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Parallel, data-intensive applications are now commonly executed on infrastructures that combine Cloud, Fog, and Edge resources. In these environments, execution takes place on devices with markedly different computational power and over networks whose latency and bandwidth can fluctuate over time. Under these conditions, overall performance is influenced not only by processing speed but also by communication delays arising from data dependencies between tasks. This leads to a basic issue: whether scheduling strategies developed under computation-focused assumptions continue to perform well once communication costs are made explicit. This work examines the behavior of simple and widely adopted scheduling heuristics when network effects are modeled directly within the system. No new scheduling algorithms are introduced. Instead, the analysis focuses on how execution time and monetary cost change for deterministic parallel workloads deployed on hierarchical Cloud–Edge infrastructures exposed to stochastic latency and bandwidth variations. For this purpose, we introduce CLOWNSim, a lightweight discrete-event simulation framework that supports large-scale Monte Carlo experiments on fixed task graphs, allowing infrastructural and scheduling effects to be examined independently of workload variability. The experimental analysis covers fully centralized Cloud deployments, intermediate Fog configurations, and resource-constrained IoT scenarios. Scheduling policies based on computational speed, execution cost, or random device selection are evaluated across these settings. In Cloud and Fog environments, communication latency and data transfers represent a substantial portion of the overall makespan, weakening the impact of scheduling decisions driven primarily by computation. In IoT scenarios, limited processing capacity becomes the main limiting factor, while communication overhead remains present but less influential in comparison. The results indicate that performance trends across the Cloud–Edge continuum cannot be attributed to scheduler choice alone. Execution behavior arises from the combined effects of workload structure, placement decisions, and network properties, with different elements becoming dominant depending on the deployment context. The proposed simulation framework offers a practical way to study these interactions and to assess cost–performance trade-offs under communication conditions that reflect realistic operating environments.

Low complexity and efficient algorithms for Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) are crucial to foster low-cost and energy-saving solutions. With the aim of lowering the complexity of the radio circuitry, and inspired by the superposition codes concept, we propose a novel encoding algorithm for tag-to-reader communication channels of modern RFID systems. We show that the developed scheme—despite the simplicity of its hardware realization—allows a coding gain comparable to the one obtained by the more complex Viterbi decoding of the Miller 4 modulation scheme used in the EPC Generation 2 Class 1 RFID standard. Simulation results prove the effectiveness of the proposed solution for low-cost tags, under different signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) and interrogation time durations. Although our numerical evaluation mainly focuses on the EPC Generation-2 standard, we believe that the proposed scheme will also be attractive for future Ultra-wideband RFID systems.

On October 22, 1934, in a famous experiment, Enrico Fermi and his colleagues discovered that a significant increase in induced radioactivity can be obtained when neutrons are slowed down by means of hydrogen atoms. This discovery and its explanation earned him the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics. One year later, on October 1935, Fermi held a public speech in Palermo, Italy, presenting his findings at the 24th congress of the Italian Society for the Progress of Sciences. The transcription of his speech, entitled \"Recenti risultati della radioattività artificiale\" (Recent Results in Artificial Radioactivity), was soon published in Italy. The published text is one of the very first articles in which Fermi describes the success of the Via Panisperna boys and how he came to discover that hydrogen atoms slowed the neutrons. Unfortunately, the content of the original Italian speech has never been republished since and was forgotten. Similarly, a translation published internally by the US Atomic Energy Commission is not publicly available and is probably lost. In this work, we include the transcription of the original article in Italian, and we also propose an English translation to make the text available worldwide to a broader public.

In 1919, Eddington and Dyson led two famous expeditions to measure the bending of light during a total solar eclipse. The results of this effort led to the first experimental confirmation of Einstein's General Relativity and contributed to create its unique and enduring fame. Since then, similar experiments have been carried out all around the world, confirming the predictions of the General Relativity. Later, developments in radio interferometry provided a more accurate way to measure the gravitation deflection. We believe that - after more than a century - starlight deflection caused by the Sun's gravity still represents a simple and intuitive way to introduce high-school students to General Relativity and its effects. To this aim, we gathered measurements taken during eight eclipses spanning from 1919 to 2017, and we created a single dataset of homogeneous values. Together with the whole dataset, this article provides a blueprint for a possible group activity for students, useful to introduce the theory in physics classes with a playful approach.

In 1929, Enrico Fermi wrote \"Problemi attuali della fisica\" (\"Contemporary Problems of Physics\"), a short article in Italian published in the magazine \"Annali dell'istruzione media\". The magazine was sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Schooling and Education, and it was addressed to teachers and principals of middle and high schools. This short text written by Fermi had been forgotten for a long time. However, in recent years it has been republished in Italy; moreover, the \"Annali dell'istruzione media\" have been digitized and made freely available online. It is unclear why Fermi wrote an article of a clearly divulgative nature for a non-technical journal, but is still interesting to to read his words and appreciate his skills as a great scientific communicator. In this work we include the transcription of the original article in Italian, and we also propose an English translation to make the text available world-wide and accessible to a broader public.

In April 1925, Enrico Fermi was only 23 years old and he had graduated less than three years earlier. Despite his age, Fermi was invited at the University of Rome by Federigo Enriques to give several lectures on the recent advances in physics at the Italian Mathematics Seminar. Enriques was also the editor of \"Periodico di Matematiche\", an important Italian journal concerned primarily with secondary school math teachers. Some of the articles published by \"Periodico di Matematiche\" correspond to the lectures which Fermi gave during seminars and meetings of Italian mathematicians. Here we propose an English translation for one of these articles, entitled \"Sopra la teoria cinetica dei corpi solidi\" and discussing the kinetic theory of solids. We believe that this Fermi's work offers a twofold interesting perspective: on one side, it allows us to explore the problems related to the structure of matter of emerging at the time as seen by the eyes of a bright, young physicist. On the other hand, it shows us the undoubtedly high scientific level of the articles read in Italy by the secondary school math teachers in the Twenties.

Precise indoor localization of moving targets is a challenging activity which cannot be easily accomplished without combining different sources of information. In this sense, the combination of different data sources with an appropriate filter might improve both positioning and tracking performance. This work proposes an algorithm for hybrid positioning in Wireless Sensor Networks based on data fusion of UWB and inertial information. A constant-gain Steady State Kalman Filter is used to bound the complexity of the system, simplifying its implementation on a typical low-power WSN node. The performance of the presented data fusion algorithm has been evaluated in a realistic scenario using both simulations and realistic datasets. The obtained results prove the validity of this approach, which efficiently fuses different positioning data sources, reducing the localization error.

Wolf-Ferrari wrote La vedova scaltra as pure amusement, a portrayal of fine intrigue that is, in itself, without any idealistic echoes, following the uncritical line of eighteenth-century comedy – nostalgia for a civilization with ancient roots, which the musician still felt he was part of.