Epidemiology of acute otitis in pediatric patients

Introduction. Acute otitis is one of the most common pediatric infectious diseases that requires an accurate diagnosis in order to direct appropriate therapy to reduce the risk of complications. In this study pathogens collected from pediatric patients and their antibiotic susceptibility patterns were evaluated. Methods. Between May 2009 and May 2010, 739 samples (swabs taken from nasopharynx in case of acute otitis media and/or from ears in case of acute external otitis, collected from 680 patients, suffering of otalgia, admitted to the emergency department of our Hospital were studied.The specimens were submitted for routine bacterial cultures and the susceptibility tests were performed according to Clinical Laboratory Standards. Nitrocefin was used to detect s-lactamase activity. Results. 316 samples (42.8%) of 739 were negative, 102 (13.8%) were positive for Streptococcus pneumoniae, 97 (13.1%) for Moraxella catarrhalis, 68 (9.2%) for Haemophilus influenzae, 62 (8.4%) for Pseudomonas aeruginosa, 49 (6.6%) for Staphylococcus aureus, 36 (4.9%) for Streptococcus pyogenes, 5 (0.7%) for Gram negative and 4 (0.5%) for Candida spp. Antibiotic susceptibility tests showed that amikacin, ceftazidime, ciprofloxacin, imipenem, meropenem and piperacillin/tazobactam were active against all Gram negative strains isolated.We found one strain of MRSA. Of 102 Streptococcus pneumoniae, 5 (4.9%) were penicillin resistant and 25 (24.5%) were erythromycin resistant, showing the prevalence of constitutive phenotype (80%). All M. catarrhalis strains were s-lactamase producers while all H. influenzae were s-lactamase negatives. Conclusions. The prevalent etiological agents in pediatric acute otitis are S. pneumoniae, M. catharralis, and H. influenzae, as reported in literature. In external acute otitis P. aeruginosa prevails in particular in summer

Model for the spatio-temporal intermittency of the energy dissipation in turbulent flows

Modeling the intermittent behavior of turbulent energy dissipation processes both in space and time is often a relevant problem when dealing with phenomena occurring in high Reynolds number flows, especially in astrophysical and space fluids. In this paper, a dynamical model is proposed to describe the spatio-temporal intermittency of energy dissipation rate in a turbulent system. This is done by using a shell model to simulate the turbulent cascade and introducing some heuristic rules, partly inspired by the well known $p$-model, to construct a spatial structure of the energy dissipation rate. In order to validate the model and to study its spatially intermittency properties, a series of numerical simulations have been performed. These show that the level of spatial intermittency of the system can be simply tuned by varying a single parameter of the model and that scaling laws in agreement with those obtained from experiments on fully turbulent hydrodynamic flows can be recovered. It is finally suggested that the model could represent a useful tool to simulate the spatio-temporal intermittency of turbulent energy dissipation in those high Reynolds number astrophysical fluids where impulsive energy release processes can be associated to the dynamics of the turbulent cascade.Comment: 22 pages, 9 figure

Synthesis and Characterization of New Lithium and Boron Based Metal Organic Frameworks with NLO Properties for Application in Neutron Capture Therapy

In this work, we synthetized and characterized new crystalline materials with theranostic properties, i.e., they can be used both as bio-sensors and for "drug delivery". The two solid crystalline compounds studied are Metal Organic Frameworks and have formulas Li[(C6H12O6)2B]\ub72H2O and Li[(C4H2O6)2B]\ub75.5H2O. They can be synthetized both with natural isotopes of Li and B or with 6Li and 10B isotopes, that can be explored for Neutron Capture Therapy (NCT) for anti-cancer treatment. The presence of chiral organic molecules, such as mannitol and tartaric acid, provides the NLO property to the crystals and thus their capability to generate the Second Harmonic, which is useful for applications as bio-sensors. The two compounds were characterized with X-ray Diffraction and the Second Harmonic Generation (SHG) responses were estimated by theoretical calculations, and the results were compared with experimental measurements of powdered samples. In order to test the behavior of such compounds under thermal neutron irradiation, we preliminary exposed one of the two compounds in the e_LiBANS facility at the Torino Physics Department. Preliminary results are reported

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5,6,7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8,9,10,11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world's most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepresented in biodiversity databases.13,14,15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may eliminate pieces of the Amazon's biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological communities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple organism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region's vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most neglected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lost

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5,6,7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8,9,10,11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world's most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepresented in biodiversity databases.13,14,15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may eliminate pieces of the Amazon's biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological communities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple organism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region's vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most neglected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lost

Arte di Stato durante il regime fascista: una storia di fallimenti nel segno dei meccanismi del "consenso"

The “Art of the state” concept in fascist era is ambiguous: checking philologically the different attempts of Margherita Sarfatti and Roberto Farinacci, it is possible to realize that Mussolini himself never tried to obtain this goal: on the contrary he always vanified the different endeavors in this sense. He and his art deputies (Oppo, Bottai, Piacentini) tried instead to accomplish a politic of “consent”, more pervasive and effective than authoritarian control on artistic expressions. A politic of free art expression, associated to a wide economic help for artists and a paternalistic “soft-power”, gave the dictator a strong consent without constraints, realizing a total different situation in aestethic mood if compared to similar dictatorships of that time.Il concetto di “Arte di Stato” applicato al fascismo è ambiguo, e a un’indagine filologica risulta, contrariamente alle vecchie e tradizionali ipotesi critiche, che tutti i tentativi di realizzarla (da Margherita Sarfatti a Roberto Farinacci) durante il ventennio furono esautorati dallo stesso Mussolini e dalle politiche attuate dai suoi delegati in tal senso (Oppo, Bottai, Piacentini). In realtà la politica del “consenso” risultò più pervasiva e più utile del controllo autoritario sull’espressione artistica, e una politica di relativa libertà estetica, associata a un aiuto diffuso e capillare agli artisti e a un paternalistico “soft-power”, fruttò al regime un largo consenso senza particolari costrizioni, generando una situazione completamente differente se paragonata alle parallele dittature del tempo