Self-efficacy and medicine use for headache among adolescents in Italy: results from the Italian HBSC 2010 study

This article aims first to investigate gender patterns in medicine use, and corresponding headache complaints, in Italian adolescents; second, to examine the association between self-efficacy and medicine use for headache. This study used data from 23,941 15-year-old students participating in the 2009/2010 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) Survey. Self-complete questionnaires devised by the HBSC international group were administered in classrooms. Logistic regression models (controlling demographics: age, gender, and FAS) were used to investigate the association between medicine use for the associated health complaint, and perceived self-efficacy. Overall, prevalence of students reporting medicine use for headache (at least once a month) was 40.1%. Medicine use was significantly more common among girls than among boys for that somatic symptom. The use of medicines was significantly associated with the frequency of the corresponding health complaint. Selfefficacy was associated with a lower use of medicine for headache just for the group with low frequency of headache. In conclusion, self-efficacy may reduce the tendency to use medicines when adolescents report infrequent headaches

Opinion Dynamics in an Open Community

We here discuss the process of opinion formation in an open community where agents are made to interact and consequently update their beliefs. New actors (birth) are assumed to replace individuals that abandon the community (deaths). This dynamics is simulated in the framework of a simplified model that accounts for mutual affinity between agents. A rich phenomenology is presented and discussed with reference to the original (closed group) setting. Numerical findings are supported by analytical calculations

Numerical study on active and passive trailing edge morphing applied to a multi-MW wind turbine section

A progressive increasing in turbine dimension has characterized the technological development in offshore wind energy utilization. This aspect reflects on the growing in blade length and weight. For very large turbines, the standard control systems may not be optimal to give the best performance and the best vibratory load damping, keeping the condition of maximum energy production. For this reason, some new solutions have been proposed in research. One of these is the possibility of morphs the blade surface in an active way (increasing the performance in low wind region) or passive (load reduction) way. In this work, we present a numerical study on the active and passive trailing edge morphing, applied to large wind turbines. In particular, the study focuses on the aerodynamic response of a midspan blade section, in terms of fluid structure interaction (FSI) and driven surface deformation. We test the active system in a simple start-up procedure and the passive system in a power production with turbulent wind conditions, that is, two situations in which we expect these systems could improve the performance. All the computations are carried out with a FSI code, which couples a 2D-CFD solver, a moving mesh solver (both implemented in OpenFOAM library) and a FEM solver. We evaluate all the boundary conditions to apply in the section problem by simulating the 5MW NREL wind turbine with the NREL CAE-tools developed for wind turbine simulation

Ultrasonic distance sensor improvement using a two-level neural network

This paper discusses the performance improvement that a neural network can provide to a contactless distance sensor based on the measurement of the time of flight (TOF) of an ultrasonic (US) pulse. The sensor, which embeds a correction system for the temperature effect, achieves a distance uncertainty (rms) of less than 0.5 mm over 0.5 m by using a two-level neural network to process the US echo and determine the TOF in the presence of environmental acoustic noise. The network embeds a "guard" neuron that guards against gross measurement errors, which would be possible in the presence of high environmental noise

Dynamical affinity in opinion dynamics modelling

We here propose a model to simulate the process of opinion formation, which accounts for the mutual affinity between interacting agents. Opinion and affinity evolve self-consistently, manifesting a highly non trivial interplay. A continuous transition is found between single and multiple opinion states. Fractal dimension and signature of critical behaviour are also reported. A rich phenomenology is presented and discussed with reference to corresponding psychological implications