Re Lab (Italy)

The Osoriinae (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae) genera Typhloiulopsis Scheerpeltz, 1931 and Leptotyphlopsis Scheerpeltz, 1931 from the Ionian Islands (Greece) are revised based on morphology. Typhloiulopsis pavesii sp. nov. from Kérkyra is described. The three taxa of Leptotyphlopsis described from Kaligoni, Lefkàda, are considered as belonging to a single species, Leptotyphlopsis kaligoniana Scheerpeltz, 1931 (= Leptotyphlopsis jonica Scheerpeltz, 1931 syn. nov. and Leptotyphlopsis leucadiana Scheerpeltz, 1931 syn. nov.).

Driver monitoring systems (DMS) have been developed to improve road safety by collecting data on driver status and behavior to profile their ability to drive safely. Nowadays, DMSs aim to monitor different types of drivers' emotions and distractions, allowing for the design of intelligent driver support systems that are aware of the drivers' state. To this purpose, they require carefully designed training datasets for supervised learning algorithms to ensure state detection reliability. In this paper we present an experimental procedure to collect training data for this kind of DMSs. The procedure was designed to induce different driver's state conditions in a driving simulation environment to the aim of capturing the related driver's data by means of the DMS sensors. We report the results of the implementation of the data collection procedure in an experimental study involving 28 subjects. Validation results in terms of participants' ex-post self judgements show that the procedure is effective to induce the expected drivers' state in terms of emotions, visual and cognitive distraction.

The Shared Control (SC) cooperation scheme, where the driver and automated driving system control the vehicle together, has been gaining attention through the years as a promising option to improve road safety. As a result, advanced interaction methods can be investigated to enhance user experience, acceptance, and trust. Under this perspective, not only the development of algorithms and system applications are needed, but it is also essential to evaluate the system with real drivers, assess its impact on road safety, and understand how drivers accept and are willing to use this technology. In this sense, the contribution of this work is to conduct an experimental study to evaluate if a previously developed shared control system can improve overtaking performance on roads with oncoming traffic. The evaluation is performed in a Driver-in-the-Loop (DiL) simulator with 13 real drivers. The system based on SC is compared against a vehicle with conventional SAE-L2 functionalities. The evaluation includes both objective and subjective assessments. Results show that SC proved to be the best solution for assisting the driver during overtaking in terms of safety and acceptance. The SC's longer and smoother control transitions provide benefits to cooperative driving. The System Usability Scale (SUS) and the System Acceptance Scale (SAS) questionnaire show that the SC system was perceived as better in terms of usability, usefulness, and satisfaction.

Bioerosion is the destruction of hard substrates resulting from biological activity, and plays a relevant role in the ecological interactions and coastal dynamics processes. Several organisms have evolved structures and behaviors allowing them to perforate biotic and abiotic surfaces, transforming hard surfaces into particles, and contributing significantly to sediment production in the coastal and marine environment. Due to the large geographical diffusion of marine borers, bioerosion is relevant in many scientific and applied fields of interest. Most bioerosion studies have hitherto been conducted in tropical areas, where borers are a critical component of coral reef destruction. Comparatively, little information is available for the bioerosion of submerged archeological heritage. This review focuses on the bioerosion of archeological calcareous artifacts in the Mediterranean Sea, summarizing studies concerning the colonization of statues, shipwrecks, cargo, and the remains of submerged cities. The paper includes the first comprehensive listing of the archeological sites in the Mediterranean Sea where bioerosion has been assessed. The diversity of boring organisms affecting marine archeological remains and their boring patterns, the various types of bored materials, and the severity of the damage caused to heritage artifacts are also included. Both microborers (algae, fungi, and cyanobacteria) and macroborers (sponges, bivalves, polychaetes, sipunculids, and echinoids) are considered, and their roles in the structuring of endolithic assemblages are also covered. The experimental techniques currently employed to analyze bioerosion traces, helping to identify particular species and ichnospecies and their ecological dynamics, are also considered. Finally, a discussion of the current strategies proposed for thein situprotection and conservation of Underwater Cultural Heritage is provided.

Vδ2+ γδT cells are unconventional T cells that can be activated by cytokines without TCR signaling. Adenovirus vaccine vectors activated Vδ2+ γδT cells in an interleukin 18-, TNF-, and type I interferon-dependent manner. This stimulatory capacity was associated with adenovirus vectors of non-species C origin, including the ChAdOx1 vaccine platform.

In this paper we report our experiences in designing and implementing a digital virtual cockpit to be installed as a component within the software stack of an Advanced Driving Assisted System (ADAS). Since in next-generation automotive embedded platforms both autonomous driving related workloads and virtual cockpit rendering tasks will co-run in a hypervisor-mediated environment, they will share computational resources. For this purpose, our work has been developed by following a requirement-driven approach in which regulations, usability and visual attractiveness requirements have to be taken into account by balancing their impact in terms of computational resources of the embedded platform in which such graphics interfaces are deployed. The graphic interfaces we realized consist of a set of 2D frames for the instrument cluster (for displaying the tachometer and the speedometer) and a screen area in which a 3D representation of the vehicle surroundings is rendered alongside driving directions and the point-cloud obtained through a LIDAR. All these components are able to alert the driver of imminent and/or nearby driving hazards.