Rapid increase of resistance to erythromycin and clindamycin in Streptococcus pyogenes in Italy, 1993-1995. The Italian Surveillance Group for Antimicrobial Resistance.

A survey of antibiotic resistance in Streptococcus pyogenes in Italy showed a sharp increase in erythromycin resistance. In 1993, the incidence of erythromycin-resistant strains was on average 5.1%, with marked variations by geographic area. Two years later, the incidence of these strains had registered a 1.5- to roughly 20-fold increase, with a mean value of 25.9%, exceeding 40% in three centers out of 13 and 30% in another four. For all the strains studied, normal levels of susceptibility to penicillin were reported

THE 3D SURVEY OF THE ROMAN BRIDGE OF SAN LORENZO IN PADOVA (ITALY): A COMPARISON BETWEEN SFM AND TLS METHODOLOGIES APPLIED TO THE ARCH STRUCTURE

Abstract. 3D survey methodologies are widely applied to the Cultural Heritage, employing both TLS and close-range photogrammetry with SfM techniques. Laser scanning produces models with high metric reliability and accuracy, whereas the main quality of the 3D photogrammetry is the result in term of photorealistic representation. Many studies have been conducted about the comparison and the integration of these different approaches and the aim of this paper is to contribute with a peculiar case study: the underground Roman bridge of San Lorenzo in Padova (Italy). The investigation regards the resulting point clouds of the intrados (or inner curve) of the central arch, comparing them and providing graphical and analytical outputs. The proposed workflow has the purpose to be a simple but valid tool to detect and evaluate geometrical differences, their significativity and the reliability of the 3D models.</p

Dynamic load balancing of parallel cellular automata

We are interested in running in parallel cellular automata. We present an algorithm which explores the dynamic remapping of cells in order to balance the load between processing nodes. The parallel application runs on a cluster of PCs connected by Fast-Ethernet. A general cellular automaton can be described as a set of cells where each cell is a state machine. To compute the next cell state, each cell needs some information from neighbouring cells. There are no limitations on the kind of information exchanged nor on the computation itself. Only the automaton topology defining the neighbours of each cell remains unchanged during the automaton's life. As a typical example of cellular automation we consider the image skeletonization problem. Skeletonization requires spatial filtering to be repetitively applied to the image. Each step erodes a thin part of the original image. After the last step, only the image skeleton remains. Skeletonization algorithms require vast amounts of computing power, especially when applied to large images. Therefore, skeletonization application can potentially benefit from the use of parallel processing. Two different parallel algorithms are proposed, one with a static load distribution consisting in splitting the cells over several processing nodes and the other with a dynamic load balancing scheme capable of remapping cells during the program execution. Performance measurements show that the cell migration doesn't reduce the speedup if the program is already load balanced. It greatly improves the performance if the parallel application is not well balance

Preliminary assessment of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in tissues of Risso's dolphin (Grampus griseus) specimens stranded along the Italian coasts

Ecotoxicological and pathological research on Grampus griseus (Cuvier, 1812) (Risso's dolphins) is scarce both globally and in the Mediterranean Sea. This species has been classified as "Vulnerable" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in the Mediterranean Sea.To evaluate the presence of "persistent organic pollutants" (POPs), especially organochlorine compounds (OCs), in the animals, chemical analyses were performed on tissues and organs of Risso's dolphin stranded along the Italian coasts between 1998 and 2021. Toxic contaminants such as hexachlorobenzene (HCB), poly-chlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane and its metabolites (DDTs) were examined in the blubber, liver, muscle, and brain of 20 animals, and data was correlated with sex, age, and stranding locations

Parallel computation of radio listening rates

Obtaining the listening rates of radio stations in function of time is an important instrument for determining the impact of publicity. Since many radio stations are financed by publicity, the exact determination of radio listening rates is vital to their existence and to further development. Existing methods of determining radio listening rates are based on face to face interviews or telephonic interviews made with a sample population. These traditional methods however require the cooperation and compliance of the participants. In order to significantly improve the determination of radio listening rates, special watches were created which incorporate a custom integrated circuit sampling the ambient sound during a few seconds every minutes. Each watch accumulates these compressed sound samples during one full week. Watches are then sent to an evaluation center, where the sound samples are matched with the sound samples recorded from candidate radio stations. The present paper describes the processing steps necessary for computing the radio listening rates, and shows how this application was parallelized on a cluster of PCs using the CAP Computer-aided parallelization framework. Since the application must run in a production environment, the paper describes also the support provided for graceful degradation in case of transient or permanent failure of one of the system's components. The parallel sound matching server offers a linear speedup up to a large number of processing nodes thanks to the fact that disk access operations across the network are done in pipeline with computations

