Near real time regional moment tensor estimation using italian broadband stations

Since 2002, the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) in Rome has started the installation of a high quality regional broadband network throughout the Italian territory. Up today, the network consists of 125 stations equipped with 40 s natural period instruments. The dense station coverage allows for the implementation of real-time regional moment tensor (MT) estimation procedures such as that proposed by Dreger and Helmberger (1993). The automatic MT algorithm uses real-time broadband waveforms continuously telemetered to INGV, and it is triggered for events with magnitude greater than Ml 3.5. This is the lowermost value for which we have found it possible to obtain reliable MT determination in the frequency band used in the inversion. The automatic solution is available within about 3-5 minutes after the earthquake location. Each solution has an assigned quality factor dependent on the number of the station used in the inversion, and the godness of fit between synthetic and observed data. MT is published on the web after revision by a seismologist. Efforts are also made to evaluate MT solutions for earthquakes occurring in Italy and neighboring regions in the last years. The results are compared to those obtained from application of other moment tensor methods. It is always found a good agreement between the newly determined solutions and those from other methods. Overall, fast and accurate moment tensor solutions are an important ingredient when attempting to estimate the recorded ground shaking. Overall, in Italy, earthquakes in the magnitude range 3.5 – 5 are very common; the availability of their focal mechanisms allows the mapping of the principal stress field axes leading to a better understanding of the ongoing tectonics

A Microfluidic Platform for Cavitation-Enhanced Drug Delivery.

An endothelial-lined blood vessel model is obtained in a PDMS (Polydimethylsiloxane) microfluidic system, where vascular endothelial cells are grown under physiological shear stress, allowing -like maturation. This experimental model is employed for enhanced drug delivery studies, aimed at characterising the increase in endothelial permeability upon microbubble-enhanced ultrasound-induced (USMB) cavitation. We developed a multi-step protocol to couple the optical and the acoustic set-ups, thanks to a 3D-printed insonation chamber, provided with direct optical access and a support for the US transducer. Cavitation-induced interendothelial gap opening is then analysed using a customised code that quantifies gap area and the relative statistics. We show that exposure to US in presence of microbubbles significantly increases endothelial permeability and that tissue integrity completely recovers within 45 min upon insonation. This protocol, along with the versatility of the microfluidic platform, allows to quantitatively characterise cavitation-induced events for its potential employment in clinics

Evidences on overweight of regular blood donors in a center of Southern Italy

Objective: Smoking, unhealthy diet and obesity, sedentary behavior and inability to maintain adequate exercise have significant consequences for several chronic disorders. Blood centers can play a public health role in obesity surveillance and interventions. The purpose study was to evaluate the health status of the blood donors by monitoring the nutritional habits and lifestyle. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional face-to-face questionnaire was developed. It included a 41 item dietary assessment, reporting semi-quantitative food frequency, dietary behavior and questions on self-rated health status. Donors were regular repeat blood donors, eligible to donate. Results: Of the 2468 blood donors enrolled between July 2017 and January 2018, 1390 were repeat donors. Only 205 agreed to respond to the questionnaire. Data showed that donors followed mainly a Mediterranean diet and had more awareness to lifestyle, women more than men, in comparison with general population. The prevalence of overweight was found 50.7% in men and 16.9% in women. Conclusions: Overweight and obesity are common among regular blood donors and it is more frequent in men than women. The female blood donors seem to be characterized by better knowledge on the relationship between lifestyle and health, and by a better “putting into practice” of the information possessed

Nanocarriers for topical delivery of resveratrol.

Purpose: The aim of the present work was to develop a nanocarrier-based formulation for topical delivery of resveratrol. Methods: Trans-resveratrol (t-res) was encapsulated in liposomes, ethosomes or transferosomes, by a modified hand-shaking method followed by extrusion. All the formulations were characterised in terms of mean diameter, size distribution (I.P.), t-res loading, t-res stability upon encapsulation during storage. The nanocarriers containing t-res were then introduced in cellulose-based gel to allow their final administration on the skin and the viscoelastic properties of the resulting formulation were investigated. Finally, we studied the inhibition of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in human keratinocyte (HaCaT) cell line stimulated with H2O2 for 24 h and then incubated with the t-res containing nanocarriers. Results: All the t-res containing carriers were characterised by a very high (close to 100%) encapsulation efficiency, a negligible t-res release at 4°C and stability of resveratrol in its trans form. The carriers only slightly influenced the viscoelastic characteristics of cellulose-based gels. Nanocarriers encapsulating t-res reduced, in a concentration-dependent manner, ROS production induced by H2O2 and this effect was higher when using t-res-encapsulating nanocarrier, with the higher effect observed in the case of ethosomes. Conclusions: In this work nanocarriers with high encapsulation efficiency, high physical stability and negligible t-res release during storage at 4°C were prepared. To allow their final administration on the skin, the nanocarrier can be easilisy loaded in cellulose-based gels without altering its rheological properties. Moreover, the use of t-res-encapsulating ethosomes led to an efficient antioxidant activity. Further ex vivo and in vivo studies will clarify the role of the different carrier when administered on the skin

