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Increasingly scarce economic resources prompt the need for more efficient forms of health care; hence, brief outpatient crisis intervention has therapeutic and preventive goals with respect to suicide risk. The aim of this study was to assess which factors predict nonnegotiated termination of treatment. Patients who dropped out of treatment (n 1⁄4 26) were compared with those who concluded treatment (n 1⁄4 102). Intervention, which resembled outpatient-focused brief supporting psychotherapy, consisted of 10 weekly sessions lasting 45–50min. The first session envisaged an initial consultation; the following 2 sessions consisted of in-depth assessment, presentation of the intervention, and a battery of tests. Axis I, Axis II personality (Structured Clinical Interview for DSM IV, Axis II Personality Disorders), depression (Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, Beck Depression Inventory), anxiety (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory), anger (State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory), social adaptation (Social Adaptation Self-Evaluation Scale), and global functioning (Global Assessment Scale) were also clinically evaluated. The total dropout rate in the study was 20.3%. Logistic regression analysis identified borderline personality disorder as a predictor of dropout, which was associated with a mean age of less than 30 years, a prevalence of female gender, and the tendency to act out (dropout in the final sessions) and slightly correlated with a propensity for interpersonal deficits and lower resources or social support. No major differences were observed in Axis I, and the adopted clinical instruments did not seem able to predict dropout by clinical–symptomatological ‘‘magnitude.’’ Even in crisis situations, dropping out appears to be correlated with borderline personality disorder (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [4th ed.]). The extent to which this depends on crisis remission or poses a barrier to treatment remains to be seen. [Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention 5:356–367 (2005)]

Occasional damages occurring to offshore structures and routing ships have brought attention on whether conventional analyses of stormy seas are adequate to represent wave extremes. Indeed, field and laboratory data showed that in short-crested seas (typical of stormy conditions) the maximum wave elevation is rarely retrieved by a single-point observation (a buoy, for example), which tends to underestimate the actual extreme that occurs over an area surrounding the point. Recently, stochastic models for the prediction of maxima of multidimensional Gaussian random fields (e.g. the Piterbarg’s theorem and the Adler and Taylor’s Euler Characteristics approach) have been successfully applied to ocean wave statistics, thus permitting to extend the extreme value analysis from the time to the space–time domain. Results from space–time models are here firstly compared to observations gathered by an optical stereo system, and then used to preliminarily assess wave extremes over the Italian Seas, by using a numerical model analysis covering the period 2007–2013. In particular, space–time maxima are estimated as affecting a fishing boat and a cruise ship, showing that, locally, space–time extremes may exceed time-based values up to about 50 %.

Assistive technologies have the objective to improve the people quality of life of in daily living, with a special aim to those who suffer of physical disabilities or cognitive impairment, which may be caused by an accident, disease or the natural process of ageing. The present paper describes the main results of a study realized for the INTERREG IVC INNOVAGE project, where the domain target addressed are: home and building automation and assistive robotics. The project provides a quick overview of the typical needs of elderly people, describes the state-of-the-art technologies which can be adopted to satisfy these needs and presents a critical analysis of the functionalities, which present and future assistive technologies should possess. The result of this study is a detailed assessments of requirements and limits of nowadays domotics and robotics technologies aimed to improve people quality of life.

The Bora wind event occurred in winter 2012 was exceptional in terms of both meteorological effects and impact on the Adriatic Sea circulation. It was associated with intense and persistent winds, very cold temperatures all over the Mediterranean basin and heavy snowfall over the Apennines slopes exposed to north-easterly winds, and it was responsible for triggering dense water formation and driving basin-scale oceanic circulation. The cooling period (29 January–13 February) was characterized by intense air–sea exchanges of momentum and heat, whose accurate simulation is required for a proper description of atmospheric and ocean circulations. In the present study, results of a number of short-range high-resolution numerical weather prediction (NWP) model simulations for the entire Bora outbreak are discussed. The modeling chain, based on BOLAM and MOLOCH limited area models, has been implemented using initial and boundary conditions provided by different global NWP systems. Model performance has been evaluated in terms of variables of interest for oceanographic applications, such as sea surface temperature (SST), surface heat fluxes, solar radiation and near surface meteorological parameters (air temperature, wind, pressure and humidity). The validation has been undertaken through a comparison against surface data (buoys and oceanographic platforms) available at different locations in the northern Adriatic area, while advanced synthetic aperture radar (ASAR) products have been used to assess modeled wind fields on a larger scale. Model results indicate a good agreement with the observations concerning meteorological variables, in particular wind, pressure and temperature. However, large differences were found in the SST forecasts, which in turn affect also sea surface flux predictions. The uncertainties in SST forecasts are mainly ascribable to the different initialization fields provided by either the global models or satellite analyses. Thus SST initialization represents a critical issue for an accurate description of surface fluxes at least for this exceptionally severe event.

