A systemic design approach applied to rice and wine value chains. The case of the innovaecofood project in piedmont (italy)

Attention to food waste is an increasingly growing phenomenon today, especially in the context of a circular economy. The InnovaEcoFood project investigates the use of by-products of the Piedmontese rice and wine production chains to valorize their untapped potential in the food sector by applying the Systemic Design approach. We collected, systematized, and visualized a range of solutions for exploiting these by-products, starting from an in-depth literature review on the two value chains. With the support of a consortium of partners from both multidisciplinary industrial and academic sectors, it was possible to validate the links that have been generated. Eventually, the project created food products that integrated these outputs as ingredients (like flour and butter) because they have antioxidant properties and are rich in proteins. InnovaEcoFood has successfully tested how value could be created from waste. Moreover, using rice hull, marc flour, and bran lipid (butter) is of immediate technical and economic feasibility. It could be considered a viable way that deserves further experimentation

Food, design, users: how to design food interaction modes

Food is becoming a design material: its use and consumption along with the entire related scenario have changed. Food, in particular, is no longer of interest only to cooks and pastry chefs but also to designers, of food and otherwise. The design of the new "material-food" creates new sensory worlds: as a result, the taste is analysed as a new and unexpected experience. At the same time, food handling is another crucial aspect that has acquired growing importance: what is the consumer’s behaviour like when handling the food product? In other words, what are the ways and places of interaction between “this material” and the consumer? It is clear that interaction modes with food are changing according to its “usage context” and its presentation form (extruded, expanded, sandwich, mesh, granules, etc.). These presentation forms are directly linked to food ingredients and are often mediated by the presence of a packaging, which determines the user's first interaction with the food. An example is given by a study of a chocolate bar that is illustrated in this paper. The chocolate can be eaten at home as a dessert or on a ski slope as an energising snack, but at the same time it can appear in different ways: as a multilayer when joined with cookies, as a moulded material in the case of cream chocolate or as a composite material when the chocolate bar contains nuts. Starting from the mode of interaction and consumption that should be satisfied, a classification of the possible presentation forms of a chocolate bar can be carried out. Consequently, on the basis of this classification, innovative interactions modes of the food with its packaging and the final user should be devised. As a result, according to the different interaction modes that should be achieved, the chocolate bar can become the object of the design process and therefore its design can be approached by following the design process usually adopted for a product. Moreover, on these assumptions, should the real or virtual material libraries, generally considered by designers as a useful research and knowledge tool in relation to material innovations, enlarge the field of action with the inclusion of a section dedicated to food? Should the material libraries include a cabinet as a section dedicated to food and its presentation forms? The paper aims at describing the results collected so far by this research focused on “food as a design material”

Light chain deposition disease presenting as paroxysmal atrial fibrillation: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Light chain deposition disease (LCDD) can involve the heart and cause severe heart failure. Cardiac involvement is usually described in the advanced stages of the disease. We report the case of a woman in whom restrictive cardiomyopathy due to LCDD presented with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>A 55-year-old woman was admitted to our emergency department because of palpitations. In a recent blood test, serum creatinine was 1.4 mg/dl. She was found to have high blood pressure, left ventricular hypertrophy and paroxysmal atrial fibrillation. An ACE-inhibitor was prescribed but her renal function rapidly worsened and she was admitted to our nephrology unit. On admission serum creatinine was 9.4 mg/dl, potassium 6.8 mmol/l, haemoglobin 7.7 g/dl, N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide 29894 pg/ml. A central venous catheter was inserted and haemodialysis was started. She underwent a renal biopsy which showed kappa LCDD. Bone marrow aspiration and bone biopsy demonstrated kappa light chain multiple myeloma. Echocardiographic findings were consistent with restrictive cardiomyopathy. Thalidomide and dexamethasone were prescribed, and a peritoneal catheter was inserted. Peritoneal dialysis has now been performed for 15 months without complications.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>Despite the predominant tubular deposition of kappa light chain, in our patient the first clinical manifestation of LCDD was cardiac disease manifesting as atrial fibrillation and the correct diagnosis was delayed. The clinical management initially addressed the cardiovascular symptoms without paying sufficient attention to the pre-existing slight increase in our patient's serum creatinine. However cardiac involvement is a quite uncommon presentation of LCDD, and this unusual case suggests that the onset of acute arrhythmias associated with restrictive cardiomyopathy and impaired renal function might be related to LCDD.</p

