Search results for "DDE"

Simulation and Test of UAV Tasks With Resource-Constrained Hardware in the Loop

2021

Simulations are indispensable to reduce costs and risks when developing and testing algorithms for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) especially for applications in high risk scenarios like search and rescue (SAR) operations and post-disaster damage assessment. Many UAV applications require real-time tasks for which the timeliness of computations is fundamental. However, standard simulation tools are not guaranteed to run in sync with real-time events, leading to unreliable assessments of the ability of the target hardware to perform specific tasks. In this work we present a simulation and test system able to run UAV tasks on resource-constrained target hardware possibly adopted in these applic…

Soil Erosion Induced by the Introduction of New Pasture Species in a Faxinal Farm of Southern Brazil

2018

The faxinal management system is an endangered agro-silvopastoral system which forms part of the local traditional management in the Paraná federal state (Brazil). Significant changes in land management since the 1970s caused farmers to look for alternatives to increase the productivity of their farms. The introduction of new pasture species is causing land degradation problems, of which soil erosion is the most important challenge. Therefore, in this study, we assessed the environmental consequences of introducing exotic pasture species, such as Brachiaria decumbens. To achieve this goal, ten erosion plots were installed with exotic and native pastures (Paspalum notatum Flügg&e…

THE MULTIPLE COUNTING OF TOURISTS IN SICILY AND THE ANALYSIS OF INTRA-REGIONAL TOURIST FLOWS

2008

Tourist arrivals are often wrongly interpreted as the number of tourists. The non-agreement between arrivals and tourists (Parroco and Vaccina, 2006) produces a large overestimation of the number of tourists really present at the destinations (tourists replication), so determining heavy consequences on economic and territorial planning. In order to get a first estimate of replications and to analyse the typical tourist tours throughout Sicily, in summer 2005 a census research was made on 8.883 tourists intercepted at 13 hotels in Cefalù, a well-known bathing resort in the Northern coast of Sicily (Italy).

Smoking cessation and outcome of patients affected by non muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMI-BC)

2013

Introduction: Does a correlation exist between smoking cessation and recurrence of non muscle invasive bladder carcinoma (NMI-BC) after TUR and adjuvant intravescical chemotherapy? Up today just few retrospective studies tried to answer this question. There is evidence that quitting decreases the risk of recurrence but nowadays it is still controversial how and how long it takes from quitting to reduce the risk (1-3). The aim of the present study is to compare the recurrence rate in smokers, non smokers and former smokers and in particular to evaluate if and how the decision of quitting at diagnosis could change the patients’outcome. Patients and Methods: We retrospectively analyzed the out…

"Ink and incapability" : verbal humour in the TV-sitcom Blackadder : a pragmatic and rhetorical analysis

2005

Feasibility of Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator Treatment in Five Patients With Familial Friedreich's Ataxia-A Case Series

2010

Friedreich's ataxia (FRA) is an autosomal recessive disease of the central nervous system that is associated with familial cardiomyopathy. Cardiac involvement is seen in more than 90% of the patients and is the most common cause of death in these patients. We present a case series and discuss the indications for implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) implantation in FRA with review of the literature. Five pediatric patients who suffer from FRA (four female and one male, mean age 17.4 years) underwent ICD implantation between 2007 and 2008 in the University Hospital of Goettingen. The diagnosis of FRA was established by standard clinical criteria and proven in each case by genotyping a…

A Neural Multi-Agent Architecture for an Autonomous Mobile Robot Control

1999

The aim of this paper is to introduce a multi-agent architecture for an autonomous robot control oriented to obtain high design modularity and high parallelism of decision processes. A multi-agent approach allows us to design several specialized agents and each of them is optimized in order to solve a single part of the whole task. Each agent is able to cooperate with other agent exchanging information, so the robot is able to make the appropriate policy of management to reach a prefixed goal. We tested the proposed architecture with a simple application: an autonomous mobile robot performs object retrieval tasks into unknown structured environments. The robot is not given a priori map of t…

A microcontroller-based portable electrocardiograph system

2004

The ambulatory acquisition and monitorization of electrocardiograms (ECG) under not controlled conditions, is a practice of paramount importance in cardiology diagnosis nowadays. The ECGs are acquired while patients develop their normal life, using a portable device. The storage capacity of such devices usually ranges from 24 to 48 hours. ne systems used to perform this task are the so-called Holter systems. In this paper we describe a low cost single channel Holter system, based on a microcontroller, to register the ECG signal continuously during up to 48 hours. This microcontroller system runs off batteries, and includes many peripherals such as a display, keyboard, serial interface, soli…

Tax Performance Assessment in Scandinavian Countries

2015

Abstract The aim of this paper is to evaluate fiscal policy performance level in Nordic countries of Europe by quantifying the gap between their performance and an optimum benchmark value. In this study it was selected Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway. These countries occupy the first places in the ranking of countries with the highest rate of tax burden in Europe. The first part of paper contains general aspects of fiscal performance in international research and an overview of the Nordic tax systems model. The second part of paper focuses on evaluation of tax policy performance in these countries by using OptimTax scoring analysis. The research is based on a multivariate analysis instr…

Exploiting programmable architectures for WiFi/ZigBee inter-technology cooperation

2014

The increasing complexity of wireless standards has shown that protocols cannot be designed once for all possible deployments, especially when unpredictable and mutating interference situations are present due to the coexistence of heterogeneous technologies. As such, flexibility and (re)programmability of wireless devices is crucial in the emerging scenarios of technology proliferation and unpredictable interference conditions. In this paper, we focus on the possibility to improve coexistence performance of WiFi and ZigBee networks by exploiting novel programmable architectures of wireless devices able to support run-time modifications of medium access operations. Differently from software…