42 research outputs found
Land use inventory as framework for environmental accounting: an application in Italy
Land use inventories are sound measures to provide information on the area
occupied by different land use or land cover types and their changes, although
less widespread than traditional mapping; as such, they are distinctively wellestablished
tools for generating statistics on the state and the dynamics of land
use in the European Union. Italy has recently set up a land use inventory system
(IUTI) as a key instrument for accounting removals and emissions of greenhouse
gases (GHG) associated to land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF)
activities elected by Italy under the Kyoto Protocol. IUTI adopts a statistical
sampling procedure to estimate the area covered by LULUCF land use
categories in Italy, and associated uncertainty estimates. Estimates of land use
have been so far processed for the period 1990-2008 and highlight three interlinked
land use change patterns in Italy: (i) increase in forest land for a total
uptake of 1.7% of the Italian territory; forest cover estimates, with a standard
error of 0.1%, indicate an annual increase of forestland higher over the period
1990-2000 (32 901 ha year-1) than in 2000-2008 (22 857 ha year-1); surprisingly,
also a significant deforestation rate is observed (-7000 ha year-1), due to
forest land conversion mainly into artificial areas; (ii) consumption of arable
land (-4.2% of the Italian territory) primarily due to land uptake by urban areas
and to conversions to permanent crops (mainly orchards and vineyards); (iii)
urban sprawl uptakes 1.6% of the Italian territory in this period, with a total
coverage of settlements reaching 7.1% of total land surface in Italy in 2008.
Overall, land use dynamic results in land uptake by forest land is of the same
magnitude of land uptake by urban areas, but the effects of these processes on
GHG removals (by forest sinks) and emissions (by urban areas) is expected to
be significantly different. In a broader perspective, IUTI methodology, by
providing reliable estimates and well-defined levels of statistical uncertainty
for assessing stocks and flows of land use at national level, can be further implemented
to frame other key questions for sustainable development policies,
like the set up of environmental-economic accounting systems.L'articolo è disponibile sul sito dell'editore www.sisef.i
Comparison of approaches for reporting forest fire-related biomass loss and greenhouse gas emissions in southern Europe
Wildfires are the most common disturbances in Mediterranean forest ecosystems that cause significant
emissions of greenhouse gases as a result of biomass burning. Despite this, there is reasonably high uncertainty regarding
the actual fraction of burnt biomass and the related CO2 and non-CO2 gas emissions released during forest fires. The aim of
this paper is to compare existing methodologies adopted in the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory reports of five of the
most fire-affected countries of southern Europe (Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, France) with those proposed in the
literature, to operationally estimate forest fire emissions, and to discuss current perspectives on reducing uncertainties in
reporting activities for the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry sector under the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. Five selected approaches have been experimentally applied for the
estimation of burnt biomass in forest fire events that occurred in Italy in the period 2008–2010. Approaches based on
nominal rates of biomass loss can lead to an overly conservative value or, conversely, to underestimation of the fraction of
burnt biomass. Uncertainties can be greatly reduced by an operational method able to assess inter-annual and local
variability of fire effects on fire-affected forest types.
L'articolo è disponibile sul sito dell'editore http://www.publish.csiro.a
In vivo antimicrobial activity of 0.6% povidone-iodine eye drops in patients undergoing intravitreal injections: a prospective study
To investigate the antimicrobial activity of a preservative-free 0.6% povidone-iodine eye drop as an antiseptic procedure in decreasing the conjunctival bacterial load in eyes scheduled for intravitreal treatment and to compare its efficacy to the untreated fellow eye used as the control group. Prospective cohort analysis in which 208 patients received preservative-free 0.6% povidone-iodine eye drops three times a day for three days before intravitreal injection. Before and after the prophylactic treatment, a conjunctival swab was collected from both the study eye and the untreated contralateral eye, used as control. The swab was inoculated on different culture media and the colony-forming units were counted. Bacteria and fungi were identified by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Treatment with 0.6% povidone-iodine eye drops significantly reduced the conjunctival bacterial load from baseline (p < 0.001 for blood agar and p < 0.001 for chocolate agar) with an eradication rate of 80%. The most commonly isolated pathogen at each time-point and in both groups was coagulase-negative Staphylococci, isolated in 84% of the positive cultures. The study provides evidence about the effectiveness of 0.6% povidone-iodine eye drops treatment in reducing the conjunctival bacterial load in eyes scheduled for intravitreal treatment
Extending large-scale forest inventories to assess urban forests
Urban areas are continuously expanding
today, extending their influence on an increasingly
large proportion of woods and trees located
in or nearby urban and urbanizing areas, the socalled
urban forests. Although these forests have
the potential for significantly improving the quality
the urban environment and the well-being of
the urban population, data to quantify the extent
and characteristics of urban forests are still lacking
or fragmentary on a large scale. In this regard,
an expansion of the domain of multipurpose forest
inventories like National Forest Inventories
(NFIs) towards urban forests would be required.
