Chaos and change: The fall of Mussolini, the signing of the armistice by Italy in the second world war and its effects on the pows interned at Zonderwater

L’articolo si propone di evidenziare il senso di caos psico-sociologicoavvertito tra i prigonieri di guerra italiani internati nel campo diconcentramento di Zonderwater (Pretoria) a seguito dell’armistizio dell’8settembre 1943. Al centro dell’articolo alcuni passi dal manoscritto inedito Inmarcia, prodotto da prigionieri di guerra della Gabbia Politica (Block 8)istituita nel campo di concentramento di Zonderwater subito dopo la firmadell’armistizio. Particolare attenzione è posta altema della memoria e dellutto

Multi-user Communication in Difficult Interference

The co-channel interference (CCI) is one of the major impairments in wireless communication. CCI typically reduces the reliability of wireless communication links, but the difficult CCI which is no more or less strong to the desired signals destroys wireless links despite having myriad of CCI mitigation methods. It is shown in this paper that M-QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) or similar modulation schemes which modulate information both in in-phase and quadrature-phase are particularly vulnerable to difficult CCI. Despite well-known shortcomings, it is shown in this paper that M-PAM or similar schemes that use a single dimension for modulation provides an important mean for difficult CCI mitigation.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figs and accepted in IEEE ICASSP 2019, Brighton, U

Post hoc analyses of surrogate markers of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and liver fibrosis in patients with type 2 diabetes in a digitally supported continuous care intervention: An open-label, non-randomised controlled study

OBJECTIVE: One year of comprehensive continuous care intervention (CCI) through nutritional ketosis improves glycosylated haemoglobin(HbA1c), body weight and liver enzymes among patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D). Here, we report the effect of the CCI on surrogate scores of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and liver fibrosis. METHODS: This was a non-randomised longitudinal study, including adults with T2D who were self-enrolled to the CCI (n=262) or to receive usual care (UC, n=87) during 1 year. An NAFLD liver fat score (N-LFS) >-0.640 defined the presence of fatty liver. An NAFLD fibrosis score (NFS) of >0.675 identified subjects with advanced fibrosis. Changes in N-LFS and NFS at 1 year were the main endpoints. RESULTS: At baseline, NAFLD was present in 95% of patients in the CCI and 90% of patients in the UC. At 1 year, weight loss of ≥5% was achieved in 79% of patients in the CCI versus 19% of patients in UC (p<0.001). N-LFS mean score was reduced in the CCI group (-1.95±0.22, p<0.001), whereas it was not changed in the UC (0.47±0.41, p=0.26) (CCI vs UC, p<0.001). NFS was reduced in the CCI group (-0.65±0.06, p<0.001) compared with UC (0.26±0.11, p=0.02) (p<0.001 between two groups). In the CCI group, the percentage of individuals with a low probability of advanced fibrosis increased from 18% at baseline to 33% at 1 year (p<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: One year of a digitally supported CCI significantly improved surrogates of NAFLD and advanced fibrosis in patients with T2D

Roald Dahl: the great storyteller revealing his life

Roald Dahl is a wonderful storyteller. One of the great storytellers revealing his life, Roald Dahl writes stories with a fantastic narrative. This paper discusses some of the real life experiences that inspire Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, the Witches, the Twits and the Big Friendly Giant. The impact of the narrative on the readers has also been discussed.published_or_final_versio

Prevalence of healthcare-associated infections, estimated incidence and composite antimicrobial resistance index in acute care hospitals and long-term care facilities: results from two European point prevalence surveys, 2016 to 2017

