Development of a molecular method for the rapid screening and identification of the three functionally relevant polymorphisms in the human TAS2R38 receptor gene in studies of sensitivity to the bitter taste of PROP

The objective of this work was to develop a rapid screening method to identify the three single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the TAS2R38 gene, with the aim of providing a significant contribution to studies designed to assess sensitivity to the bitter taste of 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP). Specifically, the objective of this study was to characterize the TAS2R38 gene haplotypes in a group of 60 subjects with variable sensitivity to PROP and preliminarily genotyped for the rs2274333 allele (A/G) of carbonic anhydrase isoform VI gene (CA6). The molecular characterization of the TAS2R38 gene was conducted using the PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism technique after creating artificial restriction sites upstream or downstream of the SNPs, as none of the three polymorphisms contributes to the formation of a restriction site for a specific endonuclease. The results indicate that the method described in this paper could be a valid and simple experimental strategy to identify genetic differences related to taste sensitivity to bitter taste, and could be applied as a nutrigenetics test in studies aimed at understanding people’s eating behaviors

Energy consumption management in Smart Homes: An M-Bus communication system

Energy consumption management in Smart Home environments relies on the implementation of systems of cooperative intelligent objects named Smart Meters. In order for devices to cooperate to smart metering applications' execution, they need to make their information available. In this paper we propose a framework that aims at managing energy consumption of controllable appliances in groups of Smart Homes belonging to the same neighbourhood or condominium. We consider not only electric power distribution, but also alternative energy sources such as solar panels. We define a communication paradigm based on M-Bus for the acquisition of relevant data by managing nodes. We also provide a lightweight algorithm for the distribution of the available alternative power among houses. Performance evaluation of experiments in simulation mode prove that the proposed framework does not jeopardise the lifetime of Smart Meters, particularly in typical situations where managed devices do not continuously turn on and off

Dihydropteroate synthase gene mutations in Pneumocystis and sulfa resistance

Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) remains a major cause of illness and death in HIV-infected persons. Sulfa drugs, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP-SMX) and dapsone are mainstays of PCP treatment and prophylaxis. While prophylaxis has reduced the incidence of PCP, its use has raised concerns about development of resistant organisms. The inability to culture human Pneumocystis, Pneumocystis jirovecii, in a standardized culture system prevents routine susceptibility testing and detection of drug resistance. In other microorganisms, sulfa drug resistance has resulted from specific point mutations in the dihydropteroate synthase (DHPS) gene. Similar mutations have been observed in P. jirovecii. Studies have consistently demonstrated a significant association between the use of sulfa drugs for PCP prophylaxis and DHPS gene mutations. Whether these mutations confer resistance to TMP-SMX or dapsone plus trimethoprim for PCP treatment remains unclear. We review studies of DHPS mutations in P. jirovecii and summarize the evidence for resistance to sulfamethoxazole and dapsone

Impact on streams and sea water of a near-neutral drainage from a flooded mine in Sardinia, Italy

After mine closure and subsequent shutdown of the dewatering system, groundwater rebound led to drainage outflow from the Casargiu gallery (Montevecchio mine, SW Sardinia, Italy) since 1997. As compared with the first discharge, a very high contamination level still persists after almost 20 years of flushing. Mine drainage (20-70 L s-1; pH 6.0±0.2; Zn-Mg-Ca-SO4 composition) flows into the Rio Irvi. Abundant precipitation of amorphous Fe(III)-(oxy)hydroxides occurs. Moreover, sulfate-bearing green rust is observed to flocculate in the reach of the Rio Irvi where pH is still circumneutral. Water sampling along this stream shows a pH decrease from 6.0 to 4.0 and a significant removal of Fe (46%) and As (96%), while sulfate, Zn, Mn, Co, Ni and Cd show small variations downstream. Lead is initially adsorbed onto Fe(III)-(oxy)hydroxides, then desorbed as pH drops below 5.4. A conservative estimation of dissolved metals discharged into the Mediterranean Sea is significant (e.g. 900 kg day-1 Zn, 1.4 kg day-1 Cd, 5 kg day-1 Ni)

