Trade-off between sound insulation performance and cost-optimality in a residential nZEB

Until now, design of new high performance buildings has been focused on the en-ergy performance but lacks to be addressed as a holistic problem taking into account all the aspects of a performance of a building. This work strives to study and optimize at once, the energy performance of a building and the sound insulation performance of its facades. In particular,energy and acoustic performances of different building facades, made of two different wall types, were compared taking in account the cost-optimized design of a building. The proposed methodology couples a cost-optimization of the building energy model made though TRNSYS® and GenOpt, with an evaluation of the sound insulation indexes with Matlab®, and it was applied to a French single-family case study. The results show that the cost optimal energy performance level of such case study is somewhere between 40 and 47 kWh/m².year, while the sound insulation efficiency of the façade can reach a wide range of values. However, the proposed methodology allowed to highlight several design solutions fulfilling the requirements in term of energy, cost and acoustics performances

Reliability and clinical usefulness of the personality inventory for DSM-5 in clinically referred adolescents. A preliminary report in a sample of Italian inpatients

Background The DSM-5 Alternative Model of Personality Disorders (AMPD) provides the opportunity to integrate the needed developmental perspective in the assessment of personality pathology. Based on this model, Krueger and colleagues (2012) developed the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5), which operationalizes the proposed DSM-5 traits. Methods Eighty-five consecutively admitted Italian adolescent inpatients were administered the Italian translation of the PID-5, in order to obtain preliminary data on PID-5 reliability and clinical usefulness in clinically referred adolescents. Results With the possible exception of the PID-5 Suspiciousness scale, all other PID-5 scales evidenced adequate internal consistency reliability (i.e., Cronbach's α values of at least .70, most being greater than .80). Our data seemed to yield at least partial support for the construct validity of the PID-5 scales also in clinical adolescents, at least in terms of patterns of associations with dimensionally assessed DSM-5 Section II PDs that were also included in the DSM-5 AMPD (excluding Antisocial PD because of the participants' minor age). Finally, our data suggested that the clinical usefulness of the PID-5 in adolescent inpatients may extend beyond PDs to profiling adolescents at risk for life-threatening suicide attempts. In particular, PID-5 Depressivity, Anhedonia, and Submissiveness trait scales were significantly associated with adolescents' history of life-threatening suicide attempts, even after controlling for a number of other variables, including mood disorder diagnosis. Discussion As a whole, our study may provide interesting, albeit preliminary data as to the clinical usefulness of PID-5 in the assessment of adolescent inpatients

Presumptive taxation and firms’ efficiency: an integrated approach for tax compliance analysis

Presumptive taxation methods are policy tools widespread adopted by fiscal authorities with the aim to improve voluntary tax compliance and to fight tax evasion. Such methods allow authorities to uncover firms’ under-reporting, but face several limits. In particular, presumptive taxation methods do not allow to disentangle when the presence of under-reporting is ascribable to tax evasion behaviour or to the lack of managerial skills and inefficiency. To overcome the main presumptive taxation weakness, we propose combining presumptive frameworks with a measure of technical efficiency, thus developing an integrated approach for tax evasion analysis able to support the audit activities of fiscal authorities. Further, we provide some considerations in terms of tax compliance and support our approach with evidence obtained from an empirical application based on Italian firms

Labour-use Efficiency in the Italian Machinery Industry: a Non-parametric Stochastic Frontier Perspective

Firms’ efficiency is a mainstream in the study of economic growth. Within this broad research area, the present work, conducted as part of the research activities of SOSE S.p.A., analyses the labour use efficiency in the Italian machinery industry through the application of a non-parametric stochastic frontier model with the aim of suggesting new insights to better understand the recent dynamics of the Italian manufacturing system. An extended panel data of manufacturing Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) operating in the mechanical industry for the period 2002-2012 has been extracted (in anonymous form) from the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance annual survey and used for the implementation of the proposed method. Results show the presence of a persistent level of labour-use inefficiency in the sample used for the analysis: this issue is particularly evident for the subset of firms using non standard jobs, while firms entitled to access to wage redundancy fund appear to have achieved higher levels of efficiency in labour input use on average. The analysis also shows that the inefficiency gap between the two subsets of firms tends to reduce in absolute terms over tim

Skeletal status in children and adolescents with new-onset type 1 diabetes: a preliminary study based on bone densitometry and quantitative ultrasound

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) represents a risk factor for bone loss and impaired bone quality

Where have the children with epilepsy gone? An observational study of seizure-related accesses to emergency department at the time of COVID-19

Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdown measures drastically changed health care and emergency services utilization. This study evaluated trends in emergency department (ED) access for seizure-related reasons in the first 8 weeks of lockdown in Italy. Methods: All ED accesses of children (<14 years of age) at two university hospitals, in Turin and Rome, Italy, between January 6, 2020 and April 21, 2020, were examined and compared with the corresponding periods of 2019. Results: During the COVID-19 lockdown period (February 23-April 21, 2020), there was a 72 % decrease in all pediatric ED accesses over the corresponding 2019 period (n = 3,395 vs n = 12,128), with a 38 % decrease in seizure-related accesses (n = 41 vs n = 66). The observed decrease of seizure-related ED accesses was not accompanied by significant changes in age, sex, type of seizure, or hospitalization rate after the ED visit. Conclusion: The COVID-19 lockdown was accompanied by a sudden decrease in seizure-related hospital emergency visits. School closure, social distancing, reduced risk of infection, and increased parental supervision are some of the factors that might have contributed to the findin

Wastewater-based epidemiology for early warning of SARS-COV-2 circulation: A pilot study conducted in Sicily, Italy

There is increasing evidence of the use of wastewater-based epidemiology to integrate conventional monitoring assessing disease symptoms and signs of viruses in a specific territory. We present the results of SARS-CoV-2 environmental surveillance activity in wastewater samples collected between September 2020 and July 2021 in 9 wastewater treatment plants (WTPs) located in central and western Sicily, serving over 570,000 residents. The presence of SARS-CoV-2, determined in 206 wastewater samples using RT-qPCR assays, was correlated with the notified and geo-referenced cases on the areas served by the WTPs in the same study period. Overall, 51% of wastewater samples were positive. Samples were correlated with 33,807 SARS-CoV-2 cases, reported in 4 epidemic waves, with a cumulative prevalence of 5.9% among Sicilian residents. The results suggest that the daily prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 active cases was statistically significant and higher in areas with SARS-CoV-2 positive wastewater samples. According to these findings, the proposed method achieves a good sensitivity profile (78.3%) in areas with moderate or high viral circulation (≥133 cases/100,000 residents) and may represent a useful tool in the management of epidemics based on an environmental approach, although it is necessary to improve the accuracy of the process