Management of Patients Taking Oral Anticoagulants Who Need Urgent Surgery for Hip Fracture

The number of hip fractures in anticoagulated patients is predicted to increase, due to people living longer. However, evidence regarding urgent perioperative management of elderly patients with hip fracture who take oral anticoagulants (vitamin K antagonists or direct oral anticoagulants) is scarce. In this article, the authors present a narrative review of the evidence to date supporting the urgent management of hip fracture in anticoagulated elderly patients. They discuss the complexity of managing the high risk of procedure-related bleeding and, at the same time, the high risk of thromboembolism. The role of a bridging procedure and the best strategy of anticoagulation reversal are also reviewed. Further studies are required to improve the evidence in urgent surgery, especially in frail elderly patients

Photogrammetry and 3D Scanning: Assessment of Metric Accuracy for the Digital Model of Danatello's Maddalena

The deployment of 3D optical scanning technologies for measuring three-dimensional shapes of sculptures of high morphological complexity, have seen recently a development so noticeable that it emerges as one of the most promising methods for the analysis and preservation of the Cultural Heritage. In spite of an undoubted richness of information produced with this technique, the method for generating a digital model from single 3D acquisitions involves errors propagation that may deteriorate the actual metric accuracy attainable with such procedure. The activity reported in this paper describes a recent experiment in 3D scanning of a highly complex sculpture: the wooden statue <em>Maddalena</em> by Donatello, kept in the museum of the <em>Opera del Duomo</em>, in Florence. The acquisitions, taken with a commercial system based on fringe projection, give a local measurement uncertainty of about 70mm, but when the complete model is generated by automatic alignment of the raw 3D images in a common coordinate system, possible scale variations might be involved, especially along the height of the statue. With this preliminary work, the authors want to verify the metric reliability of the three-dimensional model, obtained through iterative alignments of single 3D acquisitions. For this purpose, a measurement over well-identified features of the sculpture have been performed and the distances between couples of significant points have been calculated with photogrammetric operations. By repeating the same measurements on the 3D model, a corresponding set of point-to-point distances have been evaluated and compared with the photogrammetric results.Les technologies de balayage optique 3D d\ue9ploy\ue9es pour la mesure des formes 3D de sculptures d'une forte complexit\ue9 morphologique ont connu r\ue9cemment un d\ue9veloppement tellement remarquable, qu'elles \ue9mergent comme l'un des groupes de m\ue9thodes les plus prometteuses pour l'analyse et la conservation du patrimoine culturel. Malgr\ue9 une richesse incontestable d'information produite au moyen de ces techniques, la m\ue9thode de g\ue9n\ue9ration d'un mod\ue8le num\ue9rique \ue0 partir d'acquisitions 3D individuelles comporte des erreurs de propagation susceptibles de d\ue9t\ue9riorer l'exactitude r\ue9elle de la mesure qu'on peut obtenir au moyen de cette proc\ue9dure. L'activit\ue9 signal\ue9e dans le pr\ue9sent document d\ue9crit une exp\ue9rience men\ue9e r\ue9cemment au sujet du balayage 3D d'une sculpture tr\ue8s complexe : la statue en bois Madeleine, de Donatello, conserv\ue9e au Museo dell'Opera del Duomo de Florence. Les acquisitions, prises au moyen d'un syst\ue8me commercial fond\ue9 sur la projection de franges, donnent une incertitude de mesure locale d'environ 70 mm mais, lorsque le mod\ue8le complet est g\ue9n\ue9r\ue9 par l'alignement automatique des images 3D brutes dans un syst\ue8me de coordonn\ue9es communes, il risque d'y avoir des variations d'\ue9chelle, surtout le long de la hauteur de la statue. Avec ce travail pr\ue9liminaire, les auteurs veulent v\ue9rifier la fiabilit\ue9 de la mesure du mod\ue8le 3D, obtenu au moyen d'alignements it\ue9ratifs d'acquisitions 3D individuelles. \uc0 cette fin, des mesures de traits bien identifi\ue9s de la sculpture ont \ue9t\ue9 prises, et les distances entre des paires de points significatifs ont \ue9t\ue9 calcul\ue9es au moyen d'op\ue9rations photogramm\ue9triques. La r\ue9p\ue9tition des m\ueames mesures sur le mod\ue8le 3D a permis d'\ue9valuer une s\ue9rie correspondante de distances point-\ue0-point et de la comparer avec les r\ue9sultats photogramm\ue9triques.NRC publication: Ye

Damage Control System: an Application for Ship Safety and Security

A crucial application in naval field called Damage Control System (DCS) is the focus of this paper. DCS is an information-retrieval and equipment-control system that allows ship personnel to detect, analyze, and handle various types of situations which are hazardous for shipboard safety. The DCS is embedded in the Integrated Platform Management System (IPMS) and developed by researches of, Apphia s.r.l., CCII (Centro Cultura Innovativa d'Impresa) of University of Salento and Avio S.p.A

Evaluation of hygienic conditions of food contact surfaces in retail outlets: Six years of monitoring

