Erik Franco – Pagina 14 – Progress in Research

Training school on modelling compound climate-related events

Posted on 24/05/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The project “Training school on modelling compound climate-related events” has won a grant of 10,000 euros as a T.I.M.E. project.

June and July 2021 have been characterised by extraordinary natural events, like the heatwave occurred on the Pacific Coast of the United States and Canada, and the flood event occurred in Northern Europe. These events extended over rather large spatial and temporal scales, and manifested with cascading effects, interconnected behaviours and hazards. They are classified as “compound climate-related events”.

They are an emerging topic in science for the enormous impact on society. Compound climate-related events can pose serious threats to natural systems and human societies. Modelling and predicting compound events require knowledge on advanced statistical methods.

The project proposes a Training School on Modelling Compound climate-related Events to train the next generation of researchers and scientists to deal with such complex and impactful events. The school, targeted for PhD students, will be two weeks long, and provide tools and methodologies to investigate compound events. In addition, there will be ample time to work on scientific projects organized in four small groups and socialize with the other participants and lecturers.

The coordinator of the project is the Politecnico di Milano, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, with Prof. Carlo De Michele as principal investigator. The project involves also Technische Universität Dresden (Germany) and Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium).

The T.I.M.E. Association (Top International Managers in Engineering), founded in 1989, is a network of leading technical universities and engineering schools in Europe and all over the world, with a strong international dimension in teaching, research and industrial relations. The association currently consists of 57 members in 25 countries, and the Politecnico di Milano is a member of the Advisory Committee.

Besides double degree activities, T.I.M.E. promotes a series of other initiatives, including the T.I.M.E. projects, through which the association co-finances new or existing initiatives between member universities, in which T.I.M.E. can represent an added value.

The role of digitalization in supporting the industrial circular transition

Posted on 23/05/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The project “The role of digitalization in supporting the industrial circular transition” has won a grant of 10,000 euros as a T.I.M.E. project.

The project aims at investigating the relationship between the adoption of digital technologies and the implementation of circular economy practices within the industrial sector. Its aim is to understand the supporting role offered by the digital technologies, passing from the enhancement and generation of dynamic capabilities. This would be done by conducting an international survey, providing empirical-based insights.

The coordinator of the project is the Politecnico di Milano, Department of Management Economic and Industrial Engineering, with Dr. Alessandra Neri as principal investigator. KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden) and Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (Spain) are partners of the project and members of the T.I.M.E. Association. The University of the West of England (UK) and Aston University (UK) take part in the project as external members.

BUDD-e: Blind-assistive aUtonomous Drive Device

Posted on 20/05/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

COVID-19 pandemics and related politics have strongly impacted on people’s life and, even more dramatically, that of people with visual impairment – 4% of the planet population. This is due to the fact that blind and visual impaired (BVI) people need tactile contact with the environment and a guide for moving and orienteering.

The goal of the BUDD-e (Blind-assistive aUtonomous Drive Device) project is to make public spaces and services, such as shopping centers and cultural centers/museums, accessible, functional and usable by BVI persons.

The project will be divided into two sub-objectives:

design and realize a first prototype of the innovative autonomous robotic guide BUDD-e for blind and visually impaired (BVI) persons;
design accessible and inclusive public places and indoor environments where BUDD-e can take the role of a guide for BVI persons and permit the fruition of the offered services.

BUDD-e is one of the 5 high social impact research projects of the Politecnico di Milano selected via the last edition of the Polisocial Award to be financed by funds from the 5×1000 donations (a fraction of the personal income tax each Italian citizen can donate to support a non-profit organisation).

THE PROJECT TEAM
Marcello Farina, Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering (principal investigator)
Emanuele Lettieri, Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering (project manager)
Luca Bascetta, Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering
Matteo Corno, Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering
Manuela Galli, Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering
Giuseppe Andreoni, Department of Design
Paolo Perego, Department of Design
Andrea Rebecchi, Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering

BUDD-e project website

Saving the Mekong Delta from rising sea levels

Posted on 12/05/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The Mekong Delta in Vietnam could be almost completely submerged by sea water by the end of the century unless we take urgent action. In a paper published in Science magazine, an international research team, including the Politecnico di Milano, has identified concrete actions to prevent this economically crucial and densely populated area ending up under water.

