L'ospedale del Brolo di Milano e i diritti sulle acque della Muzza (sec. XIII)

This paper focuses on the control and management of water resources displayed by one of the major Milanese hospitals in the Middle Ages. Since the 13th century, the ospedale del Brolo had increased its properties in the Lodigiano: this paper aims at explaining the main features of the area affected by these investments, and the rights held by the hospital. Keywords: Milano, Ospedali medievali, Diritti sulle acque, Rogge, Mulini; Milan, Medieval hospitals, Water resources, Jurisdiction, Canals, Mill

Le possessioni dell’Ospedale Maggiore di Milano nel Lodigiano nel secondo Quattrocento: gestione economica e diritti signorili

Questo contributo si concentra su una peculiare tipologia di signoria rurale. Analizzando le modalit\ue0 di gestione delle propriet\ue0 lodigiane giunte nel Quattrocento nelle disponibilit\ue0 dell\u2019Ospedale Maggiore di Milano, a seguito dell\u2019accorpamento amministrativo degli ospedali, si nota come il capitolo ospedaliero scelse di riattivare o rivitalizzare un controllo di tipo signorile. Il potere del capitolo ospedaliero sui rustici si manifestava nella nomina del podest\ue0 (con funzioni non solo di gestione del patrimonio, ma anche di amministrazione della giustizia) e nel controllo che esso esercitava anche sulle attivit\ue0 agricole in un\u2019area all\u2019avanguardia nelle grandi trasformazioni agrarie che interessarono alla fine del medioevo le terre della bassa Lombardia.This paper focuses on a peculiar type of rural lordship. The analysis of the forms by which the Lodi estates were managed in the 15th century, after being handed over to the Ospedale Maggiore of Milan, clearly shows that the hospital\u2019s Chapter reactivated and renewed seigneurial bonds. The control over peasants is visible in the appointment of the podest\ue0 (entrusted with various tasks: estate management, justice, etc). This official exercised a strict control over farming activities, in an area affected by significant agricultural transformations at the end of the Middle Ages

Pauperismo e solidarietà femminile nell’Italia settentrionale (secoli XIII-XIV)

During the thirteenth century we can see a significant presence of women in productive realities. Instead, during the fourteenth century, characterized by famines, epidemics and profound transformations, the social role of women has progressively reduced. The economic conditions of the women became more and more precarious and shaped forms of growing dependence. The paper pays attention to the practices of protection and assistance, oriented to help women in trouble (alms, dowries, gifts, hospitals, etc.) and deals with practices of solidarity between woman and woman, that moved away from the formalized channels of assistance: daily acts of mutual help and foundation of female religious communities

Quantum Homodyne Tomography as an Informationally Complete Positive Operator Valued Measure

We define a positive operator valued measure $E$ on $[0,2\pi]\times R$ describing the measurement of randomly sampled quadratures in quantum homodyne tomography, and we study its probabilistic properties. Moreover, we give a mathematical analysis of the relation between the description of a state in terms of $E$ and the description provided by its Wigner transform.Comment: 9 page

Insight into the epidemiology of leptospirosis: A review of leptospira isolations from “unconventional” hosts

Leptospirosis is a re-emerging worldwide zoonotic disease. Even though the primary serological test for diagnosis and surveying is the microscopic agglutination test (MAT), isolation remains the gold-standard test to detect Leptospira infections. The leptospirosis transmission is linked to maintenance and accidental hosts. In the epidemiology of Leptospira some serovar are strictly related to specific maintenance hosts; however, in recent years, the bacterium was isolated from an even wider spectrum of species. The aim of this review is to report the isolation of Leptospira strains in animals which could be recognized as “unconventional” hosts, analyzing studies from 1960 to 2020 that highlighted the Leptospira isolation. This scientific literature aimed to provide evidence of infection in several animal species including of the Carnivora, Didelphimorphia, Rodentia, Cetacea, Cingulata, Afrosoricida, Chiroptera and Primate orders, as well as in Reptilia and Amphibia classes. In conclusion, the spreading of Leptospira is attention-worthy because the infection could occur in all the animal species ranging in a specific area. Further screening and isolations are needed to collect all necessary data to gain a complete understanding of leptospirosis epidemiology and its modifications

