture healing and are higher in high (group A) than in low energy fractures (group B). Significant differences were also found in both RUST score and LEM between groups A and B. Changes in TNF-α and IL-6 levels correlate with RUST and LEM in fragility and high energy fractures, while RANKL/OPG ratio is associated with these clinical parameters only in fragility fractures. These findings suggest that serum levels of IL-6, TNF-α, RANKL and OPG might be used to monitor the stages of fracture repair. Further studies will be needed to confirm the role of these cytokines in fracture repair

Dataset of immune responses induced in swine by an inactivated Porcine Circovirus 2b vaccine

A whole virus, inactivated, Porcine Circovirus 2b (PCV2b) vaccine was submitted to a quantal assay of potency, as explained in detail in our companion paper [1]. To this purpose, twenty, 45-day old piglets, checked for maternally-derived antibody (MDA), were allocated to four groups of 5 animals each; these were vaccinated with 800/266/88/0 nanograms, respectively, of an inactivated PCV2b strain, consisting of two distinct virion populations. Twenty-six days later, all the pigs were challenged intranasally with the homologous PCV2b strain. In the presence of a clear dose-dependent protection in terms of viremia, no such effect was observed in terms of weight gain after challenge. The 800 and 266-ng payloads were associated with neutralizing antibody titers above the MDA levels in oral fluids. Higher levels of viremia in control and 88-ng groups [1] coincided with a higher Natural Killer activity of tracheobronchial lymph node cells from PCV2-infected pigs. The PCV2 ORF2-specific ELISPOT assay for IFN-g– secreting cells showed very few (2–4) ORF2-specific cells/105 peripheral blood mononuclear cells beyond the basal levels under our experimental conditions (non-significant differences among groups). Also, no significant differences were observed in the degree of lymphoid tissue hyperplasia among the different groups