Search

Aerosol satellite remote sensing can be profitably exploited in Air Quality monitoring in order to estimate the particulate matter concentration (PM) at surface level. Actually, the satellite sensor synoptic view enables monitoring of PM concentration spatial distribution fostering the analysis of the compliance with the new European Commission (EC) Directive on ambient air quality and cleaner air for Europe. In this work MODIS level 2 aerosol data are employed in a semi-empirical approach to estimate daily PM2.5 concentration at the ground over Northern Italy from 2004 to 2008. A further analysis, aimed at providing MODIS-based maps of yearly percentage of days exceeding the PM2.5 daily concentration limit prescribed by EC directive is then presented giving very promising results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computer science provides with virtual laboratories, places where one can merge real experiments with the formalism of algorithms and mathematics and where, with the advent of multimedia, sounds and movies can also be added. In this paper we present a method, based on principles of formal ontology, allowing one to develop interactive educational tools. The structure of our system starts from general considerations on knowledge itself moving on to formal ontological principles in order to obtain a robust knowledge frame and good awareness of knowledge levels involved during the teaching process. Our system is split into object-knowledge - the knowledge of the phenomenon to be taught - and meta-knowledge - i.e., how to teach it. Using a trip (journey) metaphor, together with the flexibility of semantic graph representations, we define the reference frame and we apply it to a case study related to the Planetary Missions, the subject of our research. This tool is provided with a multimedia interface to show the results of several current missions , but may be implemented with new missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]