Quantifying and modeling ecosystem services provided by urban greening in cities of the Southern Alps, N Italy

Population growth in urban areas is a world-wide phenomenon. According to a recent United Nations report, over half of the world now lives in cities. Numerous health and environmental issues arise from this unprecedented urbanization. Recent studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of urban green spaces and the role they play in improving both the aesthetics and the quality of life of its residents. In particular, urban green spaces provide ecosystem services such as: urban air quality improvement by removing pollutants that can cause serious health problems, carbon storage, carbon sequestration and climate regulation through shading and evapotranspiration. Furthermore, epidemiological studies with controlled age, sex, marital and socio-economic status, have provided evidence of a positive relationship between green space and the life expectancy of senior citizens. However, there is little information on the role of public green spaces in mid-sized cities in northern Italy. To address this need, a study was conducted to assess the ecosystem services of urban green spaces in the city of Bolzano, South Tyrol, Italy. In particular, we quantified the cooling effect of urban trees and the hourly amount of pollution removed by the urban forest. The information was gathered using field data collected through local hourly air pollution readings, tree inventory and simulation models. During the study we quantified pollution removal for ozone, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and particulate matter (<10 microns). We estimated the above ground carbon stored and annually sequestered by the urban forest. Results have been compared to transportation CO2 emissions to determine the CO2 offset potential of urban streetscapes. Furthermore, we assessed commonly used methods for estimating carbon stored and sequestered by urban trees in the city of Bolzano. We also quantified ecosystem disservices such as hourly urban forest volatile organic compound emissions.

Caratteristiche innovative nell'acquisizione di dati di informatica forense in ambienti virtuali

Come risposta positiva alle richieste provenienti dal mondo dei giuristi, spesso troppo distante da quello scientifico, si vuole sviluppare un sistema solido dal punto di vista tecnico e chiaro dal punto di vista giurico finalizzato ad migliore ricerca della verità. L’obiettivo ci si prefigge è quello di creare uno strumento versatile e di facile utilizzo da mettere a disposizione dell’A.G. ed eventualmente della P.G. operante finalizzato a consentire il proseguo dell’attività d’indagine in tempi molto rapidi e con un notevole contenimento dei costi di giustizia rispetto ad una normale CTU. La progetto verterà su analisi informatiche forensi di supporti digitali inerenti vari tipi di procedimento per cui si dovrebbe richiedere una CTU o una perizia. La sperimentazione scientifica prevede un sistema di partecipazione diretta della P.G. e della A.G. all’analisi informatica rendendo disponibile, sottoforma di macchina virtuale, il contenuto dei supporti sequestrati in modo che possa essere visionato alla pari del supporto originale. In questo modo il CT diventa una mera guida per la PG e l’AG nell’ambito dell’indagine informatica forense che accompagna il giudice e le parti alla migliore comprensione delle informazioni richieste dal quesito. Le fasi chiave della sperimentazione sono: • la ripetibilità delle operazioni svolte • dettare delle chiare linee guida per la catena di custodia dalla presa in carico dei supporti • i metodi di conservazione e trasmissione dei dati tali da poter garantire integrità e riservatezza degli stessi • tempi e costi ridotti rispetto alle normali CTU/perizie • visualizzazione diretta dei contenuti dei supporti analizzati delle Parti e del Giudice circoscritte alle informazioni utili ai fini di giustizia

Data breach - services for threat detection, analysis and response

Nel mondo della sicurezza informatica, le tecnologie si evolvono per far fronte alle minacce. Non è possibile prescindere dalla prevenzione, ma occorre accettare il fatto che nessuna barriera risulterà impenetrabile e che la rilevazione, unitamente ad una pronta risposta, rappresenta una linea estremamente critica di difesa, ma l’unica veramente attuabile per poter guadagnare più tempo possibile o per limitare i danni. Introdurremo quindi un nuovo modello operativo composto da procedure capaci di affrontare le nuove sfide che il malware costantemente offre e allo stesso tempo di sollevare i comparti IT da attività onerose e sempre più complesse, ottimizzandone il processo di comunicazione e di risposta.

Distributed Smart City Services for Urban Ecosystems

A Smart City is a high-performance urban context, where citizens live independently and are more aware of the surrounding opportunities, thanks to forward-looking development of economy politics, governance, mobility and environment. ICT infrastructures play a key-role in this new research field being also a mean for society to allow new ideas to prosper and new, more efficient approaches to be developed. The aim of this work is to research and develop novel solutions, here called smart services, in order to solve several upcoming problems and known issues in urban areas and more in general in the modern society context. A specific focus is posed on smart governance and on privacy issues which have been arisen in the cellular age.

Riconoscimento automatico di attività attraverso i Google Play Services: una valutazione sperimentale

Tesi sperimentale per testare la nuova libreria di Activity Recognition per Android di Google inc.