Point prevalence surveys of healthcare-associated infections (HAI) and antimicrobial use in the European Union and European Economic Area (EU/EEA) from 2016 to 2017 included 310,755 patients from 1,209 acute care hospitals (ACH) in 28 countries and 117,138 residents from 2,221 long-term care facilities (LTCF) in 23 countries. After national validation, we estimated that 6.5% (cumulative 95% confidence interval (cCI): 5.4-7.8%) patients in ACH and 3.9% (95% cCI: 2.4-6.0%) residents in LTCF had at least one HAI (country-weighted prevalence). On any given day, 98,166 patients (95% cCI: 81,022-117,484) in ACH and 129,940 (95% cCI: 79,570-197,625) residents in LTCF had an HAI. HAI episodes per year were estimated at 8.9 million (95% cCI: 4.6-15.6 million), including 4.5 million (95% cCI: 2.6-7.6 million) in ACH and 4.4 million (95% cCI: 2.0-8.0 million) in LTCF; 3.8 million (95% cCI: 3.1-4.5 million) patients acquired an HAI each year in ACH. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) to selected AMR markers was 31.6% in ACH and 28.0% in LTCF. Our study confirmed a high annual number of HAI in healthcare facilities in the EU/EEA and indicated that AMR in HAI in LTCF may have reached the same level as in ACH

Altered Excitability and Local Connectivity of mPFC-PAG Neurons in a Mouse Model of Neuropathic Pain

The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) plays a major role in both sensory and affective aspects of pain. There is extensive evidence that chronic pain produces functional changes within the mPFC. However, our understanding of local circuit changes to defined subpopulations of mPFC neurons in chronic pain models remains unclear. A major subpopulation of mPFC neurons project to the periaqueductal gray (PAG), which is a key midbrain structure involved in endogenous pain suppression and facilitation. Here, we used laser scanning photostimulation of caged glutamate to map cortical circuits of retrogradely labeled cortico-PAG (CP) neurons in layer 5 (L5) of mPFC in brain slices prepared from male mice having undergone chronic constriction injury (CCI) of the sciatic nerve. Whole-cell recordings revealed a significant reduction in excitability for L5 CP neurons contralateral to CCI in the prelimbic (PL), but not infralimbic (IL), region of mPFC. Circuit mapping showed that excitatory inputs to L5 CP neurons in both PL and IL arose primarily from layer 2/3 (L2/3) and were significantly reduced in CCI mice. Glutamate stimulation of L2/3 and L5 elicited inhibitory inputs to CP neurons in both PL and IL, but only L2/3 input was significantly reduced in CP neurons of CCI mice. We also observed significant reduction in excitability and L2/3 inhibitory input to CP neurons ipsilateral to CCI. These results demonstrating region and laminar specific changes to mPFC-PAG neurons suggest that a unilateral CCI bilaterally alters cortical circuits upstream of the endogenous analgesic network, which may contribute to persistence of chronic pain

Non-reciprocal coherent dynamics of a single spin under closed-contour interaction

Three-level quantum systems have formed a cornerstone of quantum optics since the discovery of coherent population trapping (CPT) and electromagnetically induced transparency. Key to these phenomena is quantum interference, which arises if two of the three available transitions are coherently driven at well-controlled amplitudes and phases. The additional coherent driving of the third available transition would form a closed-contour interaction (CCI) from which fundamentally new phenomena would emerge, including phase-controlled CPT and one atom interferometry. However, due to the difficulty in experimentally realising a fully coherent CCI, such aspects of three-level systems remain unexplored as of now. Here, we exploit recently developed methods for coherent driving of single Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) electronic spins to implement highly coherent CCI driving. Our experiments reveal phase-controlled, single spin quantum interference fringes, reminiscent of electron dynamics on a triangular lattice, with the driving field phases playing the role of a synthetic magnetic flux. We find that for suitable values of this phase, CCI driving leads to efficient coherence protection of the NV spin, yielding a nearly two orders of magnitude improvement of the coherence time, even for moderate drive strengths <~1MHz. Our results establish CCI driving as a novel paradigm in coherent control of few-level systems that offers attractive perspectives for applications in quantum sensing or quantum information processing.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures. Including supplementary material. Comments are welcome. For further information visit https://quantum-sensing.physik.unibas.ch/news.htm

Time Series Estimates of the Italian Consumer Confidence Indicator

This work shows that Italian consumer confidence indicator (CCI) is non-stationary and, therefore, can be estimated with the time series methods. It is found that a long-run relationship exists between CCI, short-term interest rate, industrial production index and the difference between perceived and measured inflation. The use of time series methods to estimate CCI for Italy is a novelty in the literature.Consumer confidence indicator, Short-term interest rate, Perceived rate of inflation, Cointegration.