Chromosome-wide DNA methylation analysis predicts human tissue-specific X inactivation

X-chromosome inactivation (XCI) results in the differential marking of the active and inactive X with epigenetic modifications including DNA methylation. Consistent with the previous studies showing that CpG island-containing promoters of genes subject to XCI are approximately 50% methylated in females and unmethylated in males while genes which escape XCI are unmethylated in both sexes; our chromosome-wide (Methylated DNA ImmunoPrecipitation) and promoter-targeted methylation analyses (Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation27 array) showed the largest methylation difference (D = 0.12, p < 2.2 E−16) between male and female blood at X-linked CpG islands promoters. We used the methylation differences between males and females to predict XCI statuses in blood and found that 81% had the same XCI status as previously determined using expression data. Most genes (83%) showed the same XCI status across tissues (blood, fetal: muscle, kidney and nerual); however, the methylation of a subset of genes predicted different XCI statuses in different tissues. Using previously published expression data the effect of transcription on gene-body methylation was investigated and while X-linked introns of highly expressed genes were more methylated than the introns of lowly expressed genes, exonic methylation did not differ based on expression level. We conclude that the XCI status predicted using methylation of X-linked promoters with CpG islands was usually the same as determined by expression analysis and that 12% of X-linked genes examined show tissue-specific XCI whereby a gene has a different XCI status in at least one of the four tissues examined

On Punctured Pragmatic Space-Time Codes in Block Fading Channel

Abstract—This paper considers the use of punctured convolutional codes to obtain pragmatic space-time trellis codes over block-fading channel. We show that good performance can be achieved even when puncturation is adopted and that we can still employ the same Viterbi decoder of the convolutional mother code by using approximated metrics without increasing the complexity of the decoding operations. I

Interaction modalities with food: proposal of a new design method. Analysis on chocolate products

Food is becoming a design material: is no longer of interest only to cooks and pastry chef but also to designers. The design of the new "material-food" creates new sensory worlds: as a result, the taste is analysed as a new and unexpected experience. Moreover food handling is a key aspect that is acquiring more and more importance because it is very important in the design process of a food product to know which are the ways and the places of interaction and consume between food and consumer. Interactions modes with food are changing according to its “usage context” and its presentation form (extruded, expanded, sandwich, mesh, granules, etc.). These presentation forms are directly linked to food ingredients and are often mediated by the presence of a packaging, which determines the user's first interaction with the food

A Visual Analytics System for Managing Mobile Network Failures

Large mobile operators have to quickly react to mobile network failures to ensure service continuity and this task is a complex one, due to the continuous and very fast evolution of mobile networks: from 2G to 3G and onto LTE, each significant milestone in the mobile technology has increased the complexity of networks and services management. Failures must be promptly analyzed and sorted according to different prioritizing objectives, in order to devise suitable fix plans able to mitigate failures impact in terms of money loss or damaged reputation. This paper presents a visual analytics solution for supporting the failure management activities of TIM (Telecom Italia Group), the biggest Italian provider of telecommunications services with over 30M active mobile subscribers. The proposed system has been developed collaboratively by University of Rome ''La Sapienza'', Polytechnic of Turin, and TIM, analyzing the operators' requirements and viable optimization strategies for prioritizing interventions that rely on statistical data on mobile cells occupation, in order to identify the impact of failures in term of end users' connectivity