Energy retofits in single family homes

textData on U.S. energy consumption and carbon emission stresses the importance of improving the current process of home remodeling in order to take advantage of the great potential offered by the existing housing stock. Home energy retrofits have gained increased popularity in the recent years. Yet, improvements are needed in order to get the most from these processes. In fact, energy retrofits occur in a way that is still too slow or too shallow. Furthermore, the retrofit industry approaches home assessments mainly relying on the use of technology and energy analysis tools. This method is limited inasmuch as it excludes social, cultural and personal variables from the assessment. This research investigates possible strategies to render the process of retrofit to be more holistic and long-lasting. Moreover, it investigates how the main obstacles that prevent homeowners from engaging in home energy retrofits can be removed and how the whole process can become easier and more accessible. Finally, it analyzes the relevant social groups that influence home energy retrofits and how their interactions shape this process.Architectur

CD4(+) and CD4(-) CD1D-restricted natural killer T cells in perinatally HIV-1 infected children receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy.

We conducted a cross-sectional study on 43 Italian perinatally human immunodeficiency virus-type 1 (HIV-1) infected children receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) and 26 age-matched healthy controls to explore CD1d-restricted NKT subsets. CD4+CD1d-rectricted natural killer (NKT) cell depletion was evidenced in 26 HIV-1 infected children with active viral replication despite HAART. Conversely, no alteration was evidenced in 17 children with undetectable viral load, suggesting full recovery in both CD4+ and CD4− CDld-rectricted NKT cell subsets. The loss of CD4+ NKT cells in unresponsive children may have clinical consequences, including autoimmune disorders or cancer development. Future therapeutic perspectives are suggested

Potential Role of M. tuberculosis Specific IFN-γ and IL-2 ELISPOT Assays in Discriminating Children with Active or Latent Tuberculosis

BACKGROUND: Although currently available IGRA have been reported to be promising markers for TB infection, they cannot distinguish active tuberculosis (TB) from latent infection (LTBI). OBJECTIVE: Children with LTBI, active TB disease or uninfected were prospectively evaluated by an in-house ELISPOT assay in order to investigate possible immunological markers for a differential diagnosis between LTBI and active TB. METHODS: Children at risk for TB infection prospectively enrolled in our infectious disease unit were evaluated by in-house IFN-γ and IL-2 based ELISPOT assays using a panel of Mycobacterium tuberculosis antigens. RESULTS: Twenty-nine children were classified as uninfected, 21 as LTBI and 25 as active TB cases (including 5 definite and 20 probable cases). Significantly higher IFN-γ ELISPOT responses were observed in infected vs. uninfected children for ESAT-6 (p<0.0001), CFP-10 (p<0.0001), TB 10.3 (p = 0.003), and AlaDH (p = 0.001), while differences were not significant considering Ag85B (p = 0.063), PstS1 (p = 0.512), and HspX (16 kDa) (p = 0.139). IL-2 ELISPOT assay responses were different for ESAT-6 (p<0.0001), CFP-10 (p<0.0001), TB 10.3 (p<0.0001), HspX (16 kDa) (p<0.0001), PstS1 (p<0.0001) and AlaDH (p = 0.001); but not for Ag85B (p = 0.063). Comparing results between children with LTBI and those with TB disease differences were significant for IFN-γ ELISPOT only for AlaDH antigen (p = 0.021) and for IL-2 ELISPOT assay for AlaDH (p<0.0001) and TB 10.3 antigen (p = 0.043). ROC analyses demonstrated sensitivity of 100% and specificity of 81% of AlaDH-IL-2 ELISPOT assay in discriminating between latent and active TB using a cut off of 12.5 SCF per million PBMCs. CONCLUSION: Our data suggest that IL-2 based ELISPOT with AlaDH antigen may be of help in discriminating children with active from those with latent TB

