Tesi di Dottorato

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    Global Optimization and Fractal Curves
    (Università della Calabria, 2022-07-13) Nasso, Maria Chiara; Crupi, Felice; Sergeev, Yaroslav
    Il presente lavoro di tesi è principalmente dedicato all'ottimizzazione globale e in particolare a metodi numerici di ottimizzazione globale basati su frattali. Viene affrontato lo studio teorico di alcune curve frattali, vengono proposti nuovi algoritmi che si basano su approcci frattali per ridurre la dimensione del problema e vengono introdotti nuovi metodi di ottimizzazione globale basati sulla tecnica del Local Tuning. Ciascuno dei nuovi metodi proposti è stato implementato e studiato dal punto di vista teorico. Inoltre, gli esperimenti numerici, condotti su diverse centinaia di funzioni test, tratte dalla letteratura e generate in maniera random confermano i vantaggi degli algoritmi presentati.
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    Arm growth and regeneration in octopus (Octopus vulgaris and Eledone moschata)
    (Università della Calabria, 2020-02-12) Baldascino, Elena; Cerra, Maria Carmela; Fiorito, Graziano
    Here I evaluated the timing and rate of arm regeneration in octopus, a cephalopod mollusc, and contributed to the understanding of the molecular machinery involved in arm growth and regeneration in two octopus’ species: Octopus vulgaris and Eledone moschata. This work stands and revisit in part the first experimental study on arm regeneration in cephalopod molluscs, including the two species carried out by M. Lange (1920). An arm of octopus may fully regenerate and regrowth in few months after amputation. Lange recognized three stages: wound healing, tissue degeneration and tissue renewal. I applied the 3Rs principle to this study utilizing samples and data from a previous study, thus limiting the number or live animals humanely killed for the purpose of this PhD project. During the analysis of data, I found the same three stages in O. vulgaris arm regeneration to occur. I was not able to observe similar series of events in E. moschata, probably due to limited time and conditions of the animals. I found that O. vulgaris increased significantly body weight in 21 weeks. The growth appeared to be affected by repeated anesthesia, thus encouraging further studies on the physiological responses to stress in octopus. Data I analyzed confirm the view that O. vulgaris is characterized by rapid non-asymptotic growth, with high individual variability. Octopuses elongate their arms continuing to grow over time with no significant difference in the relative rate of elongation between anterior and posterior arms. The arms that underwent to regeneration, appear to have a faster growth when compared with the contralateral arms (but repeated anesthesia influenced the rate of growth of regenerating arms). Data analyzed extent the study of Lange, by providing morphometric information on the relative growth rate of the arms (regenerating vs contralateral), for the first time. A significant change in the relative expression profile of the tip vs the proximal part of the arm in O. vulgaris was observed using different approaches, confirming and extending the view that the tip the arm represents an exceptional biological system where continuous growth is achieved through massive cellular differentiation and interesting molecular events. I identified 39 genes in O. vulgaris and seven in E. moschata and studied their involvement in arm growth and/or regeneration events in octopus arms. These studies are novel.
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    New on-line model for shoreline evolution at beaches composed of not cohesive grains of any size
    (Università della Calabria, 2020-02-12) Francone, Antonio; Furgiuele, Franco; Tomasicchio, Giuseppe Roberto; Frega, Ferdinando
    Over recent decades, efforts have been made to find robust methods for predicting shoreline evolution near to the coastal structures. This requires a rigorous understanding of the key coastal processes that drive sediment transport, and how they are impacted by the presence of structures. Once this understanding is reached, a method for predicting morphological shoreline evolution is required. In this context, numerical modelling plays an important role. A new one-line model for shoreline evolution at beaches composed of not cohesive grains of any size is proposed: the General Shoreline beach (GSb). GSb model is based on the one-line theory, for which it is assumed that the equilibrium beach profile remains unchanged (Dean, 1990), thereby allowing beach change to be described uniquely in terms of the shoreline position. The longshore sediment transport rate is estimated by means of a general formula/procedure (Tomasicchio et al., 1994; Lamberti and Tomasicchio, 1997; Tomasicchio et al., 2013; Tomasicchio et al., 2015) combining an energy flux approach with an empirical/statistical relationship between the waveinduced forcing and the number of moving units. The uniqueness of the proposed new one-line model consists in the possibility to simulate beach change, including the effects of coastal structures (i.e. groynes, detached breakwaters), at a mound composed of not cohesive grains of any size, from sand to rock units. Despite other existing models, the GSb model presents a calibration factor, KGSb solely and it has been calibrated and verified against field and laboratory data on sandy and mixed beach (sand and gravel) referring to simple groyne and detached breakwater (Ming and Chiew, 2000; Hamilton et al., 2001; Martin-Grandes et al., 2009; Medellin et al., 2018;). Optimal values of KGSb, valid for different types of not cohesive grains and coastal structures, have been reported. It is showed that the GSb model can be considered a reliable engineering tool to conduct morphodynamics studies. A demo version of the GSb model, for Mac and Windows systems, has been released for the scientific community and is available at www.scacr.eu.
