The effect of residential urban greenness on allergic respiratory diseases in youth: A narrative review

Background: Environmental exposures across the life course may be a contributor to the increased worldwide prevalence of respiratory and allergic diseases occurring in the last decades. Asthma and rhinoconjunctivitis especially contribute to the global burden of disease. Greenness has been suggested to have beneficial effects in terms of reduction of occurrence of allergic respiratory diseases. However, the available evidence of a relationship between urban greenness and childhood health outcomes is not yet conclusive. The current review aimed at investigating the current state of evidence, exploring the relationship between children's exposure to residential urban greenness and development of allergic respiratory diseases, jointly considering health outcomes and study design. Methods: The search strategy was designed to identify studies linking urban greenness exposure to asthma, rhinoconjunctivitis, and lung function in children and adolescents. This was a narrative review of literature following PRISMA guidelines performed using electronic search in databases of PubMed and Embase (Ovid) from the date of inception to December 2018. Results: Our search strategy identified 2315 articles; after exclusion of duplicates (n = 701), 1614 articles were screened. Following review of titles and abstracts, 162 articles were identified as potentially eligible. Of these, 148 were excluded following full-text evaluation, and 14 were included in this review. Different methods for assessing greenness exposure were found; the most used was Normalized Difference Vegetation Index. Asthma, wheezing, bronchitis, rhinoconjunctivitis, allergic symptoms, lung function, and allergic sensitization were the outcomes assessed in the identified studies; among them, asthma was the one most frequently investigated. Conclusions: The present review showed inconsistencies in the results mainly due to differences in study design, population, exposure assessment, geographic region, and ascertainment of outcome. Overall, there is a suggestion of an association between urban greenness in early life and the occurrence of allergic respiratory diseases during childhood, although the evidence is still inconsistent. It is therefore hard to draw a conclusive interpretation, so that the understanding of the impact of greenness on allergic respiratory diseases in children and adolescents remains difficult

How long does a tennis game last?

In this paper we present a generalisation of previously considered Markovian models for Tennis that overcome the assumption that the points played are i.i.d and includes the time into the model. Firstly we postulate that in any game there are two different situations: the first 6 points and the, possible, additional points after the first deuce, with different winning probabilities. Then we assume that the duration of any point is distributed with an exponential random time. We are able to compute the law of the (random) duration of a game in this more general setting

Poverty-happiness nexus: Does the use of regional poverty lines matter?

This analysis aims to provide a comprehensive representation of the role of regional disparities in the nexus between poverty and subjective well-being, by adding the territorial dimension to the definition of poverty conditions. We investigate the nexus using regional poverty lines, including different poverty measures and considering different life domains. The analysis focuses on Italy because of its strong regional socio-economic disparities. Results show that the relevance of being poor on the well-being of citizens is in general higher and significant; the intensity and severity of poverty also change for different life domains. Findings are fundamental in designing local policies against poverty

Leak-Induced Pressure Decay During Transients in Viscoelastic Pipes. Preliminary Results

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Numerical and experimental investigation of leaks in viscoelastic pressurized pipe flow

Abstract. This paper extends the analysis concerning the importance in numerical models of unsteady friction and viscoelasticity to transients in plastic pipes with an external flow due to a leak. In fact recently such a benchmarking analysis has been executed for the cases of a constant diameter pipe (Duan et al., 2010), a pipe with a partially closed in-line valve (Meniconi et al., 2012a), and a pipe with cross-section changes in series (Meniconi et al., 2012b). Tests are based on laboratory experiments carried out at the Water Engineering Laboratory (WEL) of the University of Perugia, Italy, and the use of different numerical models. The results show that it is crucial to take into account the viscoelasticity to simulate the main characteristics of the examined transients

Preface: CCWI 2013

Since 1991 "Computing and Control for the Water Industry – CCWI" is a well-established series of bi-annual meetings. On 2–4 September 2013, the 12th edition (CCWI2013) was held in Perugia (Italy) and was focused on Information for Water Systems and Smart Cities. CCWI2013 emphasized the integration between the more conventional themes of the analysis and planning of water systems and information technology. Such an integration offers opportunities for design solutions and innovative models for the challenging problems of water system management in an urban perspective, a key concept for smart cities (Brunone and Giustolisi, 2014). The large number of presentations – more than 200 with many young researchers from Europe and overseas – confirmed the interest for CCWI2013 themes and the increasing success of CCWI Conferences (Fig. 1). This CCWI2013 special issue contains a selection of extended CCWI2013 papers which give a taste of the Proceedings of the Conference published on Procedia Engineering Elsevier (www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/ 18777058/70). In fact their topics range from sustainabilitybased indicators of the urban water systems (Behzadian et al., 2014), design and control parameters in water treatment (Ramphal and Sibiya, 2014), numerical simulation of the transition between surface and pressurized flow (Fernandez-Pato and Garcia-Navarro, 2014) to optimisation of pump and valve schedules in complex large-scale water distribution networks (Skworcow et al., 2014), and a real data-based model to simulate the behavior of a pumping station equipped with variable speed pumps (Capponi et al., 2014). Figure 1. Last nine editions of CCWI conferences: number of papers published in the proceedings (from Brunone and Giustolisi, 2014)

Small-area deprivation index does not improve the capability of multisource comorbidity score in mortality prediction

BackgroundThe stratification of the general population according to health needs allows to provide better-tailored services. A simple score called Multisource Comorbidity Score (MCS) has been developed and validated for predicting several outcomes. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether the ability of MCS in predicting 1-year mortality improves by incorporating socioeconomic data (as measured by a deprivation index). MethodsBeneficiaries of the Italian National Health Service who in the index year (2018) were aged 50-85 years and were resident in the Sicily region for at least 2 years were identified. For each individual, the MCS was calculated according to his/her clinical profile, and the deprivation index of the census unit level of the individual's residence was collected. Frailty models were fitted to assess the relationship between the indexes (MCS and deprivation index) and 1-year mortality. Akaike information criterion and Bayesian information criterion statistics were used to compare the goodness of fit of the model that included only MCS and the model that also contained the deprivation index. The models were further compared by means of the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). ResultsThe final cohort included 1,062,221 individuals, with a mortality rate of 15.6 deaths per 1,000 person-years. Both MCS and deprivation index were positively associated with mortality.The goodness of fit statistics of the two models were very similar. For MCS only and MCS plus deprivation index models, Akaike information criterion were 17,013 and 17,038, respectively, whereas Bayesian information criterion were 16,997 and 17,000, respectively. The AUC values were 0.78 for both models. ConclusionThe present study shows that socioeconomic features as measured by the deprivation index did not improve the capability of MCS in predicting 1-year risk of death. Future studies are needed to investigate other sources of data to enhance the risk stratification of populations

Editorial

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Lyapunov Control on Quantum Open System in Decoherence-free Subspaces

A scheme to drive and manipulate a finite-dimensional quantum system in the decoherence-free subspaces(DFS) by Lyapunov control is proposed. Control fields are established by Lyapunov function. This proposal can drive the open quantum system into the DFS and manipulate it to any desired eigenstate of the free Hamiltonian. An example which consists of a four-level system with three long-lived states driven by two lasers is presented to exemplify the scheme. We have performed numerical simulations for the dynamics of the four-level system, which show that the scheme works good.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure