Mountain Water Management through Systemic Design: The Monviso Institute real-world laboratory

This research deals with the sustainable management of water resources in rural areas, through the study and design of integrated water systems in a mountain environment. The work promotes a new model of sustainable use and treatment of water in a real context, created to be experimented by the public, by the research centre and born from the need for the development of new environmental activism, based on conscience and awareness. Thinking across scales of space and governance, a scalable and replicable system is outlined, based on cooperation between local actors, addressing current tensions while thinking of long-term effects. The trans-disciplinary approach joins systemic projects from different fields, brought together to model a single cooperating system. We outline the regenerative water management model at the campus of the MonViso Institute, a real-world laboratory advancing sustainability and regenerative design in the Italian Alps, as an illustrative case for the design of regenerative water systems. The delineation of the project came to life thanks to a careful initial research phase, which clarified the identity of the chosen site and the local culture. These were the foundations for the design project of water systems on campus, applying the development of natural technologies, creation of connections and circularity as of reusing water and nutrient flows. The interaction between the components highlights the desired dependence between one and the other, which generates the value of the whole system

Real-time marker-less multi-person 3D pose estimation in RGB-Depth camera networks

This paper proposes a novel system to estimate and track the 3D poses of multiple persons in calibrated RGB-Depth camera networks. The multi-view 3D pose of each person is computed by a central node which receives the single-view outcomes from each camera of the network. Each single-view outcome is computed by using a CNN for 2D pose estimation and extending the resulting skeletons to 3D by means of the sensor depth. The proposed system is marker-less, multi-person, independent of background and does not make any assumption on people appearance and initial pose. The system provides real-time outcomes, thus being perfectly suited for applications requiring user interaction. Experimental results show the effectiveness of this work with respect to a baseline multi-view approach in different scenarios. To foster research and applications based on this work, we released the source code in OpenPTrack, an open source project for RGB-D people tracking.Comment: Submitted to the 2018 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automatio

Two cases of COPD benefitting from therapy with roflumilast

Two clinical cases of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) stage II patients are reported here. One case refers to a patient with hypoxemia associated to severe air flow limitation, chronic bronchitis and frequent exacerbation events. A significant improvement of patient’s conditions was observed after pharmacological treatment with roflumilast. The second case refers to a patient who refused to adhere to prescribed therapy but adhered to roflumilast therapy, eventually achieving a good response. Both cases highlight roflumilast’s efficacy in improving health conditions of COPD patients

Sviluppo di un registro tumori animali in alcune aree della Toscana

Lo studio dei tumori in medicina veterinaria sta acquistando un’importanza sempre maggiore: la necessità di conoscere l’incidenza delle neoplasie, di individuare le possibili cause, di valutare i trattamenti terapeutici più indicati e di ottenere indicazioni sulle misure preventive da adottare ha reso essenziale la raccolta di una casistica che permettesse di effettuare studi epidemiologici significativi. Il Registro tumori animali della regione Toscana (RoVeT), è nato agli inizi del 2006 con la collaborazione della Regione Toscana, la Azienda USL 10 di Firenze ed il Dipartimento di Patologia Animale, Profilassi ed Igiene degli Alimenti dell’Università di Pisa. L’intento ultimo è quello di raccogliere in modo coordinato i tumori animali sul territorio toscano. L’iniziativa ha alla base l’ipotesi, riscontrabile in letteratura, che esistono similitudini tra le patologie neoplastiche riscontrate nell’uomo e negli animali domestici. Ciò permette di considerare tali animali come sentinelle biologiche utili alla identificazione di fattori di rischio oncogeno ambientale. L’elaborazione delle indagini che scaturiscono dai risultati di questa tesi hanno reso possibile la stima delle popolazioni canina e felina della provincia di Firenze, la quale, è risultata di 56.502 e 78.314 soggetti rispettivamente. L’incidenza di neoplasie maligne è stata stimata pari a 94,9 per 100.000 cani/anno e per le neoplasie benigne 81,4. Nella popolazione felina il tasso di incidenza per le neoplasie maligne è stato di 45,9 mentre per quelle benigne 12,7 per 100.000 gatti/anno

Two cases of paralitic ileus in onco-hematologic patients

Paralytic ileus is a severe complication resulting from a variety of disorders. It occurs most commonly in patients with serious underlying medical or surgical conditions. Prompt diagnosis and appropriate management may improve the outcome. We describe 2 cases of onco-hematologic patients who presented this complication after intensive chemotherapy

Ozonation of Human Blood Induces a Remarkable Upregulation of Heme Oxygenase-1 and Heat Stress Protein-70

Heme oxygenase-I (HO-1) has emerged as one of the most protective enzymes and its pleiotropic activities have been demonstrated in a variety of human pathologies. Unpublished observations have shown that HO-1 is induced after the infusion of ozonated blood into the respective donors, and many other experimental observations have demonstrated the efficacy of oxidizing agents. It appeared worthwhile to evaluate whether we could better define the activity of potential inducers such as hydrogen peroxide and ozonated human plasma. Human vascular endothelial cells at confluence were challenged with different concentrations of these inducers and the simultaneous production of nitric oxide (NO); and HO-1 was measured by either measuring nitrite, or bilirubin formation, or/and the immune reactivity of the protein by Western blot using a rabbit antihuman HO-1 and Hsp-70. The results show that production of both NO and HO-1 is fairly dose dependent but is particularly elevated using human plasma after transient exposure to a medium ozone concentration. At this concentration, there is also induction of Hsp-70. The results clarify another positive effect achievable by the use of ozone therapy

Current evidence of antifungal prophylaxis and therapy in pediatric patients

Invasive fungal infections (IFI) are an important complication in pediatric haematological and oncological patients who undergo intensive chemotherapy for leukemia, solid tumour at advanced stage or relapsed, and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. The incidence of IFI is lower than bacterial infection but mortality rate remains high. This review is designed to help paediatric oncologists in choosing the appropriate anti-fungal strategy and agents for prophylaxis, empirical, pre-emptive and specific therapy on the basis of published evidence