In recent years, European maritime countries had to face new situations involving the traffic of illegal vessels. The fight against unauthorized fishing, irregular migration and related smuggling activity has become an international priority. Image processing and computer vision methods can contribute to find a solution to these problems by using the large scale data which is nowadays made available by satellite constellations. With this aim, researchers at the Signals and Images Lab of ...

The face is the pre-eminent channel of communication among humans: it is a mirror of status, emotions, mood. This is the base principle of Medical Semeiotics, which looks at the face as a revealer of the healthy status of an individual, through a combination of physical signs (e.g., skin colour, subcutaneous fat) and facial expressions. Medical Semeiotics dates back as far as Aristotle's time; nevertheless it is still used by medical practitioners today, who rely on their ability to read the ...

The EU-funded DOREMI project (Decrease of cOgnitive decline, malnutRition and sedEntariness by elderly empowerment in lifestyle Management and social Inclusion) showed that in elderly people cognitive decline can be counteract and social inclusion can be improved with the help of cognitive games and a virtual companion to be used with PCs, TVs and tablets. The decline of cognitive ability is strongly related to lifestyle, as well as social engagement, cognitive stimulation, nutrition and ...

The processes behind the functioning of modern Public Administration (PA) are characterized by increasing complexity and continuous evolution. In most cases these processes require a collaborative activity shared among different offices, both within an administration and also across more organizations. Moreover, as related laws and regulations are frequently modified, the administrative processes are constantly transformed requiring the intertwined adaptation of related services and data. At ...

Context Mobile devices are today noticeable means by which people disseminate digital tracks of their everyday activities: movements, purchase transactions, preferences, opinions, and so on. In particular, mobile phones and the data they produce revealed as a high-quality proxy for studying people mobility in different domains, such as environmental monitoring, transportation planning , smart cities and social relationship analysis and innovative demographic indexes. Opportunities Currently, a ...

The restoration of the Neptune Fountain in Bologna (Italy) started in 2016 and will be terminated in the first half of 2017. This action is funded by Comune di Bologna and it is joint project of Bologna University, Istituto Superiore per la Conservazione ed il Restauro del MiBACT (ISCR) and CNR-ISTI. This restoration qualifies as a major restoration action both for the complexity of the artwork (a complex multi-material monument, with parts in stone and bronze showing different conservation ...

With specific reference to production processes, industrial security may be defined as the set of the studies, development and the applications of strategies, policies and operative plans, finalized to prevent, manage and solve adverse behaviors against people, environment and properties, either within or outside the industrial site, and against company resources, which are essential to ensure competitiveness in short or long period. In this perspective, industrial installations can represent ...

In un mondo sempre più globalizzato, gli abiti sono il frutto di un lungo processo produttivo dove origine delle materie prime, luoghi di lavorazione e consumo diventano più lontani tra loro. Così le scelte delle imprese e dei consumatori hanno ricadute economiche, ambientali, sociali ed etiche sempre più complesse e difficili da controllare da parte del singolo attore socioeconomico. In questo panorama, sta lentamente avvenendo quanto si è già verificato per il cibo: si fa strada una ...

Magnetic recording is presently the leading technology for mass data storage. Its dominant role has been reinforced by the success of cloud computing, which requires huge amounts of data to be stored and managed on a multitude of servers. Nonetheless, the hard-disk storage industry is presently at a crossroad as the current magnetic recording technologies are unable to achieve storage densities beyond 1Tbit/in2. Pushing the recording density to the terabit regime requires new storage materials, ...

The Institute of Research on Combustion (IRC) is one of the partners of the research project Waste2Fuels 'Sustainable production of next generation biofuels from waste streams' that has been funded under the European Union's research and innovation program Horizon 2020 under the grant agreement no. 654623. The project is coordinated by the Spanish company IRIS Advanced Engineering with the participation of 20 partners from 8 countries, among these the 'Dipartimento di Ingegneria Chimica dei ...

