Outcomes of conjunctival compression sutures for hypotony after glaucoma filtering surgery

3openopenQuaranta L.; Riva I.; Floriani I.C:Quaranta, Luciano; Riva, Ivano; Floriani I., C

Case studies of landscape and environmental impact evaluation of roundabouts

This paper is a follow-up to a previous one that presented a new method for evaluating the landscape and environmental impact of roundabouts borrowed from building technology and based on the needs, requirements and performance expected from an object rather than on prescriptions for and descriptions of its dimensions and quality. The proposed method aims at defining criteria to set up an information structure based on a need and performance approach capable of evaluating impacts on the landscape and environmental integration. After a brief résumé of the above-mentioned principles, two applications are presented in order to highlight two practical developments. The roundabouts on which the applications are focused are located in an urban and in a rural environment respectively in the Northern part of Italy. Obviously their analysis cannot be considered comprehensive of all possible cases but it covers a large proportion of them. Differences between the two roundabouts are many and they concern, besides the landscape and environment, geometrical dimensions, type of flow, presence of weekday users (pedestrians and bikers). The final evaluation sheets are presented and through them it is relatively easy to single out the problems and drawbacks of the roundabouts from the landscape point of view

Landscape and Environmental Impact Evaluation of Roundabouts

The interest of researchers and practitioners on roundabout solutions has been growing increasingly in the last decades. The often large areas occupied by this type of intersections require special attention on the use of ground and the preservation of the natural, environmental and architectural heritage. This aim also presents the opportunity for evaluating their impact on the landscape and environment. The paper proposes a new method developed for roundabout evaluation (but generalizable to other infrastructures and fields) borrowed from building technology and based on the needs, requirements and performance expected from an object rather than on prescriptions for and descriptions of its dimensions and quality. Applications on two roundabouts are presented in order to highlight practical developments. Their final evaluation sheets are presented and through them it is relatively easy to single out the problems and drawbacks of the roundabouts from the landscape point of view

Impact of IFN lambda 3/4 single nucleotide polymorphisms on the cytomegalovirus reactivation in autologous stem cell transplant patients

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection represents one of the main cause mortality after Stem Cell Transplantation. Recently, a protective effect of the T allele of rs12979860 IL28B Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) against CMV infection in the allogenic stem cell transplantation was suggested. We investigate whether the rs12979860 IL28B SNP and the relative rs368234815 (IFNλ4) genotype may affect the incidence of active CMV infection in Autologous stem cell transplantation (Auto-SCT) setting. The study included 99 patients who underwent to Auto-SCT. IL28 and IFNΔ4 SNPs were correlated with CMV reactivation along with other clinical and treatment parameters. CMV reactivation by CMV DNAemia was evaluated once a week until day 100 from Auto-SCT. CMV reactivation was documented in 50% (TT-ΔG/ΔG), 35% (CC-TT/TT) and 29.2% (CT-TT/ΔG) of the patients respectively. No differences in CMV copies number were recorded at reactivation between different IL28/IFNλ4 genotypes. The analysis of patients older than 60 years showed a significantly higher incidence of active CMV infection in the TT-ΔG/ΔG (83%) population with respect to CC-TT/TT (21%) and CT-TT/ΔG (40%) patients. Our data suggest a negative role of TT-ΔG/ΔG genotype in the CMV reactivation in Auto-SCT. The exposure to rituximab and the pre-infusion presence of anti CMV IgG also significantly influenced CMV reactivation

Magpie: towards a semantic web browser

Web browsing involves two tasks: finding the right web page and then making sense of its content. So far, research has focused on supporting the task of finding web resources through ‘standard’ information retrieval mechanisms, or semantics-enhanced search. Much less attention has been paid to the second problem. In this paper we describe Magpie, a tool which supports the interpretation of web pages. Magpie offers complementary knowledge sources, which a reader can call upon to quickly gain access to any background knowledge relevant to a web resource. Magpie automatically associates an ontologybased semantic layer to web resources, allowing relevant services to be invoked within a standard web browser. Hence, Magpie may be seen as a step towards a semantic web browser. The functionality of Magpie is illustrated using examples of how it has been integrated with our lab’s web resources

Excitons and charged excitons in semiconductor quantum wells

A variational calculation of the ground-state energy of neutral excitons and of positively and negatively charged excitons (trions) confined in a single-quantum well is presented. We study the dependence of the correlation energy and of the binding energy on the well width and on the hole mass. The conditional probability distribution for positively and negatively charged excitons is obtained, providing information on the correlation and the charge distribution in the system. A comparison is made with available experimental data on trion binding energies in GaAs-, ZnSe-, and CdTe-based quantum well structures, which indicates that trions become localized with decreasing quantum well width.Comment: 9 pages, 11 figure