In this paper, an observational space–time ensemble of sea surface elevations is investigated in search of the highest waves of the sea state. Wave data were gathered by means of a stereo camera system, which was installed on top of a fixed oceanographic platform located in the Adriatic Sea (Italy). Waves were measured during a mature sea state with an average wind speed of 11 m s−1. By examining the space–time ensemble, the 3D wave groups have been isolated while evolving in the 2D space and grabbed “when and where” they have been close to the apex of their development, thus exhibiting large surface displacements. The authors have selected the groups displaying maximal crest height exceeding the threshold adopted to define rogue waves in a time record, that is, 1.25 times the significant wave height (Hs). The records at the spatial positions where such large crests occurred have been analyzed to derive the empirical distributions of crest and wave heights, which have been compared against standard statistical linear and nonlinear models. Here, the maximal observed wave crests have resulted to be outliers of the standard statistics, behaving as isolated members of the sample, apparently uncorrelated with other waves of the record. However, this study has found that these unexpectedly large wave crests are better approximated by a space–time model for extreme crest heights. The space–time model performance has been improved, deriving a second-order approximation of the linear model, which has provided a fair agreement with the empirical maxima. The present investigation suggests that very large waves may be more numerous than generally expected.

During winter 2012 an extreme meteorological event stroke the whole Europe and particularly its central-southern sector. A strong and persistent spit of cold air coming from Siberian region (a Cold Air Outbreak, CAO) insisted on northern Italy and the Adriatic sea basin, leading to decreases in the sea temperatures up to 6 oC in less than two weeks, ice formation on the Venice lagoon and an exceptional snow fall in the Apennine region. In the sea the CAO was associated to a significant episode of dense water formation (DWF), a crucial phenomenon that heavily impacts the whole Adriatic Sea (from the sinking of water masses and associated ventilation of the northernmost shelf, to the flow along the western coast, until the flushing of southern Adriatic open slope and submarine canyons, with associated sediment transport and bottom reshaping). The extent of the DWF event in the Northern Adriatic sub-basin was estimated by means of coastal observatories, ad hoc measurements and, until now, results from existing one-way coupled atmosphere-ocean models. These are characterized by no SST feedback from the ocean to the atmosphere, and therefore by turbulent heat fluxes that may heavily reflect a non-consistent ocean state. The study proposes an investigation of the 2012 CAO using a fully coupled, three components, ocean-atmosphere- wave system (COAWST). Results highlight that, although the energy interplays between air and sea do not seem to significantly impact the wind forecasts, when providing heat fluxes that are consistent with the ocean temperature we find modified heat fluxes and air sea temperatures figures. Moreover, the consistent description of thermal exchanges adopted in the fully coupled model can affect the basin circulation, the quantification of dense water produced mass, and the description of its migration pathways and rates of off-shelf descent.

Both the theoretical background and the experimental results of an algorithm developed to perform human respiratory rate measurements without any physical contact are presented. Based on depth image sensing techniques, the respiratory rate is derived by measuring morphological changes of the chest wall. The algorithm identifies the human chest, computes its distance from the camera and compares this value with the instantaneous distance, discerning if it is due to the respiratory act or due to a limited movement of the person being monitored. To experimentally validate the proposed algorithm, the respiratory rate measurements coming from a spirometer were taken as a benchmark and compared with those estimated by the algorithm. Five tests were performed, with five different persons sat in front of the camera. The first test aimed to choose the suitable sampling frequency. The second test was conducted to compare the performances of the proposed system with respect to the gold standard in ideal conditions of light, orientation and clothing. The third, fourth and fifth tests evaluated the algorithm performances under different operating conditions. The experimental results showed that the system can correctly measure the respiratory rate, and it is a viable alternative to monitor the respiratory activity of a person without using invasive sensors.

