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The emergency caused by Covid-19 pandemic raised interest in studying lifestyles and comorbidities as important determinants of poor Covid-19 prognosis. Data on tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption and obesity are still limited, while no data are available on the role of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products (HTP). To clarify the role of tobacco smoking and other lifestyle habits on COVID-19 severity and progression, we designed a longitudinal observational study titled COvid19 and SMOking in ITaly (COSMO-IT). About 30 Italian hospitals in North, Centre and South of Italy joined the study. Its main aims are: 1) to quantify the role of tobacco smoking and smoking cessation on the severity and progression of COVID-19 in hospitalized patients; 2) to compare smoking prevalence and severity of the disease in relation to smoking in hospitalized COVID-19 patients versus patients treated at home; 3) to quantify the association between other lifestyle factors, such as e-cigarette and HTP use, alcohol and obesity and the risk of unfavourable COVID-19 outcomes. Socio-demographic, lifestyle and medical history information will be gathered for around 3000 hospitalized and 700-1000 home-isolated, laboratory-confirmed, COVID-19 patients. Given the current absence of a vaccine against SARS-COV-2 and the lack of a specific treatment for -COVID-19, prevention strategies are of extreme importance. This project, designed to highly contribute to the international scientific debate on the role of avoidable lifestyle habits on COVID-19 severity, will provide valuable epidemiological data in order to support important recommendations to prevent COVID-19 incidence, progression and mortality.

This paper presents a detailed modelling, control system design, and numerical simulation of a rotary wing aircraft with two synchronised rotors. Following the derivation of the complete non-linear 6 DoF equations, a nested loop control architecture made of attitude stabilisation and trajectory tracking is designed after a linearisation process. Numerical simulation and performance analysis are carried out. Results concerning hovering and forward flight, relevant from the perspective of practical applications are presented and discussed. The synch-rotor configuration appears suitable and effective for application where Unmanned Aerial Systems are foreseen such as environment monitoring, aerial photogrammetry, and load transportation.

The paper deals with attitude dynamics of an underactuated spacecraft, proposing a technique for aiming a body-fixed axis (e.g. sensor, antenna, nozzle, etc.) arbitrarily close to a prescribed direction in space by means of two reaction wheels only, when the total angular momentum of the spacecraft is zero. The technique is based on a simple kinematic planning scheme, where an eigenaxis rotation is performed around an admissible rotation axis, that is, an axis that lies on the plane of the two active reaction wheels. Proof of almost global stability is provided, together with a detailed discussion of a few theoretical shortcomings. The latter can be circumvented in the numerical implementation of the control law, that remains simple and computationally efficient. Numerical simulations of single-axis pointing maneuvers for a reference spacecraft prove the practical viability and validity of the approach. The effect of non-ideal conditions, such as a small residual angular momentum, command torque saturation and off-diagonal terms in the inertia tensor, are also investigated.

The use of magnetic torquers on satellites flying inclined Low Earth Orbits (LEO) arises challenging problems when dealing with control strategies: since the available torque is perpendicular to the local magnetic field, the Attitude Control System (ACS) is inherently underactuated if no other attitude effector is available. In this paper a rigorous proof of global asymptotic stability is derived for a control law that leads the satellite to a desired pure spin condition around a principal axis of inertia. A heuristic contribution is then added, inspired by quaternion feedback control and a previous geometric result obtained by the authors, which allows for pointing the spin axis along the normal to the orbital plane

GPS navigation system is widely used for terrestrial vehicle navigation system. Nevertheless satellites visibility can be interrupted by city obstacles such as trees, tunnels or urban canyons. Nevertheless, the trajectory can be partially reconstructed by means of inertial measurements units but, while the integrity of navigation data signal is provided in Europe using the EGNOS system by means of the Horizontal Protection Level calculation, when GPS data are missing there is an impossibility to associate an HTL (Horizontal Trust Level) to position measurement. This paper deals with the possibility to use the covariance matrix propagated in a Kalman filter to obtain an evaluation of the HTL. Some sensors classes, with different accuracies and in different configurations have been analyzed and numerical results are described. Moreover a real city path has been performed, acquiring GPS and Inertial Measurement Unit data, and trajectory reconstruction data are shown and commented, paying particular attention to differences between simulations and “real-world” cases.

The use of magnetic actuators on Low Earth Orbiting spacecrafts represents an attractive solution because of its simplicity, reliability and a power-effective smooth modulation of control actions. Attitude regulation yet proves to be a challenging problem, since magnetic actuators alone do not allow providing three independent control torque components at each time instant. The goal of this paper is to derive a rigorous proof of global asymptotic stability for a magnetic control law that leads the satellite to a desired spin condition around a principal axis of inertia, pointing the spin axis towards a target direction in the inertial reference frame.