This paper proposes to use the volumetric Laplace spectrum as a global shape descriptor for medical shape analysis. The approach allows for shape comparisons using minimal shape preprocessing. In particular, no registration, mapping, or remeshing is necessary. All computations can be performed directly on the voxel representations of the shapes. The discriminatory power of the method is tested on a population of female caudate shapes (brain structure) of normal control subjects and of subjects with schizotypal personality disorder. The behavior and properties of the volumetric Laplace spectrum are discussed extensively for both the Dirichlet and Neumann boundary condition showing advantages of the Neumann spectra. Both, the computations of spectra on 3D voxel data for shape matching as well as the use of the Neumann spectrum for shape analysis are completely new.

The item-level tracing requirements are quickly becoming a key issue in many application scenarios, in order to guarantee major transparency in products flow along the whole supply chain. The continuous evolution of auto-identification technologies, as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), and the asserting of new open international standards, as EPCglobal, will play a very important role in tracing and tracking systems. A key component of the EPCglobal network is represented by the Discovery Service that is not a standard yet. In this paper, we focus on an implementation of a scalable Discovery Service developed as an extension of the framework FossTrak, an open architecture that implements EPCglobal services and protocols.This extended architecture has been tested in a controlled laboratory environment simulating the whole pharmaceutical supply chain, where it is possible to appreciate advantages of a Discovery Service for item-level tracing.

Multi-User Virtual Environments are often used to support learning in formal and informal educational contexts. A technology-based educational experience consists of several elements: content, syllabus, roles, sequence of activities,\ud assignments, assessment procedures, etc. that must be aligned with the affordances of the technologies to be used. The design\ud process, therefore, has to follow a dual track: the design of the educational experience as a whole and the design of the MUVE.\ud Each design process has some degree of independence, while, at the same time, the two design processes are also deeply\ud intertwined. The paper proposes a novel approach to design (both for the educational experience and the MUVE): a “biological\ud lifecycle” design, where evolution (for survival and fitness) is crucial, while anticipating all the requirements (creating an engineering blueprint) is very challenging. This paper is based upon a number of large-scale case studies, involving nearly 9,000 high-school students from 18 countries in Europe, Israel, and the USA. Substantial educational benefits were achieved by these learning experiences, at the center of which were MUVEs. It can’t be claimed that MUVEs were the only factors for generating these benefits, but for sure they were exceptionally important components

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