Most of the 40,000 km² of the Mekong Delta lies two metres below sea level, and is therefore vulnerable to rising oceans caused by global warming. In addition, local actions such as over-pumping groundwater, mining sand for use in the construction industry and the rapid development of hydropower threaten the future of Southeast Asia’s most productive rice fields. The research team, which includes the Politecnico, argues that only concerted action by the six countries in the Mekong basin (China, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam) and better management of water and sediment within the delta could prevent this outcome.

There is scientific evidence identifying the processes that threaten the continued existence of the Mekong Delta and how these processes could be controlled and mitigated.

The team identified six measures that would significantly increase the survival of delta.

The dams could be designed to allow better sediment passage
The dams could be placed strategically to reduce their downstream impact, or replaced with wind and solar farms, where possible
Sediment mining should be strictly regulated and the use of Mekong sand could be reduced through the use of sustainable building materials
Intensive agriculture in the Mekong Delta should be re-evaluated in terms of sustainability
Natural solutions for coastal protection should be implemented on a large scale along the coasts of the delta

All of these measures are feasible and have precedents in other parts of the world.

Despite the effectiveness of these measures, particularly if implemented in unison, the scientific community agrees, there are significant hurdles to their implementation. Some of these actions would be in conflict with the vested interests of certain local players, such as the sand mining industry and hydropower plants,
Professor Andrea Castelletti, co-author of the study and full professor of Natural Resources Management at the Politecnico di Milano.

Implementing the measures will require the involvement of national governments and international actors (banks and development agencies), as well as new actors, such as the private sector and civil society, as Castelletti reminds us:

The measures would require coordination among the countries, which would have to agree that sustaining the Mekong Delta is an important objective of regional policy.

The paper on Science

In search of the perfect sound: the case of the stradivarius violins

Posted on 09/05/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

A multidisciplinary team coordinated by the CNR engaged seventy violin makers in a listening experiment to compare and evaluate the sound qualities of four violins: two modern, one factory and one Stradivarius. The results, published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, suggest that what makes the Stradivarius the most pleasant sound is a particular balance in the properties of the violin’s timbre.

The experiment was conducted by Carlo Andrea Rozzi from the Cnr Nanoscience Institute, Alessandro Voltini from the ‘A. Stradivari’ International School of Violin Making in Cremona, Fabio Antonacci from the Politecnico di Milano, Massimo Nucci and Massimo Grassi from the University of Padua.

The researchers used a very simple sound stimulus, the musical scale, so that the judgements were guided only by the timbre of the violin and not by other factors such as ‘liking/disliking’ a particular piece of music. Based solely on five notes, the listeners showed a marked preference for one particular violin, the Stradivarius. The researchers then identified a kind of ‘signature’ that distinguishes the preferred violin sound from those considered less pleasant. Thanks to an in-depth analysis of the descriptions provided by the listeners and vibro-acoustic measurements made on the instruments, they were able to describe the preferred sound as one that has a particular balance of ‘openness’, ‘clarity’ and ‘nasality’.

Establishing which aspects of the sound contribute to making the timbre of an instrument pleasant is important for violin making, as it paves the way for the creation of instruments with desired timbral properties. The vibratory measurements made on these violins also have the purpose of building, in the future, a data repository that enables the relationship to be estimated between the way the instrument vibrates and the timbre,
Dr. Fabio Antonacci.

The experiment was conducted in the name of excellence: thanks to the support of the Municipality of Cremona, the researchers had access to violins from the Historical collection of the Cremona Violin Museum and the excellent acoustics of the Auditorium room for listening tests.

The study online

Cover image: Historical violins from the collection at the Antonio Stradivari Violin Museum, ‘Scrigno dei Tesori’ room. Credit: Museo del Violino 2020 © Cristian Chiodelli for Museo del Violino

Misinformation slows vaccination campaign

Posted on 03/05/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

Online misinformation has negatively impacted the US COVID-19 vaccination campaign. This emerges from a study by Francesco Pierri, researcher in the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering (DEIB) at the Politecnico di Milano, in collaboration with Indiana University as part of the H2020 Periscope project, published in Nature Scientific Reports.

