Deriving the respiratory sinus arrhythmia from the heartbeat time series using Empirical Mode Decomposition

Heart rate variability (HRV) is a well-known phenomenon whose characteristics are of great clinical relevance in pathophysiologic investigations. In particular, respiration is a powerful modulator of HRV contributing to the oscillations at highest frequency. Like almost all natural phenomena, HRV is the result of many nonlinearly interacting processes; therefore any linear analysis has the potential risk of underestimating, or even missing, a great amount of information content. Recently the technique of Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) has been proposed as a new tool for the analysis of nonlinear and nonstationary data. We applied EMD analysis to decompose the heartbeat intervals series, derived from one electrocardiographic (ECG) signal of 13 subjects, into their components in order to identify the modes associated with breathing. After each decomposition the mode showing the highest frequency and the corresponding respiratory signal were Hilbert transformed and the instantaneous phases extracted were then compared. The results obtained indicate a synchronization of order 1:1 between the two series proving the existence of phase and frequency coupling between the component associated with breathing and the respiratory signal itself in all subjects.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures. Will be published on "Chaos, Solitons and Fractals

Fertility and well-being in the italian regions

We analyse the association between fertility rates and well-being in the Italian regions in the period 2012-2017. Well-being is measured by the indicators of Equitable and Sustainable Well-being (BES), collected by ISTAT since 2013 with the aim of evaluating the economic, social and environmental development of the society through measurement of citizens’ life quality. We expect that the regions performing better in terms of well-being conditions are also those with the highest levels of fertility. Both graphical and panel data regression analyses support our main hypothesis, but also reveal that in different clusters of regions the intensity and direction of the relationship significantly change. Our results also stress the need of taking the different domains of well-being into account while explaining reproductive behaviour of resident population at territorial level

Fertility and territorial well-being in Italy .How is fertility related to social, economic and environmental quality?

We analyzed the association between fertility rates and well-being measured at the regional level. How does the gap between intended and realized fertility relate with other well-being indicators measured at the aggregate level in terms of social, economic, environmental conditions? We try to answer this question with reference to Italy in the period 2010-2017 through the analysis of the association between the regional fertility rates and a rich system of regional indicators measuring various aspects of the social, economic and environmental quality (Equitable and Sustainable Well-being or Benessere Equo e Sostenibile - BES, in Italian). The results show that in regions best performing in terms of economic conditions and of the functioning of public services as well as in terms of the quality of the educational system and of the environment, fertility is higher than the national average

Verde urbano e sviluppo sostenibile in Italia

Le politiche per la sostenibilità urbana sono fondamentali per raggiungere l’undicesimo Obiettivo di Sviluppo Sostenibile. Lo scopo di questa ricerca è misurare l’impegno delle città nel salvaguardare il loro patrimonio naturale e nel rendere inclusivi e accessibili gli spazi verdi urbani pubblici. Rispetto agli indicatori delle Nazioni Unite e dell’ISTAT, qui ne sono proposti altri che tengono conto delle azioni locali di istituzioni e associazioni di cittadini per la gestione, lo sviluppo e la tutela del verde urbano. Inoltre, sono introdotte misure di dotazione del verde per classi di popolazione fragile. Gli indicatori sono calcolati per i capoluoghi di Regione italiani utilizzando i più recenti dati ISTAT sul Verde Urbano, al fine di delineare una mappa della sostenibilità verde urbana in Italia.Urban sustainability policies are crucial to achieve the 11th Sustainable Development Goal. The aim of this research is to measure care devoted by cities in protecting their natural heritage and in making inclusive and accessible public urban green areas. Compared to indicators by the United Nations and ISTAT, here we propose others that take into account local actions promoted by institutions and citizens’ associations for management, development and protection of urban green. Moreover, we introduce some green’s endowment measures for fragile population classes. Indicators were applied to the Italian Regional capitals using the most recent ISTAT data, in order to trace a map of the urban green sustainability for Italy

From LTL and Limit-Deterministic B\"uchi Automata to Deterministic Parity Automata

Controller synthesis for general linear temporal logic (LTL) objectives is a challenging task. The standard approach involves translating the LTL objective into a deterministic parity automaton (DPA) by means of the Safra-Piterman construction. One of the challenges is the size of the DPA, which often grows very fast in practice, and can reach double exponential size in the length of the LTL formula. In this paper we describe a single exponential translation from limit-deterministic B\"uchi automata (LDBA) to DPA, and show that it can be concatenated with a recent efficient translation from LTL to LDBA to yield a double exponential, \enquote{Safraless} LTL-to-DPA construction. We also report on an implementation, a comparison with the SPOT library, and performance on several sets of formulas, including instances from the 2016 SyntComp competition

Interstitial pneumonia with autoimmune features: Why rheumatologist–pulmonologist collaboration is essential

In 2015 the European Respiratory Society (ERS) and the American Thoracic Society (ATS) “Task Force on Undifferentiated Forms of Connective Tissue Disease-associ-ated Interstitial Lung Disease” proposed classification criteria for a new research category defined as “Interstitial Pneumonia with Autoimmune Features” (IPAF), to uniformly de-fine patients with interstitial lung disease (ILD) and features of autoimmunity, without a definite connective tissue disease. These classification criteria were based on a variable combination of features obtained from three domains: a clinical domain consisting of extra-thoracic features, a serologic domain with specific autoantibodies, and a morphologic domain with imaging patterns, histopathological findings, or multicompartment in-volvement. Features suggesting a systemic vasculitis were excluded. Since publication of ERS/ATS IPAF research criteria, various retrospective studies have been published focusing on prevalence; clinical, morphological, and serological features; and prognosis of these patients showing a broad heterogeneity in the results. Recently, two prospective, cohort studies were performed, confirming the existence of some peculiarities for this clinical entity and the possible progression of IPAF to a defined connective tissue disease (CTD) in about 15% of cases. Moreover, a non-specific interstitial pneumonia pattern, an anti-nuclear antibody positivity, and a Raynaud phenomenon were the most common findings. In comparison with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), IPAF patients showed a better performance in pulmonary function tests and less necessity of oxygen delivery. However, at this stage of our knowledge, we believe that further prospective studies, possibly derived from multicenter cohorts and through randomized control trials, to further validate the proposed classification criteria are needed