What makes hot beverage vending machine cups eco-friendly? A research into consumer views and preferences

Purpose: This study aims to gain a first explorative view on what intrinsic/extrinsic attributes a generic cup for hot beverage should possess to be perceived as eco-friendly, and how some attributes of a hot beverage could influence consumers’ purchase decision and willingness to pay (WTP) for that beverage dispensed by vending machines (VMs). Design/methodology/approach: A questionnaire was developed in 2021 and sent to all students of an Italian university campus. For the first goal, students were asked to assign a score to some eco-friendly intrinsic/extrinsic attributes using a five-point Likert scale. For the second aim, a choice experiment with six scenarios was developed. Findings: Both intrinsic and extrinsic attributes play a key role in shaping students’ opinions and preferences. Results indicate that students are attracted by the idea of a cup that communicates its environmental properties through corresponding labels and information, and it is made by materials that guarantee biodegradability, recyclability or reusability. Originality/value: The research represents the first academic attempt to provide a first consumers’ viewpoint on the importance of eco-friendly attributes of cups for hot beverages able to influence consumers’ perceptions and consumption choices of hot beverages dispensed by VMs

Present and future self in memory: the role of vmPFC in the self-reference effect

Self-related information is remembered better than other-related information (self-reference effect; SRE), a phenomenon that has been convincingly linked to the medial prefrontal cortex. It is not clear whether information related to our future self would also have a privileged status in memory, as medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) regions respond less to the future than to the present self, as if it were an 'other'. Here we ask whether the integrity of the ventral mPFC (vmPFC) is necessary for the emergence of the present and future SRE, if any. vmPFC patients and brain-damaged and healthy controls judged whether each of a series of trait adjectives was descriptive of their present self, future self, another person and that person in the future and later recognized studied traits among distractors. Information relevant to the present (vs future) was generally recognized better, across groups. However, whereas healthy and brain-damaged controls exhibited strong present and future SREs, these were absent in vmPFC patients, who concomitantly showed reduced certainty about their own present and anticipated traits compared to the control groups. These findings indicate that vmPFC is necessary to impart a special mnemonic status to self-related information, including our envisioned future self, possibly by instantiating the self-schema

Efficient Location Training Protocols for Localization in Heterogeneous Sensor and Actor Networks

International audienceAbstract--In this work we consider a large-scale geographic area populated by tiny sensors and some more powerful devices called actors, authorized to organize the sensors in their vicinity into short-lived, actor-centric sensor networks. The tiny sensors run on miniature non-rechargeable batteries, are anonymous and are unaware of their location. The sensors differ in their ability to dynamically alter their sleep times. Indeed, the periodic sensors have sleep periods of predefined lengths, established at fabrication time; by contrast, the free sensors can dynamically alter their sleep periods, under program control. The main contribution of this work is to propose an energy-efficient location training protocol for heterogeneous actor-centric sensor networks where the sensors acquire coarse-grain location awareness with respect to the actor in their vicinity. Our analytical analysis, confirmed by experimental evaluation, show that the proposed protocol outperforms the best previously-known location training protocols in terms of the number of sleep/awake transitions, overall sensor awake time, and energy consumption

Efficient Binary scheme for Training Heterogeneous Sensor Actor Networks

International audienceSensor networks are expected to evolve into long-lived, autonomous networked systems whose main mission is to provide in-situ users – called actors – with real-time information in support of specific goals supportive of their mission. The network is populated with a heterogeneous set of tiny sensors. The free sensors alternate between sleep and awake periods, under program control in response to computational and communication needs. The periodic sensors alternate between sleep periods and awake periods of predefined lengths, established at the fabrication time. The architectural model of an actor-centric network used in this work comprises in addition to the tiny sensors a set of mobile actors that organize and manage the sensors in their vicinity. We take the view that the sensors deployed are anonymous and unaware of their geographic location. Importantly, the sensors are not, a priori, organized into a network. It is, indeed, the interaction between the actors and the sensor population that organizes the sensors in a disk around each actor into a short-lived, mission-specific, network that exists for the purpose of serving the actor and that will be disbanded when the interaction terminates. The task of setting up this form of actor-centric network involves a training stage where the sensors acquire dynamic coordinates relative to the actor in their vicinity. The main contribution of this work is to propose an energy- efficient training protocol for actor-centric heterogeneous sensor networks. Our protocol outperforms all know training protocols in the number of sleep/awake transitions per sensor needed by the training process. Specifically, in the presence of $k$ coronas, no sensor will experience more than$\lceil log(k)\rceil$ sleep/awake transitions and awake periods

Is post orthognathic maxillary sinusitis related to sino-nasal anatomical alterations?