Report on the brain of the monk seal (Monachus monachus, Hermann, 1779)

The Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus, Hermann, 1779) is an endangered species of pinniped endemic to few areas of the Mediterranean Sea. Extensive hunting and poaching over the last two centuries have rendered it a rare sight, scattered mainly in the Aegean Sea and the western coast of North Africa. In a rare event, a female monk seal calf stranded and died in southern Italy (Brindisi, Puglia). During due necropsy, the brain was extracted and fixed. The present report is the first of a monk seal brain. The features reported are remarkably typical of a true seal brain, with some specific characteristics. The brain cortical circonvolutions, main fissures and the external parts are described, and an EQ was calculated. Overall, this carnivore adapted to aquatic life shares some aspects of its neuroanatomy and physiology with other seemingly distant aquatic mammals

Synthesizing parallel imaging applications using the CAP Computer-Aided Parallelization tool

Imaging applications such as filtering, image transforms and compression/decompression require vast amounts of computing power when applied to large data sets. These applications would potentially benefit from the use of parallel processing. However, dedicated parallel computers are expensive and their processing power per node lags behind that of the most recent commodity components. Furthermore, developing parallel applications remains a difficult task. In order to facilitate the development of parallel applications, we propose the CAP computer aided parallelization tool which enables application programmers to specify at a high level of abstraction the flow of data between pipelined parallel operations. In addition, the CAP tool supports the programmer in developing parallel imaging and storage operations. CAP enables combining efficiently parallel storage access routines and image processing sequential operations. The paper shows how processing and I/O intensive imaging applications must be implemented to take advantage of parallelism and pipelining between data access and processing. The paper's contribution is: (1) to show how such implementations can be compactly specified in CAP; and (2) to demonstrate that CAP specified applications achieve the performance of custom parallel code. The paper analyzes theoretically the performance of CAP specified applications and demonstrates the accuracy of the theoretical analysis through experimental measurement

Importancia del hematoma en las fracturas de los hueso s largos: estudio experimental en ratas

Los autores han estudiado la importancia del hematoma en la consolidación de las fracturas de los hueso s largos. Para ello, han realizado un estudio experimental en 50 ratas Wistar, en las cuales se producía una fractura a nivel de sus tibias, siendo estabilizadas posteriormente, mediante agujas intramedulares. El hematoma era aspirado del foco de fractura en el miembro derecho, mientras que el miembro izquierdo servía como control. Los animale s fueron sacrificados tras diferente s periodos de tiempo, y el callo formado en las diferente s muestras ha sido analizado en relación a los aspectos radiológico y microscópico. Se pudo observar un predominio del tejido fibroso en el miembro control, y en aquellas muestras donde el hematoma había sido aspirado, predominaba tejido óseo y cartilaginoso.The authors studied the importance of the haematoma in the consolidation of fractures of long bones. It was performed an experiment in 50 Wistar rats that had their tibiae fractures and stabilized with intramedullary wires. The haetoma wa s aspired from the fracture site in the right limb whereas the left limbed served as control. The animals wer e sacrified in different periods of time , and the calli formed in the sample s wer e analysed in reltion to the radiological and microscopical aspects. It w a s observed a predominancy of fibrous tissue in the control limb and in the sample s wher e the haematoma was aspirated it was obtained a predominancy of cartilaginous and osseous tissue

Dolphin Morbillivirus in a Cuvier’s beaked whale (Ziphius cavirostris), Italy

Dolphin Morbillivirus (DMV) has caused several mortality events in Mediterranean striped (Stenella coeruleoalba) and bottlenose (Tursiops truncatus) dolphins populations since nineties; in the last 5 years, the virus was reported to infect new hosts in this basin, such as fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus), sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) and even a harbor seal (Phoca vitulina). Very recently, a calf Cuvier’s beaked whale (Ziphius cavirostris) calf stranded on the Southern Italian coastline with mild pathological findings suggestive of morbilliviral infection, received the first confirmation of DMV infection in this species by biomolecular evidences on lung tissue. This new cross species infection report, along with 19% of the cetaceans specimens examined by the Italian Stranding Network being found positive to DMV, support the hypothesis of an endemic circulation of this virus among Mediterranean cetaceans