DESIGN OF A STATED RANKING EXPERIMENT TO STUDY INTERACTIVE FREIGHT BEHAVIOUR: AN APPLICATION TO ROME'S LTZ

City logistics policies require an understanding of several issues (e.g. freight distribution context, preferences and relationship among agents) seldom accounted for in current research. Policies run the risk of producing unsatisfactory results because behavioural and contextual aspects are not considered. The acquisition of relevant data is crucial to test hypothesis and forecast agents' reactions to policy changes. Despite recent methodological advances in modelling interactive behaviour the development of apt survey instruments is still lacking to test innovative policies acceptability. This paper expands and innovate the methodological literature by describing a stated ranking experiment to study freight agent interactive behaviour and discusses the experimental design implemented to incorporate agent-specific priors when efficient design techniques are employed.urban freight distribution, group decision making, agent-specific interaction, stated preference, stated ranking experiments

Errors in neuroradiology

Approximately 4 % of radiologic interpretation in daily practice contains errors and discrepancies that should occur in 2-20 % of reports. Fortunately, most of them are minor degree errors, or if serious, are found and corrected with sufficient promptness; obviously, diagnostic errors become critical when misinterpretation or misidentification should significantly delay medical or surgical treatments. Errors can be summarized into four main categories: observer errors, errors in interpretation, failure to suggest the next appropriate procedure, failure to communicate in a timely and a clinically appropriate manner. Misdiagnosis/misinterpretation percentage should rise up in emergency setting and in the first moments of the learning curve, as in residency. Para-physiological and pathological pitfalls in neuroradiology include calcification and brain stones, pseudofractures, and enlargement of subarachnoid or epidural spaces, ventricular system abnormalities, vascular system abnormalities, intracranial lesions or pseudolesions, and finally neuroradiological emergencies. In order to minimize the possibility of error, it is important to be aware of various presentations of pathology, obtain clinical information, know current practice guidelines, review after interpreting a diagnostic study, suggest follow-up studies when appropriate, communicate significant abnormal findings appropriately and in a timely fashion directly with the treatment team

Development of a stochastic computational fluid dynamics approach for offshore wind farms

In this paper, a method for stochastic analysis of an offshore wind farm using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is proposed. An existing offshore wind farm is modelled using a steady-state CFD solver at several deterministic input ranges and an approximation model is trained on the CFD results. The approximation model is then used in a Monte-Carlo analysis to build joint probability distributions for values of interest within the wind farm. The results are compared with real measurements obtained from the existing wind farm to quantify the accuracy of the predictions. It is shown that this method works well for the relatively simple problem considered in this study and has potential to be used in more complex situations where an existing analytical method is either insufficient or unable to make a good prediction

Hospital Discharge: Results From an Italian Multicenter Prospective Study Using Blaylock Risk Assessment Screening Score

PURPOSE:To analyze the predictive validity and reliability of the Blaylock Risk Assessment Screening Score (BRASS) Index in a large group of patients. METHODS: Prospective multicenter observational study was conducted in six Italian hospitals. Data were collected in three phases. FINDINGS: Seven hundred eleven patients were recruited. The mean length of hospitalization for low-risk patients was significantly shorter than those in the medium and high-risk groups. Patients with a BRASS Index lower than 10, unlike those with a higher BRASS Index, were mainly discharged home. CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that the BRASS Index is useful to identify patients at risk for prolonged hospitalization. CLINICAL RELEVANCE: The use of a validated BRASS instrument can be useful to screen the patients, improving individual discharge planning

A Cylindrical GEM Inner Tracker for the BESIII experiment at IHEP

The Beijing Electron Spectrometer III (BESIII) is a multipurpose detector that collects data provided by the collision in the Beijing Electron Positron Collider II (BEPCII), hosted at the Institute of High Energy Physics of Beijing. Since the beginning of its operation, BESIII has collected the world largest sample of J/{\psi} and {\psi}(2s). Due to the increase of the luminosity up to its nominal value of 10^33 cm-2 s-1 and aging effect, the MDC decreases its efficiency in the first layers up to 35% with respect to the value in 2014. Since BESIII has to take data up to 2022 with the chance to continue up to 2027, the Italian collaboration proposed to replace the inner part of the MDC with three independent layers of Cylindrical triple-GEM (CGEM). The CGEM-IT project will deploy several new features and innovation with respect the other current GEM based detector: the {\mu}TPC and analog readout, with time and charge measurements will allow to reach the 130 {\mu}m spatial resolution in 1 T magnetic field requested by the BESIII collaboration. In this proceeding, an update of the status of the project will be presented, with a particular focus on the results with planar and cylindrical prototypes with test beams data. These results are beyond the state of the art for GEM technology in magnetic field

