State of the art of technology in the food sector value chain towards the IoT

The food sector is challenged to provide safe and qualitative food to consumers at affordable price and to feed appropriately increasing population using natural resources, like soil and water, in a sustainable way. Consumers awareness about food origin, nutritional and wellness properties, attention to processed meals ingredients, due to health issues, and requests of new customized portions formats and receipts, related to habits changes, are also demanding trends in the sector. Several technologies can help to address those responsibilities of efficient, safe and environmental respectful production, and strict communication and connection with the consumers. This paper provides a state of the art of smart and other emerging technologies framed in the whole food supply-chain, to create a picture of the added value that the technology can bring to the sector. Moreover, the evolutions towards the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm adoption are presented

Additive Manufacturing applications within food industry: An actual overview and future opportunities

The food sector is one of the major economic sectors in Europe and beyond and produces nutrition for the world population. Food industry has a unique role in all countries economy as it is essential to people lives. In Europe it is the largest manufacturing sector in terms of value added, turnover and employment. On the other hand, several worldwide economic-social-technological trends are pushing organizations to embrace innovation as an integrated part of their corporate strategy, and to offer customized products tailored to market targets need. Embracing innovation became strategic in order to create a sustainable competitive advantage and to stay ahead of the competition in every industry, even in food one. Today, among all the most cutting-edge technologies, Additive Manufacturing (AM) has the potential to develop business paradigms to face an ever changing demand. AM comprises a group of technologies whose initial inception occurred over thirty years, characterized by a layer upon layer production directly from Computer-Aided Design (CAD) data. Over the past few years AM development has increased exponentially and has expanded to include new areas of research. Within all the innovative applications, one of the most promising under respect of social impacts and progress, has proved to be the technological application in the food industry. This scientific work aims at finding out potential touching points between additive manufacturing technologies and food market, either consumer and industrial, focusing on the actual and future applications

State of the art of sustainability in 3D food printing

3D Printing or Additive Manufacturing (AM) has become an emerging trend in global production area with a wide range of application fields. The increasing number of the concepts indicates the opportunity to address the needs and challenges of AM in both food industry and global scale. The technological, resource and industrial aspects of 3D Food Printing have the potentialities to enable to ‘print’ highly customized food, not just about the shape, but also about the structure, texture, flavor, taste, nutritional value, new edible alternatives and specific formulations for different choices, where the individual meals become possible. Anyway, the increasing importance of global concerns push towards the consideration if the value of the printed meal and 3D Printing itself can be sustainable and how. Whereas several studies claim to address the sustainability of 3Dfood printing, it is not clear yet what is the state of the art of 3D Food Printing within the sustainability intersection of economic, environmental and social pillars. Starting from the presentation of the available current approaches and practices, the paper provides a holistic outlook of the topic, shows the parameters that impact the sustainability of the technology and propose the improvements to be applied for completing the sustainability view and to achieve the 3D food printing full potential

Lean Innovative Connected Vessels (LINCOLN)

The European vessel industry is traditionally leader in the sector. In the last decades, to stay competitive worldwide, it has repositioned on the high-end market, characterized by specialized design and production with high complexity and technological content. This implies new challenges in complex product creation with reduced costs, fast design and optimal production time. This is more valid for SMEs and for emerging maritime sectors, where traditional vessels can’t comply with their requirements. A comprehensive approach starting from early vessels design stages can help to overcome those issues. In this paper is proposed an integrated solution based on lean design methodology, IoT (Internet of Things) tools, HPC (High Performance Computing) simulation and sustainability methods, such as LCA (Life cycle Cost Analysis) and LCC (Life Cycle Cost). This is validated towards three specific industrial cases, related to small and medium vessels and mainly coastal activities. The adoption of this approach along the maritime value chain can also foster the introduction of new business models

Maritime 4.0 – Opportunities in Digitalization and Advanced Manufacturing for Vessel Development

Maritime vessels are complex systems that generate and require the utilization of large amounts of data for maximum efficiency. The successful utilization of sensors and IoT in the industry requires a forward-thinking approach to leverage the benefits of Industry 4.0 in a more comprehensive manner. While processes and manufacturing processes can be improved and advanced through such efforts, in order the industry to be able to benefit from data generation, integrated approaches are necessary. In order to develop truly value-added vessels, we introduce a descriptive approach for understanding Maritime 4.0

Endovascular Bailout Repair After Intraprocedural Thrombosis of a Bifurcated Unimodular Stent-graft During Aorto-iliac Revascularization in a Patient with Sars CoV-2 Infection

: To describe a case of endovascular bailout strategy during stent-graft thrombotic complication in an endovascular procedure for complex TASC II D aortoiliac lesion. A 77-year-old patient was admitted at our institution with bilateral lower limb rest pain due to aortoiliac obstructive disease in a previous aortobifemoral bypass grafting with an asymptomatic Sars-CoV-2 infection. We planned an anatomic reconstruction of the aortoiliac segment with an unimodular bifurcated stent-graft. During the procedure, we observed a preocclusive thrombosis of the aortic portion requiring endovascular thrombectomy with vacuum assisted system followed by a successfully kissing-stent endolining. The post-operative period was uneventful and patient was discharged on the 14th post-operative day. Endovascular thrombectomy may be a helpful strategy during thrombotic complication of complex reconstructions of obstructive aortoiliac disease avoiding surgical conversion to laparotomy

Sonographic risk stratification systems for thyroid nodules as rule-out tests in older adults

Ultrasonographic risk-stratification systems (RSS), including various Thyroid Imaging Reporting and Data Systems (TIRADS), were proposed to improve reporting and reduce the number of fine-needle aspiration biopsies. However, age might be a confounder since some suspicious ultrasonographic features lack specificity in elderly patients. We aimed to investigate whether the diagnostic performance of the RSS varied between age groups. All patients consecutively referred for thyroid biopsy between November 1, 2015, and March 10, 2020, were included. The malignancy risk of each nodule was estimated according to five RSS: the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists/American College of Endocrinology/Associazione Medici Endocrinologi guidelines, the American College of Radiology (ACR) TIRADS, the American Thyroid Association guidelines, the European TIRADS, and the Korean TIRADS. Overall, 818 nodules (57 malignant) were evaluated. The malignancy rate was higher in patients ≤ 65 years (8.1%) than in patients > 65 years (3.8%; p = 0.02). All RSS confirmed a significant discriminative performance in both age groups, with a negative predictive value of 100% in patients > 65 years, although specificity was lower in older patients. The ACR TIRADS was the best performing in both age groups. RSS could avoid a sizable number of biopsies when applied as rule-out tests in elderly patients