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The new challenge in power systems design and operation is to organize and control smart micro grids supplying aggregation of users and special loads as electric vehicles charging stations. The presence of renewable and storage can help the optimal operation only if a good control manages all the elements of the grid. New models of green buildings and energy communities are proposed. For a real application they need an appropriate and advanced power system equipped with a building automation control system. This article presents an economic model predictive control approach to the problem of managing the electric and heating resources in a smart building in a coordinated way, for the purpose of achieving in real time nearly zero energy consumption and automated participation to demand response programs. The proposed control, leveraging a mixed integer quadratic programming problem, allows to meet manifold thermal and electric users’ requirements and react to inbound demand response signals, while still guaranteeing stable operation of the building's electric and thermal storage equipment. The simulation results, performed for a real case study in Italy, highlight the peculiarities of the proposed approach in the joint handling of electric and thermal building flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information on the 13th International Workshop on Finite Elements for Microwave Engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information on the Industry Forum on Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Robotics and Automation (IERA) held on April 10, 2007 in Rome, Italy is presented. The morning session consisted of plenary addresses by the finalists of the IERA Awards and presentation of the award. The afternoon workshop consisted of six presentations and a panel discussion.

Describes the above-named upcoming conference event. May include topics to be covered or calls for papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade, there has been increasing interest in pair programming (PP). However, despite the existing work, there is still a lack of substantial evidence of the effects of PP in industrial environments. To address this issue, we have analyzed the work of a team of 17 industrial developers for 14 months. The team is part of the IT department of a large Italian manufacturing company; it adopts a customized version of extreme programming (XP). We have investigated the effects of PP on software quality in five different scenarios. The results show that PP appears to provide a perceivable but small effect on the reduction of defects in these settings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article offers information on the International Symposium on Reliability of Optoelectronics for Space (ISROS) to be held in Italy from October 1-5, 2012 and also invites optoelectronics-related papers to be submitted for the symposium.

The Pavia University is celebrating the 650th anniversary of its foundation. In the framework of many different initiatives, a book, a workshop, and an exhibition were organized as part of the solemn celebrations “Pavia 1878,” dedicated to Alessandro Volta (Como, Italy, February 18, 1745 - Como, Italy, March 5, 1827). For 41 years - from 1778 up to 1819 - Volta served as a teacher, Dean, and Rector of the University (Figure 1). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The 12th International Conference on Electromagnetics in Advanced Applications (ICEAA), eo-organized by the Politecnico di Torino, Italy, and Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, was held at the Sydney Masonic Centre on September 20–24, 2010. This conference has been held in Torino, Italy, in odd years since 1989. In 2009, the organizers decided to continue with the conference at Torino in odd years, while making it a yearly event by having it offshore at different venues around the globe in even years. Sydney was selected as the first offshore venue. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A calendar of congresses is presented which includes the "2009 International Conference on Biomedical Engineering and Pharmaceutical Engineering, ICPBE 2009" in Singapore on December 2-4, 2009, "6th International Workshop on Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions for Biomedical Applications, MAVEBA 2009" in Firenze, Italy on December 14-16, 2009, and "33rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society" in Boston, Massachusetts on September 1-4, 2011.

An almost unknown calculating machine, deemed lost, has recently been discovered. It was invented and built before 1858 by Count Niccola Guinigi-Magrini, a nobleman from Lucca, Italy. The machine has a unique design and single-dial input device and is one of the few ancient Italian calculators still in existence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

