Colonization by Legionella spp. of water networks in residential buildings of the Province of Pisa, Italy

Despite the increase of community acquired cases of legionellosis in Italy over the last years, the Italian guidelines do not give indications for prevention and control of Legionella in the hot water networks (or centralized conditioning systems) of residential buildings. We performed a survey on eight medium sized apartment buildings in the Pisa district to assess the prevalence of Legionella spp. in the water network and the respondance to drinking water requisites at the point of use, according to the Italian norms

Innovative Techniques for Infection Control and Surveillance in Hospital Settings and Long-Term Care Facilities: A Scoping Review

Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) pose significant challenges in healthcare systems, with preventable surveillance playing a crucial role. Traditional surveillance, although effective, is resource-intensive. The development of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), can support traditional surveillance in analysing an increasing amount of health data or meeting patient needs. We conducted a scoping review, following the PRISMA-ScR guideline, searching for studies of new digital technologies applied to the surveillance, control, and prevention of HAIs in hospitals and LTCFs published from 2018 to 4 November 2023. The literature search yielded 1292 articles. After title/abstract screening and full-text screening, 43 articles were included. The mean study duration was 43.7 months. Surgical site infections (SSIs) were the most-investigated HAI and machine learning was the most-applied technology. Three main themes emerged from the thematic analysis: patient empowerment, workload reduction and cost reduction, and improved sensitivity and personalization. Comparative analysis between new technologies and traditional methods showed different population types, with machine learning methods examining larger populations for AI algorithm training. While digital tools show promise in HAI surveillance, especially for SSIs, challenges persist in resource distribution and interdisciplinary integration in healthcare settings, highlighting the need for ongoing development and implementation strategies

Acute respiratory virus emergency department admissions in a tertiary care hospital in Central Italy and the relative impact on bed occupancy, January 2017-May 2022

Acute Respiratory Infections (ARIs) have a relevant impact on public health in terms of prevalence and costs associated with the diseases. This concern highlighted the need to adopt accurate surveillance systems to respond to new emergencies and meet the demand for access to care. The objective of our work is to set up, at the Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria Pisana (AOUP), an automated syndromic surveillance for ARI

Sustainable vs. not sustainable cooperative banks business model: The case of {GBCI} and the authority view

Sustainable finance has become a common lexicon of both supervisors and financial institutions in the last years also due to the COVID-19 crisis. Undoubtedly, the application of ESG (environmental, social, and governance) factors is currently designing a new strategic perspective, a new approach to business usually named “sustainable”. The paper’s research problem is related to the reengineering of the bank’s business model on sustainability. Integrate ESG factors within the decision-making process will not be enough for the European financial sector; it will be strategic that European authorities and regulators also ensure incentives in this direction. In this perspective, the paper has the purpose to answer the following questions: “How sustainable the business model of cooperative credit banks is and how they are ESG oriented?”, “What are the possible ways, in the prudential framework, to foster a higher attention to the ESG paradigm, in the bank’s business model?”. The research methodology used analyses of a) the main features of cooperative bank systems and the sustainability of their business model and the conceptual benchmark framework used by EBA in the 2020 survey; b) the case of Iccrea Sustainability Framework. The contribution of our paper is manifold and likely to raise the interest of policymakers. Our argumentations and conclusions are likely to contribute in terms of recognition of the sustainable business model also in the prudential framework in the current COVID-19 economy

Local and global regularity of weak solutions of elliptic equations with superquadratic Hamiltonian

Abstract: In this paper, we study the regularity of weak solutions and subsolutions of second order elliptic equations having a gradient-dependent term with superquadratic growth. We show that, under appropriate integrability conditions on the data, all weak subsolutions in a bounded and regular open set are Hölder-continuous up to the boundary of the set. Some local and global summability results are also presented. The main feature of this kind of problem is that the gradient term, not the principal part of the operator, is responsible for the regularity. - See more at: http://www.ams.org/journals/tran/2015-367-05/S0002-9947-2015-05976-5/#sthash.WPapGnMK.dpu

Nonhomogeneous Dirichlet problems for degenerate parabolic-hyperbolic equations

The aim of the paper is to give a formulation for the initial boundary value problem of parabolic-hyperbolic type partial derivative(t)u - Deltab(u) + div Phi(u) g, u(t = 0) = u(0), u(partial derivativeOmegax(0,T)) = a(0). in the case of nonhomogeneous boundary data a(0). Here u = u(x, t) G R, with (x, t) is an element of Q = Omega x (0, T), where Omega is a bounded domain in R-N with smooth boundary and T > 0. The function b is assumed to be nondecreasing (allowing degeneration zones where b is constant), Phi is locally Lipschitz continuous and g is an element of L-infinity (Omega x (0, T)). After introducing the definition of an entropy solution to the above problem (in the spirit Of OTTO [ 14]), we prove uniqueness of the solution in the proposed setting. Moreover we prove that the entropy solution previously defined can be obtained as the limit of solutions of regularized equations of nondegenerate parabolic type (specifically the diffusion function b is approximated by functions b(epsilon) that are strictly increasing). The approach proposed for the hyperbolic-parabolic problem can be used to prove similar results for the class of hyperbolic-elliptic boundary value problems of the form u - Deltab(u) + div Phi(u) = g, u(partial derivativeOmega) = a(0), again in the case of nonconstant boundary data a(0)