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    Methodologies and Applications for Big Data Analytics
    (Università della Calabria, 2020-05-02) Cassavia, Nunziato; Crupi, Felice; Flesca, Sergio; Masciari, Elio;
    Due to the emerging Big Data paradigm, driven by the increase availability of users generated data, traditional data management techniques are inadequate in many real life scenarios. The availability of huge amounts of data pertaining to user social interactions calls for advanced analysis strategies in order to extract meaningful information. Furthermore, heterogeneity and high speed of user generated data require suitable data storage and management and a huge amount of computing power. This dissertation presents a Big Data framework able to enhances user quest for information by exploiting previous knowledge about their social environment. Moreover an introduction to Big Data and NoSQL systems is provided and two basic architecture for Big Data analysis are presented. The framework that enhances user quest, leverages the extent of influence that the users are potentially subject to and the influence they may exert on other users. User influence spread, across the network, is dynamically computed as well to improve user search strategy by providing specific suggestions, represented as tailored faceted features. The approach is tested in an important application scenario such as tourist recommendation where several experiment have been performed to assess system scalability and data read/write efficiency. The study of this system and of advanced analysis on Big Data has shown the need for a huge computing power. To this end an high performance computing system named CoremunitiTM is presented. This system represents a P2P solution for solving complex works by using the idling computational resources of users connected to this network. Users help each other by asking the network computational resources when they face high computing demanding tasks. Differently from many proposals available for volunteer computing, users providing their resources are rewarded with tangible credits. This approach is tested in an interesting scenario as 3D rendering where its efficiency has been compared with "traditional" commercial solutions like cloud platforms and render farms showing shorter task completion times at low cost.
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    TiO2 nanotubes in nanotechnologies
    (2017-10-10) Jimenez, Leticia; Versace, Carlo
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    High-energy resummation in semi-hard processes at the LHC
    (2017-06-30) Celiberto, Francesco Giovanni; Carbone, Vincenzo; Papa, Alessandro
    Semi-hard processes in the large center-of-mass energy limit offer us an exclusive chance to test the dynamics behind strong interactions in kinematical sectors so far unexplored, the high luminosity and the record energies of the LHC providing us with a richness of useful data. In the Regge limit, s jtj, fixed-order calculations in perturbative QCD based on collinear factorisation miss the effect of large energy logarithms, which are so large to compensate the small QCD coupling s and must therefore be accounted for to all perturbative orders. The BFKL approach represents the most powerful tool to perform the resummation to all orders of these large logarithms both in the LLA, which means inclusion of all terms proportional to ( s ln(s))n, and NLA, which means inclusion of all terms proportional to s( s ln(s))n. The inclusive hadroproduction of forward jets with high transverse momenta separated by a large rapidity gap at the LHC, the so-called Mueller–Navelet jets, has been one of the most studied reactions so far. Interesting observables associated to this process are the azimuthal correlation momenta, showing a very good agreement with experimental data at the LHC. However, new BFKL-sensitive observables should be considered in the context of the LHC physics program. With the aim the to further and deeply probe the dynamics of QCD in the Regge limit, we give phenomenological predictions for four distinct semi-hard process. On one hand, we continue the analysis of reactions with two objects identified in the final state (i) by addressing open problems in the Mueller– Navelet sector and (ii) by studying the inclusive dihadron production in the full NLA BKFL accuracy. Hadrons can be detected at the LHC at much smaller values of the transverse momentum than jets, allowing us to explore an additional kinematical range, complementary to the one studied typical of Mueller– Navelet jets. Furthermore, this process permits to constrain not only the parton distribution functions for the initial proton, but also the parton fragmentation functions describing the detected hadron in the final state. On the other hand, we show how inclusive multi-jet production processes allow us to define new, generalised and suitable BFKL observables, where transverse momenta and rapidities of the tagged jets, well separated in rapidity from each other, appear in new combinations. We give the first phenomenological predictions for the inclusive three-jet production, encoding the effects of higher-order BFKL corrections. Then, making use of the same formalism, we present the first complete BFKL analysis for the four-jet production.