A total of 68 food contact surfaces in five different retail outlets of the following food categories: raw meat (17 surfaces), fishery products (12), deli (11), pastry (18), and dairy products (10) were monitored for hygienic conditions during the years 2010–2015. Each retail outlet was visited three times per year, except for that of dairy products which was monitored once a year. The samples were collected by hygiene swabs used on the sanitized surfaces before coming in contact with any type of food and analyzed for total aerobic count and presence of Salmonella spp. and Listeria monocytogenes. On the basis of the results, the surfaces were classified according to compliance criteria with good hygienic conditions: compliant (from not detectable to 49 CFU/cm2), improvable (between 50 and 499 CFU/cm2) and not compliant (>500 CFU/cm2). The highest rates of improvable or not compliant data were found in the stores of raw meat (38 and 29%, respectively) and fishery products (23 and 31%), followed by deli (21 and 13%). As no regulatory limits have been established for food contact surfaces, the compliance criteria proposed in this study could be used to monitor the cleaning and sanitation procedures in the food distribution system

Heme oxygenase-1 is an important modulator in limiting glucose-induced apoptosis in human umbilical vein endothelial cells

Hyperglycaemia is associated with oxidative stress. The inducible isoform of heme oxygenase (HO-1) is an effective system to counteract oxidative stress, yet it is unclear how hyperglycaemia affects HO-1. In this study, we explored: 1) the HO-1 protein content and HO activity in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) exposed to different glucose concentrations, and 2) the mechanisms which account for the high glucose-induced effects on HO-1. We evaluated HO-1 protein expression, HO activity, apoptosis and reactive oxygen species (ROS) in HUVECs treated for 48 h with 5.5, 10 and 20 mM glucose. A dose-dependent production of reactive oxygen species was observed. At 10 mM glucose, an increase of HO-1 protein expression and HO activity was observed, whereas at 20 mM, there was no change in protein content and activity relative to at 5.5 mM glucose. HO-1 protein expression in HUVECs exposed to 20 mM of glucose was increased in the presence of 20 U/ml superoxide dismutase (SOD). HO-1 gene silencing augments ROS production both at 5.5 and 10 mM glucose, leading to an increased apoptosis. We conclude that, in endothelial cells, the regulation of HO-1 by glucose is dependent upon levels of glucose itself. Lack of homeostatic HO-1 upregulation fails to protect from oxidative damage and results in a higher rate of apoptotic cell death

Electrokinetic remediation of metal-polluted marine sediments: experimental investigation for plant design

This paper presents the results of an extensive set of laboratory experiments performed to design a demonstrative electrokinetic plant for extracting heavy metals from marine sediments dredged from the Livorno marine harbour. The investigated sediments displayed a high salinity, a high acid neutralization capacity, a low electrical resistivity (0.5 Ωm), a high alkalinity (pH ≈ 8) and a large fraction of fine particles. The target metals were Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn at relatively weak and inhomogeneous concentrations with high non-mobile fractions. After an accurate characterization, several screening and full electrokinetic tests were performed using cells of two different sizes, several conditioning agents (HNO3, HCl, H2SO4, citric acid, oxalic acid, ascorbic acid, EDTA), different applied current intensities and durations. The tests highlighted the need for long treatment times in order to obtain a significant pH reduction, with some appreciable metal removal being attained only after several weeks. The best results were obtained with strong acids used as the conditioning agents, with significant specific effects of each acid, including pronounced resistivity increase (from 0.5 up to 10 Ωm) and a high electroosmotic flow (EOF) with H2SO4, or a reversed EOF (electroendosmosis), and minor resistivity changes with HNO3. The use of the obtained data to design a demonstrative plant is also presented in the paper, with considerations on operating parameters such as energy and reagent consumption, characteristics of plant components and required safety measures

Correlation between In Vitro Neutralization Assay and Serological Tests for Protective Antibodies Detection

Serological assays are useful in investigating the development of humoral immunity against SARS-CoV-2 in the context of epidemiological studies focusing on the spread of protective immunity. The plaque reduction neutralization test (PRNT) is the gold standard method to assess the titer of protective antibodies in serum samples. However, to provide a result, the PRNT requires several days, skilled operators, and biosafety level 3 laboratories. Therefore, alternative methods are being assessed to establish a relationship between their outcomes and PRNT results. In this work, four different immunoassays (Roche Elecsys&reg; Anti SARS-CoV-2 S, Snibe MAGLUMI&reg; SARS-CoV-2 S-RBD IgG, Snibe MAGLUMI&reg; 2019-nCoV IgG, and EUROIMMUN&reg; SARS-CoV-2 NeutraLISA assays, respectively) have been performed on individuals healed after SARS-CoV-2 infection. The correlation between each assay and the reference method has been explored through linear regression modeling, as well as through the calculation of Pearson&rsquo;s and Spearman&rsquo;s coefficients. Furthermore, the ability of serological tests to discriminate samples with high titers of neutralizing antibodies (&gt;160) has been assessed by ROC curve analyses, Cohen&rsquo;s Kappa coefficient, and positive predictive agreement. The EUROIMMUN&reg; NeutraLISA assay displayed the best correlation with PRNT results (Pearson and Spearman coefficients equal to 0.660 and 0.784, respectively), as well as the ROC curve with the highest accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity (0.857, 0.889, and 0.829, respectively)