How did COVID-19 affect medical and cardiology journals? A pandemic in literature

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The spreading speed of the COVID-19 pandemic forced the medical community to produce efforts in updating and sharing the evidence about this new disease, trying to preserve the accuracy of the data but at the same time avoiding the potentially harmful delay from discovery to implementation. The aim of our analysis was to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on medical literature in terms of proportion of COVID-19-related published papers and temporal patterns of publications within a sample of general/internal medicine and cardiology journals. METHODS: We searched through PubMed scientific papers published from 1 January 2020 to 31 January 2021 about COVID-19 in ten major medical journals, of which five were in general/internal medicine and five in the cardiology field. We analyzed the proportion of COVID-19-related papers, and we examined temporal trends in the number of published papers. RESULTS: Overall, the proportion of COVID-19-related papers was 18.5% (1986/10 756). This proportion was higher among the five selected general/internal medicine journals, compared with cardiology journals (23.8% vs 9.5%). The vast majority of papers were not original articles; in particular, in cardiology journals, there were 28% 'original articles', 17% 'review articles' and 55.1% 'miscellaneous', compared with 20.2%, 5.1% and 74.7% in general/internal medicine journals, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Our analysis highlights the big impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on international scientific literature. General and internal medicine journals were mainly involved, with cardiology journals only at a later time

Design methodology for the development of variable stiffness devices based on layer jamming transition

Variable stiffness mechanisms as Jamming Transition draw huge attention recently in Soft Robotics. This paper proposes a comprehensive design methodology for developing variable stiffness devices based on layer jamming. Starting from pre-existing modelling, we highlight the design parameters that should be considered, extracting them from literature and our direct experience with the phenomenon. Then we validated the methodology applying the design process to previous layer jamming cases presented in literature. The comparison between the results obtained from our methodology and those presented in the analyzed previous works highlights a good predictive capability, demonstrating that this methodology can be used as a valid tool to design variable stiffness devices based on layer jamming transition. Finally, in order to provide the scientific community with an easily usable tool to design variable stiffness structures based on layer jamming transition, we have elaborated a Matlab script that guides the user through the main design parameters implementing the proposed methodology in an interactive process

Surface activated chemical ionization - Electrospray mass spectrometry in the analysis of urinary thiodiglycolic acid

RATIONALE Thiodiglycolic acid (TDGA) is a urinary metabolite of the oxazaphosphorine class of chemotherapeutics, in particular of ifosfamide. Ifosfamide metabolism generates chloroacetaldehyde (CAA), a toxic compound associated with neurotoxicity, nephrotoxicity, urotoxicity and cardiotoxicity. CAA, in turn, interacts with cellular thiol groups leading to GSH depletion, cell death and generation of thiodiglycolic acid (TDGA), as a final product. TDGA is mainly excreted in the urine. The ability to accurately measure TDGA in urine, therefore, will be a useful way of monitoring the ifosfamide exposure during chemotherapy. METHODS TDGA in urine samples was measured with liquid chromatograpy coupled to mass spectrometry (LC-MS) by means of a novel Surface Activated Chemical Ionization - Electrospray (SACI-ESI) or a classical ESI ion source alone. RESULTS The SACI - ESI and ESI alone based methods for analysis of urinary TDGA were optimized and compared. A strong reduction in matrix effect together with enhanced quantification performances was obtained with the SACI \u2013 ESI when compared with the ESI. In particular, an increase in quantification precision (from 85 to 95%) and accuracy (from 59 to 90%) were observed, which allowed for optimal detection of TDGA. CONCLUSIONS The LC-SACI-ESI-MS approach provides a very sensitive and quantitative method for the analysis of TDGA. Thanks to sensitivity enhancement and matrix effect reduction, the SACI \u2013 ESI enables the use of a relatively low cost ion-trap mass spectrometer in the analysis of this toxicity biomarker in urine. Due to these characteristics, this approach would constitutes an invaluable tool in the clinical laboratory, for measuring TDGA and other toxicity related biomarkers of chemotherapy with proper sensitivity and accuracy