Nonostante il numero e frequenza delle frane e delle inondazioni che colpiscono i nostri territori, e la quantità di informazioni anche reperibili online su eventi di frana e di inondazione, il tema del rischio geo-idrologico resta poco conosciuto per la maggioranza dei cittadini. La mancata conoscenza si riflette sulla scarsa percezione che i cittadini hanno dei rischi geo-idrologici. Una delle cause della poca conoscenza è la modalità con cui i temi del rischio geo-idrologico sono stati ...

The study deals with the friction and wear properties of materials for brake pads. It has been developed in the frame of a research collaboration with ITT Friction Technologies company, who is one of the world leaders in the field of brake pads. The gradual phasing out of asbestos, recognized as carcinogenic materials, pushed pads manufacturers to move away from them, to the purpose to obtain safe components. Such phenomenon resulted in a wide variety of brake pads, each with its peculiar ...

Esistono alcuni gamberetti che riescono a vedere la luce con una dimensione in più rispetto a noi per individuare meglio il quasi invisibile plancton. Infatti la luce, oltre al colore dato dalla propria energia, ha un'altra proprietà di cui normalmente non è facile rendersi conto: la polarizzazione, ossia la direzione e il modo in cui il campo elettromagnetico oscilla nel propagarsi alla velocità della luce. Uno studio pubblicato sulla rivista 'Light Science & Applications' propone e ...

Era già noto da tempo che la cozza fosse fonte preziosa di principi antiossidanti, proteine nobili, vitamine e sali minerali, potente antinfiammatorio naturale e cibo afrodisiaco, ed era già altrettanto noto che la sua 'bava' fosse una colla dotata di superpoteri. Nessuno però si era spinto fino ad oggi a studiare il comportamento delle sue proteine per misurare la portata di questa 'appiccicosità'. L'insolita ricerca, pubblicata su Nature Communication, è stata condotta dai ricercatori ...

The growing interest in metal nanoparticles (NP) is related to their increasing importance for a series of applications, ranging from nanoelectronics to magnetism, pharmaceutics (e.g. for biological labeling) and catalysis. It is now well established that the NPs' properties depend critically on their size and shape1-3 and that some peculiar geometries may appear when reducing the cluster size4. In spite of the vast literature on the topic, most of the attention has concentrated so far on metal ...

The climate changes related to CO2 emission from combustion of fossil fuels increased more and more in the last 50 years. According to Protocol of Doha, extending the Protocol of Kyoto, the European Union decided 20% (or even more) reduction of CO2 emission levels of 1990 by 2020. The Covenant of Mayors is a European movement where local/regional authorities, voluntarily commit to increasing energy efficiency and use of renewable energy. In this framework the Istituto di Ricerche sulla ...

The continual progress of physics provides an insight ever deeper of the Universe, and also to have new technologies, but at the same time place us in front to new and new demands. One of the open questions in physics is to reconcile the two most successful theories of physics, Einstein's general relativity and quantum physics, which work perfectly, but in completely different fields. General relativity explains gravity and the universe at large scale, astronomical and cosmological, and at the ...

It is already two decades that there is an evident re-distribution of economic power among the Triad (North America, Europe and Japan) and new emerging economies. Trends in the international trade and FDI show how economic activities in the Triad are threatened by countries such as China and India. Both nations have huge population and they are more and more crucial economic partners in the new and multi-polar world economy. To which extent the economic activities of these two emerging areas are ...

An innovative robotized inclinometer system for inclinometer measurements to evaluate deep-seated ground deformations in standard boreholes. Our AIS (Automated Inclinometer System) allows for fully automatic inclinometer measurements in standard boreholes. The deep measurements have multiple applications, including (i) evaluating the rate of deep-seated ground deformation in landslide areas, (ii) evaluating the volume of deep-seated landslides, and (ii) assessing landslide hazards. The AIS is ...

The intestinal microbiota plays a key role in promoting maturation of the immune system, particularly during the neonatal period, and is influenced throughout life by environmental factors. In particular, diet plays a central role in the structure and constitution of the gut microbiota. Moreover, it has been suggested that a healthy microbiota exists when there is a balance between symbionts, commensal organisms, and pathobionts. Alterations in this balance can lead to dysbiosis, which has been ...