MultiEXCELL, a new rainfall model oriented to the analysis of radio propagation impairments which was developed on the basis of a comprehensive rain field database collected by the weather radar sited in Spino d'Adda (Italy), is presented. Single rain cells are modeled by an analytical exponential profile which best represents real single-peaked rain structures. The rain cells' probability of occurrence is analytically derived from the local rainfall statistics. The spatial features of the rain field at mid- and large-scale are investigated through their natural aggregative process. The clusters (aggregates) of cells are studied in terms of distance between individual cells, number of cells per aggregate, and distance between aggregates. Finally, the fractional area covered by rain, which the rainfall spatial correlation strongly depends on, is derived from radar data through the comparison with the same quantity provided by global long-term numerical weather products. The MultiEXCELL procedure for the generation of spatially correlated synthetic rain fields is duly presented and the model's accurateness is preliminary assessed against the available radar dataset. Although MultiEXCELL is mainly oriented to propagation-related applications, its cellular approach may reveal useful also in hydrology, for the prediction/management of water resources, and in meteorology, for the nowcasting of the temporal evolution of rain structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A distributed telemeter is herein presented, which has specifically been designed for the high-speed high-resolution monitoring of trains in railway portals but can be adapted to a number of industrial and environmental applications. The system uses a single transmitter/receiver unit to feed, using optical fiber pairs, a number of measuring stations. It makes use of an ultrashort fiber laser operating at 400 kHz or, alternatively, a fiber-coupled diode laser and presents in-house developed solutions to obtain a 40-dB dynamic range, thus allowing to monitor targets within large distance/angle/color intervals. The system has been developed, tested, and installed on a train-monitoring portal in the Roma–Napoli railway, in the framework of an effort to increase the safety of trains entering tunnels in the Italian railway system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Morphological attribute profiles (APs) are defined as a generalization of the recently proposed morphological profiles (MPs). APs provide a multilevel characterization of an image created by the sequential application of morphological attribute filters that can be used to model different kinds of the structural information. According to the type of the attributes considered in the morphological attribute transformation, different parametric features can be modeled. The generation of APs, thanks to an efficient implementation, strongly reduces the computational load required for the computation of conventional MPs. Moreover, the characterization of the image with different attributes leads to a more complete description of the scene and to a more accurate modeling of the spatial information than with the use of conventional morphological filters based on a predefined structuring element. Here, the features extracted by the proposed operators were used for the classification of two very high resolution panchromatic images acquired by Quickbird on the city of Trento, Italy. The experimental analysis proved the usefulness of APs in modeling the spatial information present in the images. The classification maps obtained by considering different APs result in a better description of the scene (both in terms of thematic and geometric accuracy) than those obtained with an MP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an examination into the designs of two keyboard mechanical calculators from the mid 19th-century. Details are given outlining the specifications of two Italian calculators and highlighting their significance within the history of computing technology. The instruments under discussion include the 1834 keyboard calculator of Luigi Torchi and the later similar 1858 design of Tito Gonnella. Several features of the devices are mentioned as innovations during the period, such as their input/output interfaces, key-based mechanisms, and the direct-multiplication feature of Torchi's design.