Animali segnanti: sulla capacità di linguaggio in primati non umani

The present study reviews the first attempts to teach a sign language to nonhuman primates and discusses the controversial results provided by different cross-fostering laboratories starting with Project Washoe. After a long training, chimpanzees and gorilla memorized hundreds of signs and actively used them with comprehensible productions, combining them to create novel combinations. Nevertheless, nonhuman primates showed different patterns in language acquisition, compared to human children, as well as significant qualitative differences in sentence construction

I segni nel dominio della linguistica: la rivoluzione di William Stokoe

The notion that the visual communication of the Deaf was a language analyzable with the tools provided by descriptive linguistics came into being with William C. Stokoe. His Sign Language Structure (1960) was the first modern attempt to devise a descriptive system of American Sign Language (ASL) based on the identification of phonological, morpholog-ical and syntactic features. The attempt to identify a phonological level in sign languages, named cherology by Stokoe, will be investigated com-paring it to his later and less known essay Semantic Phonology (1991). This comparison will show that the idea of cherology proposed in 1960 has, ever since its own inception, proven to be difficult to adapt to some structural aspects of sign languages. Regarding the importance of Stokoe’s theory on the history of sign language studies, the influence of his work on the first linguistic description of Italian Sign Language (LIS) will be discussed. His highly valuable support is testified by a notebook exchanged for more than one year between him and Virginia Volterra

Seamless Servient Migration to Support the Web of Mobile Things in a Cloud-/Edge-Computing Infrastructure

In the context of the architectures for Internet of Things (IoT) systems, the Web of Things (WoT) standard provided by W3C represents a promising solution that enables interoperability between heterogeneous IoT platforms and devices. The multiple components that interact and cooperate in IoT applications are devised in the W3C WoT architecture as entities called Things which are described through standard interfaces known as Thing Descriptions and hosted in software components called Servients. When the IoT applications can exploit the presence of an existing Cloud-/Fog-Computing infrastructure, the Servients that compose the services are executed on the Fog nodes, thus exploiting their topological proximity to the IoT devices. According to the W3C WoT standard, the allocation of Servients to nodes is static and mobility support is not provided. This thesis aims at enhancing the W3C WoT architecture with an additional mechanism that supports the migration of Servients among Fog nodes and the mobility of the interacting devices, which is a typical feature of IoT environments. The provided mobility support guarantees that, after the migration of a Servient, its Things remain reachable from interacting Things hosted on other Servients

Cross-language activation in deaf LIS (Italian Sign Language) – Italian bilinguals

The present study investigates the visual word processing in deaf bimodal bilinguals who are proficient in Italian and Italian Sign Language (LIS). In particular, the research addresses the parallel activation of LIS phonology in a reading task adapting the paradigm proposed for the first time by Morford et al. (2011). Deaf bimodal bilinguals and a control group of hearing Italian native speakers judged the semantic relation of Italian written words; critically, half of the stimuli has a covert phonologically related translation in LIS. To narrow down the possibility of a strategic translation during the task, the time available for lexical processing has been controlled using a short SOA (300ms). The results are consistent with previous studies and show that bimodal bilinguals were significantly slower to judge semantically unrelated pairs if the translation equivalents in LIS were phonologically related. A significant effect of LIS covert phonology on the error rate was also found in the semantically unrelated condition. These results and the use of a fast rate of presentation of the stimuli indicate that bimodal bilinguals’ lexicon is cross-linguistically integrated, with phonological representations of the signed lexicon associated with the orthographic representation of the vocal one. Morford, J. P., Wilkinson, E., Villwock, A., Piñar, P., & Kroll, J. F. (2011). When deaf signers read English do written words activate their sign translations? Cognition, 118(2), 286-292

Beyond Orality: The Case of Sign Languages

The present paper reviews the main approaches developed for the linguistic analysis of sign languages, discussing the different theoretical assumptions and methodological implications applied along with the history of sign language studies. Sign language research demanded a revolution in some core beliefs of language, namely the linearity of speech, discreteness, and arbitrariness, providing a new way to look at the nature of language