Unsteady Simulation of CO/H2/N2/air Turbulent Non-Premixed Flame

The Sandia/ETH-Zurich CO/H2/N2 non-premixed unconfined turbulent jet flame (named ‘Flame A’) is numerically simulated by solving the unsteady compressible reactive Navier– Stokes equations in a three-dimensional axisymmetric formulation, hence, in a formally twodimensional domain. The turbulent combustion closure model adopted is the Fractal Model, FM, developed as a subgrid scale model for Large Eddy Simulation. The fuel is injected from a straight circular tube and the corresponding Reynolds number is 16 700, while the air coflows. Since the thickness of the nozzle is 0.88 mm, and the injection velocity high, ?104ms?1, capturing the stabilization mechanism of the actual flame requires high spatial resolution close to the injector. Results are first obtained on a coarse grid assuming a fast-chemistry approach for hydrogen oxidation and a single step mechanism for carbon monoxide oxidation.With this approach the flame is inevitably anchored. Then, to understand the actual flame stabilization a more complex chemical mechanism, including main radical species, is adopted. Since using this chemistry and the coarse grid of previous simulation the flame blows off numerically, attention is focused on understanding the actual flame stabilization mechanism by simulating a small spatial region close to the injection with a very fine grid. Then, analysing these results, an artificial anchoring mechanism is developed to be used in simulations of the whole flame with a coarse grid. Unsteady characteristics are shown and some averaged radial profiles for temperature and species are compared with experimental data

Empathy through the Pandemic: Changes of Different Emphatic Dimensions during the COVID-19 Outbreak

Growing evidence suggests that empathy is a relevant psychological trait to face the challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, but at the present very little is known on whether this multi-dimensional construct has been affected by the pandemic outbreak differently in its separate components. Here, we aimed at filling this gap by capitalizing on the opportunity of having collected data from different self-report measures and cognitive tasks assessing the main dimensions of empathy immediately before the beginning of the global pandemic and about one year later. The results showed a detrimental impact of the pandemic outbreak on empathic social skills but not on both cognitive (perspective-taking) and emotional empathy that instead significantly improved. Thus, reduced empathic social skills could be a weakness to be targeted in psychological interventions to help people cope with the mental health challenges related to COVID-19 pandemic, whereas the ability of understanding another’s mental states and emotions could represent a strength in dealing with the current long-lasting crisis

Switching on the deep brain stimulation: Effects on cardiovascular regulation and respiration.

BACKGROUND: Objective of this study was to evaluate the acute cardiovascular and respiratory effects of switching on the deep brain stimulation in the follow up of nine Parkinson's disease patients with subthalamic nucleus stimulation and six cluster headache patients with posterior hypothalamic area stimulation. METHODS: Systolic and diastolic blood pressure, heart rate, and respiratory rate were monitored continuously during supine rest in both groups. Each patient was assessed in two conditions: resting supine with stimulator off and with stimulator on. RESULTS: In supine resting condition switching on the DBS induced no significant changes (p>0.05) in systolic and diastolic blood pressure as well as in heart rate and respiratory rate, in both groups of patients, either taking 1 min or 10 heartbeats as a sample for analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Switching on the DBS does not modify heart rate, blood pressure nor respiratory rate in both Parkinson and cluster headache patients under resting conditions

Efficacy of ginger as antiemetic in children with acute gastroenteritis: a randomised controlled trial

Background: Ginger is a spice with a long history of use as a traditional remedy for nausea and vomiting. No data on the efficacy of ginger are presently available for children with vomiting associated with acute gastroenteritis (AGE). Aim: To test whether ginger can reduce vomiting in children with AGE. Methods: Double-blind, randomised placebo-controlled trial in outpatients aged 1 to 10 years with AGE-associated vomiting randomised to ginger or placebo. The primary outcome was the occurrence of ≥1 episode of vomiting after the first dose of treatment. Severity of vomiting and safety were also assessed. Results: Seventy-five children were randomised to the ginger arm and 75 to the placebo arm. Five children in the ginger arm and 4 in the placebo arm refused to participate in the study shortly after randomisation, leaving 70 children in the ginger arm and 71 in the placebo arm (N = 141). At intention-to-treat analysis (N = 150), assuming that all children lost to follow-up had reached the primary outcome, the incidence of the main outcome was 67% (95% CI 56 to 77) in the ginger group and 87% (95% CI 79 to 94) in the placebo group, corresponding to the absolute risk reduction for the ginger versus the placebo group of −20% (95% CI −33% to −7%, P = 0.003), with a number needed to treat of 5 (95% CI 3 to 15). Conclusion: Oral administration of ginger is effective and safe at improving vomiting in children with AGE. Trial registration: The trial was registered on https://clinicaltrials.gov/ with the identifier NCT02701491

Targeting cognition in schizophrenia through transcranial direct current stimulation: a systematic review and perspective