The use of NE102A-BaF2 phoswich detector drastically improves the particle identification with respect to BaF2 crystals. To better exploit the possibility of light ion discrimination we have applied digital signal processing to the signals, on-beam collected with NE102A-BaF2 phoswich. We present the results obtained for the heavy ion charge identification (up to Z = 50) and light particle mass identification, using digital pulse shape acquisition and a 12-bit, 2 GSample/s sampling analog to digital converter. The results concerning the response of BaF2 -plastic phoswich to the reaction products issued at forward angles in the collision of 35.1 MeV/u 124Sn beam on 64Ni target have been obtained at the Superconducting Cyclotron of the Laboratori Nazionali del Sud in Catania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multispectral data acquired by Spinning Enhanced Visible and InfraRed Imager (SEVIRI) onboard the geostationary platform Meteosat Second Generation (MSG2), located at 0° longitude, were analyzed to assess the payload suitability for quantitative volcano monitoring. In times of good infrared transparency of the troposphere, SEVIRI data proved particularly suited to detect the onset of effusive eruptions and to monitor the related lava flows with 15-min refresh rates. After development of a code allowing for fast automated processing of the 96 data streams downlinked daily by MSG2, thorough monitoring tests were carried out on the 2007 eruptions of Stromboli (Aeolian Islands, Italy) and Piton de la Fournaise (Reunion Island, France). The results in radiant flux and effusion rate provided by use of thermal, mid-, and short infrared bands of SEVIRI were validated by exploiting simultaneous MODIS overpasses by Terra and Aqua, up to four times daily. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the analysis of reliability performance of distribution utilities, as well as in continuity of supply regulation, criteria are needed for separating normal operation data from exceptional events. In recent years a number of statistical methodologies has been proposed for this purpose. We present here the new methodology that was adopted by the Italian regulatory authority at the beginning of 2008. The decision is supported by a statistical analysis of the number of faults on the medium voltage (MV) and low voltage (LV) networks, for each six-hour time interval in a three year time span, for different provinces and distribution companies. The new methodology is employed in the reward and penalty mechanisms that regulate the SAIDI, SAIFI, and MAIFI indicators and, with some original provisions, also in the Guaranteed Standard on maximum restoration times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a consequence of electric power systems growth and further interconnection, the fault current levels increase. Therefore there is the interest in devices which are able to limit fault currents. The Superconducting Fault Current Limiter (SFCL) is an innovative device able to limit the short-circuit currents to lower levels, so that no component or underrated switching equipment in the system becomes overloaded but can be operated safety. In this work, we report on design and development of a 9 kV/15 MVA-class SFCL for MV distribution system, based on 1G and 2G HTS. The project final goal is to develop a SFCL for a MV distribution system, including design, fabrication, test at a high power test facility, installation and operation in the Milan area distribution network. AC losses for different HTS winding arrangements and SFCL short-circuit simulation results for two selected network case studies are reported and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A high performance detector head with matrices of silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) as photodetectors is under development at the University of Pisa and INFN Pisa. The silicon photomultipliers fabricated at FBK-irst (Trento, Italy) are being evaluated for this purpose. Single SiPM detectors of 1 mm × 1 mm size and the first SiPM test matrices composed of four (2 × 2) pixel elements in a common substrate have been tested with LYSO crystals. The energy and timing resolution of single SiPMs have been evaluated, obtaining an energy resolution of 20% FWHM at 511 keV, and a coincidence timing resolution of 1.4 ns FWHM. In addition, the first tests performed with the SiPM matrices prove the feasibility of such devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new multi-energy CT for small animals is operative (now only in scanning mode) at the Physics Department of the University of Bologna. The system makes use of a set of quasi-monochromatic X-ray beams produced by means of an Highly-Oriented Pyrolytic Graphite Bragg monochromator. This source is able to provide beams with energy tunable in a range from 20 to 70 keV. Here we present a complete characterization of the source. A theoretical model of the source has been analyzed, according to the known Zachariasen's theory for diffracting crystals [1]. The beams have also been characterized in resolution and intensity, over the accessible range, and we present here some measured spectra. The monochromator system demonstrated an energy spread of about 3 keV (Full Width at Half Maximum-FWHM) at a beam energy of 26 keV. At the same energy, the intensity of the output beam is about 6% of the primary beam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on the M-Learning Game at Archaeological Parks in Southern Italy. It states that M-Learning is a combination of e-learning and mobile technologies designed to capture the nature of e-learning by providing users with independence from the constraints of time and location. It notes the three main phases of the game carried out by the Explore! It mentions that the user experience with an interactive system depends on system's characteristics, needs, and motivations. It also notes the importance and practical advantage of Explore!