An iot-based smart building solution for indoor environment management and occupants prediction

Smart buildings use Internet of Things (IoT) sensors for monitoring indoor environmental parameters, such as temperature, humidity, luminosity, and air quality. Due to the huge amount of data generated by these sensors, data analytics and machine learning techniques are needed to extract useful and interesting insights, which provide the input for the building optimization in terms of energy-saving, occupants’ health and comfort. In this paper, we propose an IoT-based smart building (SB) solution for indoor environment management, which aims to provide the following main functionalities: monitoring of the room environmental parameters; detection of the number of occupants in the room; a cloud platform where virtual entities collect the data acquired by the sensors and virtual super entities perform data analysis tasks using machine learning algorithms; a control dashboard for the management and control of the building. With our prototype, we collected data for 10 days, and we built two prediction models: a classification model that predicts the number of occupants based on the monitored environmental parameters (average accuracy of 99.5%), and a regression model that predicts the total volatile organic compound (TVOC) values based on the environmental parameters and the number of occupants (Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.939)

Virtual user in the IoT: definition, technologies and experiments

Virtualization technologies are characterizing major advancements in the Internet of Things (IoT) arena, as they allow for achieving a cyber-physical world where everything can be found, activated, probed, interconnected, and updated at both the virtual and the physical levels. We believe these technologies should apply to human users other than things, bringing us the concept of the Virtual User (VU). This should represent the virtual counterpart of the IoT users with the ultimate goal of: (i) avoiding the user from having the burden of following the tedious processes of setting, configuring and updating IoT services the user is involved in; (ii) acting on behalf of the user when basic operations are required; (iii) exploiting to the best of its ability the IoT potentialities, always taking always account the user profile and interests. Accordingly, the VU is a complex representation of the user and acts as a proxy in between the virtual objects and IoT services and application; to this, it includes the following major functionalities: user profiling, authorization management, quality of experience modeling and management, social networking and context management. In this respect, the major contributions of this paper are to: provide the definition of VU, present the major functionalities, discuss the legal issues related to its introduction, provide some implementation details, and analyze key performance aspects in terms of the capability of the VU to correctly identify the user profile and context

Coherent structures in turbulent boundary layers over an airfoil

This preliminary study is concerned with the identification of three-dimensional coherent structures, defined as intense Reynolds-stress events, in the turbulent boundary layer developing over the suction side of a NACA4412 airfoil at a Reynolds number based on the chord lenght and the incoming velocity of Rec = 200, 000. The scientific interest for such flows originates from the non-uniform adverse pressure gradient that affects the boundary-layer development. Firstly, we assess different methods to identify the turbulent-non-turbulent interface, in order to exclude the irrotational region from the analysis. Secondly, we evaluate the contribution of the considered coherent structures to the enhanced wall-normal velocity, characteristic of adverse pressure gradients. Our results show that it is necessary to limit the detection of coherent structures to the turbulent region of the domain, and that the structures reveal qualitative differences between the contributions of intense events to the wall-normal velocity in adverse-pressure-gradient and zero-pressure-gradient turbulent boundary layers

Contribution of Reynolds-stress structures to the secondary flow in turbulent ducts

The present work is aimed at evaluating the contribution to the secondary flow in duct flow with square and rectangular cross section from three-dimensional coherent structures, defined as intense Reynolds-stress events. The contribution to a certain mean quantity is defined as the ensemble average over the detected coherent structures, weighted with their own occupied volume fraction. Our analysis unveils that the contribution to the cross-stream components of the mean velocity is either very similar to the same contribution in channel flow, or almost negligible in respect to the contribution from the portion of the domain not occupied by coherent structures. These results suggest that the most intense events are not directly responsible for the secondary flow