Commercial electric-power wheelchairs have become much cheaper in the recent years, likewise the availability of reduced size sensors to an affordable price has made their integration easier in this kind of vehicle. This paper presents the development of a smart navigation system applied to an electric wheelchair. The developed work falls within the Ambient Assisted Living field (AAL), which includes all the technologies whose aim is to improve the quality of life of people in the home environment, especially for the elderly and physically impaired. In particular, the present work is focused on the development of technological support aimed at improving the daily life of that population segment who has motor difficulties, and is forced to use personal mobility support systems such as a wheelchair. This system is able to localize the wheelchair while it is moving in an indoor environment. The system exploits a low cost hardware and an integrated open source software, which permit a cheap integration with already available electric wheelchairs.

Remote sensing imaging systems for the measurement of oceanic sea states have recently attracted renovated attention. Imaging technology is economical, non-invasive and enables a better understanding of the space-time dynamics of ocean waves over an area rather than at selected point locations of previous monitoring methods (buoys, wave gauges, etc.). We present recent progress in space-time measurement of ocean waves using stereo vision systems on offshore platforms. Both traditional disparity-based systems and modern elevation-based ones are presented in a variational optimization framework: the main idea is to pose the stereoscopic reconstruction problem of the surface of the ocean in a variational setting and design an energy functional whose minimizer is the desired temporal sequence of wave heights. The functional combines photometric observations as well as spatial and temporal smoothness priors. Disparity methods estimate the disparity between images as an intermediate step toward retrieving the depth of the waves with respect to the cameras, whereas elevation methods estimate the ocean surface displacements directly in 3-D space. Both techniques are used to measure ocean waves from real data collected at offshore platforms in the Black Sea (Crimean Peninsula, Ukraine) and the Northern Adriatic Sea (Venice coast, Italy). Then, the statistical and spectral properties of the resulting observed waves are analyzed. We show the advantages and disadvantages of the presented stereo vision systems and discuss the improvement of their performance in critical issues such as the robustness of the camera calibration in spite of undesired variations of the camera parameters.

Damages and accidents occurred to offshore structures and routing ships raise questions about adequacy of conventional time domain analysis of short-crested sea waves. Indeed, experimental and field evidence showed that during such wave states, typical of storms, the maximum sea surface elevation gathered at a single point in time, i.e. the time extreme, tends to underestimate the actual maximum that occurs over a surrounding area, i.e. the space-time extreme. Recently, stochastic models for the prediction of multidimensional Gaussian random fields maxima, e.g. Piterbarg’s theorem and Adler and Taylor’s approach, have been applied to ocean waves statistics, permitting to extend extreme value analysis from time to space-time domain. In this paper, we present analytical and numerical approaches aimed at supporting applicability of such models, which is limited by the knowledge of directional spectrum parameters. Firstly, we validate stochastic models against stereo-photogrammetric measurements of surface wave fields. Then, we investigate the dependence of space-time extremes upon physical parameters (wind speed, fetch length, current speed) in the context of analytical spectral formulations, i.e. Pierson-Moskowitz and JONSWAP, and by using spectral numerical wave modeling. To this end, we developed two sets of closed formulae and a modified version of the SWAN model to calculate parameters of analytical and arbitrary directional spectra, respectively. Finally, we present preliminary results of a 3 years Mediterranean Sea hindcast as a first step towards operational forecasts of space-time extremes.Copyright © 2014 by ASME

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) evolution is tightly bound to Internet and the evolution of data networks. Nowadays data connection is available everywhere and the traditional voice communications are now a small part of the wide range of services that can be used for communicating (video, desktop sharing, chat, instant messaging). All these services are now easy to use and access from any portable device such as PCs, mobile smartphones and tablets. This paper introduces a service approach, called Functional Collaboration System (FCS), that allows complex organizations to communicate between parties leveraging on these technologies and their integration with a social network paradigm. Still today, in many organizations and workflows lots of time is spent to find out, when needed, the right person with the right skills. A typical search activity involves several people and calls in order to identify the right person that is available at the right time and in the right place. People involved in the search process might be interrupted while performing other tasks, thus increasing inefficiency. Functional collaboration system combines social network principles to provide an easy to use yet effective solution for skill search, workforce management, presence and instant messaging. It enables fast connections between workers, based on their role, relationships, availability, function, skill and position. This paper introduces the system architecture and provides practical application example of healthcare environment, identifying also a method for assessing the communication efficiency improvement provided by this approach.