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    High-energy resummation in semi-hard processes at the LHC
    (2017-06-30) Celiberto, Francesco Giovanni; Carbone, Vincenzo; Papa, Alessandro
    Semi-hard processes in the large center-of-mass energy limit offer us an exclusive chance to test the dynamics behind strong interactions in kinematical sectors so far unexplored, the high luminosity and the record energies of the LHC providing us with a richness of useful data. In the Regge limit, s jtj, fixed-order calculations in perturbative QCD based on collinear factorisation miss the effect of large energy logarithms, which are so large to compensate the small QCD coupling s and must therefore be accounted for to all perturbative orders. The BFKL approach represents the most powerful tool to perform the resummation to all orders of these large logarithms both in the LLA, which means inclusion of all terms proportional to ( s ln(s))n, and NLA, which means inclusion of all terms proportional to s( s ln(s))n. The inclusive hadroproduction of forward jets with high transverse momenta separated by a large rapidity gap at the LHC, the so-called Mueller–Navelet jets, has been one of the most studied reactions so far. Interesting observables associated to this process are the azimuthal correlation momenta, showing a very good agreement with experimental data at the LHC. However, new BFKL-sensitive observables should be considered in the context of the LHC physics program. With the aim the to further and deeply probe the dynamics of QCD in the Regge limit, we give phenomenological predictions for four distinct semi-hard process. On one hand, we continue the analysis of reactions with two objects identified in the final state (i) by addressing open problems in the Mueller– Navelet sector and (ii) by studying the inclusive dihadron production in the full NLA BKFL accuracy. Hadrons can be detected at the LHC at much smaller values of the transverse momentum than jets, allowing us to explore an additional kinematical range, complementary to the one studied typical of Mueller– Navelet jets. Furthermore, this process permits to constrain not only the parton distribution functions for the initial proton, but also the parton fragmentation functions describing the detected hadron in the final state. On the other hand, we show how inclusive multi-jet production processes allow us to define new, generalised and suitable BFKL observables, where transverse momenta and rapidities of the tagged jets, well separated in rapidity from each other, appear in new combinations. We give the first phenomenological predictions for the inclusive three-jet production, encoding the effects of higher-order BFKL corrections. Then, making use of the same formalism, we present the first complete BFKL analysis for the four-jet production.
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    Development of integrated membrane systems for the treatment of olive mill wastewater and valorization of highadded value bioproducts
    (2017-07-21) Bazzarelli, Fabio; Carbone, Vincenzo; Giorno, Lidietta; Piacentini, Emma
    Nowadays, it is well recognized that advanced clean technologies, able to work in mild conditions and with low energy input are necessary to face challenges in environment protection, ratio nal use of water, production of naturally derived stable bioactive compounds. Membrane technologies fulfill these requirements. Studies are necessary to tune materials and processes for specific applications. The treatment of wastewaters coming from olive oil production is among the critical issues in agro food industry. The present work promoted advances in the development of novel membrane systems for the treatment of olive mill wastewater (OM WW). Th e se waters represent a severe environmental problem due to their high organic load and phytotoxic and antibacterial phenolic compounds, which resist to biological degradation . Additionally, the large volume of OMWW produced in combination with the short discarding time, increases the importance for disposal of this waste. On the other hand, OMWW represents a significant source of polyphenols for health benefits , which can be revalorized and used for medical or agro alimentary purposes. They also represent novel environmentally friendly formulation for chemical m anufacturing. The development of new strategies for the disposal of these by products appears to be extremely useful from an environmental and economic point of view. An advantageous solution is to transform what until now was considered junk to be dispos ed of in resource to be exploited and from which to draw profi t, through the recovery of high added value natural products (bioproducts) and water. In this context, integrated membrane systems can permit the selective recovery of bioactive compounds, such as polyphenols as well as water recovering and purification Moreover, membrane technology is considered a powerful tool for the sustainable industrial development, being able to well respond to the goal of the process intensification strategy” in terms of reduction of the plant size, increase of the plant efficiency, reduction of energy consumption and environmental impact. Nevertheless, one drawback of m embrane filtration of OMWW is the membrane fouling that drastically reduces the process performance. Therefore, OMWW pretreatment upstream of membrane process is necessary to limit fouling phenomena and to increase filtration efficiency. In this thesis, a co mprehensive study from OMWW treatment to biophenols recovery and valorization and water purification by means of integrated membrane process was carried out. Initially, studies focused on the decrease the fouling phenomena. For this purpose, a novel strate gy for a suitable pretreatment of OMWW was