Thetis

In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus disease 19 (COVID‐19) outbreak as global pandemic. Nursing homes were particularly struck by the COVID‐19 outbreak, with some authors considering the COVID‐19 pandemic as the “ground zero” for these structures.

A comprehensive dataset on dissolved trace element concentrations spanning a decade (2008-2017), collected during monitoring campaigns, is the result of an investigation meant to evaluate spatial variability and temporal evolution in the Venice Lagoon waters. The concentration levels at the different sites unfold that the lagoon is not homogeneous but a system of various parts having different characteristics affected by various pollutant sources, meanwhile the analysis for trend performed both at each site and at the entire lagoon as a whole revealed that arsenic and heavy metals showed little variations or decreasing trends, with the exception of iron that may have had an overall increase in concentrations.

This paper presents a 28 nm-bulk-CMOS 3rd-order 132 MHz low-pass filter based on an improved Active-gm-RC stage. Challenges related to the design of analog circuits in 28 nm-bulk-CMOS process node are faced, mitigated and exploited by operating at both architecture and circuit design levels. The filter uses a single-opamp two-stage topology where both poles are used for synthesizing a 3rd-order low-pass transfer function. The proposed filter operates from a single 0.9 V supply voltage, consumes 340 µW and performs high linearity (IIP3 = 11.5 dBm at 21 and 22 MHz input tones) and large Signal-to-Noise ratio (58 dB). This enables one of the higher Figure-of-Merit (163.2 dB) with respect to the state-of-the-art.

Abstract. The present study is part of the preliminary investigation to design a coastal protection for the archaeological sites of Sabratha and Leptis Magna and the hydraulic re-arrangement of the final stretch of the Wadi Lebda which runs across the archaeological area of Leptis Magna. This study is a part of the project "Safeguarding the Sabratha and Leptis Magna archaeological sites. Preventing flooding of Leptis Magna from the Wadi Lebda", started in 2009 and commissioned by MARCO POLO STORICA LTD – Scotland. The planning of interventions has required an accurate morphological reconstruction of the interested areas. In this regard, given the wide investigation area, the aerial and land survey operations logistic difficulties and tight timeframe, the use of multi-beam technology and satellite images was particularly useful. The Digital Terrain Model has been coupled with detailed bathymetric surveys of the coastal area, undertaken mostly by multi-beam techniques, and by investigations of the ground characteristics, which were integrated in the information system prepared as design support.

Thigh muscles indirect injuries are common finding in soccer and represent a critical challenge for teams medical staffs. Indirect injuries are classified on the basis of their site and their clinical and radiological findings, but the assessment of a precise prognosis remains a crucial point. Both ultrasound (US) and magnetic resonance (MR) represent effective techniques not only to detect indirect injuries but also to accurately determine severity, location, and, consequently, the prognosis. In this setting, our aim is to review imaging findings of professional athletes muscle tears at three time points (3 days, 2 weeks, and 4 weeks after the time of injury) and, further, to investigate the correlation between tears extent and lay-off time of the athletes. Combined US-MR assessment could be helpful in the management of thigh muscles indirect injuries providing accurate information about the site, the extent, and the healing process.

Th e Lagoon of Marano and Grado has been experiencing some remarkable environmental impacts, which have affected the high-value natural ecosystem and consequently influenced relevant socio-economic aspects. One of the main problems relates to the diffuse contamination of soil and groundwater in the mainland, as well as sediments in rivers and in the lagoon itself. The need to ensure safe navigation conditions in the lagoon and in the Corno River serving Porto Nogaro harbour is another critical emergency. Other environmental issues of concern are: loss of morphological diversity, watershed basins’ pollution loads and protection of lagoon habitats. Due to the emergency situation, a Special Commissioner has been appointed by the national government to proceed with the resolution of the most critical problems. A specific “Operational Plan of interventions” was therefore elaborated in 2009. Approaching problems and solutions in an integrated way, the Plan represents one of the tools for the sustainable development of the lagoon. It strongly supports the adoption of adaptive management, foreseeing the periodical updating and improvement of objectives, strategies and interventions. The Plan also identifies the need for coordination among institutions and involvement of stakeholders as key elements for the implementation of adaptive management.

IEEE 802.11 based WLANs have became popular, but they can only provide best effort services and so they are poorly suitable for multimedia applications. Recently IEEE 802.11e standard has been proposed to support quality of service. The new standard introduces a so-called Hybrid Coordination Function containing two medium access mechanisms: contention-based channel access and controlled channel access.In this paper we propose a novel framework to better support QoS guarantees for multimedia applications. It comprises QoS Manager, Admission Control, Enhanced Scheduler, Predictor and Feedback System. The scheduler adopted supports real-time applications, variable packet sizes and variable bit rate traffic streams. We show that this framework is suitable to be used by applications requesting Application Level Contracts which will be translated in Resource Level Contracts to the scheduler subsystem. The QoS manager component is able to dynamically manage available resources under different load conditions.