Le Fort I osteotomies have been used for more than five decades, but their impact on nasal and paranasal cavities physiology, has not been studied deeply. In this paper we want to analyse the possible correlation between post-orthognathic findings and prevalence of sinusitis which require surgical treatment. A retrospective cohort study was designed in 2017; the study was designed and carried out in the Verona University maxillo-facial department, a referral centre for orthognathic surgery. The study population is made of 64 patients that underwent orthognathic surgery (To treat class II or III malocclusion) between 2010 and 2015. Inclusion criteria were the availability of a Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) before surgery and one between 12 and 24 months after orthognathic surgery. Exclusion criteria were smoking habit and previous orthognathic procedures. During follow-up time prevalence of sinusitis was 18.5% and some patients required a secondary surgery to treat sinusitis. Surgery induced anatomic alterations were frequent in patients with sinusitis, sings and symptoms of sinusitis show positive correlation with anatomic alterations

Nonsurgical genioplasty

Chin contributes to facial balance and harmony. Appropriate treatment of aesthetic deformities of the will often improves the appearance of the mouth, lips, and nose. Augmentation of the chin can be performed with injectable fillers or autologous fat, placement of an alloplastic chin implant, or with chin's bony osteotomy. Determining the best procedure for a patient requires careful consideration of his anatomy, as well as the risks and benefits of each treatment. Fillers offer a nonsurgical, nonpermanent method of correction of chin retrusion in the appropriate patient

Mobile Daily Centre (Mdc) for Elder People with Cognitive Impairment: a Retrospective Observational Study

Introduction Trieste is a city characterized by a high mean age of the resident population, with 6,000 people with a cognitive impairment. Evidences show that is necessary to have a multidisciplinary approach, making alliances with the social network and families, while dealing with people with cognitive impairment. Because of this, the 3rd catchment district has developed a Mobile Daily Centre that aims to promote health, abilities and socialization giving the possibilities for these people to stay in a social context. Objectives Evaluating the impact of the Mobile Daily Centre on QoL of people with Cognitive Impairment. Aims Considering the rate of hospitalization and access to the first aid unit at the general hospital. Methods Retrospective Observational Study for the period between 01.01.2012 and 30.04.2014 on people in charge to the MDC. We have considered socio-demographic variables such as age, gender, care-givers; clinical variables such as psychopharmacotherapy and acetylcolinesterase-inhibitors drugs; rates of hospitalization, number of accesses to the first aid unit and of interventions of the MDC. Results in the period of the study 20 patients have been followed by the MDC; half of them had a psycho-pharmacological prescription. Very low rates of institutionalization have been detected. Conclusions MDC, in these small numbers, has shown to reduce the number of improper institutionalizations while guaranteeing to the elder people to maintain their abilities and socialization and to their care-givers periods of relief. Moreover, it promotes social inclusion and destigmatization. These results suggest that more territorial work and further studies should be done

Aneurysmal bone cyst of the nasal bone: case report

The aneurysmal bone cyst (ABC) is a solitary, expansile, non-neoplastic bone lesion, described as a distinct clinicopathological entity by Jaffe and Lichtenstein. We report a case of an ABC arising from the nasal bone in a adult male patient treated with complete surgical excision

Parameterized Edge Hamiltonicity

We study the parameterized complexity of the classical Edge Hamiltonian Path problem and give several fixed-parameter tractability results. First, we settle an open question of Demaine et al. by showing that Edge Hamiltonian Path is FPT parameterized by vertex cover, and that it also admits a cubic kernel. We then show fixed-parameter tractability even for a generalization of the problem to arbitrary hypergraphs, parameterized by the size of a (supplied) hitting set. We also consider the problem parameterized by treewidth or clique-width. Surprisingly, we show that the problem is FPT for both of these standard parameters, in contrast to its vertex version, which is W-hard for clique-width. Our technique, which may be of independent interest, relies on a structural characterization of clique-width in terms of treewidth and complete bipartite subgraphs due to Gurski and Wanke