The objective of this study is to demonstrate whether or not there are statistically significant associations between the quality of information consumed online and the “anti-vax” sentiment of the US population, with consequent repercussions on the vaccination campaign.

The study confirmed a statistically significant association between the amount of misinformation shared online and the tendency to refuse or delay vaccination in the United States. In particular, in the states and counties where the most online misinformation is consumed, there is greater vaccination hesitancy and, consequently, lower vaccination coverage.

Since the beginning of 2021, researchers at the Politecnico di Milano and the Observatory on Social Media (OSOME) have collected millions of posts shared on Twitter related to vaccines, with the aim of studying the effects of unreliable and/or inaccurate information on the US vaccination campaign, which began at the end of 2020.

Using a list of news sites tagged by journalists, fact-checkers, and other academics as portals spreading false and unreliable news, the researchers identified millions of posts with potentially harmful content (e.g. articles claiming that vaccines don’t work or cause death) shared by millions of Twitter users in early 2021 who geolocated themselves in the various states and counties of the United States.

In order to measure people’s willingness or not to get vaccinated, the researchers used millions of responses to daily polls administered on Facebook in which they asked geolocated users whether or not they intended to get vaccinated.

These results and other statistics on the online conversations related to the COVID-19 vaccination campaign can be found on the dashboard associated with the CoVaxxy project.

The results of the multiple linear regression model, which includes other socio-economic variables, such as the average wealth and ethnic composition of each state/county,” researcher at the Politecnico di Milano, “show that the proportion of misinformation shared on average by users in a given area is positively correlated with the proportion of people who declare they have no intention of getting vaccinated and, similarly, negatively correlated with the number of vaccine doses administered.
PhD Francesco Pierri

Many studies published during the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted how the “infodemic” of false or misleading news about the virus has slowed the efforts made by governments to reduce the infection, from the refusal to wear masks to the breaching of restrictions.

Pierri, F., Perry, B.L., DeVerna, M.R. et al.
Online misinformation is linked to early COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy and refusal.
Sci Rep 12, 5966 (2022).

The article online

ERC Advanced Grant to Daniele Ielmini with Animate

Posted on 28/04/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

Daniele Ielmini, professor at the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, will conduct ANIMATE (ANalogue In-Memory computing with Advanced device Technology), a project that aims to develop a new computational concept to reduce energy consumption in machine learning.

We generate, process and use a huge amount of data every day. Searching for a keyword on the internet, choosing a film for the weekend or booking our next holiday are just some of the actions that rely on data-intensive algorithms.

The energy cost of this type of calculation is extremely high: it has been estimated that training a conventional neural network for artificial intelligence (AI) produces the same amount of carbon dioxide as 5 cars in their life cycle. Data centres, which currently meet most of the world’s AI needs, now consume about 1% of global energy demand, with growth expected to reach 7% by 2030. To correct this worrying trend, new energy-efficient hardware solutions are needed. Professor Ielmini’s preliminary ANIMATE research has shown that computational energy requirements can be reduced by closed-loop in-memory computing (CL-IMC), which can solve linear algebra problems in a single computational step.

In CL-IMC, the time to solve a given problem does not increase in proportion to the size of the problem, unlike other computing concepts, such as digital and quantum computers. Thanks to the reduction in calculation time, CL-IMC requires 5,000 times less energy than digital computers with the same accuracy in terms of number of bits.

Ielmini’s project will develop the device and circuit technology, system architectures and set of applications to fully validate the CL-IMC concept. System-level architecture and exploring its applications will further prove the scalability and feasibility of the concept, to prove that CL-IMC is a major contender among energy-efficient computing technologies.

Our university once again proves to be at the forefront, having outperformed its scholarly competitors in a very competitive selection process, with only 14.6% of the 1735 projects submitted receiving funding. With this project, the Politecnico di Milano has been awarded a total of 86 European Individual Grants (including ERC and Marie Curie).

ERC Advanced Grant to Manuela Raimondi with Beaconsandegg

Posted on 27/04/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

Manuela Raimondi, professor at the Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering “Giulio Natta”, will work on BEACONSANDEGG (Mechanobiology of cancer progression), a project that combines mechanobiology with bioengineering, oncology, genetics, microtechnology, biophysics and pharmacology in order to develop an innovative platform capable of recapitulating tumour fibrosis by exploiting the vascularisation of a living organism.

