Consumer health protection and Information and Communication Technology

The environmental emergencies, the alimentary crisis, the increase of chronic illnesses, pushes the consumers to seek informative channels often also "virtual" as a reassurance for their own health, for the salubriousness of food and above all as a direct channel with the enterprises. For these last, then, it becomes fundamental to look at the information, to the virtual nets, and to the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) especially as powerful means of communication. Therefore, the work analyzes the role that the ICTs develop in the productive sector of ‘Mozzarella di Bufala Campana’, a particularly important product for the economy of the Region but in crisis because installed in a context of environmental emergencies that have seriously compromise the trust of the consumer, worried about the implications for the health. Particularly, the work proposes a survey both on the dairies that on the consumers with the purpose to appraise the propensity of the first ones to use Internet in their own strategies of web marketing and the importance of such tool, for the seconds, in presence of a situation of alarm for the health.Health, consumer protection, food quality, Information and Communication Technologies., Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Consistent Monte Carlo methods for non-linear applications in light transport

The study of light transport focuses on describing the propagation of light from emitters to sensors through accurately describing the interactions light can undergo with everything in between. Physically-based rendering is the process of applying the laws of light transport to formulate practical algorithms which simulate the flow of light for the purpose of synthesizing images of virtual environments. Unfortunately, there are very few interesting scene configurations which can be computed analytically. Instead, modern solutions predominantly rely on Monte Carlo integration to stochastically estimate the transfer of light since the process is both unbiased and consistent. Meaning, it is expected to give us the correct result, and if we took the average of infinitely many estimates we would obtain the correct answer. However, the ideal properties of Monte Carlo integration are not guaranteed for all problems. In the presence of non-linear perturbations, Monte Carlo integration will almost always result in incorrect solutions. Unfortunately, applications with non-linear perturbations appear throughout light transport from simulating the interactions between light and participating media, to rendering complicated visual phenomena like caustics, to even modern applications in differentiable rendering. In this dissertation we focus on formulating consistent solutions for general non-linear problems within light transport. We achieve this by devising a general recipe outlining for both scientists and practitioners alike how to address and account for the many difficulties which can arise when estimating these difficult problems. This involves discussing various ways of reconstructing non-linear problems into alternative forms which are amenable to unbiased Monte Carlo integration. We then review ways of verifying that these unbiased estimators are efficient enough to be employed in practice. When this is not the case, we review and introduce methods for constructing biased, but still consistent, solutions. Through the application of our recipe, we introduce the first general unbiased rendering algorithm capable of rendering non-classical participating media, the first truly unbiased photon-mapping algorithm for rendering razor sharp caustics, and various consistent techniques for efficiently rendering participating media comprised of unknown black box densities

INNOVAZIONE, INFORMAZIONE ED INCLUSIONE: DINAMICHE DI SVILUPPO E STRATEGIE COMPETITIVE DEI SISTEMI TERRITORIALI A VOCAZIONE AGROALIMENTARE

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IL SISTEMA AGROALIMENTARE CAMPANO E LE DINAMICHE GLOBALI

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Smart mobility and public transport: Opportunities and challenges in rural and urban areas

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Bioactivity and Development of Small Non-Platinum Metal-Based Chemotherapeutics

Countless expectations converge in the multidisciplinary endeavour for the search and development of effective and safe drugs in fighting cancer. Although they still embody a minority of the pharmacological agents currently in clinical use, metal-based complexes have great yet unexplored potential, which probably hides forthcoming anticancer drugs. Following the historical success of cisplatin and congeners, but also taking advantage of conventional chemotherapy limitations that emerged with applications in the clinic, the design and development of non-platinum metal-based chemotherapeutics, either as drugs or prodrugs, represents a rapidly evolving field wherein candidate compounds can be fine-tuned to access interactions with druggable biological targets. Moving in this direction, over the last few decades platinum family metals, e.g., ruthenium and palladium, have been largely proposed. Indeed, transition metals and molecular platforms where they originate are endowed with unique chemical and biological features based on, but not limited to, redox activity and coordination geometries, as well as ligand selection (including their inherent reactivity and bioactivity). Herein, current applications and progress in metal-based chemoth are reviewed. Converging on the recent literature, new attractive chemotherapeutics based on transition metals other than platinum—and their bioactivity and mechanisms of action—are examined and discussed. A special focus is committed to anticancer agents based on ruthenium, palladium, rhodium, and iridium, but also to gold derivatives, for which more experimental data are nowadays available. Next to platinum-based agents, ruthenium-based candidate drugs were the first to reach the stage of clinical evaluation in humans, opening new scenarios for the development of alternative chemotherapeutic options to treat cancer

Clinical research and leadership training program as a knowledge translation initiative across an Australian health care service

&nbsp;Health professionals need to be integrated more effectively in clinical research initiatives to ensure that research addresses key clinical needs and provides practical, implementable solutions at the coal face of care. Here we describe the informative phase of a broader program to enable and support health professionals at Monash Health who do not have a research background, to engage in and lead research to improve healthcare outcomes. The findings will be used to develop a dedicated clinical research and leadership training program. The training program will support Monash Health staff to up-skill or enhance skills to conduct rigorous research; engage and lead multidisciplinary, collaborative teams; and to use research to guide practice, as well as identify and address gaps in clinical research. &nbsp;</div

Improvement of Rural Mobility in European Regions Affected by Demographic Change

Paper presents some of the specific mid-term results of RUMOBIL project. RUMOBIL is project funded by INTERREG CENTRAL EUROPE program. The main objective of RUMOBIL is to improve public transport in rural areas by better connecting them to the national and European transport networks. Project supports transnational cooperation between eight public authorities from Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia and Italy, and their transport entities. These are confronted with a similar challenge to respond to pressures on regional public transport systems caused by demographic change in peripheral areas. Working together provide them with a platform to exchange knowledge, to generate learning through launching pilot applications of state-of-the art tools and solutions, and to revise their transport policies to better suit changing mobility needs. Quicker and more comfortable access by public transport positively contributes to the quality of life in rural areas and supports business activities there. To that aim, a set of evidence-based policy recommendations will be elaborated at the end of the project to improve the capacities of local and regional decision-makers responsible for the design and coordination of public passenger transport in Central European regions affected by demographic change. These recommendations will be presented in the form of the RUMOBIL Model which provides insights in already proven good practices and novel solutions. Main outputs of RUMOBIL project are pilot actions, the elaboration of a RUMOBIL strategy, and policy-decisions to implement this strategy in the eight partner regions through an improvement of their transport plans. Pilot actions allow testing a number of innovative applications during a period 2017-2018 how sparsely populated peripheral areas can be better linked to a primary, secondary or tertiary transport node (access to European and national passenger transport networks)