Three Bead Rotating Chain model shows universality in the stretching of proteins

We introduce a model of proteins in which all of the key atoms in the protein backbone are accounted for, thus extending the Freely Rotating Chain model. We use average bond lengths and average angles from the Protein Databank as input parameters, leaving the number of residues as a single variable. The model is used to study the stretching of proteins in the entropic regime. The results of our Monte Carlo simulations are found to agree well with experimental data, suggesting that the force extension plot is universal and does not depend on the side chains or primary structure of proteins

High-resolution imaging of basin-bounding normal faults in the Southern Apennines seismic belt (Italy) by traveltime and frequency-domain full-waveform tomography

We apply a two-step seismic imaging flow by combined first-arrival traveltime and frequency-domain waveform tomographies to dense wide aperture data collected in the Val d’Agri basin (southern Italy). A large wavelength Vp model determined by first-arrival traveltime tomography is used as a starting model for waveform tomography. The multiscale waveform tomography consisting of successive inversion of increasing frequencies allows to progressively reconstruct the short wavelengths of the velocity model, providing valuable information on the Quaternary basin and on range-bounding normal-faulting systems

DMAIC Approach for the Reduction of Healthcare-Associated Infections in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the University Hospital of Naples ‘Federico II’

Improvements in the obstetrical and neonatal management have allowed children to survive. These enhancements have showed, anyway, a general increased incidence of healthcare-associated infections, one of the most influent causes of morbidity and mortality in neonatal intensive care units. The aim of this paper is to suggest corrective measures to reduce sentinel germs colonization and identify the relationships between bacteria colonization with the number of procedures and the length of hospital stay. The Lean Six Sigma methodology was used to tackle this issue using a tailored Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control problem-solving strategy. An increased number of procedures and an extended length of hospital stay demonstrated a statistically significant influence on newborns’ possibility to be infected by sentinel germs. These findings could guide the clinical staff to improve the management of neonates in neonatal intensive care units reducing the number of infected patients, their length of hospital stay and the costs for the hospital. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG

Air quality biomonitoring through Olea europaea L.: The study case of “Land of pyres”

The “Land of pyres”, namely “La Terra dei Fuochi”, is an area of Campania region (South-Italy), highly inhabited and comprises between the Provinces of Naples and Caserta, sadly known worldwide for the criminal activities related to the illegal waste disposal and burning. These fires, concomitantly with traffic emissions, might be the source of potential toxic element (PTE) dangerous for the human health and causing pathologies. In the framework of Correlation Health–Environment project, funded by the Campania region, eight municipalities (of area “Land of pyres”) and three remote sites have been bio-monitored using the olive (Olea europaea L.) plants as biomonitors. Leaves of olive plants were collected in each assayed municipality and the concentration of 11 metal(loid)s was evaluated by means of ICP-OES. Our findings revealed that the air of these municipalities was limitedly contaminated by PTE; in fact, only Sb, Al and Mn were detected in the olive leaves collected in some of the assayed municipalities and showed a high enrichment factors (EC) manly due, probably, to the vehicular traffic emissions. Furthermore, the concentrations of the other assayed PTEs were lower than those of Sb, Al and Mn. For these reasons we suppose that their emissions in the troposphere have been and are limited, and they mainly have a crustal origin. Even if our data are very comforting for those urban area, regarded by many as one of the most contaminated one in Italy, a great environment care, in any case, is always needed

A Hybrid Analytic Hierarchy Process and Likert Scale Approach for the Quality Assessment of Medical Education Programs

The quality assessment of training courses is of utmost importance in the medical education field to improve the quality of the training. This work proposes a hybrid multicriteria decision-making approach based on two methodologies, a Likert scale (LS) and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), for the quality assessment of medical education programs. On one hand, the qualitative LS method was adopted to estimate the degree of consensus on specific topics; on the other hand, the quantitative AHP technique was employed to prioritize parameters involved in complex decision-making problems. The approach was validated in a real scenario for evaluating healthcare training activities carried out at the Centre of Biotechnology of the National Hospital A.O.R.N. “A. Cardarelli” of Naples (Italy). The rational combination of the two methodologies proved to be a promising decision-making tool for decision makers to identify those aspects of a medical education program characterized by a lower user satisfaction degree (revealed by the LS) and a higher priority degree (revealed by the AHP), potentially suggesting strategies to increase the quality of the service provided and to reduce the waste of resources. The results show how this hybrid approach can provide decision makers with helpful information to select the most important characteristics of the delivered education program and to possibly improve the weakest ones, thus enhancing the whole quality of the training courses

