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The design of an efficient curing policy, able to stem an epidemic process at an affordable cost, has to account for the structure of the population contact network supporting the contagious process. Thus, we tackle the problem of allocating recovery resources among the population, at the lowest cost possible to prevent the epidemic from persisting indefinitely in the network. Specifically, we analyze a susceptible-infected-susceptible epidemic process spreading over a weighted graph, by means of a first-order mean-field approximation. First, we describe the influence of the contact network on the dynamics of the epidemics among a heterogeneous population, that is possibly divided into communities. For the case of a community network, our investigation relies on the graph-theoretical notion of equitable partition; we show that the epidemic threshold, a key measure of the network robustness against epidemic spreading, can be determined using a lower-dimensional dynamical system. Exploiting the computation of the epidemic threshold, we determine a cost-optimal curing policy by solving a convex minimization problem, which possesses a reduced dimension in the case of a community network. Lastly, we consider a two-level optimal curing problem, for which an algorithm is designed with a polynomial time complexity in the network size. to be published on Journal of Complex Networks

This is the post-print version of paper "A linear parameter-varying modelling approach for dielectric elastomer loudspeakers", presented at the 10th Vienna International Conference on Mathematical Modelling MATHMOD 2022. Link to the paper's page on the publisher's website: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405896322013532

We conducted a contingent valuation survey to estimate the social acceptance and preferences of a local community towards the installation of a wind farm in a countryside area presenting significant aesthetic, cultural, and identity place attributes. We focused on two opposite potential externalities caused by wind turbines. The first relates to the contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gas emission through the production of green energy. The second concerns the degradation of rural landscape assets. In the sample, we identified factors for or against the installation of the wind farm. People in favor of the wind farm were asked to state their willingness to pay for reducing the effect of global warming by purchasing electricity produced by wind turbines. People against it were solicited to declare their willingness to pay to avoid landscape loss. Welfare measures were elicited using a payment card elicitation format and quantified through different estimation models. An analysis of data revealed high heterogeneity in attitudes, beliefs, and preferences of citizens towards the two potentially competing environmental goods. The willingness to pay for reducing the effect of global warming was much higher than the willingness to pay for avoiding the loss of the rural landscape.

AbstractIn this study, grey cast iron disc brake rotors are refurbished by adding a surface layer through laser cladding. Current methods to deal with replaced rotors mainly include remelting, with a minority fraction disposed in landfill. Both approaches result in a huge waste of resources and an increase in CO2 footprint. From a sustainable point of view, this study aims to evaluate the feasibility of refurbishing brake rotors by a combined environmental and tribological performance approach. A streamlined life cycle assessment is conducted to compare the environmental impacts between producing virgin grey cast iron brake rotors and refurbishing replaced brake rotors by laser cladding. It turns out that the energy consumption and CO2 footprint of the laser cladding refurbished brake rotors are 80% and 90% less than the virgin brake rotors. The results show that the refurbished brake rotor yields higher friction compared to the original cast iron utilizing the same pad material. The wear and particle emissions of the disc brake contact are in this study higher for the laser-cladded one compared to the original cast iron one.

Huntington's disease (HD) is a monogenic autosomal dominant, fatal disorder due to CAG trinucleotide expansion in exon 1 of the HD gene (HTT) (The Huntington's Disease Collaborative Research Group, 1993; Figure ​Figure1A).1A). Nowadays, there is no cure or effective treatment for the disease which presents with motor, cognitive and psychiatric dysfunction. Although typically conceived as a “neurodegenerative disease,” mainly affecting the GABAergic medium-sized spiny neurons (MSN) of the striatum and deep layers of the cortex (Rosas et al., 2003), an increasing body of evidence has surfaced indicating that abnormal neurodevelopment might also have a crucial role in HD (Mehler and Gokhan, 2000, 2001; Humbert, 2010). Neurodegenerative diseases have been classically defined as chronic and progressive disorders of the nervous system affecting neurologic and behavioral functions, which start with specific biochemical changes that ultimately lead to distinct histopathologic and clinical syndromes. On the contrary, neurodevelopmental disorders result from an anomaly of brain maturation, during fetal or early postnatal life, which is postulated to alter the structure and/or function of neuronal and synaptic populations (Harrison, 1995).

The work describes the contribution of SAFESTRIP EU project technology to the implementation of the Dynamic Local Map used by C-ITS safety applications. The road strips developed in SAFESTRIP are able to detect and estimate the longitudinal and lateral position of detected vehicle at lane level. This is exploited by many existing and new C-ITS applications. Here a Coorperative Intersection Support application is described and used as example to explain the concept and highlight the benefit put forward by the road strips informations.