Sviluppo e verifica di un framework basato su logica computazionale per la selezione dinamica di web services tramite informazioni

La presenza sempre più massiccia di fornitori di servizi basati su web service ha portato in rilievo uno dei limiti di questo approccio, l’impossibilità di rendere automatizzabili i task di ricerca, invocazione e orchestrazione dei servizi. Il raggiungimento di questo obiettivo risulta impossibile a causa della mancanza di informazioni comprensibili ad una macchina attraverso le quali un agente software può effettuare delle scelte tra vari servizi esposti. Il fallimento della “ricerca intelligente” di un servizio pubblicato sta nella stessa modellazione dei servizi. I linguaggi attualmente disponibili permettono di modellare un servizio solo dal punto di vista sintattico. Definire le operazioni proposte, il tipo di parametri accettati e il tipo di output prodotto non è sufficiente a comprendere cosa il servizio può fare. I web services semantici consentono di superare questo limite fornendo uno stack semantico, il quale ha il compito di racchiudere le informazioni relative ai servizi, il loro funzionamento e gli obiettivi raggiungibili organizzando la conoscenza in ontologie. La formalizzazione dei modelli ontologici e la loro integrazione con i servizi esistenti è uno dei problemi più interessanti che ha catturato l’attenzione di numerosi studi di settore. Negli ultimi anni numerose sono state le soluzioni proposte. Tra queste si possono considerare due principali vie di sviluppo che hanno visto un’intensa attività sperimentale. Il primo scenario è volto a modellare in maniera formale la conoscenza legata ai servizi esposti, il secondo integra i servizi già esistenti con nuove strutture semantiche in modo da conservare le infrastrutture presenti. Entrambi i filoni hanno come scopo quello di fornire la conoscenza adatta a sistemi esperti che consentano di automatizzare la ricerca dei servizi in base ai desideri dei clienti, permettendo la loro composizione dinamica basata su un’interazione utile e indipendente dai protocolli che vincolano il trasporto delle informazioni.

Scalable and Seamless Discovery and Selection of Services in Mobile Cloud Computing

Mobile devices are now capable of supporting a wide range of applications, many of which demand an ever increasing computational power. To this end, mobile cloud computing (MCC) has been proposed to address the limited computation power, memory, storage, and energy of such devices. An important challenge in MCC is to guarantee seamless discovery of services. To this end, this thesis proposes an architecture that provides user-transparent and low-latency service discovery, as well as automated service selection. Experimental results on a real cloud computing testbed demonstrated that the proposed work outperforms state of-the-art approaches by achieving extremely low discovery delay.

Crowdsensing and proximity services for impaired mobility

La tesi si occupa della creazione di una piattaforma virtuale, composta da un sito web e da una applicazione Android, a supporto di persone con handicap motori. La piattaforma e composta da una mappa interattiva che permette agli utenti di inserire nuovi locali o di commentarne esistenti, e di fare lo stesso per le barriere architettoniche. Per questi motivi il progetto e dettato da una continua comunicazione tra client e server, rendendo la piattaforma aggiornata e dinamica, anche alla vista degli utenti. La parte web viene implementata attraverso Spring MVC, utilizzando delle View .jsp ed AJAX per la comunicazione remota con il server. La parte mobile e stata implementata basandosi principalmente sulle classi di geolocalizzazione di Android, oltre alle librerie osmdroid ed osmbonuspack, fornendo compatitiblita con OSM. Questa fornisce anche un servizio di calcolo del percorso, cercando di evitare il numero maggiore di ostacoli. L'applicazione Android appoggia le proprie comunicazioni sulla libreria Robospice. La parte di persistenza e stata implementata adottando un approccio ad alto livello, grazie ad Hibernate e JPA.

A feasibility study for the provision of electronic healthcare tools and services in areas of Greece, Cyprus and Italy

Background Through this paper, we present the initial steps for the creation of an integrated platform for the provision of a series of eHealth tools and services to both citizens and travelers in isolated areas of thesoutheast Mediterranean, and on board ships travelling across it. The platform was created through an INTERREG IIIB ARCHIMED project called INTERMED. Methods The support of primary healthcare, home care and the continuous education of physicians are the three major issues that the proposed platform is trying to facilitate. The proposed system is based on state-of-the-art telemedicine systems and is able to provide the following healthcare services: i) Telecollaboration and teleconsultation services between remotely located healthcare providers, ii) telemedicine services in emergencies, iii) home telecare services for "at risk" citizens such as the elderly and patients with chronic diseases, and iv) eLearning services for the continuous training through seminars of both healthcare personnel (physicians, nurses etc) and persons supporting "at risk" citizens. These systems support data transmission over simple phone lines, internet connections, integrated services digital network/digital subscriber lines, satellite links, mobile networks (GPRS/3G), and wireless local area networks. The data corresponds, among others, to voice, vital biosignals, still medical images, video, and data used by eLearning applications. The proposed platform comprises several systems, each supporting different services. These were integrated using a common data storage and exchange scheme in order to achieve system interoperability in terms of software, language and national characteristics. Results The platform has been installed and evaluated in different rural and urban sites in Greece, Cyprus and Italy. The evaluation was mainly related to technical issues and user satisfaction. The selected sites are, among others, rural health centers, ambulances, homes of "at-risk" citizens, and a ferry. Conclusions The results proved the functionality and utilization of the platform in various rural places in Greece, Cyprus and Italy. However, further actions are needed to enable the local healthcare systems and the different population groups to be familiarized with, and use in their everyday lives, mature technological solutions for the provision of healthcare services.