A Fuzzy Inference System for the Assessment of Indoor Air Quality in an Operating Room to Prevent Surgical Site Infection

Indoor air quality in hospital operating rooms is of great concern for the prevention of surgical site infections (SSI). A wide range of relevant medical and engineering literature has shown that the reduction in air contamination can be achieved by introducing a more efficient set of controls of HVAC systems and exploiting alarms and monitoring systems that allow having a clear report of the internal air status level. In this paper, an operating room air quality monitoring system based on a fuzzy decision support system has been proposed in order to help hospital staff responsible to guarantee a safe environment. The goal of the work is to reduce the airborne contamination in order to optimize the surgical environment, thus preventing the occurrence of SSI and reducing the related mortality rate. The advantage of FIS is that the evaluation of the air quality is based on easy-to-find input data established on the best combination of parameters and level of alert. Compared to other literature works, the proposed approach based on the FIS has been designed to take into account also the movement of clinicians in the operating room in order to monitor unauthorized paths. The test of the proposed strategy has been executed by exploiting data collected by ad-hoc sensors placed inside a real operating block during the experimental activities of the “Bacterial Infections Post Surgery” Project (BIPS). Results show that the system is capable to return risk values with extreme precision

Analisi della risposta sismica di un edificio campione nel Comune di Ariano Irpino (AV)

Nella pratica ingegneristica vengono usate correlazioni derivate da regressioni statistiche tra numero dei piani degli edifici e frequenze di risonanza. Tuttavia la discrepanza tra comportamento reale e valori aspettati può essere talvolta significativa, e solo l’acquisizione di dati sperimentali consente di comprendere il reale comportamento dinamico di una struttura. La sperimentazione, in situazioni anche complesse, e la raccolta di nuovi dati possono essere molto importanti nel campo dell’ingegneria strutturale. In questo articolo vengono presentati i risultati del monitoraggio sismico effettuato su un edificio campione in muratura (il municipio di Ariano Irpino), tipologia costruttiva largamente diffusa tra gli edifici pubblici strategici (ad esempio scuole, caserme ed ospedali). Sono state utilizzate 7 stazioni sismologiche a sei canali equipaggiate con sismometri ed accelerometri. I dati sismici sono stati acquisiti in modalità continua, in punti strategici della struttura, su diversi livelli, dal gennaio 2006 a dicembre 2007. Sono stati selezionati una ventina di terremoti di magnitudo bassa o intermedia (1.5 ≤ M ≤ 4.8) avvenuti a distanze epicentrali variabili da 4 a 116 km. Le registrazioni sono state analizzate sia mediante la tecnica dei rapporti spettrali rispetto alla base dell’edificio sia calcolando i rapporti spettrali tra componente orizzontale e verticale di ogni sensore. L’analisi svolta ha consentito di evidenziare numerose frequenze di vibrazione dell’edificio. Mediante simulazioni numeriche su un modello tridimensionale rappresentativo della struttura in esame è stato possibile associare i picchi in frequenza ai modi propri in campo lineare. In particolare, sono stati ben identificati i primi 3 modi di vibrazione (due flessionali ed uno rotazionale)

Detecting young, slow‐slipping active faults by geologic and multidisciplinary high‐resolution geophysical investigations: A case study from the Apennine seismic belt, Italy.