Through a joint study carried out in cooperation with Italian scientists, among which ISN-CNR researchers, a total of 1972 ALS cases were identified. The study population included: 333 Italian ALS cases who carried the C9ORF72expansion, 1639 Italian ALS not carrying the C9ORF72 expansion and 1043 controls.  In this study the large series of Italian ALS patients with C9ORF72 GGGGCC hexanucleotide repeat expansion, compared to age-, gender- and ethnic-matched controls, did not reveal an ...

The main aim of industrial prototyping is to create a tangible representation of an arbitrary digital geometry. Industrial fabrication is generally tuned for a specific object and the initial setup is usually a time consuming operation. The more complex the shape of the object, the more complex is the manufacturing process. Obviously, implementing a similar process to create a single (or a few) prototype(s) is not efficient. To deal with these specific industrial needs 3D printing devices have ...

by Maria Girardi, Cristina Padovani and Daniele Pellegrini In Italy many historically and artistically important masonry buildings are in dire need of maintenance and restoration. In order to optimize such operations in terms of cost-effectiveness, architectural impact and static effectiveness, numerical codes have a crucial role to play in modelling the structural behaviour of masonry buildings. By providing important information such as the collapse loads, the stress field and the ...

The smart area of the CNR was born in Pisa, baptized with an event held at the Auditorium of the National Research Council on Nov. 30, 2015, in which ICT applications were presented that make smart the CNR area in Pisa, being this the largest area in the overall panorama of the CNR research centers in Italy. In its 130 thousand s/m, 13 CNR institutes operate, and other research centers are housed, such as the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, the Ericsson, the Enea and and the G. Monasterio ...

Il progetto SI DO RE MI è stato sviluppato dal Laboratorio Segnali e Immagini dell'ISTI grazie ad un finanziamento della Fondazione Telecom Italia. Il progetto prevede un intervento rivolto a bambini con Disturbi dello Spettro Autistico (DPS) e difficoltà relazionali finalizzato a promuovere l'interazione a vari livelli di complessità attraverso la mediazione della stimolazione sonora interattiva. A tale scopo è stato sviluppato un sistema HW/SW basato su di un calcolatore con sistema ...

Down syndrome, also known as Trisomy 21, is associated, albeit with varying severity, with intellectual disability, premature aging, propensity to develop a disease similar to Alzheimer's, and the onset of some types of leukemia. Several studies have associated this phenotype with increased oxidative stress. A research conducted by a team of IGM researchers coordinated by Ennio Prosperi, in collaboration with the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the University of Pavia, have shown that ...

Da FOCUS CNR n.1 2015 L'Italia custodisce un immenso patrimonio storico-artistico, che costituisce una preziosa eredità da salvaguardare e tramandare alle generazioni future, sviluppando nuove tecniche di intervento non invasive e adottando efficaci strategie conservative. L'ultima frontiera nel campo della conservazione è l'impiego di impulsi laser per la rimozione di depositi e materiali applicati in precedenti restauri dalla superficie di un'opera d'arte. "La tecnica, solitamente, sfrutta ...

The location of Italian Peninsula at the convergence between the African and Eurasian plates, makes it a Country with high level of seismic hazard. The relationship between the damage and the energy released by earthquakes is much stronger in Italy than in other Countries with high seismicity, such as California or Japan. This is mainly because our Country is characterized by the presence of historical centers with buildings that often are not adequate to support seismic forces. Our historical ...

A giant depression (0.5 km2) associated with hydrothermal activity has been recently discovered, on the seafloor surrounding Zannone Island (western Pontine Archipelago, Tyrrhenian Sea) at water depth ranging between 110 and 130 m, by CNR-IGAG researchers. This depression has been studied through very high resolution bathymetric data in the framework of the MaGIC project (http://www.magicproject.it/). Successively, during the research cruise "BOLLE 2014" aboard of the Urania R/V the site has ...

This research aim at: -tracing, monitoring, preserving, characterizing and exploiting the biodiversity of species of interest for the agri-food sector, and the natural and agroforestry ecosistems (including non-plant organisms) with the goal of securing their sustanability; -enhancing the knowledge on the evolution of bioresources and their distribution and functional role, with the goal of securing their adaptive potential against stress factors generated by the climate change, and defining ...