Assistive robotics has the objective to improve the quality of life of people in daily living, with a special aim to those who suffer of physical disabilities or cognitive impairment, which may be caused by an accident, disease or the natural process of ageing. Autonomous mobile robots can be adapted to work as assistive robots, because of their capabilities to navigate in unstructured environments and react to changes in it. In order to turn a mobile robot into an assistive robot, the contest of use and the set of functionalities to perform should be clearly identified, while limiting at the same time hardware complexity and costs, which are key factors against the application of assistive technologies into the real world. The present paper deals with the development of a home robot companion, an assistive robot, which is being realized at Universita Politecnica delle Marche: its main contribution is the implementation of both a stance detection and respiratory rate algorithm by using the information provided by non-invasive sensors, and their integration into a low cost robotic platform which can perform navigation, user identification and tracking. The overall result is an assistive mobile robot which can increase safety at home for the user.

Stereo video imaging of water surface has become an effective instrumentation to gather wind waves 3-D data from small to medium range spatial scales. Indeed, recent applications of stereo techniques provided new insights of space-time distributions of sea wave elevations, small scale wave statistics, and directional wave spectra. Like most photogrammetric applications, an accurate calibration of the optical acquisition machinery is required to provide a low-noise, precise and reliable surface reconstruction adequate to extract meaningful wavy surfaces. However, for practical open field applications, there is a strong interest to provide a calibration procedure apt to be performed in an uncomfortable environment in which it may be unfeasible to take apart or even physically access the device. Here, we propose a stereo pipeline suitable for 3-D wave measurements from fixed and moving platforms. In particular, within the Wave Acquisition Stereo System (WASS) framework, we contemplated a self-calibration technique for a robust estimation of the stereo extrinsic parameters, a fast dense stereo correspondence algorithm, and a two-step correction of the cameras motion. As for other applications, wave information collected by WASS includes synthetic wave parameters (e.g., significant wave height, wave periods, and directions), wavenumber and frequency-direction spectra, spatial distribution of wave elevations, heights, and lengths. The new pipeline features has been firstly assessed by installing WASS on top of the “Acqua Alta” oceanographic tower in the northern Adriatic Sea (Italy) and comparing WASS measurements against those acquired at the tower with reference instrumentation. Afterwards, the stereo system has been mounted on board the R/V “Urania” during a cruise on April 2013 in the southern Adriatic Sea. During the cruise, to correct for ship’s motion, WASS has been synchronized to the motion unit used for the vessel’s navigation. For validation, sea wave state gathered by WASS has been compared to theoretical models and results from the numerical wave model SWAN. Results presented show that the accuracy of 3-D waves provided by the new algorithms is comparable to that of other WASS applications, although significantly reducing the installation effort and the computational time by more than one order of magnitude. Additionally, encompassing for ship’s motion makes stereo system a perspective instrumentation for operational wave measuring from research and opportunity vessels. The manuscript is completed by a discussion on the limitations and troubleshooting related to the proposed pipeline.

