Impact of COVID-19 on maxillofacial surgery practice: a worldwide survey

The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is rapidly changing our habits. To date, April 12, 2020, the virus has reached 209 nations, affecting 1.8 million people and causing more than 110,000 deaths. Maxillofacial surgery represents an example of a specialty that has had to adapt to this outbreak, because of the subspecialties of oncology and traumatology. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of this outbreak on the specialty of maxillofacial surgery and how the current situation is being managed on a worldwide scale. To achieve this goal, the authors developed an anonymous questionnaire which was posted on the internet and also sent to maxillofacial surgeons around the globe using membership lists from various subspecialty associations. The questionnaire asked for information about the COVID-19 situation in the respondent's country and in their workplace, and what changes they were facing in their practices in light of the outbreak. The objective was not only to collect and analyse data, but also to highlight what the specialty is facing and how it is handling the situation, in the hope that this information will be useful as a reference in the future, not only for this specialty, but also for others, should COVID-19 or a similar global threat arise again

The Impact of Adjacent-Letter Flanking Bigrams on Lexical Decision Performance

Some models of word identification hypothesize that the word recognition system includes units responsive to bigrams (letter pairs). Grainger, Mathot, and Vitu (2014) and Palinski (2016) found that target-flanking bigrams consisting of letters adjacent in targets (e.g., OG FROG FR) affect decisions about whether letter strings are words: Bigram-letter order, but not proximity of bigram letters to their locations in the targets, affected performance. (Average performance was better with FR FROG OG and OG FROG FR than with RF FROG GO and GO FROG RF, but no different with FR FROG OG and RF FROG GO than with OG FROG FR and GO FROG RF.) In a second experiment, Palinski (2016) included nonadjacent-letter flanking bigrams (e.g., FO FROG RG). For adjacent-letter bigrams she found, as did Araya, Russo, and Smith (2017) in an exact replication, significant effects of both letter order and letter proximity. To investigate whether performance with adjacent-letter bigrams depends on the presence of non-adjacent-letter bigrams, we presented these in different blocks of trials. The results were consistent with those of Palinski and of Araya et al. Lexical decision performance with adjacent-letter flanking bigrams appears to depend on the presence of non-adjacent letter bigrams in the experimental context.https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/u_poster_2018/1044/thumbnail.jp

Reading Between the Bigrams

In lexical decision experiments in which target strings were flanked by pairs of bigrams, Grainger, Mathot, and Vitu (2014) and Palinski (2016) found, for words, better performance when flanking bigrams contained target-string letters (e.g., FR FROG OG; OG FROG FR; RF FROG GO; GO FROG RF) than when they did not (e.g., EX FROG IT); better performance when flanking bigrams contained letters ordered as in the target (e.g., FR FROG OG; OG FROG FR) than switched (e.g., RF FROG GO; GO FROG RF); and no effect on performance of proximity of flanking letters to their locations in the targets. We plan (and have programmed) an experiment to investigate (1) whether the effects of whether flanking bigrams contain target-string letters are facilitative, interfering, or both; (2) the general effect of flanking characters; and (3) whether proximity of flanking letters to their locations in targets affects performance when flanking letters are ordered as in targets. This experiment will include three previously used display conditions (e.g., FR FROG OG; OG FROG FR; EX FROG IT) and two control conditions—one in which no characters will flank targets and one in which targets will be flanked by special character bigrams (e.g., #* FROG %&).https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/u_poster_2018/1045/thumbnail.jp

Seismic Analysis of Traditional Stone Rural Buildings: Case study of a one-storey building

Specific features of traditional rural buildings can influence the assessment of their seismic behaviour. When a change in intended use of traditional rural buildings is necessary, restoration work must comply with specific seismic norms and should preserve their original features. In this paper, a model for the seismic safety verification of masonry walls for inplane actions was applied to investigate the structural behaviour of one-storey stone-masonry traditional rural buildings, in relation to standards application and possible retrofitting interventions. The results showed that pier-panel collapse mechanisms and the simulation method of masonry spandrel behaviour are of importance and affect the need to provide for strengthening interventions

Potential biogas production from agricultural by-products in Sicily. A case study of citrus pulp and olive pomace

