The underwater wonderland of ancient Puglia

The projects Puglia Seascapes - looking at Apulia from an underwater perspective – and UnderwaterMuse, Immersive Underwater Museum Experience for a wider inclusion, both coordinated by Puglia Region, aim to make a significant contribution to better understanding of the underwater cultural heritage; the study cases concern different sites in the Marine Protected Areas of Porto Cesareo and Torre Guaceto: a cargo of columns from Evia island and another cargo of amphoras scattered in the shallow waters of Torre Chianca (Porto Cesareo, Lecce) and the remains of a Late Antique cargo (V-VI century AD) found in the waters of Torre Guaceto (Brindisi). The interpretation of the archaeological and geoarchaological data about the sites, their formation process and the coastal landscape evolution, as well as the 3D models obtained through photogrammetry techniques based on SfM (Structure from Motion) and underwater 360° and 5K videos, allowed us to develope a methodological and technological protocol based on the use of a software (App), i.e. Puglia Seascapes VR. It provides suggestive scenarios through advanced 3D modeling and animation techniques and results in interactive videos shoot that reconstruct and above all narrate in an emotional way the last journey of the ship in the ancient seascape, deeply different from the current, and the formation of underwater context. Moreover, the application of immersive techniques accessible from a single VR application for wearable devices allows the large public to discover new environments and the scholars to face to a new approach for rewriting the history of ancient Italy

Predicting microRNA modulation in human prostate cancer using a simple String IDentifier (SID1.0).

To make faster and efficient the identification of mRNA targets common to more than one miRNA, and to identify new miRNAs modulated in specific pathways, a computer program identified as SID1.0 (simple String IDentifier) was developed and successfully applied in the identification of deregulated miRNAs in prostate cancer cells. This computationally inexpensive Fortran program is based on the strategy of exhaustive search and specifically designed to screen shared data (target genes, miRNAs and pathways) available from PicTar and DIANA-MicroT 3.0 databases. As far as we know this is the first software designed to filter data retrieved from available miRNA databases. SID1.0 takes advantage of the standard Fortran intrinsic functions for manipulating text strings and requires ASCII input files. In order to demonstrate SID1.0 applicability, some miRNAs expected from the literature to associate with cancerogenesis (miR-125b, miR-148a and miR-141), were randomly identified as main entries for SID1.0 to explore matching sequences of mRNA targets and also to explore KEGG pathways for the presence of ID codes of targeted genes. Besides genes and pathways already described in the literature, SID1.0 has proven to useful for predicting other genes involved in prostate carcinoma. These latter were used to identify new deregulated miRNAs: miR-141, miR-148a, miR-19a and miR-19b. Prediction data were preliminary confirmed by expression analysis of the identified miRNAs in androgen-dependent (LNCaP) and independent (PC3) prostate carcinoma cell lines and in normal prostatic epithelial cells (PrEC)

Developing and Piloting a Standardized European Protocol for Hepatitis C Prevalence Surveys in the General Population (2016-2019)

Funding Information: This work was funded by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) through a contract. Publisher Copyright: © Copyright © 2021 Sperle, Nielsen, Bremer, Gassowski, Brummer-Korvenkontio, Bruni, Ciccaglione, Kaneva, Liitsola, Naneva, Perchemlieva, Spada, Toikkanen, Amato-Gauci, Duffell and Zimmermann.Background: A robust estimate of the number of people with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is essential for an appropriate public health response and for monitoring progress toward the WHO goal of eliminating viral hepatitis. Existing HCV prevalence studies in the European Union (EU)/European Economic Area (EEA) countries are heterogeneous and often of poor quality due to non-probability based sampling methods, small sample sizes and lack of standardization, leading to poor national representativeness. This project aimed to develop and pilot standardized protocols for undertaking nationally representative HCV prevalence surveys in the general adult population. Methods: From 2016 to 2019 a team from the Robert Koch-Institute contracted by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control synthesized evidence on existing HCV prevalence surveys and survey methodology and drafted a protocol. The methodological elements of the protocol were piloted and evaluated in Bulgaria, Finland and Italy, and lessons learnt from the pilots were integrated in the final protocol. An international multidisciplinary expert group was consulted regularly. Results: The protocol includes three alternative study approaches: a stand-alone survey; a "nested" survey within an existing health survey; and a retrospective testing survey approach. A decision algorithm advising which approach to use was developed. The protocol was piloted and finalized covering minimum and gold standards for all steps to be implemented from sampling, data protection and ethical issues, recruitment, specimen collection and laboratory testing options, staff training, data management and analysis and budget considerations. Through piloting, the survey approaches were effectively implemented to produce HCV prevalence estimates and the pilots highlighted the strengths and limitations of each approach and key lessons learnt were used to improve the protocol. Conclusions: An evidence-based protocol for undertaking HCV prevalence serosurveys in the general population reflecting the different needs, resources and epidemiological situations has been developed, effectively implemented and refined through piloting. This technical guidance supports EU/EEA countries in their efforts to estimate their national hepatitis C burden as part of monitoring progress toward the elimination targets.publishersversionPeer reviewe

Diversity and ethics in trauma and acute care surgery teams: results from an international survey

Background Investigating the context of trauma and acute care surgery, the article aims at understanding the factors that can enhance some ethical aspects, namely the importance of patient consent, the perceptiveness of the ethical role of the trauma leader, and the perceived importance of ethics as an educational subject. Methods The article employs an international questionnaire promoted by the World Society of Emergency Surgery. Results Through the analysis of 402 fully filled questionnaires by surgeons from 72 different countries, the three main ethical topics are investigated through the lens of gender, membership of an academic or non-academic institution, an official trauma team, and a diverse group. In general terms, results highlight greater attention paid by surgeons belonging to academic institutions, official trauma teams, and diverse groups. Conclusions Our results underline that some organizational factors (e.g., the fact that the team belongs to a university context or is more diverse) might lead to the development of a higher sensibility on ethical matters. Embracing cultural diversity forces trauma teams to deal with different mindsets. Organizations should, therefore, consider those elements in defining their organizational procedures. Level of evidence Trauma and acute care teams work under tremendous pressure and complex circumstances, with their members needing to make ethical decisions quickly. The international survey allowed to shed light on how team assembly decisions might represent an opportunity to coordinate team member actions and increase performance

Spatio-temporal access control: challenges and applications

International audienceno abstrac

Management of mission critical public safety applications: the 5G ESSENCE Project

To address the limitations of legacy Public Safety (PS) solutions, as narrow bandwidth, high deployment cost and poor flexibility, the 5G cellular systems have been proposed. The architecture proposed by the 5G ESSENCE project is based on a cloud-enabled small cell infrastructure with a fully distributed orchestration architecture leveraging multi-access technologies in 5G. Furthermore, SDN and NFV are exploited, with MEC, to create flexible slices for dedicated mission critical public safety applications also at the edge of the network. This is shown by describing as the mission critical push-to-talk services have been implemented in a real testbed.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version