In recent years, remote sensing imaging systems for the measurement of oceanic sea states have attracted renovated attention. Imaging technology is economical, non-invasive and enables a better understanding of the space-time dynamics of ocean waves over an area rather than at selected point locations of previous monitoring methods (buoys, wave gauges, etc.). We present recent progress in space-time measurement of ocean waves using stereo vision systems on offshore platforms, which focus on sea states with wavelengths in the range of 0.01 m to 1 m. Both traditional disparity-based systems and modern elevation-based ones are presented in a variational optimization framework: the main idea is to pose the stereoscopic reconstruction problem of the surface of the ocean in a variational setting and design an energy functional whose minimizer is the desired temporal sequence of wave heights. The functional combines photometric observations as well as spatial and temporal smoothness priors. Disparity methods estimate the disparity between images as an intermediate step toward retrieving the depth of the waves with respect to the cameras, whereas elevation methods estimate the ocean surface displacements directly in 3-D space. Both techniques are used to measure ocean waves from real data collected at offshore platforms in the Black Sea (Crimean Peninsula, Ukraine) and the Northern Adriatic Sea (Venice coast, Italy). Then, the statistical and spectral properties of the resulting observed waves are analyzed. We show the advantages and disadvantages of the presented stereo vision systems and discuss future lines of research to improve their performance in critical issues such as the robustness of the camera calibration in spite of undesired variations of the camera parameters or the processing time that it takes to retrieve ocean wave measurements from the stereo videos, which are very large datasets that need to be processed efficiently to be of practical usage. Multiresolution and short-time approaches would improve efficiency and scalability of the techniques so that wave displacements are obtained in feasible times.

Ocean circulation in the northern Adriatic Sea is characterised by the interactions of tidal currents, bathymetric constraints, wind forcing and density gradients induced by river input and heat exchange. The MIKE 3/21 modelling system, together with measurements of wind, waves, currents and water levels at one location, has been used to investigate the currents dynamics of the northern Adriatic basin and to assess model sensitivity to the parameterisation of different processes and implementation strategies. An assessment has been carried out against available in-situ observations (waves, currents, surface elevation, and water temperature), and also in comparison with a high-resolution modelling system (COAWST) implemented in the same area during the corresponding period. The MIKE 3/21 system was implemented for a 1-year simulation period and validation of surface elevation, wind, and waves with data indicated a good model performance, statistically very similar to the COAWST implementation. Depth-averaged, surface and bottom currents were more difficult to reproduce by both models, with the observed high variability not being fully captured by the model systems. Some of the differences between the models results may be due to model configuration, spatial resolution and the way they treat atmosphere-ocean momentum and heat transfers, turbulence, and are therefore discussed in the paper. From the thorough analysis of MIKE 3/21 system, wind is found to be the main forcing factor inducing currents in the northern Adriatic; tides and baroclinic motions were of second order, although some specific events seems to be forced by these processes. Waves were found to be highly correlated with local wind, and a rather weak wave-current interaction was observed. Even if the inclusion of wave effects trough radiation stress did not seem to lead to significant improvements in the modelled currents with MIKE 3/21, the full wave-ocean coupling in COAWST was significant in explaining small scale features, especially in the Gulf of Venice. Spectral and SVD analysis showed energy around diurnal and semidiurnal frequencies and that about 50% of variance in the current profile was explained by the first mode, which was well captured by both modelling systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Adriatic Sea is a semi-enclosed basin located in the NE part of the Mediterranean Sea and it is strongly influenced by riverine inputs. In its northern sub-basin the freshwater plume of the Po River, together with those of numerous smaller rivers, plays a fundamental role in driving the physical and biogeochemical processes of the whole basin. In this paper we characterize the surface plume structure and identify its patterns and temporal variability on seasonal and inter-annual scales relating it to its major forcings (i.e., river discharges and winds). To perform this analysis, a 3D hydrodynamic numerical model was implemented over the whole Adriatic for the period 2003–2010 and the resulting outputs were analyzed through a series of statistical tools. The inter-annual and seasonal averages of Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) fields show that the average patterns are composed of a coastal plume, wider or narrower depending on the season, that flows southward of the Po River mouths. The first two modes of the Empirical Orthogonal Functions (EOF) analysis show a similar distribution with a cumulative explained variance up to 60%; the third mode, instead, presents a plume shape that extends well into the basin. To obtain a more detailed representation of the plume, a 2×3 Self-Organizing Map (SOM) analysis was performed over the surface salinity fields. Two antithetic patterns were depicted: (i) a small plume confined to coastal areas, typical of low discharges and/or Bora wind events and (ii) a wider plume that extends into the basin, typical of high river discharges and/or Sirocco winds. The comparison between wind regimes, riverine inputs and the time series of the SOM's Best Matching Units (BMU) suggested that, on long time scales, river discharges represent the dominant forcing in defining the plume size and surface pattern, while on time scales of few days the plume dynamics are modulated mostly by the wind structure.