Retrieval simulations of the vertical profiles of water vapour and other chemical species in the Martian atmosphere using PACS

Water vapour, despite being a minor constituent in the Martian atmosphere with its precipitable amount of less than 70 pr. μm, attracts considerable attention in the scientific community because of its potential importance for past life on Mars. The partial pressure of water vapour is highly variable because of its seasonal condensation onto the polar caps and exchange with a subsurface reservoir. It is also known to drive photochemical processes: photolysis of water produces H, OH, HO2 and some other odd hydrogen compounds, which in turn destroy ozone. Consequently, the abundance of water vapour is anti-correlated with ozone abundance. The Herschel Space Observatory provides for the first time the possibility to retrieve vertical water profiles in the Martian atmosphere. Herschel will contribute to this topic with its guaranteed-time key project called "Water and related chemistry in the solar system". Observations of Mars by Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI) and Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) onboard Herschel are planned in the frame of the programme. HIFI with its high spectral resolution enables accurate observations of vertically resolved H2O and temperature profiles in the Martian atmosphere. Unlike HIFI, PACS is not capable of resolving the line-shape of molecular lines. However, our present study of PACS observations for the Martian atmosphere shows that the vertical sensitivity of the PACS observations can be improved by using multiple-line observations with different line opacities. We have investigated the possibility of retrieving vertical profiles of temperature and molecular abundances of minor species including H2O in the Martian atmosphere using PACS. In this paper, we report that PACS is able to provide water vapour vertical profiles for the Martian atmosphere and we present the expected spectra for future PACS observations. We also show that the spectral resolution does not allow the retrieval of several studied minor species, such as H2O2, HCl, NO, SO2, etc.

Staff and patient perspectives on unmet need and therapeutic alliance in community mental health services

Therapeutic alliance between clinicians and their patients is important in community mental healthcare. It is unclear whether providing effective interventions influences therapeutic alliance.

Changing the Face of Traditional Education

At large, research universities, a common approach for teaching hundreds of undergraduate students at one time is the traditional, large, lecture-based course. Trends indicate that over the next decade there will be an increase in the number of large, campus courses being offered as well as larger enrollments in courses currently offered. As universities investigate alternative means to accommodate more students and their learning needs, Web-based instruction provides an attractive delivery mode for teaching large, on-campus courses. This article explores a theoretical approach regarding how Web-based instruction can be designed and developed to provide quality education for traditional, on-campus, undergraduate students. The academic debate over the merit of Web-based instruction for traditional, on-campus students has not been resolved. This study identifies and discusses instructional design theory for adapting a large, lecture-based course to the Web.

E-Learning 2.0 in hydraulic engineering education

In this contribution the experiences with e-Learning 2.0 applications by using a Wiki for the education in hydraulic engineering are shown. Up to now important information for the students has been prepared by the instructor. For this project the students were asked to collaborate and search on their own for the information they needed. Therefore a Wiki-system was used. For the engineering practice a self dependent realisation of tasks is an important requirement which students should be prepared for. With the help of online communication there should be shown the possibilities for students for working together in an interdisciplinary team. The positive experiences as well as the results of the evaluation of this project plead for a continuation of the application of e-Learning 2.0 for education. The comparison of results of tests without using Wiki and with using Wiki shows a qualitative tendency of better marks. In this contribution we present the application of Wiki in hydraulic engineering but the results can also be used for other engineering disciplines.

Enabling Access to Welfare Services - the Place of Social Solidarity and Dialogue

The welfare state in the UK presents immigrant communities with a set of institutions, which are potentially new and unknown. What is the best way to ensure that the questions of access to the welfare institutions are best managed? Trusting, understanding and feeling solidarity with the welfare state will obviously help with this problem. In order to shed light on this phenomenon, this paper presents a qualitative exploratory study dealing with elements of solidarity as perceived by members of the South Asian Community in the UK. Six indepth interviews with South Asian first generation immigrants who had never experienced mental health problems were conducted. They were asked questions about who their support networks would be in the event of them experiencing mental health problems. The thematic analysis of the interviews suggests that the respondents believed that solidarity and support ties are found to be present in families, within the south Asian community and also with welfare institutions. It is concluded that there although things are far from perfect, assimilation and integration based on dialogue is an observable positive aspect of mental health service provision in the UK.