In breast cancer, aggressiveness is related to fibrotic stiffening of the tumour tissue. Fibrosis progressively prevents drugs from reaching the tumour cells, due to the formation of a matrix with mechanical properties that stabilise the tumour’s vascular network. However, the hierarchy and stability of the tumour vascular network are not reproducible in vitro.

The BEACONSANDEGG research will model microtumours at various levels of fibrosis. Human breast cancer cells adhered to 3D polymeric microplates will be used. The microtumours will be implanted in vivo in the respiratory membrane of embryonated avian eggs in order to elicit a fibrotic foreign body reaction in the microtumours. The geometry of the 3D microsupports will be manipulated to condition the infiltration of the microtumours by the vessels and cells of the embryo.

This study model will be validated with anticancer drugs whose clinical outcome is known to depend on the level of tumour fibrosis.

This project will also provide a standardised and ethical platform to promote the clinical translation of new therapeutic products in oncology.

Autofficina Futuro: an interactive vision of the mobility of the future

Posted on 20/04/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

How will we travel and live in 2086, 200 years after the invention of the car? The exhibition Motion, Autos, Art, Architecture commissioned by the Norman Foster Foundation and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao seeks to answer this question thanks also to contributions by fifteen schools of design and architecture, from four different continents, which participate by presenting their vision of the future of mobility. As the only Italian participant, the School of Design of the Politecnico di Milano, presents the interactive installation Autofficina Futuro (Future Car Workshop) in the Galleria del Futuro, at the end of the exhibition tour.

Autofficina Futuro investigates various aspects of the theme, with a broad and multidisciplinary approach, examining the dimension of mobility in interaction with the environment, the city, society, community and the individual. It tackles a contemporary challenge, considering the near and distant future: from global warming to migratory flows, but also stories of vulnerable individuals: the elderly, children, people with disabilities.

The installation brings together twelve projects by selected students: a sort of design anthology. A long collage represents the workshop and combines the illustrations with photographs. An imaginary landscape fills five wall monitors that invite visitor interaction. By standing in front of a monitor, visitors start the story. The digital interaction was designed with the support of the contemporary art collective CamerAnebbia.

Autofficina Futuro also offers a dual viewer experience: in addition to the physical dimension of the interactive installation, there is a QR Code revealing additional in-depth information and redirects viewers to a virtual exhibition hosted on a special Instagram page.

Design students and professors certainly do not have the ambition to predict the future, while the field of design does involve the ability to conceive and develop scenarios that look to the future, even distant future, not only as something unexpected and incontrovertible. On the other hand, the future must be thought of – even in the most difficult moments, such as those we are experiencing – as something we can plan, and therefore direct, towards processes that improve the quality of life.
Luisa Collina, professor in the School of Design

Autofficina Futuro was created with the support of the Italian Council (X edition, 2021), the programme of international promotion of Italian art by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture – with participation in the call made possible by the support of the Fondazione Politecnico di Milano.

New ONCO-TECH-LAB

Posted on 19/04/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The Politecnico di Milano and the European Institute of Oncology (IEO) have today launched a framework agreement for scientific research, through the establishment of the joint research centre ONCO-TECH-LAB – Modeling and Applications for Human Health, which will combine the Politecnico di Milano’s know-how in artificial intelligence, robotics and cutting-edge tissue engineering technologies with IEO’s extensive knowledge in life sciences.

ONCO-TECH-LAB is a platform that integrates the two partners’ human, instrumental and logistical resources in order to increase the critical mass and quality of research, thus opening up access to national and international calls, funding and programmes for both institutions. The main area covered by the agreement is oncology, plus other disciplines: haematology, immunology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, transplantology and diagnostic imaging.

The initiative stems from the awareness that synergy between biomedical research and technology is the winning strategy for bringing together different skills and developing a common language to support research and education. This is the model implemented at ONCO-TECH-LAB, a multidisciplinary driving force for bringing scientific discoveries more efficiently into the reality of patient care.
Guido Baroni, Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano and coordinator of the Joint Research Centre.