Pediatric Injury Surveillance From Uncoded Emergency Department Admission Records in Italy: Machine Learning-Based Text-Mining Approach

Background: Unintentional injury is the leading cause of death in young children. Emergency department (ED) diagnoses are a useful source of information for injury epidemiological surveillance purposes. However, ED data collection systems often use free-text fields to report patient diagnoses. Machine learning techniques (MLTs) are powerful tools for automatic text classification. The MLT system is useful to improve injury surveillance by speeding up the manual free-text coding tasks of ED diagnoses. Objective: This research aims to develop a tool for automatic free-text classification of ED diagnoses to automatically identify injury cases. The automatic classification system also serves for epidemiological purposes to identify the burden of pediatric injuries in Padua, a large province in the Veneto region in the Northeast Italy. Methods: The study includes 283, 468 pediatric admissions between 2007 and 2018 to the Padova University Hospital ED, a large referral center in Northern Italy. Each record reports a diagnosis by free text. The records are standard tools for reporting patient diagnoses. An expert pediatrician manually classified a randomly extracted sample of approximately 40, 000 diagnoses. This study sample served as the gold standard to train an MLT classifier. After preprocessing, a document-term matrix was created. The machine learning classifiers, including decision tree, random forest, gradient boosting method (GBM), and support vector machine (SVM), were tuned by 4-fold cross-validation. The injury diagnoses were classified into 3 hierarchical classification tasks, as follows: injury versus noninjury (task A), intentional versus unintentional injury (task B), and type of unintentional injury (task C), according to the World Health Organization classification of injuries. Results: The SVM classifier achieved the highest performance accuracy (94.14%) in classifying injury versus noninjury cases (task A). The GBM method produced the best results (92% accuracy) for the unintentional and intentional injury classification task (task B). The highest accuracy for the unintentional injury subclassification (task C) was achieved by the SVM classifier. The SVM, random forest, and GBM algorithms performed similarly against the gold standard across different tasks. Conclusions: This study shows that MLTs are promising techniques for improving epidemiological surveillance, allowing for the automatic classification of pediatric ED free-text diagnoses. The MLTs revealed a suitable classification performance, especially for general injuries and intentional injury classification. This automatic classification could facilitate the epidemiological surveillance of pediatric injuries by also reducing the health professionals' efforts in manually classifying diagnoses for research purposes

Reversible Cavitation-Induced Junctional Opening in an Artificial Endothelial Layer.

Targeting pharmaceuticals through the endothelial barrier is crucial for drug delivery. In this context, cavitation-assisted permeation shows promise for effective and reversible opening of intercellular junctions. A vessel-on-a-chip is exploited to investigate and quantify the effect of ultrasound-excited microbubbles-stable cavitation-on endothelial integrity. In the vessel-on-a-chip, the endothelial cells form a complete lumen under physiological shear stress, resulting in intercellular junctions that exhibit barrier functionality. Immunofluorescence microscopy is exploited to monitor vascular integrity following vascular endothelial cadherin staining. It is shown that microbubbles amplify the ultrasound effect, leading to the formation of interendothelial gaps that cause barrier permeabilization. The total gap area significantly increases with pressure amplitude compared to the control. Gap opening is fully reversible with gap area distribution returning to the control levels 45 min after insonication. The proposed integrated platform allows for precise and repeatable in vitro measurements of cavitation-enhanced endothelium permeability and shows potential for validating irradiation protocols for in vivo applications

Early and mid-term results in patients undergoing primary CABG in comparison with patients with PCI prior to CABG

Aim: We evaluated the impact of prior percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) on early and mid-term results in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). Methods: Between 2015 and 2020, 938 consecutive patients (mean age 67.4 ± 9.11 years) underwent CABG with prior PCI (n = 121) or primary CABG (n = 817). The mean follow-up was 37 ± 25 (median 36) months. Kaplan- Meier estimates were used to assess survival rates, while Logistic and Cox model analysis regressions assessed the risk of prior PCI and other variables. Results: Six-year survival including in-hospital mortality was 79% ± 6% in CABG with prior-PCI patients vs. 88% ± 2% in primary CABG (P = 0.002). As compared with primary CABG, in prior-PCI patients, clinical presentation (acute coronary syndrome, reduced left ventricular ejection fraction, and previous myocardial infarction, P ≤ 0.01, for all comparisons) was worse, comorbidity increased (Euroscore-2, severe chronic renal dysfunction, P < 0.01), and in-hospital mortality was higher (6.6% or 8 patients vs. 1.6% or 13 patients, P < 0.001). Prior PCI was found to be an independent predictor of mortality (HR = 4.23; P = 0.01). Six-year freedom from late all-cause death and cardiac death were 84% ± 6% vs. 90% ± 2% (P = 0.2) and 96% ± 2% vs. 96% ± 1% (P = 0.5), respectively. Independent predictors of all-cause death were advanced age at the operation (P < 0.0001), reduced left ventricular ejection fraction (P = 0.01), severe chronic renal dysfunction (P = 0.02), prior PCI (P = 0.03), and Euroscore-2 (P = 0.05). Prior PCI did not negatively affect late cardiac death (P = 0.5). Conclusion: Patients undergoing CABG after prior PCI have worse perioperative outcomes. Mid-term reduced survival in the prior-PCI patients is mainly due to the concomitant presence of worse clinical presentation and increased comorbidity. Freedom from cardiac death is comparable and satisfactory in both cohorts, highlighting the positive protective effect of CABG over time