The paper describes formation and spreading of dense shelf waters in the Adriatic Sea (North Adriatic Dense Water, NAdDW) during the winter of 2012 as a consequence of an intense and long cold air outbreak of northeasterly Bora winds. As a result, during February 2012 northern Adriatic Sea water temperature dropped to about 6 degrees C and density exceeded 1030 kg/m(3), most likely the maximum value since 1929. NAdDW dynamics has been investigated by means of a 3-D ocean-wave coupled model running on a high resolution and eddy-permitting grid. The numerical experiments have relied on the Coupled-Ocean-Atmosphere-Wave-Sediment-Transport (COAWST) system forced one-way with atmospheric forcings provided by the model COSMO-17. A suite of observational data has been used to characterize the Bora event and evaluate numerical model performance. At sub-basin scales, the newly formed waters flowing southerly have produced a water renewal of the northern Adriatic, as more than 50% of water volumes have left the basin. Dense waters volume transports, evaluated through different Adriatic cross-sections, have been modulated by tides (damped for the densest water masses) and reached about 1 Sv. The contribution of wave-induced forcings has been quantified and examined, indicating that these represent a major driving mechanism during NAdDW production and spreading phases. This work provides evidence that NAdDW is spread accordingly with two different mechanisms: at early stages of its formation, the wind-driven ocean circulation pushes newly formed waters to leave the northern basin with relatively high speeds (about 0.30 m/s). Later on, remaining NAdDW leaks slowly out (0.09 m/s as average) from the production site. Residence times of dense waters in the north, middle, and south Adriatic Sea are also documented. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In recent years, the study of the dynamics of ocean waves via stereo vision systems has focused on investigating sea states with wavelengths in the range of 0.01 m to 1 m. In this work, we present two modern stereo variational approaches, viz. the disparity and graph methods, for the estimation of the ocean surface displacements over larger spatial scales of 10 to 100 m. The disparity method estimates the disparity between images as an intermediate step toward retrieving the depth of the waves with respect to the cameras, and the graph method estimates the ocean surface displacements directly in 3-D space. The pros and cons of both methods are compared and their performance is evaluated using experimental video data collected at an offshore platform in the Black Sea.

A hierarchy of medium (2 km) and high (0.5 km) resolution operational models cast in the Adriatic sea (NE Mediterranean Sea), relying on an updated core w.r.t. previously existing one, characterized by having a wide variety of applications ranging from civil protection to scientific ones, is presented and described. The computing core of the system sits at Hydro-Meteo-Clima Service (SIMC, Bologna), and the scientific supervision is provided by DISVA Polytechnic University of Marche and CNR-ISMAR Venice. The core of the operational system is based on the Regional Ocean Modeling System, version 3.4. The hydrodynamic variables (e.g. sea surface elevation, currents, temperature, salinity, storm surge height), and wave parameters are predicted every day for the next 72 hours. The surface forcing for the hydrodynamic (AdriaROMS 4.0) and wave (SWAN) operational models is derived from the predicted results of the operational meteorological model COSMO-I7 (7 km resolution) which forecasts atmospheric fields over the whole Italian seas. Hydrodynamic results are verified against oceanographic and wave buoys, tide gauges, bottom mounted acoustic current meter profilers, available in the coastal waters of the Adriatic Sea and oceanographic surveys. More specifically, CNR-ISMAR in the northern Adriatic Sea manages a meteo-oceanographic buoy network and the fixed ocean observatory tower “Acqua Alta”, SIMC manages a wave buoy. Aiming to obtain forecast improvements in coastal areas of northern Adriatic Sea, a newly implemented, more resolved (0.5 km) ROMS version two-way coupled with SWAN is nested in the operational AdriaROMS 4.0 covering the Adriatic Sea at 2 km horizontal resolution. Outputs of operational models drive dedicated submodels for oil-spill transport and dispersion, coastal morphodymanic, sediment transport, saline wedge, water quality.