1,721,601 research outputs found
Reed, D. and Santini (2022) Chapter 6 - Designing Studies Part 3 - Qualitative Study Design in Santini, A. and Eaton, K. (Editors) (2022) An introduction to clinical research for health and social care professionals. Milton Keynes: Authorhouse.
Full text linkExperimental violations of Leggett-Garg inequalities on a quantum computer
No full textLeggett-Garg's inequalities predict sharp bounds for some classical correlation functions that address the quantum or classical nature of real-time evolutions. We experimentally observe the violations of these bounds on single- and multiqubit systems, in different settings, exploiting the IBM Quantum platform. In the multiqubit case, we introduce the Leggett-Garg-Bell's inequalities as an alternative to the previous ones. Measuring these correlation functions, we find quantum error mitigation to be essential to spot inequalities violations. Accessing only two qubit readouts, we assess Leggett-Garg-Bell's inequalities to emerge as the most efficient quantum coherence witnesses to be used for investigating quantum hardware, among those introduced. Our analysis highlights the limits of current quantum platforms, showing that the above-mentioned correlation functions deviate from theoretical prediction as the number of qubits and the depth of the circuit grow
Nutraceuticals - shedding light on the grey area between pharmaceuticals and food
No full textThe term ‘nutraceutical’, originally coined in 1989 by Stephen
DeFelice, founder and chairman of the Foundation for
Innovation in Medicine (DeFelice, 1989), is a portmanteau of
the words ‘nutrition’ (indicating a nourishing food or food
component) and ‘pharmaceutical’ (with reference to a drug),
the concept of nutraceutical and potential has been described
and widely assessed in the following years since 1995
Complex insect-pathogen interactions in tree pandemics
Full text linkTree pandemics are a major cause of economic and ecological loss in forest and urban ecosystems. They often depend on the introduction of a non-native pathogen, which is occupying the niche of a native, non-aggressive organism. Complex interactions with native insects carrying fungi and nematodes can be established based on the proximity of the aggressive pathogenic agents. Here we review three major pandemics of forest and urban trees in temperate ecosystems at world scale, i.e., the Dutch elm disease, the cypress canker, and the pine wilt disease. For each system, the relationships between aggressive and non-aggressive fungi and nematodes with the native insect vectors are presented. Hidden players such as insects, microorganisms or plants, which may have the role of facilitating or contrasting the performance of the agents, are also considered. Results suggest that pandemics rely on the introduction of a non-native pathogen that exploits well-developed interactions between native non-aggressive organisms and insects associated with trees. The success of the invaders depends on the morpho-physiological proximity of the players and on the mutual benefits resulting from the associations. Deciphering such interactions in native systems may help to predict the outcome of the introduction of new pathogens and the development of new tree pandemics
Energy-efficient automated vertical farms
Full text linkAutonomous vertical farms (VFs) are becoming increasingly more popular because they allow to grow food minimising water consumption and the use of pesticides, while greatly increasing the yield per square metre compared with traditional agriculture. To meet sustainability goals, however, VFs must operate at maximum efficiency; it would be otherwise impossible to compete with the energy source powering plant growth in traditional agriculture: the sun. We introduce the Vertical Farming Elevator Energy Minimisation Problem (VFEEMP), which arises when minimising the energy consumption of automatic elevators servicing VFs. We prove that the decision problem associated with the VFEEMP is NP-complete. To solve the problem, we propose three Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MIP) formulations together with valid inequalities, and a Constraint Programming model. We present a large set of instances, both synthetic and derived from real-life data, and we determine through extensive computational experiments which instance characteristics have an impact on the difficulty of the problem and which formulations are the most suitable to solve the VFEEMP
La Competitività del sistema turistico: il caso delle destinazioni entertainment-based
Full text linkIl tema della competitività delle destinazioni turistiche si presenta di estrema attualità e rilevanza per il settore del turismo in Italia in quanto, nel panorama competitivo internazionale, caratterizzato da marcati processi di globalizzazione dei mercati e di concentrazione delle imprese, il futuro delle imprese di piccole e medie dimensioni, particolarmente diffuse in in Italia, è legato alla possibilità di
collaborazione, in ottica sistemica, al fine di valorizzare le risorse locali e migliorare il livello complessivo dell’offerta. In tale contesto, si ritiene che l’ambito della competitività di una destinazione turistica basata su un’offerta legata all’intrattenimento sia ancora da esplorare e di particolare interesse, sia per il mondo accademico, in cui questi temi di ricerca all’interno del filone di studi sullo sviluppo e gestione di una destinazione turistica, avviato negli anni ’90, sono stati solo parzialmente affrontati, sia per quello professionale. La ricerca ha, inoltre, teso colmare un’assenza nell’area del destination management con specifico interesse verso il settore dell’intrattenimento. Le esperienze di Dubai e della ArenA Boulevard, sebbene comunque di successo, non sono state oggetto di interesse e ricerca da parte del mondo accademico
Learning universality and scaling from simple deposition models
No full textWe use deposition models of kinetic roughening of a growing surface to introduce the concepts of universality and scaling and to analyze the qualitative and quantitative role of different parameters. In particular, we focus on two classes of models where the deposition is accompanied by a local relaxation process within a distance δ. The models are in the Edwards-Wilkinson universality class, but the role of δ is nontrivial
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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