Mobile-Dose has been designed for a very innovative use: the integration in a robotic machinery for automatic preparation of radioactive doses, to be injected to patients in Nuclear Medicine Departments, with real time measurement of the activity under preparation. Mobile-Dose gives a constant measurement of the dose during the filling of vials or syringes, triggering the end of the filling process based on a predefined dose limit. Several applications of Mobile-Dose have been delivered worldwide, from Italian hospitals and clinics to European and Japanese ones. The design of such an instrument and its integration in robotic machineries, was required by an Italian company specialised in radiation protection tools for nuclear applications, in the period 2001-2003. At the time of its design, apparently no commercial instruments with a suitable interfacing capability to the external world existed: we designed it in order to satisfy all the strict requirements coming from the medical aspects (precision within 10%, repeatability, stability, time response) and from the industrial conceiving principles that are mandatory to ensure a good reliability in such a complicated environment. The instrument is suitable to be used in standalone mode too, thanks to its portability and compactness and to the intelligent operator panel programmed for this purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A model is presented that extends the applicability of the propagation data collected during a long measurements campaign in a particular site and for a particular radiolink, to a generic link in a generic site. In fact, the objective of the model is to create a set of attenuation time series to be used in the design of advanced TLC systems. The model assumes that the marked differences of the rain statistics observed in various locations are, in first approximation, mainly due to the different frequency of occurrence of the various rainy events rather than to their shape. Starting from this assumption the model selects, from a large database of rain attenuation events collected in a particular site, a subset that, after an appropriate frequency and elevation scaling, can be used to represent time series of attenuation recorded in other experimental conditions (as for both site and link). The model has been applied to the attenuation data collected at Spino d'Adda (Milan, Italy) during the ITALSAT propagation campaign in order to simulate attenuation time series in several different links and sites. The model demonstrated good performance both in link conditions and climates, similar and different from the Spino d'Adda ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights the 2003 High Performance Switching and Routing Workshop, which was held in Torino, Italy on June 24-27, 2003. Number of papers submitted for the conference; Keynote speeches delivered during the event.

