Effect of Lockdowns on Hospital Staff in a COVID Center: A Retrospective Observational Study

At the onset of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, individual and social measures were strengthened through restrictive non-pharmaceutical interventions, labelled with the term "lockdown". In Italy, there were two lockdowns (9 March 2020-3 May 2020 and 3 November 2020-27 March 2021). As part of preventive measures, healthcare workers and the administrative staff population of Policlinico A. Gemelli underwent nasopharyngeal swab tests from 1 March 2020 to 9 February 2022, a long time interval that includes the two aforementioned lockdowns. The population included 8958 people from 1 March 2020 to 31 December 2020; 8981 people from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021; and 8981 people from 1 January 2022 to 9 February 2022. We then analysed pseudo-anonymized data, using a retrospective observational approach to evaluate the impact of the lockdown on the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infections within the population. Given the 14 day contagious period, the swab positivity rate (SPR) among the staff decreased significantly at the end of the first lockdown, every day prior to 18 May 2020, by 0.093 (p < 0.0001, CI = (-0.138--0.047)). After the fourteenth day post the end of the first lockdown (18 May 2020), the SPR increased daily at a rate of 0.024 (p < 0.0001, 95% CI = (0.013-0.034)). In addition, the SPR appeared to increase significantly every day prior to 17 November 2020 by 0.024 (p < 0.0001, CI = (0.013-0.034)). After the fourteenth day post the start of the second lockdown (17 November 2020), the SPR decreased daily at a rate of 0.039 (p < 0.0001, 95% CI = (-0.050--0.027)). These data demonstrate that, in our Institution, the lockdowns helped to both protect healthcare workers and maintain adequate standards of care for COVID and non-COVID patients for the duration of the state of emergency in Italy

Visibility and Networked Participation in TikTok. The Breonna Taylor Trend

The Breonna Taylor case was another instance of police brutality that reached popularity during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Even without mainstream media coverage, protesters were able to use social media to sensitize, engage and inform about the protest, to reach huge popularity worldwide. Often self-positioning as a space for leisure and creativity, TikTok was used by its audience as a platform to interact and perform new practices of political participation (Medina Serrano et al., 2020). The aim of this work is to understand how the use of sound can shape political expression through the platform, the actors involved in the process, and the audience’s perception. Following the theoretical framework tied to the dynamics of networked participation (Boccia Artieri, 2021) and the relationship between music, politics, and TikTok, we focused on searchability through sound as one of the main affordances of the platform. We qualitatively evaluated each piece of content produced from July 2020 to May 2022, collecting 1644 videos and the 5 highly ranked comments for each of them. The results suggest that TikTok can frame the political narrative and participation through its affordances, structure, and visibility logic

Quality and safety of agri-food systems: technological and economic innovations

This study aims to point out the evolution of the economical approach to the topics of agri-food product quality and safety with particular attention to the schemes developed at European level. Thus, we wish to underline the forces which identified the insurance and certification systems as innovative tools for quality problem management in agri-food systems and what aspects they allow to manage according to the different needs of the stakeholders. In the last years, the proliferation of these schemes was so strong to considered the recent Iso 22000 Law as a possible solution for the harmonization process. Finally, some aspects of traceability systems are examined, apart from law obligations, identifying important opportunity of differentiation and acquisition of competitive advantages for the organization choosing them

Qualit\ue0 e sicurezza nei sistemi agroalimentari: innovazioni tecnologiche, implicazioni organizzative ed economiche

Il lavoro ha preso in considerazione il ruolo della qualit\ue0 e delle certificazioni in ambito agroalimentare

Food Waste And Bio-Economy: A scenario for the Italian Tomato Market

Food wastes display a great potential for waste-based biorefineries in the frame of a bio-economy system. The bio-economy is an innovative economy model based on the sustainable use of renewable resources in agriculture and industry, and that takes in account biodiversity and environmental protection. To this aim, some key factors are need: the development of new technologies and processes, the identification of renewable feedstock not in competition with other production chains, the creation of new markets and competitiveness, the pushing of policymakers and stakeholders to work more closely together. Tomato industry, that is one of the most important sector of the world food industry, can display an enormous potential since it produces huge amounts of wastes. Such residues negatively impact on the sustainability of food industry, since their disposal represents one main issue in terms of environmental and economic impact. Nevertheless, they represent a cheap and renewable biomass that, in the frame of the biorefinery model, could be exploited for the production of chemicals and energy thus contributing to the sustainability of this production chain. In this paper the potentiality of the tomato-wastes biorefinery was investigated with particular regard to the Italian scenario. Some main aspects were investigated including the possible re-use strategies and the available examples of tomato wastes conversion into marketable products. The analysis of the state of the art showed that tomato wastes recycling in Italy is till limited. Indeed, the scalability of such processes at an industrial scale still remains to be assessed in order to open the way to new markets based on the exploitation of tomato wastes

Higher Neuromuscular Manifestations of Fatigue in Dynamic than Isometric Pull-Up Tasks in Rock Climbers

Neuromuscular assessment of rock climbers has been mainly focused on forearm muscles in the literature. We aimed to extend the body of knowledge investigating on two other upper limb muscles during sport-specific activities in nine male rock climbers. We assessed neuromuscular manifestations of fatigue recording surface electromyographic signals from brachioradialis and teres major muscles, using multi-channel electrode arrays. Participants performed two tasks until volitional exhaustion: a sequence of dynamic pull-ups and an isometric contraction sustaining the body at half-way of a pull-up (with the elbows flexed at 90°). The tasks were performed in randomized order with 10 minutes of rest in between. The normalized rate of change of muscle fiber conduction velocity was calculated as the index of fatigue. The time-to-task failure was significantly shorter in the dynamic (31 ±10 s) than isometric contraction (59 ±19 s). The rate of decrease of muscle fiber conduction velocity was found steeper in the dynamic than isometric task both in brachioradialis (isometric: −0.2 ±0.1%/s; dynamic: −1.2 ±0.6%/s) and teres major muscles (isometric: −0.4±0.3%/s; dynamic: −1.8±0.7%/s). The main finding was that a sequence of dynamic pull-ups lead to higher fatigue than sustaining the body weight in an isometric condition at half-way of a pull-up. Furthermore, we confirmed the possibility to properly record physiological CV estimates from two muscles, which had never been studied before in rock climbing, in highly dynamic contractions