Generating metasystem: how three years of life become an emergent system

In the last three years, (in which I planning, studying, understanding and marvelling), I have observed that basically the study of complex systems generates, in turn, a complex system. A small experiment of metatheater in which you can't use a linear way of thinking, but you need to use a system of analysis of distorted, inconsistent, computational and self-reflexive reality. The path of my Ph.D. course on complex systems has thus generated a complex system and I had to redefine the areas in which I had to work and on which I had to focus. This thesis is intended as a detailed report of all the situations that I faced, starting from the field of neuroscience, in which I began my job, continuing in the analysis of big data in the web, in the analysis of motor skills and finally monitoring pollutant parameters during sport activities. In the first period of my PhD course, I focused on the study of EEG signals taken from healthy subjects. I learned to use acquisition and visualization tools and to analyze signals. In the course of three years, I made two different data acquisition campaigns. One of these was to compare the signal from subject in different postural situations, the other one to compare the quantitative electroencephalographic signal picked up by wireless and wired devices designed and built with the cooperation of the company OTBiolettronica and comparing the same signal picked up by three different types of caps, one with a plastic sleeve, an other with neoprene sleeve, and finally the third with an electrode-skin contact with electrodes made of felt. The construction of the wireless device has been done by working with the mentioned company, in particular seeking to improve EEG recording during moviment. It is clear that a major problem in EEG analysis in relation to the movement was given by the limited range of motion caused by the presence of the cap-amplifier cable connection; the study concerning the comparison between the different types of headset has been done trying to understand which model could give the best result regarding to the reliability of the acquired signal and the minimal presence of noise and motion artifacts. The evolution of these studies would allow EEG signal analysis in complex motor situations without affecting the acquisition because of noise and artifacts. The two above-stated studies succeeded in obtaining two grants from the ISI Foundation (one for a period of 12 months and the second for a period of 18 months) which includes the acquisition of signals on subjects in different postural conditions, the development of the wireless amplifier with the software for data processing and the study of a innovative cup that will be patented. Besides my work on the mainstream project related EEG I have developed three other projects. In June of 2009 I began to follow the project We-Sport with the aim to create a social network connected to the sporting environment and to facilitate the practice of amateur sport and in particular related to sport with low diffusion. The OMS has established that sport and physical activity are one of the most important means of prevention of degenerative diseases; it is clear that one of the main reasons tostop the practice and sport is the lack of a partner with which to practice. We-Sport is based on a simple algorithm with the function to create a match of data based on the characteristics of sport players: sport, location, schedule, gender, age, skill. The system displays people who have the same characteristics and who want to play sports together. Today We-Sport is a spin off of Motor Sciences Research Center, has a market value of 600,000 euros as the acquisition of shares by private company, has won 6 national and international awards and it was the finalists in the same number of cases. It is among the 7,000 most visited sites in Italy, the structure of We-Sport consists of approximately 120,000 lines of code and we have been released 280 different versions. Thanks to the work on We-Sport data base an oral report was presented at an international conference, a poster session at a national congress and finally a paper was submitted for a special issue on sports complex systems. We-Sports is a registered trademark at national office for patents and trademarks. The second side project that I have dealt with is the Touch Wall, a system for evaluating qualitative/quantitative analysis of motor skills through a multi-touch interface with IR-LLP (infrared laser light plane). The system was designed, developed (both for the hardware and the software part) in collaboration with the CSP-Innovation in ICT. A first set of data was collected from 100 subjects to validate the instrument and start the interpretation of the 92 analyzed parameters.Also the Touch Wall , that is part of a larger project from the Motor Science Research Center called MAC (Motor Activity Certification), patent is pending by the university of Turin. Finally, the last project I worked on was aGrisù, a portable device that can detect the presence of air pollutants and correlate them presence with some physiological and morphological parameters measured during outdoor or indoor physical activity. For this project a prototype was realized and in this case too the request for patent was submitted at patent office of Turin University.