Archivio della ricerca della Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna
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A soft robotic total artificial hybrid heart
No full textEnd-stage heart failure is a deadly disease. Current total artificial hearts (TAHs) carry high mortality and morbidity and offer low quality of life. To overcome current biocompatibility issues, we propose the concept of a soft robotic, hybrid (pumping power comes from soft robotics, innerlining from the patient’s own cells) TAH. The device features a pneumatically driven actuator (septum) between two ventricles and is coated with supramolecular polymeric materials to promote anti-thrombotic and tissue engineering properties. In vitro, the Hybrid Heart pumps 5.7 L/min and mimics the native heart’s adaptive function. Proof-of-concept studies in rats and an acute goat model demonstrate the Hybrid Heart’s potential for clinical use and improved biocompatibility. This paper presents the first proof-of-concept of a soft, biocompatible TAH by providing a platform using soft robotics and tissue engineering to create new horizons in heart failure and transplantation medicine
A Design Flow to Securely Isolate FPGA Bus Transactions in Heterogeneous SoCs
No full textEmbedded computing systems are becoming increasingly complex. Modern system-on-chips come with heterogeneous designs that integrate diverse processing systems and a large variety of peripherals. When considering software with mixed and independent security and criticality levels, the heterogeneity of modern computing platforms poses considerable challenges in achieving strong isolation between execution domains. Tackling these challenges is even more difficult in platforms that integrate Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) fabrics, which, due to their wide flexibility, introduce new security- and safety-related threats that can jeopardize isolation. As a matter of fact, if no proper countermeasures are in place, hardware accelerators (HAs) deployed on FPGA can be exploited to break the isolation capabilities implemented in a system by issuing dangerous bus transactions. This research proposes a design flow for heterogeneous platforms to strongly isolate bus transactions issued by HAs. The design flow is then specialized for the AMD Zynq UltraScale+ platform, leveraging the virtualizationrelated features of the Arm System Memory Management Unit (SMMU). The proposed solution jointly combines two new IPs for enforcing information transported by the AXI bus, a tool to verify the FPGA design, a principled configuration of the SMMU driver, and a secure boot flow. The proposal is evaluated with an industry-relevant use case related to embedded machine learning applied for the railway domain, in which isolation is established between two AMD Deep Learning Processor Units (DPU) and a set of FPGA HAs dedicated to a real-time critical application
The Impact of Green Training on Workforce Behavior, Environmental Performance, and Reputation: A European Study
No full textThe challenges of digitization, the green transition, and demographic trends in Europe have significantly impacted
the labor market. In particular the request of green talent from the demand side has grown enormously, making
mandatory to reskill and upskill the workforce to address the green skill gap. In this scenario employees’ green training,
a key element of Green Human Resource Management (GHRM), has become fundamental to align employers requests
and employees working profile availability. This study examines the impact of green training for the existing workforce
in the European business context, focusing on its influence on the green working climate and its mediating role in
enhancing firms' environmental performance and green reputation, enabling organizations to anticipate green trends,
driving the transition. The paper explores the role of green training through an online survey, focused on the agri-food,
construction, manufacturing, wood and furniture industries, and public administration, strategic sectors within Europe.
