Did Neoliberalizing West African Forests Produce a New Niche for Ebola?

A recent study introduced a vaccine that controls Ebola Makona, the Zaire ebolavirus variant that has infected 28,000 people in West Africa. We propose that even such successful advances are insufficient for many emergent diseases. We review work hypothesizing that Makona, phenotypically similar to much smaller outbreaks, emerged out of shifts in land use brought about by neoliberal economics. The epidemiological consequences demand a new science that explicitly addresses the foundational processes underlying multispecies health, including the deep-time histories, cultural infrastructure, and global economic geographies driving disease emergence. The approach, for instance, reverses the standard public health practice of segregating emergency responses and the structural context from which outbreaks originate. In Ebola's case, regional neoliberalism may affix the stochastic "friction" of ecological relationships imposed by the forest across populations, which, when above a threshold, keeps the virus from lining up transmission above replacement. Export-led logging, mining, and intensive agriculture may depress such functional noise, permitting novel spillovers larger forces of infection. Mature outbreaks, meanwhile, can continue to circulate even in the face of efficient vaccines. More research on these integral explanations is required, but the narrow albeit welcome success of the vaccine may be used to limit support of such a program.SCOPUS: re.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Adaptive Dynamic Control for Magnetically Actuated Medical Robots

In the present letter, we discuss a novel dynamic control approach for magnetically actuated robots, by proposing an adaptive control technique, robust toward parametric uncertainties and unknown bounded disturbances. The former generally arise due to partial knowledge of the robots' dynamic parameters, such as inertial factors, the latter are the outcome of unpredictable interaction with unstructured environments. In order to show the application of the proposed approach, we consider controlling the magnetic flexible endoscope (MFE), which is composed of a soft-tethered internal permanent magnet (IPM), actuated with a single external permanent magnet. We provide with experimental analysis to show the possibility of levitating the MFE-one of the most difficult tasks with this platform-in case of partial knowledge of the IPM's dynamics and no knowledge of the tether's behavior. Experiments in an acrylic tube show a reduction of contact of the 32% compared to non-levitating techniques and 1.75 times faster task completion with respect to previously proposed levitating techniques. More realistic experiments, performed in a colon phantom, show that levitating the capsule achieves faster and smoother exploration and that the minimum time for completing the task is attained by the proposed approach

Did Ebola emerge in West Africa by a policy-driven phase change in agroecology? Ebola's social context

SCOPUS: no.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Magnetic Levitation for Soft-Tethered Capsule Colonoscopy Actuated With a Single Permanent Magnet: A Dynamic Control Approach

The present letter investigates a novel control approach for magnetically driven soft-tethered capsules for colonoscopy—a potentially painless approach for colon inspection. The focus of this work is on a class of devices composed of a magnetic capsule endoscope actuated by a single external permanent magnet. Actuation is achieved by manipulating the external magnet with a serial manipulator, which in turn produces forces and torques on the internal magnetic capsule. We propose a control strategy which, counteracting gravity, achieves levitation of the capsule. This technique, based on a nonlinear backstepping approach, is able to limit contact with the colon walls, reducing friction, avoiding contact with internal folds, and facilitating the inspection of nonplanar cavities. The approach is validated on an experimental setup, which embodies a general scenario faced in colonoscopy. The experiments show that we can attain 19.5% of contact with the colon wall, compared to the almost 100% of previously proposed approaches. Moreover, we show that the control can be used to navigate the capsule through a more realistic environment—a colon phantom—with reasonable completion time

Nurses' protocol-based care decision-making: a multiple case study

Aim: To describe and explain nurses' protocol-based care decision-making. Background: Protocol-based care is a strategy to reduce variability in clinical practice. There are no studies looking at protocol-based care decision-making. Understand this process is key to successful implementation. Method: A multiple embedded case study was carried out. Nurses' protocol-based care decision-making was studied in three inpatient wards (medical, surgical and medical-surgical) of a university hospital in northern Spain. Data collection was performed between 2015 and 2016 including documentary analysis, non-participant observations, participant observations and interviews. Analysis of quantitative data involved descriptive statistics and qualitative data was submitted to Burnard's method of content analysis (1996). The data integration comprised the integration of the data set of each case separately and the integration of the findings resulting from the comparison of the cases. The following the thread method of data integration was used for this purpose. The SRQR guideline was used for reporting. Results: The multiple embedded case study revealed protocol-based care decision-making as a linear and variable process that depends on the context and consists of multiple interrelated elements, among which the risk perception is foremost. Conclusion: This study has allowed progress in protocol-based care decision-making characterisation. This knowledge is crucial to support the design of educational and management strategies aimed at implementing protocol-based care. Relevance to clinical practice: Strategies to promote protocol-based care should address the contexts of practice and the ability of professionals' to accurately assess the degree of risk of clinical activity. Hence, it will promote quality of care, patient safety and efficiency in healthcare cost

User Interaction Templates for the Design of Lifelogging Systems

No abstract available

“I rapporti commerciali tra Cina, Europa e Italia”

Pubblicazione in numero speciale della Rivista di Economia Italiana "La media e piccola impresa nello scenario della globalizzazione