Labour supply and skills demands in fashion retailing

If, as Adam Smith once famously suggested, Britain was a nation of shopkeepers then it is now a nation of shopworkers. Retail is now a significant part of the UK economy, accounting for £256 billion in sales and one-third of all consumer spending (Skillsmart, 2007). It is the largest private sector employer in the UK, employing 3m workers, or 1 in 10 of the working population. For future job creation in the UK economy retail is also similarly prominent and the sector is expected to create a further 250,000 jobs to 2014 (Skillsmart, 2007). The centrality of retail to economic success and job creation is apparent in other advanced economies. For example, within the US, retail sales is the occupation with the largest projected job growth in the period 2004-2014 (Gatta et al., 2009) and in Australia retail accounts for 1 in 6 workers (Buchanan et al., 2003). Within the UK these workers are employed in approximately 290,000 businesses, encompassing large and small organizations and also a number of sub-sectors. This variance suggests that retail should not be regarded as homogenous in its labour demands. Hart et al. (2007) note how skill requirements and the types of workers employed may differ across the sector. This chapter further opens up this point, providing an analysis of the labour supply and skills demands for the sub-sectors of clothing, footwear and leather goods, which are described by Skillsmart (2007: 48) as being 'significant categories in UK retailing'

Status of the Cylindical-GEM project for the KLOE-2 Inner Tracker

The status of the R&D on the Cylindrical-GEM (CGEM) detector foreseen as Inner Tracker for KLOE-2, the upgrade of the KLOE experiment at the DAFNE phi-factory, will be presented. The R&D includes several activities: i) the construction and complete characterization of the full-size CGEM prototype, equipped with 650 microns pitch 1-D longitudinal strips; ii) the study of the 2-D readout with XV patterned strips and operation in magnetic field (up to 1.5T), performed with small planar prototypes in a dedicated test at the H4-SPS beam facility; iii) the characterization of the single-mask GEM technology for the realization of large-area GEM foils.Comment: 4 pages, 10 figures, Presented at Vienna Conference on Instrumentation (Feb 15-20, 2010, Vienna, Austria). Submitted to the Proceeding

Modulating the metabolism by trimetazidine enhances myoblast differentiation and promotes myogenesis in cachectic tumor-bearing c26 mice.

Trimetazidine (TMZ) is a metabolic reprogramming agent able to partially inhibit mitochondrial free fatty acid β-oxidation while enhancing glucose oxidation. Here we have found that the metabolic shift driven by TMZ enhances the myogenic potential of skeletal muscle progenitor cells leading to MyoD, Myogenin, Desmin and the slow isoforms of troponin C and I over-expression. Moreover, similarly to exercise, TMZ stimulates the phosphorylation of the AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and up-regulates the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator 1-α (PGC1α), both of which are known to enhance the mitochondrial biogenesis necessary for myoblast differentiation. TMZ also induces autophagy which is required during myoblast differentiation and promotes myoblast alignment which allows cell fusion and myofiber formation. Finally, we found that intraperitoneally administered TMZ (5mg/kg) is able to stimulate myogenesis in vivo both in a mice model of cancer cachexia (C26 mice) and upon cardiotoxin damage. Collectively, our work demonstrates that TMZ enhances myoblast differentiation and promotes myogenesis, which might contribute recovering stem cell blunted regenerative capacity and counteracting muscle wasting, thanks to the formation of new myofibers; TMZ is already in use in humans as an anti-anginal drug and its repositioning might impact significantly on aging and regeneration-impaired disorders, including cancer cachexia, as well as have implications in regenerative medicine