Corso di formazione in "Medicina, Individuo, Società". Atti 2009

Il volume raccoglie gli atti del corso di formazione celebrato in Accademia delle Scienze Mediche di Palermo, dove sono state trattate tematiche di "Etica e Management in Sanità"

Local-Scale Weather Forecasts over a Complex Terrain in an Early Warning Framework: Performance Analysis for the Val d'Agri (Southern Italy) Case Study

Forecasting applications based on hourly meteorological predictions for weather variables are nowadays used in energy market operations, planning of gas and power supply, and renewable energy, among others. Available meteorological and climatological data, as well as critical thresholds of rainfall, may also have a key role in the hazard classification, related to slope instabilities of pipelines and critical infrastructures along routes. The present study concerns the performance of a weather forecast model in the framework of an early warning system (EWS) application, which supports the integrity management of oil and gas pipelines. This EWS has been applied on to a specific area: the Val d'Agri basin in the Basilicata region of Southern Italy, which is extensively affected by several landslides and floods. The hourly precipitation forecasts are provided by a dedicated meteorological model, the KALM-HD, using two different horizontal resolutions, 1.25 and 5 km, to analyze possible influences of the mesh grid size as well. On this area, several weather stations were specifically deployed to obtain observed data in a region where hydrogeological hazards are relevant for asset management. A comparison among observations and the KALM-HD scaled forecasts on six of these weather stations is presented to assess the model performance. Besides, precipitation, temperature, and wind speed are evaluated as well. The forecasting analysis is performed considering two years of data both on an overall and seasonal basis. Results show that the KALM-HD performs well with the 1.25 km grid, particularly on temperature and wind speed variables. Since weather stations can be gathered in two main sets depending on their positions, differences arise in the forecast quality of these two groups, related to orography and thermal effects, whose detection is difficult in the typical narrow valleys characterizing the area of study. This issue prevalently influences temperatures and local winds, which, these latter, are generally underestimated, while precipitation is mainly driven by synoptic circulation and its interaction with mesoscale meteorological features

Discrete Nonlinear Schrodinger Equations with arbitrarily high order nonlinearities

A class of discrete nonlinear Schrodinger equations with arbitrarily high order nonlinearities is introduced. These equations are derived from the same Hamiltonian using different Poisson brackets and include as particular cases the saturable discrete nonlinear Schrodinger equation and the Ablowitz-Ladik equation. As a common property, these equations possess three kinds of exact analytical stationary solutions for which the Peierls-Nabarro barrier is zero. Several properties of these solutions, including stability, discrete breathers and moving solutions, are investigated

Quantum signatures of breather-breather interactions

The spectrum of the Quantum Discrete Nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation on a periodic 1D lattice shows some interesting detailed band structure which may be interpreted as the quantum signature of a two-breather interaction in the classical case. We show that this fine structure can be interpreted using degenerate perturbation theory.Comment: 4 pages, 4 fig

Analysis of gut microbiota in rheumatoid arthritis patients. Disease-related dysbiosis and modifications induced by etanercept

A certain number of studies were carried out to address the question of how dysbiosis could affect the onset and development of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), but little is known about the reciprocal influence between microbiota composition and immunosuppressive drugs, and how this interaction may have an impact on the clinical outcome. The aim of this study was to characterize the intestinal microbiota in a groups of RA patients treatment-naïve, under methotrexate, and/or etanercept (ETN). Correlations between the gut microbiota composition and validated immunological and clinical parameters of disease activity were also evaluated. In the current study, a 16S analysis was employed to explore the gut microbiota of 42 patients affected by RA and 10 healthy controls. Disease activity score on 28 joints (DAS-28), erythrocyte sedimentation rate, C-reactive protein, rheumatoid factor, anti-cyclic citrullinated peptides, and dietary and smoking habits were assessed. The composition of the gut microbiota in RA patients free of therapy is characterized by several abnormalities compared to healthy controls. Gut dysbiosis in RA patients is associated with different serological and clinical parameters; in particular, the phylum of Euryarchaeota was directly correlated to DAS and emerged as an independent risk factor. Patients under treatment with ETN present a partial restoration of a beneficial microbiota. The results of our study confirm that gut dysbiosis is a hallmark of the disease, and shows, for the first time, that the anti-tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) ETN is able to modify microbial communities, at least partially restoring a beneficial microbiota

Capacitive mixing for the extraction of energy from salinity differences: Survey of experimental results and electrochemical models

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The behavioral parenting interventions (BPT) for support and mandatory integrative therapy for children and adolescents affected by disruptive behavioural disorders: A brief review

The behavioral parenting interventions (BPT), commonly abbreviated as parent training, is a program conducted by an expert with the specific purpose of improving or modifying parental practices in order to promote the child's well-being, increasing parenting skills in the daily management of the child, problem solving and reducing the level of parenting and family stress. BPT presents many positive effects on children or adolescents affected by neurodevelopmental disorder such as ADHD, autism and cognitive dysfunction but BPT appears to improve also other proximal outcomes such as parenting competence and parenting stress

Use of a novel sharp-tip, J-shaped guidewire to facilitate transseptal catheterization

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