Early and mid-term results in patients undergoing primary CABG in comparison with patients with PCI prior to CABG

Aim: We evaluated the impact of prior percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) on early and mid-term results in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). Methods: Between 2015 and 2020, 938 consecutive patients (mean age 67.4 ± 9.11 years) underwent CABG with prior PCI (n = 121) or primary CABG (n = 817). The mean follow-up was 37 ± 25 (median 36) months. Kaplan- Meier estimates were used to assess survival rates, while Logistic and Cox model analysis regressions assessed the risk of prior PCI and other variables. Results: Six-year survival including in-hospital mortality was 79% ± 6% in CABG with prior-PCI patients vs. 88% ± 2% in primary CABG (P = 0.002). As compared with primary CABG, in prior-PCI patients, clinical presentation (acute coronary syndrome, reduced left ventricular ejection fraction, and previous myocardial infarction, P ≤ 0.01, for all comparisons) was worse, comorbidity increased (Euroscore-2, severe chronic renal dysfunction, P < 0.01), and in-hospital mortality was higher (6.6% or 8 patients vs. 1.6% or 13 patients, P < 0.001). Prior PCI was found to be an independent predictor of mortality (HR = 4.23; P = 0.01). Six-year freedom from late all-cause death and cardiac death were 84% ± 6% vs. 90% ± 2% (P = 0.2) and 96% ± 2% vs. 96% ± 1% (P = 0.5), respectively. Independent predictors of all-cause death were advanced age at the operation (P < 0.0001), reduced left ventricular ejection fraction (P = 0.01), severe chronic renal dysfunction (P = 0.02), prior PCI (P = 0.03), and Euroscore-2 (P = 0.05). Prior PCI did not negatively affect late cardiac death (P = 0.5). Conclusion: Patients undergoing CABG after prior PCI have worse perioperative outcomes. Mid-term reduced survival in the prior-PCI patients is mainly due to the concomitant presence of worse clinical presentation and increased comorbidity. Freedom from cardiac death is comparable and satisfactory in both cohorts, highlighting the positive protective effect of CABG over time

MedNet status report

MedNet is a network of very broadband seismic stations installed in countries bordering the Mediterranean area. The project started in 1987, with a final goal of 12-15 stations and a spacing of about 1000 km between stations. It was motivated both by research interest and by seismic hazard monitoring. The network presently comprises 23 operating stations, all of them equipped with state of the art seismographic stations. Presently, fully automatic network functions include: - daily monitoring of state of health; - data recover after link failures; - triggered retrieval of event waveforms; - update of web pages (http://mednet.ingv.it) for events and station information.PublishedS. Fernando (SPAIN)1.1. TTC - Monitoraggio sismico del territorio nazionaleope

Task 3 - Molise - Deliverable D7: Validation shaking scenarios.

The main goal of this report is the computation of the bedrock seismic motion at 5 municipalities located in the Molise area (Bonefro, S.Giuliano, Colletorto, S.Croce di Magliano, Ripabottoni, hereafter referred to as sites BNF, SGI, CLT, SCM and RPB, respectively). This area represents one of the validation case studies, planned in the framework of Project S3 which aim is the production of ground shaking scenarios for moderate magnitude earthquakes. Indeed, the recently occurred Molise earthquake represents a proper opportunity to compare synthetic simulations with real data. Acceleration time series were recorded during the October 31, 2002 and November 1, 2002 main shocks by analog and digital instruments managed by the Italian Civil Protection Department [DPC-SSN, 2004] while acceleration and velocity records were collected during the first month of seismic activity by DPC, INGV, INOGS, Dip.Te.Ris.(Genoa) (see §2.1 and Deliverable D6). Both strong and weak motion data were employed to infer regional ground motion prediction equations and spectral attenuation models (§2.3 and §2.4) while acceleration time series recorded during the first main shock by nearby stations were used to constrain the seismogenic sources of the October 31 and November 1, 2002 twin earthquakes (§4.1). Bedrock shaking scenarios at different level of complexity were produced by ground motion prediction equations (scenarios of level 0, §4.2), high frequency (f>1Hz) simulations (scenarios of level I, §4.3) and broad band (0-12 Hz) simulations (scenarios of level II, §4.4). Comparison of results obtained with different simulations methods confirms the complexity of the Molise area as regard to both seismogenic and attenuation properties of the crust. Especially for this area the ground motion prediction is constrained by the demand of simulations reproducing different features of the seismic wavefield. In particular, the input motion for site effect modelling, performed at sites located in the epicentral area, was computed with a broad band technique able to reproduce the complete wave field in the frequency band 0-10 Hz in terms of acceleration time series (scenarios of level II scenarios)