A spatial characterization of the midlatitude meso-scale rain fields from C-band radar measurements is performed by means of a systematic analysis and modeling of convective rain-cell bidimensional shapes and spatial correlation. A large rainfall dataset that is derived from an operational C-band dual-polarized radar, which is placed in S. Pietro Capofiume near Bologna (Italy), has been collected and analyzed for this purpose. Different models of convective rainy horizontal structures are described and compared. Special attention is devoted to the consolidated unimodal models (or unimodal patterns) like GAUCELL with a Gaussian rain-rate profile and EXCELL with an exponential rain-rate profile, and the hybrid models like HYCELL and DEXCELL based on a proper combination of the previous unimodal models. The new hybrid model DEXELL, which is introduced here, is an extension of the HYCELL model, which is previously proposed in literature. A pixel-by-pixel model numerical integration is carried out in order to perform a homogeneous comparison between the rain-cell model and the measured features such as peak, average, root mean square, gradient average, and gradient deviation of rain rate. A maximum-likelihood algorithm, which is expressed in terms of the principal component of the previous rain-cell features, is introduced to estimate rain-cell pattern parameters from the available radar data. A detailed sensitivity analysis, which is devoted to find the best behavior in terms of root-mean-square error and correlation coefficient between the modeled and measured rain-cell features, is finally carried out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In June 2005, a special selection of images concerning the development of telecommunications, kept in the archives of the Italian Navy, were collected, selected, and organized in a panel exhibition held at the Italian Navy Academy. A selection of the rarest of these images is presented here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LiF based thermoluminescent materials are the most used passive detectors in the field of radiation protection. For personal and area dosimetry in mixed neutron and photon fields, 6LiF and 7LiF TLD pairs are employed for the simultaneous determination of neutron and photon doses. Therefore, an accurate knowledge of their sensitivity to photons and thermal neutrons is essential. Aimed at providing reliable sensitivity data for new LiF based TL materials, an experimental study was performed in the framework of collaboration between INFN Frascati National Laboratories and ENEA, Italy. The 6LiF(Mg, Cu, P) material from TLD Poland, was specially manufactured in six versions with different sensitive thickness (t = 40, 60, 80, 100, 150 and 230 mg·cm-2), which implies different neutron and photon sensitivity. Together with the 7LiF(Mg, Cu, P) material, namely MCP-7, all seven type of TLDs were irradiated in reference beams of photons and thermal neutrons, at the calibration facilities of INFN and ENEA. The study provides a set of sensitivity data and discusses the performance of the investigated materials for the dosimetry of mixed neutron and photon fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several popular bistatic calibration techniques are investigated and comparisons made between the relative merits of the various techniques. The analysis addresses sensitivity to object alignment error, sensitivity to polarization impurity, and ease of implementation. Both theoretical concepts and practical considerations are discussed based on measurements accomplished at the European Microwave Signature Laboratory of the European Come mission Joint Research Center, Ispra, Italy. This facility has the capability to produce far-field fully polarimetric precision bistatic measurements in a 30-cm-diameter quiet zone, suitable for comparing different calibration methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measurement results concerning rail-to-rail conductance are presented, based on two measurement campaigns performed in Italy at Rigutino (AR) and Anagni (FR) in spring/summer 2003. Rails in the two sites are isolated from the sleepers and the earth and the weather conditions were hot and dry, so the measured conductance values represent a lower bound. Results cover more than three frequency decades from 10 Hz to 10 kHz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have performed a propagation measurement campaign at the University of Rome br Vergata, Rome, Italy. We have sounded the channel by a probing signal at a carrier frequency of 4.78 GHz modulated by a train of pulses having a duration of 0.4 ns shaped by a pseudonoise (PN) sequence. The measurement band falls (3.6-6 GHz) in the frequency range allowed by the FCC ruling for ultrawide-band (UWB) operations. To characterize the channel behavior over the large and the small scale, the transmitter is moved in six different positions on the floor, while the receiver is moved in 625 different locations within each room. The receiver locations are arranged in a square grid of 25 × 25 points with 2 cm spacing, i.e., less than half of the minimum wavelength of the transmitted signal. A total of 625 × 16 impulse responses are recorded in nonline-of-sight (NLOS) conditions, 625 in line-of-sight (LOS) conditions within the rooms and 11 LOS measurements are made in the corridor at incremental spacing of 1 m. We describe the measurement technique as well as the procedure by which we process the experimental data to extract the amplitude, phase and delay associated to each component of the multipath profiles. We also derive path-loss and shadowing models for the UWB indoor channel in both LOS and NLOS conditions. Finally, we present an accurate analysis of the time dispersion of the UWB channel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of ground-based radar iterferometry for landslide monitoring is here analyzed: a case study based on an experimental campaign carried out in Italy in the year 2002 is discussed. Interferometric data obtained from coherent synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images acquired by means of C-band ground-based equipment are analyzed. The campaign was aimed at retrieving potential terrain movements of a small landslide observed hundreds of meters away. Critical aspects related to spatial and temporal decorrelation are discussed: the use of optical photogrammetry as a technique for evaluating mechanical stability and correcting geometric distortion is presented. Results also confirmed that the application of ground-based radar interferometry can be attractive and effective if the acquired SAR images maintain an adequate coherence on different dates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Five empirical and nonempirical parametric topographic normalization methods (the cosine, SCS, Minnaert, b correction, and c correction methods) were applied to multitemporal Landsat Thematic Mapper data (bands 1-5 and 7) collected in different periods of the growing season (April, June, and July) of a mixed deciduous forest area (340 ha) in the northern Apennines. The effectiveness of the models at removing topographic control, preserving internal data variability, and consistently normalizing radiance for flat pixels from band to band and image to image was evaluated. The entirely empirical b correction outperformed the other considered methods without relying on any photometric function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information on a study which analyzed the seismic signals produced by explosions of the Stromboli volcano using independent component analysis (ICA). Description of the seismological environment; Implementation of the ICA method; Data analysis and results; Conclusions.

Provides information on the regulation of radio frequency (RF) in Italy. Sources of RF; Comparison of the attention levels in the Italian limits for electromagnetic fields at selected frequencies with the International Commission in Nonionizing Radiation Protection limits as of December 2002; Incidence of leukemia in children in concentric rings around the station of the Vatican radio transmitters.

