DÖNER KEBAB RETAILED ON THE LUCCA AREA: RESULTS OF SURVEILLANCE ACTIVITY

In this study the results of surveillance activity on döner kebab retailed on the Lucca area are reported. Ten kebab shops were inspected by health officers and food samples, including raw kebab, cooked kebab and sandwiches with kebab, were submitted for microbiological examinations. During surveillance activity some hygiene problems and difficult application of control plan were found. The microbiological analyses showed that döner kebab retailed in Lucca area had acceptable hygienic quality, but further inspections are necessary to improve the hygienic conditions of kebab shops

The classic prognostic factors in advanced Hodgkin\u2019s lymphoma patients are losing their meaning at the time of Pet-guided treatments

The International Prognostic Score (IPS) is the most commonly used risk stratification tool for patients with advanced Hodgkin lymphoma (HL). It incorporates seven clinical parameters independently associated with a poorer outcome: male sex, age, stage IV, hemoglobin level, white blood cell and lymphocyte counts, and albumin level. Since the development of the IPS, there have been significant advances in therapy and supportive care. Recent studies suggest that the IPS is less discriminating due to improved outcomes with ABVD therapy. The aim of the present study was to asses if classic prognostic factors maintain their prognostic meaning at the time of response-adapted treatment based on interim PET scans. We evaluated the prognostic significance of IPS in the 520 advanced stage HL patients enrolled in the PET-guided, HD0801 trial in which PET2-positive patients underwent a more intense treatment with an early stem-cell transplantation after 2 cycles of ABVD. We observed that in these patients, the IPS completely loses its prognostic value together with all the single parameters that contribute to the IPS. Furthermore, neutrophils, monocytes, lymphocytes, and the ratio among them also no longer had any predictive value. We believe that the substantial improvement in survival outcomes in PET2-positive patients treated with early autologous transplantation could explain the complete disappearance of the residual prognostic significance of the IPS

THE ELDERLY PROGNOSTIC INDEX (EPI) PREDICTS EARLY MORTALITY IN OLDER PATIENTS WITH DLBCL. A SUBSTUDY OF THE ELDERLY PROJECT BY THE FONDAZIONE ITALIANA LINFOMI (FIL)

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Omega-3 Fatty Acids Modify Human Cortical Visual Processing—A Double-Blind, Crossover Study

While cardiovascular and mood benefits of dietary omega-3 fatty acids such as docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) are manifest, direct neurophysiological evidence of their effects on cortical activity is still limited. Hence we chose to examine the effects of two proprietary fish oil products with different EPA∶DHA ratios (EPA-rich, high EPA∶DHA; DHA-rich) on mental processing speed and visual evoked brain activity. We proposed that nonlinear multifocal visual evoked potentials (mfVEP) would be sensitive to any alteration of the neural function induced by omega-3 fatty acid supplementation, because the higher order kernel responses directly measure the degree of recovery of the neural system as a function of time following stimulation. Twenty-two healthy participants aged 18–34, with no known neurological or psychiatric disorder and not currently taking any nutritional supplementation, were recruited. A double-blind, crossover design was utilized, including a 30-day washout period, between two 30-day supplementation periods of the EPA-rich and DHA-rich diets (with order of diet randomized). Psychophysical choice reaction times and multi-focal nonlinear visual evoked potential (VEP) testing were performed at baseline (No Diet), and after each supplementation period. Following the EPA-rich supplementation, for stimulation at high luminance contrast, a significant reduction in the amplitude of the first slice of the second order VEP kernel response, previously related to activation in the magnocellular pathway, was observed. The correlations between the amplitude changes of short latency second and first order components were significantly different for the two supplementations. Significantly faster choice reaction times were observed psychophysically (compared with baseline performance) under the EPA-rich (but not DHA-rich) supplementation, while simple reaction times were not affected. The reduced nonlinearities observed under the EPA-rich diet suggest a mechanism involving more efficient neural recovery of magnocellular-like visual responses following cortical activation

Privaros: A Framework for Privacy-Compliant Delivery Drones

We present Privaros, a framework to enforce privacy policies on drones. Privaros is designed for commercial delivery drones, such as the ones that will likely be used by Amazon Prime Air. Such drones visit a number of host airspaces, each of which may have different privacy requirements. Privaros provides an information flow control framework to enforce the policies of these hosts on the guest delivery drones. The mechanisms in Privaros are built on top of ROS, a middleware popular in many drone platforms. This paper presents the design and implementation of these mechanisms, describes how policies are specified, and shows that Privaros's policy specification can be integrated with India's Digital Sky portal. Our evaluation shows that a drone running Privaros can robustly enforce various privacy policies specified by hosts, and that its core mechanisms only marginally increase communication latency and power consumption

Different Temporal Structure for Form versus Surface Cortical Color Systems – Evidence from Chromatic Non-Linear VEP

Physiological studies of color processing have typically measured responses to spatially varying chromatic stimuli such as gratings, while psychophysical studies of color include color naming, color and light, as well as spatial and temporal chromatic sensitivities. This raises the question of whether we have one or several cortical color processing systems. Here we show from non-linear analysis of human visual evoked potentials (VEP) the presence of distinct and independent temporal signatures for form and surface color processing. Surface color stimuli produced most power in the second order Wiener kernel, indicative of a slowly recovering neural system, while chromatic form stimulation produced most power in the first order kernel (showing rapid recovery). We find end-spectral saturation-dependent signals, easily separable from achromatic signals for surface color stimuli. However physiological responses to form color stimuli, though varying somewhat with saturation, showed similar waveform components. Lastly, the spectral dependence of surface and form color VEP was different, with the surface color responses almost vanishing with yellow-grey isoluminant stimulation whereas the form color VEP shows robust recordable signals across all hues. Thus, surface and form colored stimuli engage different neural systems within cortex, pointing to the need to establish their relative contributions under the diverse chromatic stimulus conditions used in the literature