The Southern Apennines range of Italy presents significant challenges for active fault detection due to the complex structural setting inherited from previous contractional tectonics, coupled to very recent (Middle Pleistocene) onset and slow slip rates of active normal faults. As shown by the Irpinia Fault, source of a M6.9 earthquake in 1980, major faults might have small cumulative deformation and subtle geomorphic expression. A multidisciplinary study including morphological-tectonic, paleoseismological, and geophysical investigations has been carried out across the extensional Monte Aquila Fault, a poorly known structure that, similarly to the Irpinia Fault, runs across a ridge and is weakly expressed at the surface by small scarps/warps. The joint application of shallow reflection profiling, seismic and electrical resistivity tomography, and physical logging of cored sediments has proved crucial for proper fault detection because performance of each technique was markedly different and very dependent on local geologic conditions. Geophysical data clearly (1) image a fault zone beneath suspected warps, (2) constrain the cumulative vertical slip to only 25–30 m, (3) delineate colluvial packages suggesting coseismic surface faulting episodes. Paleoseismological investigations document at least three deformation events during the very Late Pleistocene (<20 ka) and Holocene. The clue to surface-rupturing episodes, together with the fault dimension inferred by geological mapping and microseismicity distribution, suggest a seismogenic potential of M6.3. Our study provides the second documentation of a major active fault in southern Italy that, as the Irpinia Fault, does not bound a large intermontane basin, but it is nested within the mountain range, weakly modifying the landscape. This demonstrates that standard geomorphological approaches are insufficient to define a proper framework of active faults in this region. More in general, our applications have wide methodological implications for shallow imaging in complex terrains because they clearly illustrate the benefits of combining electrical resistivity and seismic techniques. The proposed multidisciplinary methodology can be effective in regions characterized by young and/or slow slipping active faults.PublishedB113073.2. Tettonica attivaJCR Journalpartially_ope

The Vallo di Diano Range-Bounding Fault-System (Southern Italy): New Evidence of Recent Activity From High-Resolution Seismic Profiling

The Vallo di Diano is the largest intermountain basin in the Southern Apennines (Italy). The basin evolution was controlled by the Quaternary activity of a range-bounding, SW-dipping normal fault system located to the east (Vallo di Diano Fault System, VDFS). Geological and oil industry data define the sin-sedimentary activity of the VDFS up to the Middle Pleistocene. However, commercial profiles do not resolve the shallower, eastern portion of the basin, due to strong lateral heterogeneities and unfavourable surface conditions. Therefore, Late Pleistocene-Holocene activity of the VDFS and its seismogenic potential are still uncertain. To better constrain the shallow structure of the basin, we performed four high-resolution seismic surveys, along its eastern side, where slope breccias and fans cover the Mesozoic carbonate bedrock and bury the VDFS. We also investigated some NW-trending flexures affecting Late Pleistocene fans, that we had previously detected and dubitatively ascribed to recent faulting. Seismic data were acquired with a dense wide-aperture geometry. Two high-resolution (HR) NE-trending profiles, about 1.5 km long, were collected using respectively 5 m and 10 m spaced receivers and sources. Two very high-resolution (VHR) NE-trending profiles, 400 and 350 m long, with densely spaced sources (4 m) and receivers (2 m) were also collected. HR profiling was aimed at imaging alluvial fan thickness and morphology of the underlying carbonate bedrock. VHR surveys targeted the flexures and their possible origin. All lines were acquired with a HR vibroseis source, except for the shortest profile, where we used a buffalo-gun, better suited for very near-surface imaging (z < 50 m depth). Seismic imaging consists of reflectivity images obtained by CDP-processing of reflection data complemented by Vp images obtained by multi-scale seismic tomography. The stack sections illuminated the basin down to 0.4-0.5 s TWT and reveal an array of high-angle, generally SW-dipping faults dissecting the bedrock and the alluvial fans. Faulting created accommodation space in the hanging-wall and displaced the different fan generations. Clear reflection truncations in the stack-sections correspond to significant Vp lateral changes in the tomographic images. VHR tomography is well defined along the shortest line down to 40 m depth, where two steps within slope breccias are visible. Moreover, two low-velocity wedges (colluvial packages) are imaged in the near surface (5-20 m depth). These data support recent faulting consistently with surface geomorphic features. We interpret these fault structures as splays of the range bounding master fault. Comparison with commercial reflection profiles nearby reveals a great improvement in seismic imaging achieved by HR surveys, which allow a detailed seismostratigraphic analysis of the basin.UnpublishedSan Francisco (CA), Moscone West, Howard Street3.2. Tettonica attivaope