Tests user acceptance and evaluation of hypermedia guides run on palmtop computers at Costa Aquarium in Genoa, Italy. Experimental framework; Expected advantages of automated tour guides; Interface structure; Evaluation of overall user acceptance; Knowledge acquisition experiment. INSET: Museum Multimedia.

Presents the results of the research carried out at the European Microwave Signature Laboratory of the Joint Research Centre of Ispra, Italy for validating electromagnetic models. Description of the three experimental dielectric models; Electromagnetic modeling; Conclusion.

Describes the history of four Italian projects aimed at either constructing computers from scratch or installing and making operational computers built in the United States and Great Britain. CRC 102A in the Numerical Computations Center of Milan Polytechnic; FINAC installed in the Istituto Nazionale per le Applicazioni del Calcolo of Rome; Olivetti ELEA 9003 at the Fermi School of Bibbiena in Arezzo, Italy.

Focuses on modelling and simulation of an experimental test performed on the Italian HV network near the French border. Restoration plan; Load and network modeling; Field test scenario; Description of operative sequence.

Reports on the rain attenuation's long term probability distribution in communication and broadcasting satellite systems, in Italy. Indication that the systems were at 11.6 GHz; In-depth look at actual satellite TV and radio broadcasting; Application of the synthetic storm technique.

This article presents a calendar of events, related to the telecommunication industry. SIP 2004--6th IASTED International, the conference on Signal and Image Processing, is to be held from August 23-25, 2004, in Hawaii. CSIMTA 2004--Complex Systems, intelligence and Modern Technology Applications, will be held from September 19-22, 2004, in France. Allerton Conference 2004--42nd Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing, will be held from September 29- October 1, 2004, in France. ISITA 2004--International Symposium on Information Theory and Its Applications, will be held from October 10-13, 2004. ISSSE 2004--International Symposium on Signals, Systems, and Electronics, from August 10-13. SOFTCOM 2004--International Conference on Software, Telecommunications and Computer Networks, will be held from October 11-13, in Italy. WNCG 2004--Wireless Networking Symposium, from October 2004. NCSBB 2004--Technology for Life,--North Carolina Symposium on Biotechnology, from October 13-15, 2004, in North Carolina.

The article discusses roboethics, which covers not just the ethics of human designers and the quality involved in the creation of robots, but the way they are to interact with people. Roboethics has been addressed during the First International Symposium on Roboethics that took place in Sanremo, Italy in 2004. It also notes the complexity of the development of roboethics, which involved the process of preserving the principles of human rights and dignity in the robot.

The article presents a corporate profile of TechImp Systems Srl, a small Italian company established as an academic spin-off by a group of professors and researchers from the Department of Electrical Engineering of the University of Bologna. The main objective of the company is to provide innovative products and services for the diagnosis of electrical systems.

The article focuses on the robotics community in Italy. A report published by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) revealed that Italy has been one of the main producers of robot systems at the international level for several years. The Italian Chapter of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) also hosted several RAS-sponsored conferences. The Italian robotics community has developed a Web site designed to keep information of practical use at a national level.

Asolemn centenary celebration of Alessandro Volta's university chair was held at the University of Pavia in April 1878. To celebrate this important event, Pavia organized a sumptuous ceremony, with vast echoes both in Italy and abroad. To immortalize the great scientist, a statue was inaugurated in the University courtyard by the Prime Minister, Benedetto Cairoli (a hero of Italian unification), with the backing of Francesco De Sanctis, Minister for National Education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article reports on the Open Intelligent Systems for Future Autonomous Vehicles, a laboratory project proposal by Professor Alberto Broggi of the Artificial Vision and Intelligent Systems Laboratory (VisLab) at the University of Parma in Italy. The project aims to design a perception layer to be implemented in vehicles so that each sensor provides information to a world perception server. After considering many vehicles, four Piaggio Porter Electric Power vans were chosen for the project.

This column is about last year's ACM Multimedia Grand Challenge in Florence, Italy, an event that endeavors to connect (academic) researchers more effectively with the realities of the business world. The authors describe the 10 challenges and present the three winning applications. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]