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Vehicle testing is a key factor in motorsport field, always oriented towards maximizing performance. In last decades, testing procedures have evolved, going from classic outdoor tests to indoor test benches capable of stressing the vehicle in different ways, up to complex virtual simulation environments. In this scenario, this work presents a virtual 7-post rig, based on a seven degree of freedom vehicle model developed with a Lagrangian approach, able to reproduce the vertical behaviour of sprung and unsprung masses. This model could represent a valid alternative to the real test bench, allowing a significant reduction in the testing phase time and costs. The model performance has been assessed by means of a comparison with a much more complex simulation environment and from the comparison of the results it is clear that the developed model can be actually used for the evaluation of the optimal conditions of stiffness and damping of the suspension.

We provide a real-time demonstration of a low-latency PON DBA mechanism, optimised for virtual PONs. Our implementation mixes P4 programmable data plane and software-based virtual DBA to provide efficient fast-track allocation for low latency applications.

Typhoid fever is a potentially severe and occasionally life-threatening bacteraemic illness caused by Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi (S. Typhi). In Pakistan, an outbreak of extensively drug-resistant (XDR) S. Typhi cases began in November 2016. We report on a five-year-old boy who contracted enteric fever while travelling in Pakistan and was diagnosed after returning to Italy in September 2019. Blood culture isolated Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi that was XDR to all first-line antibiotics, including ceftriaxone and fluoroquinolones. Empiric therapy was switched to meropenem, and the patient recovered completely. Whole-genome sequencing showed that this isolate was of haplotype H58. The XDR S. Typhi clone encoded a chromosomally located resistance region and harbored a plasmid encoding additional resistance elements, including the blaCTX-M-15 extended-spectrum β-lactamase and the qnrS fluoroquinolone resistance gene. This is the first case of typhoid fever due to XDR S. Typhi detected in Italy and one of the first paediatric cases reported outside Pakistan, highlighting the need to be vigilant for future cases. While new vaccines against typhoid are in development, clinicians should consider adapting their empiric approach for patients returning from regions at risk of XDR S. Typhi outbreak with typhoid symptoms.

In Antartide sono presenti estreme condizioni ambientali e, fra i viventi, alcuni batteri, recentemente descritti da studiosi italiani, aventi la caratteristica di produrre molecole antibiotico-simili utili a curare soggetti affetti da fibrosi cistica. Studi condotti da esperti argentini e di altri paesi hanno portato alla scoperta di comunità batteriche con grosso potenziale biotecnologico sfruttabile nell’industria alimentare, tessile, dei biocarburanti ed anche utili come degradatori di idrocarburi da usare in protocolli di ripristino di suoli contaminati; anche lieviti e virus antartici sono di interesse biotecnologico. In conclusione l’Antartide è una miniera ecosostenibile di risorse a potenziale biotecnologico. Esistono competenze appropriate in Italia, in Argentina ed in altri paesi dell’America latina per poter studiare e applicare queste biorisorse. Tramite un coordinamento ed opportuni finanziamenti, dunque, si potrà fornire un ritorno, non solo scientifico ma anche economico, a quei paesi che intenderanno supportare queste ricerche.

The rise of new types of business models with service providers, content providers, and virtual network operators entering in competition with traditional telco operators is reducing revenue margins, making cost-effective provisioning mechanism a necessity. Costly massive overprovisioning needs thus to be replaced by more intelligent dynamic resource allocation. In addition, it is increasingly recognized that many upcoming 5G applications and services will require assured end-to-end quality of service. Operators have thus started to look at network function virtualization and software-defined networks (SDNs) as means to address the challenges of cost-effective and highly dynamic end-to-end provisioning. In this paper we present a test case of an SDN-driven end-to-end service orchestration using a transport API called the control orchestration protocol. Our testbed, interconnecting a core network (within the Telefonica premises in Madrid) and an access network (within the Trinity College of Dublin facilities), demonstrates the possibility to operate sub-second end-to-end capacity reservation, showcasing SDN provisioning across multi-domain networks. © 2017 Optical Society of America.

Around the world, municipalities have been making substantial investments into broadband access infrastructure to accelerate the build-out of an urban phenomenon that has become known as a smart or connected city. At the 2016 Optical Fiber Communications Conference, a team contest, the Connected OFCity Challenge, was held to discuss the technological innovations and to examine dependencies and intricacies of a connected city project. The participants, four teams of experts coming from a cross-section of the industry, presented and defended their visions of future applications and innovative architecture and technologies to realize the interconnection. This paper provides a synthesis of the four competitive proposals offered for the contest and their ensuing discussions.

PUBLISHED, Hybrid electro-optical architectures have been recently proposed as cost-effective solution to challenge nearfuture traffic demands. We believe that IP routing technology can be closely integrated with optical circuit switching using a multi-layer traffic engineering approach. In this paper we propose a novel network architecture that, by exploiting the flow correlation of Internet packets, redirects the traffic into dynamically created optical paths, providing optical bypass of the IP layer. The simulation results we provide are based on real traffic traces collected from the pan-European GEANT network.

We evaluated the effects of dopamine (DA) infusion (1.5 micrograms.kg-1.min-1 for 60 min) on secretion of atrial natriuretic factor (ANF) in 10 healthy subjects and 10 patients with congestive heart failure (CHF) (NYHA Classes III and IV). During DA infusion plasma levels of ANF were significantly raised in healthy subjects while the high basal values of ANF in CHF patients were significantly reduced; this trend was also evident for plasma noradrenaline (NA) levels in both groups. Diuresis, natriuresis and glomerular filtration rate were significantly increased while blood pressure, heart rate and central venous pressure remained unchanged in both groups. These findings indicate that DA infusion may affect the release of ANF. Changes in plasma NA concentration suggest that the sympathetic nervous system may be involved in this phenomenon.