To this end, it would be convenient to exploit the
same sampling scheme applied in NFIs to assess
the basic features of urban forests. This paper considers
approximately unbiased estimators of abundance
and coverage of urban forests, together with
estimators of the corresponding variances, which
can be achieved from the first phase of most largescale
forest inventories. A simulation study is carried
out in order to check the performance of the
considered estimators under various situations involving
the spatial distribution of the urban forests
over the study area. An application is worked out
on the data from the Italian NFI.L'articolo è disponibile sul sito dell'editore www.springer.co
Prevalence, sensitivity and specificity of antibodies against carbamylated proteins in a monocentric cohort of patients with rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune rheumatic diseases
Antibodies against carbamylated proteins (anti-CarP) have been recently identified in the sera of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The objective of the study was to evaluate the prevalence, sensitivity and specificity of anti-CarP compared to anti-citrullinated peptide antibodies (ACPA) and rheumatoid factor (RF), replicating the existing data in a large cohort of Italian patients with RA and extending the evaluation to other autoimmune rheumatic diseases (AIRDs)
CD4 T lymphocyte autophagy is upregulated in the salivary glands of primary Sjögren’s syndrome patients and correlates with focus score and disease activity
Background: Primary Sjögren’s syndrome (pSS) is a common chronic autoimmune disease characterized by
lymphocytic infiltration of exocrine glands and peripheral lymphocyte perturbation. In the current study, we
aimed to investigate the possible pathogenic implication of autophagy in T lymphocytes in patients with pSS.
Methods: Thirty consecutive pSS patients were recruited together with 20 patients affected by sicca syndrome a
nd/or chronic sialoadenitis and 30 healthy controls. Disease activity and damage were evaluated according to SS
disease activity index, EULAR SS disease activity index, and SS disease damage index. T lymphocytes were analyzed
for the expression of autophagy-specific markers by biochemical, molecular, and histological assays in peripheral
blood and labial gland biopsies. Serum interleukin (IL)-23 and IL-21 levels were quantified by enzyme-linked
immunosorbent assay.
Results: Our study provides evidence for the first time that autophagy is upregulated in CD4+ T lymphocyte salivary
glands from pSS patients. Furthermore, a statistically significant correlation was detected between lymphocyte
autophagy levels, disease activity, and damage indexes. We also found a positive correlation between autophagy
enhancement and the increased salivary gland expression of IL-21 and IL-23, providing a further link between innate
and adaptive immune responses in pSS.
Conclusions: These findings suggest that CD4+ T lymphocyte autophagy could play a key role in pSS pathogenesis.
Additionally, our data highlight the potential exploitation of T cell autophagy as a biomarker of disease activity and
provide new ground to verify the therapeutic implications of autophagy as an innovative drug target in pSS
Hand-held echocardiography: added value in clinical cardiological assessment
BACKGROUND: The ultrasonic industry has recently produced echocardiographic Hand Held Devices (miniaturized, compact and battery-equipped echocardiographic systems). Their potential usefulness has been successfully assessed in a wide range of clinical conditions. The aim of the study was to verify if the routine use of a basic model of echocardiographic Hand Held Device (HHD) could be an important diagnostic tool during outpatient cardiologic consulting or in non-cardiologic hospital sections. METHODS: 87 consecutive patients were included in this study; they underwent routine physical examination, resting ECG and echocardiographic evaluation using a basic model of HHD performed by trained echocardiographists; the cardiologist, whenever possible, formulated a diagnosis. The percentage of subjects in whom the findings were judged reasonably adequate for final diagnostic and therapeutic conclusions was used to quantify the "conclusiveness" of HHD evaluation. Successively, all patients underwent a second echocardiographic evaluation, by an examiner with similar echocardiographic experience, performed using a Standard Echo Device (SED). The agreement between the first and the second echocardiographic exam was also assessed. RESULTS: Mean examination time was 6.7 ± 1.5 min. using HHD vs. 13.6 ± 2.4 min. using SED. The echocardiographic examination performed using HHD was considered satisfactory in 74/87 patients (85.1% conclusiveness). Among the 74 patients for whom the examination was conclusive, the diagnosis was concordant with that obtained with the SED examination in 62 cases (83.8% agreement). CONCLUSION: HHD may generally allow a reliable cardiologic basic evaluation of outpatient or subjects admitted to non-cardiologic sections, more specifically in particular subgroups of patients, with a gain in terms of time, shortening patient waiting lists and reducing healthy costs