Monitoraggio di Toxoplasma Gondii in alcune colonie feline della Provincia di Firenze

RIASSUNTO Parole chiave: Monitoraggio Epidemiologico, Toxoplasma gondii, Colonie Feline, IFAT, nPCR Sono stati esaminati, per Toxoplasma gondii, complessivamente 206 campioni di sangue e 40 campioni di feci provenienti da gatti appartenenti a colonie feline della provincia di Firenze. Su questi campioni è stata effettuata la ricerca degli anticorpi specifici attraverso Immunofluorescenza indiretta (IFAT) e del DNA parassitario su sangue e feci con la metodica della PCR (polymerase chain reaction). Cinquantasette sieri su 180 sono risultati positivi con titoli variabili da 1:40 – 1:640, con una siero prevalenza globale pari al 31,67 %. Due campioni di feci su 40 sono risultati positivi alla nPCR con una prevalenza, riferita al gruppo esaminato, del 6,25 % Tre campioni di sangue su 69, esaminati con nPCR, sono risultati positivi con una prevalenza del 4,92 % E’ interessante porre anche come dato di valutazione analitica anche i risultati combinati fra le varie metodiche che nello schema ifat tox/pcr sangue/pcr feci hanno dati i seguenti risultati: pos/neg/neg = 11 ; neg/neg/pos = 1 ; pos/pos/pos = 1; pos/pos/neg = 2 . Sono state inoltre effettuate le medesime prove su un gruppo di gatti domestici, di provenienza geografica regionale ed extra regionale, dalle quali sono emerse solo positività al Test IFA nel numero di 8 campioni sul totale di 26 esaminati, con una prevalenza del 30,77

Stabilization of Extra-Virgin Olive Oil

The conservation of virgin olive oil quality during its shelf life could be considered a key issue for olive oil industry. To improve the product stability, virgin olive oils should not be stored with considerable amounts of suspended solids and water. The latter have to be removed from oil musts. The chapter reviews the main spread technologies and those recently proposed for the removal of suspended solids and the water from extra-virgin olive oils. These technologies are described from an engineering perspective, and their effects on product quality during storage are discussed

Even/odd decomposition made sparse: A fingerprint to hidden patterns

The very fundamental operation of even/odd decomposition is at the core of some of the simplest information representation and signal processing tasks. So far most of its use has been for rearranging data to provide fast implementations of various types of transforms (Fourier, DCT, …) or for achieving elementary data transformation, such as the Walsh–Hadamard transform. This work proposes to look into the decomposition framework to obtain a richer perspective. In the context of an iterated even/odd decomposition, it is possible to pinpoint intermediate layered levels of symmetries which cannot be easily captured in the original data. In addition this determines a hierarchical fingerprinting for any sort of continuous finite support analog signal or for any discrete-time sequence which may turn out useful in several recognition or categorization tasks. It also may help to achieve sparsity within a natural hierarchical framework, which could be easily extended for many other types of orthogonal transformations. This paper also suggests a global measure of the energy imbalance across the hierarchy of the decomposition to capture the overall fingerprinting of this interpretation

Representation of Signals by Local Symmetry Decomposition

In this paper we propose a segmentation of finite support sequences based on the even/odd decomposition of a signal. The objective is to find a more compact representation of information. To this aim, the paper starts to generalize the even/odd decomposition by concentrating the energy on either the even or the odd part by optimally placing the centre of symmetry. Local symmetry intervals are thus located. The sequence segmentation is further processed by applying an iterative growth on the candidate segments to remove any overlapping portions. Experimental results show that the set of segments can be more eficiently compressed with respect to the DCT transformation of the entire sequence, which corresponds to the near optimal KLT transform of the data chosen for the experiment

Image symmetries: The right balance between evenness and perception

A recent and fascinating interest in computational symmetry for computer vision and computer graphics applications has led to a remarkable realization of new symmetry detection algorithms. Such a concern is culminated in a symmetry detection competition as a workshop affiliated with the 2011 and 2013 CVPR Conferences. In this paper, we propose a method based on the computation of the symmetry level associated to each pixel. Such a value is determined through the energy balance of the even/odd decomposition of a patch with respect to a central axis (which is equivalent to estimate the middle point of a row-wise convolution). Peaks localization along the perpendicular direction of each angle allows to identify possible symmetry axes. The evaluation of a feature based on gradient information allows to establish a classification confidence for each detected axis. By adopting the aforementioned rigorous validation framework, the proposed method indicates significant performance increase

On reflection symmetry in natural images

Many new symmetry detection algorithms have been recently developed, thanks to an interest revival on computational symmetry for computer graphics and computer vision applications. Notably, in 2013 the IEEE CVPR Conference organized a dedicated workshop and an accompanying symmetry detection competition. In this paper we propose an approach for symmetric object detection that is based both on the computation of a symmetry measure for each pixel and on saliency. The symmetry value is obtained as the energy balance of the even-odd decomposition of a patch w.r.t. each possible axis. The candidate symmetry axes are then identified through the localization of peaks along the direction perpendicular to each considered axis orientation. These found candidate axes are finally evaluated through a confidence measure that also allow removing redundant detected symmetries. The obtained results within the framework adopted in the aforementioned competition show significant performance improvement

The spent cake from olive oil filtration as biomass feedstock

The most widespread method for virgin olive oil filtration at industrial scale is the so-called precoat body-feed filtration by means of filter aids, mainly consisting of perlite and cellulose. The residue of the process is a spent filtration cake, that has potential for upgrading if understood in the context of the biorefining concept. Data about the production and composition of the spent cake were collected from an industrial case-study. The potential availability of the spent cake has been estimated both at local (the industrial case-study) and large scale (Spain context). The mean percentage composition of the spent cake is 5 % oil impurities, 7 % cellulose, 28 % perlite, 52 % oil and 8 % water. About 10 g of spent cake are produced per kilogram of virgin olive oil to be processed; while about 316 and 7482 Mg of spent cake could be potentially available for the local and large scale scenarios, respectively. Owing to its diversified composition entailing oil and waxes, cellulose and mineral fractions, the spent cake appears a valuable feedstock to supplement the supply of the emerging biorefineries technologies

Environmental Impact Assessment of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) Management in Florence, Italy

Research Paper - Facing the trouble of municipal solid waste (MSW) management is a rising challenge of urbanized areas. Yearly data of waste management from the city of Florence (Italy) and neighboring municipalities were gathered over 2015 year. About 412105 t of waste were collected, where 202794 t were mixed-waste and 72540 t were organic. Fractions were treated in a centralized selecting-composting plant. The outgoing materials were further treated in external plants for additional selection, composting, incineration, landfilling. The present study was aimed to assess the environmental impact of such waste management applying LCA technique. The functional unit was \u201cone year mixed and organic waste treatment at Florence and neighboring municipalities\u201d. System boundaries included waste collection, final transport, working of the selecting-composting plant. System expansion was used to account for energy recovery (electricity) from waste. Background data were sourced from ELCD-core3-LCI database. Life cycle impact assessment (classification and characterization) was performed by ILCD midpoint method. Sixteen impact categories were computed. Focusing on global warming potential (GWP), the functional unit impacts for roughly 6.99E+8kgCO2eq. This figure drops to 0.212E+8kgCO2eq if urban collection was not considered and further to 0.186E+8kgCO2eq if final transportation was excluded. Results underline the potential benefit of on-site treatment of waste