Cognitive deficits are a fundamental feature of schizophrenia for which currently no effective treatments exist. This paper examines the possibility to use transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to target cognitive deficits in schizophrenia as evidence from studies in healthy participants suggests that tDCS may improve cognitive functions and associated neural processes. We carried out a systematic review with the following search terms: ‘tDCS’, ‘electric brain stimulation’, ‘schizophrenia’, ‘cognitive’, ‘cognition’ until March 2019. 659 records were identified initially, 612 of which were excluded after abstract screening. The remaining 47 articles were assessed for eligibility based on our criteria and 26 studies were excluded. In addition, we compared several variables, such as online vs. offline-stimulation protocols, stimulation type and intensity on mediating positive vs. negative study outcomes. The majority of studies (n = 21) identified significant behavioural and neural effects on a range of cognitive functions (versus n = 11 with null results), including working memory, attention and social cognition. However, we could not identify tDCS parameters (electrode montage, stimulation protocol, type and intensity) that clearly mediated effects on cognitive deficits. There is preliminary evidence for the possibility that tDCS may improve cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. We discuss the rationale and strength of evidence for using tDCS for targeting cognitive deficits in schizophrenia as well as methodological issues and potential mechanisms of action

Il Sistema Informativo Territoriale della Rete Integrata Nazionale GPS (RING)

Since 2004, an important technological infrastructure has been created in Italy by INGV in order to investigate active tectonics targets. A Continuous GPS network constituted by about 130 stations has been deployed all over Italy. The development and the realization of a stable GPS monumentation, the integration with other classical seismological instruments and the choice of both satellite and internet data transmission make this network one of the most innovative and reliable CGPS networks in the world. The development of the CGPS network has been accompanied by a technologically advanced development of all the aspects related to the data acquisition and the data information mining: a database and a SIT. Based on the recent techniques of Knowledge Management, the database has been developed to manage the data and the data information of all the sites of the RING network, thus allowing us to centralize information in a single common data bank and to create an unique service of access point to the data from different remote sites by internet connections. The SIT has been developed to be fully integrated with the Knowledge Management technology and it is aimed to synthesize and to display in a geographic interface the information of the RING sites. This work has been integrated with all other spatial data, such as topographic and geo-thematic maps, geological, seismological and seismo-tectonic databases. In this work, the technological aspects of the SIT of the RING network will be detailed and some examples of thematic maps will be shown

Factors Affecting Infestation by Triatoma infestans in a Rural Area of the Humid Chaco in Argentina: A Multi-Model Inference Approach

Vector-borne transmission of Chagas disease remains a major public health problem in parts of Latin America. Triatoma infestans is the main vector in the countries located in the South American Cone, particularly in the Gran Chaco ecoregion where residual insecticide control has achieved only a moderate, irregular impact. To contribute to improved control strategies, we analyzed the factors associated with the presence and abundance of T. infestans in 327 inhabited houses in a well-defined rural area with no recent vector control interventions in the humid Argentine Chaco. Bugs were found mainly in domiciles, kitchens, storerooms, and chicken coops and nests, particularly where adequate refuge and animal hosts (humans, dogs, cats or poultry) were available. Domiciles constructed from mud were the most often infested, but brick-and-cement domiciles, even in good conditions, were also found infested. Availability of refuge and hosts for T. infestans are key targets for vector control. Ten-fold variations in domestic infestation observed across neighboring villages, and differences in the relevant factors for T. infestans presence with respect to other areas of the Gran Chaco region suggest that host management, building techniques and insecticide use need to be tailored to the local environment, socio-economic characteristics, and climatic conditions

Analysis of Movement Recursions to Detect Reproductive Events and Estimate Their Fate in Central Place Foragers

Background Recursive movement patterns have been used to detect behavioral structure within individual movement trajectories in the context of foraging ecology, home-ranging behavior, and predator avoidance. Some animals exhibit movement recursions to locations that are tied to reproductive functions, including nests and dens; while existing literature recognizes that, no method is currently available to explicitly target different types of revisited locations. Moreover, the temporal persistence of recursive movements to a breeding location can carry information regarding the fate of breeding attempts, but it has never been used as a metric to quantify recursive movement patterns. Here, we introduce a method to locate breeding attempts and estimate their fate from GPS-tracking data of central place foragers. We tested the performance of our method in three bird species differing in breeding ecology (wood stork (Mycteria americana), lesser kestrel (Falco naumanni), Mediterranean gull (Ichthyaetus melanocephalus)) and implemented it in the R package ‘nestR’. Methods We identified breeding sites based on the analysis of recursive movements within individual tracks. Using trajectories with known breeding attempts, we estimated a set of species-specific criteria for the identification of nest sites, which we further validated using non-reproductive individuals as controls. We then estimated individual nest survival as a binary measure of reproductive fate (success, corresponding to fledging of at least one chick, or failure) from nest-site revisitation histories during breeding attempts, using a Bayesian hierarchical modeling approach that accounted for temporally variable revisitation patterns, probability of visit detection, and missing data. Results Across the three species, positive predictive value of the nest-site detection algorithm varied between 87 and 100% and sensitivity between 88 and 92%, and we correctly estimated the fate of 86–100% breeding attempts. Conclusions By providing a method to formally distinguish among revisited locations that serve different ecological functions and introducing a probabilistic framework to quantify temporal persistence of movement recursions, we demonstrated how the analysis of recursive movement patterns can be applied to estimate reproduction in central place foragers. Beyond avian species, the principles of our method can be applied to other central place foraging breeders such as denning mammals. Our method estimates a component of individual fitness from movement data and will help bridge the gap between movement behavior, environmental factors, and their fitness consequences

Preventive Effect of Cow's Milk Fermented with Lactobacillus paracasei CBA L74 on Common Infectious Diseases in Children: A Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial

Background: Fermented foods have been proposed to prevent common infectious diseases (CIDs) in children attending day care or preschool