Findings indicate that green training positively contributes to fostering a green working climate within the surveyed
European firms, reinforcing the importance of structured training programs in supporting sustainability-oriented
business practices. Moreover the study indicates that green working climate positively impacts on firm environmental
performance and green reputation
The Enforcement of Arrest Warrants Issued by the International Criminal Court: Between the Duty to Cooperate and Realpolitik
No full textThe role of employers' associations
No full textThe present paper sheds light on and reflects on the role of employers’ associations (EAs) in contemporary political economies. The starting point is the supposed overall decline of social institutions that regulate market economies and the consequent weakening of incentives to be involved in employees’ and employers’ organizations. To test this hypothesis, we first review theories that explain why and how employers are interested in joining collective organizations. Theories of collective action and neo-institutionalism outline the main factors that influence employers’ decisions to act collectively and the way these same factors are shaped by recent trends in contemporary political economies (e.g., globalization, deregulation, the weakening of social dialogue institutions). In the second part of the paper, we provide empirical evidence of global trends in EAs. In the third part, we critically reflect on the possible interpretations of the unexpected resilience of EAs
Data-driven power modeling and monitoring via hardware performance counter tracking
No full textEnergy-centric design is paramount in the current embedded computing era: use cases require increasingly high performance at an affordable power budget, often under real-time constraints. Hardware heterogeneity and parallelism help address the efficiency challenge, but greatly complicate online power consumption assessments, which are essential for dynamic hardware and software stack adaptations. We introduce a novel power modeling methodology with state-of-the-art accuracy, low overhead, and high responsiveness, whose implementation does not rely on microarchitectural details. Our methodology identifies the Performance Monitoring Counters (PMCs) with the highest linear correlation to the power consumption of each hardware sub-system, for each Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) state. The individual, simple models are composed into a complete model that effectively describes the power consumption of the whole system, achieving high accuracy and low overhead. Our evaluation reports an average estimation error of 7.5% for power consumption and 1.3% for energy. We integrate these models in the Linux kernel with Runmeter, an open-source, PMC-based monitoring framework. Runmeter manages PMC sampling and processing, enabling the execution of our power models at runtime. With a worst-case time overhead of only 0.7%, Runmeter provides responsive and accurate power measurements directly in the kernel. This information can be employed for actuation policies in workload-aware DVFS and power-aware, closed-loop task scheduling
Concomitant Aficamten and Disopyramide in Symptomatic Obstructive Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy
No full textTimerlat: Real-Time Linux Scheduling Latency Measurements, Tracing, and Analysis
No full textA trend in many embedded devices is the move from hardware-based to software-defined, such as software-defined networks and software-defined PLCs. This trend is motivated by multiple aspects, including the availability of complex software stacks and the consolidation of multiple devices into a single larger system. Due to its real-time capabilities and flexibility, Linux is the operating system of choice for many applications, including time-sensitive ones. However, assessing and debugging timing violations, especially those caused by scheduling latency, is challenging with the current state-of-the-art tools. This paper presents timerlat, a tool that integrates scheduling latency measurements, tracing, and analysis in an easy-to-use interface. Its output includes an auto-analysis, providing insightful details on the composition of the scheduling latency. Experimental results are reported, evaluating the effectiveness of timerlat in assessing the latencies, considering different setups and workloads
Scan and 3D Print: Magnetic Resonance Imaging‐Guided, Monolithic Desktop Fabrication of Highly Biomimetic Skeletal System of the Human Hand
No full text3D-printed human-inspired hands, while visually similar to their biological counterparts, often lack key features that enable the unique capabilities of human hands. In this research, a framework for desktop 3D printing patient-specific human hands with a high functional level of biomimicry is presented. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data are used to create computer aided design (CAD) models replicating key features of the skeletal system, including soft joints, ligaments, and volar plates, which are critical for mimicking the motions and functions of natural hands. The entire hand, consisting of rigid and soft segments, is monolithically 3D-printed using a commercial, inexpensive (≈€ 500) desktop multimaterial printer, eliminating the need for assembly and expensive 3D printers. The proposed MRI to Desktop 3D printing approach contrasts with the state of the art, where high biomimicry is achieved through a multistage assembly process and expensive 3D printing setups. The resulting hand shows several unique behaviors of natural hands, including an opposable thumb moving across the palm, improved resistance at bone–joint interfaces, high life cycle, constrained bending, absorption of perpendicular loads, high range of coordinated, bioinspired motion, and grasping capabilities. The proposed approach can be potentially used to 3D print prosthetic hands tailored to individual needs, leveraging patient-specific digitally created MRI data