identified that permitted to obtain the total removal of suspended solids, through the aggregation and flocculation of particles by maintaining the pH of OMWW at isoelectric point. Secondly, the research focused o n the assessment of the potentiality of OMWW treatment by microfiltration and ultrafiltration process at the laboratory scale. Different organic and inorganic membrane materials were investigated, evaluating the permeation flux and the performance in terms of TOC (Total organic carbon) and polyphenols rejection . Afterwards, processes for OMWW purification aimed at obtaining of biologically active fractions at high concentration as well as their encapsulation were developed. For this purpose pressure-driven membrane processes such as microfiltration (MF) and nanofiltration (NF) and a relatively new membrane operation such as osmotic distillation (OD) were developed on lab scale prototype to obtain and concentrate fractions; membrane emulsification (ME) was st udied for the encapsulation of concentrated fractions. For MF operation, the efficiency of an air back flushing cycle was evaluated to keep constant the permeate flux during the OMWW processing processing. The overall integrated membrane system produced an enriched fraction of polyphenols, as well as a water stream that can be reused for irrigation or membrane cleaning. The highly concentrated polyphenols produced by osmotic distillation, is used as functional ingredients for formulation of water in oil (W/O) emulsions by membrane emulsification. The pulsed back and forward ME has been selected as low shear encapsulation method because it is particularly attractive for the production highly concentrated microemulsions without causing coalescence. The best operative cond itions (transmembrane pressure, wall shear stress) to control particle size and size distribution and obtain high productivity (dispersed phase flux) have been investigated . Water in oil emulsions with a narrow size distribution and high encapsulation effi ciency were obtained. Furthermore, in the present work a n ovel procedure for encapsulation of olive polyphenols with high load into solid lipid particles using traditional method (rotor stator homogenizer) and membrane emulsification was studied. Finally, a productive scale plant of the integrated membrane system was developed and installed at olive mill. The plant included the pre filtration unit, microfiltration, nanofiltration and a further step represented by reverse osmosis. The reverse osmosis has bee n used at large scale instead of membrane distillation due to its higher technology readiness level. Overall, this productive scale plant system proved efficient for fully recovery of biophenols in the retentate stream as well as reclamation of purified wa ter.
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    Nano materials and innovative laser-based accelerators for cultural heritage
    (2017-07-12) Veltri, Simona; Pantano, Pietro; Bonanno, Assunta; Antici, Patrizio
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    Charged-particle distributions and material measurements in ps = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS Inner Detector
    (2017-07-14) Cairo, Valentina Maria Martina; Pantano, Pietro; Dell'Acqua, Andrea; Schioppa, Marco
    The Run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider, which began in Spring 2015, offers new challenges to the Experiments with its unprecedented energy scale and high luminosity regime. To cope with the new experimental conditions, the ATLAS Experiment was upgraded during the first long shutdown of the collider, in the period 2013-2014. The most relevant change which occurred in the ATLAS Inner Detector was the installation of a fourth pixel layer, the Insertable B-Layer, at a radius of 33 mm together with a new thinner beam pipe. The Pixel Services, located between the Pixel and SCT detectors, were also modified. Owing to the radically modified ID layout, many aspects of the track reconstruction programs had to be re-optimized. In this thesis, the improvements to the tracking algorithms and the studies of the material distribution in the Inner Detector are described in detail, together with the improvements introduced in the geometry model description in simulation as well as the re-evaluation and the reduction of the systematic uncertainty on the estimate of the track reconstruction efficiency. The results of these studies were applied to the measurement of Charged-Particle Multiplicity in proton–proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The chargedparticle multiplicity, its dependence on transverse momentum and pseudorapidity and the dependence of the mean transverse momentum on the charged-particle multiplicity are presented for various fiducial phase spaces. The measurements are corrected for detector effects, presented as particle-level distributions and are compared to the predictions of different Monte Carlo event generators. New sets of recommended performance figures along with the related systematic uncertainties were also derived for several aspects of the ATLAS tracking, such as track reconstruction efficiency, fake rate and impact parameter resolution. These recommendations provide information on appropriate working points, i.e. track selection criteria with wellunderstood performance. They apply to physics analyses using Inner Detector tracks in Run 2 data and are important inputs for other objects based on tracks, such as jets. A simulation-based method which uses the tracking recommendations to calibrate light-jets mis-tagged as b-jets it is also presented in the context of the measurement of the crosssection of the W-boson produced in association with b-jets at 13 TeV, together with an overview of the inclusiveW-boson cross-section analysis.