Renewable energy sources represent a suitable alternative to conventional fossil fuels, due to the possible advantages in terms of environmental impact reduction. Anaerobic digestion of biomasses could be considered an environmental friendly way to treat and revalorise large amounts of by-products from farming industries because it ensures both pollution control and energy recovery. Therefore, the objective of this study was to define a methodology for evaluating the potential biogas production available from citrus pulp and olive pomace, which are suitable agricultural by-products for biogas production. In the first phase of the study, the spatial distribution of both olive and citrus-producing areas was analysed in Sicily, a geographical area of the Mediterranean basin highly representative of these types of cultivation. Then, a GIS-based model, which had been previously defined and utilised to evaluate the amount of citrus pulp and olive pomace production, was applied to this case study. Based on the results obtained for the different provinces of Sicily, the province of Catania was chosen as the study area of this work since it showed the highest production of both citrus pulp and olive pomace. Therefore, a further analysis regarded the quantification of olive pomace and citrus pulp at municipal level. The results of this analysis showed that the total amount of available citrus pulp and olive pomace corresponded theoretically to about 11,102,469 Nm3/year biogas. Finally, the methodology adopted in this study made it possible to identify suitable areas for the development of new biogas plants by considering both the spatial distribution of the olive and citrus growing areas and the locations of the existing processing industries

Development of an information system for the traceability of citrus-plant nursery chain related to the Italian National Service for Voluntary Certification

Abstract: At present, the production of certified plants in Italy, which is obtained by using propagating materials verified in terms of varietal trueness-to-type and phytosanitary condition, is guaranteed by the National Service for Voluntary Certification.  The monitoring of productions and activities that are carried out in the centres established by the National Service for Voluntary Certification is crucial for the identification of both possible sources of disease risk and the destination of the propagating materials.  In previous studies a methodology was proposed and applied to carry out the requirements analysis and specification for the development of an integrated computer-based information system for certified citrus-plant traceability.  This study proposes a methodology for the implementation of the information system suitable to execute the previously designed functionalities.  The use of PostgreSQL, a free and open-source object-relational database management system, allowed the implementation of the entity-relation scheme that included the information related to the managed propagating materials and the process activities defined by the certification program.  System functionalities were implemented in applications developed on the basis of the client-server paradigm.  The proposed methodology was applied to the case study of the Italian citrus-plant nursery chain.  Specific information derived from plants and centres of the National Service for Voluntary Certification were included in the database along with the geolocation of both certified citrus plants produced in the nurseries and planted in the field and citrus mother plants.  Geographic data acquired by using a GPS system were combined with other information concerning plant health condition and treatments with the aim to find out possible relations between the citrus-plant health status and the territory.  The system implemented in this study allows the definition and utilisation of ‘track and trace’ procedures of propagation materials and plants that are in the certified Italian citrus-plant nursery chain, as well as the evaluation and prevention of the diffusion of the Citrus Tristeza Virus which causes one of the most damaging diseases in citrus orchards.   Keywords: citrus, certification, traceability, nursery chain, GIS, information system, plant disease

Improving natural ventilation in renovated free-stall barns for dairy cows: Optimized building solutions by using a validated computational fluid dynamics model

Natural ventilation is the most used system to create suitable conditions, removing gases, introducing oxygen in livestock buildings. Its efficiency depends on several factors and above all on the number, the dimensions and the position of wall openings and internal layout of livestock buildings. The aim of this research was to develop optimized layout solutions for improving natural ventilation effectiveness in free-stall barns for dairy cows by using a CFD approach. A validated computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was applied in a case study which is highly representative of building interventions for renovating the layout of free-stall barns for dairy cows located in an area of the Mediterranean basin. Firstly, dairy cow behaviour was analysed by visual examination of time-lapse video-recordings. Then, simulations were carried out by using the validated CFD model and changing the position of internal and external building elements (i.e., internal office and external buildings for milking) in order to find the best condition for the thermal comfort of the animals. The results showed that the best conditions were recorded for a new configuration of the building in terms of air velocity distribution within the resting area, the service alley and the feeding alley for dairy cows, and in the pens for calves. In this new layout, the office areas and the north-west wall openings were located by mirroring them along the transversal axis of the barn. Therefore, the CFD approach proposed in this study could be used during the design phase, as a decision support system aimed at improving the natural ventilation within the barn

Development of a CFD model to simulate natural ventilation in a semi-open free-stall barn for dairy cows

Natural ventilation is the most common passive cooling system in livestock buildings. The aim of this research is to assess airflow distribution inside a free-stall barn for dairy cows by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling and simulation. The model is validated by using the average values of experimental data acquired in a free-stall barn, which is considered relevant because it is located in a region characterised by hot climate conditions during the summer that could induce animal heat stress. Simulations are carried out in steady-state conditions, and simulated data are validated by the average values of air velocity measurements. Since the modelled air velocity distribution in the barn fits the real one well, the CFD model is considered reliable to simulate other conditions. The application of the proposed CFD model in the simulation of specific building design alternatives could be aimed at studying the related airflow distribution in order to find the best configuration