Analysis and Valuation of Hospital Foodservice Quality-the Perugia case-study

The hospital catering is characterized for the necessity to satisfy the nutritional and dietetic principles, and the several therapeutic requirements of the patient.The main problem is to coordinate the production with the always various number of the requirements. On the other hand,emerging of competition forms in the sanitary field,based on the possibility of chosen of the structure cure from the customer and on the prices and tariffs system,has open new spaces for the recovery of a strategic perspective of the public sanitary companies respect private sector. Always mainly,the hospital companies must centralize own ttention so is minimal the difference between planned quality, distributed quality and perceived quality. The present work offers,through a public opinion pull on a specific case, a first attempt to tie the satisfaction or not satisfaction of a consumer regarding the sanitary service,on the base of some qualitatative variable. The innovation of this work consist of a index series created from the hospital documents and patient judgment (questionnaire) to establish a gap between planned and perceived quality

Redox Regulation Mechanisms in Inflammatory Macrophages

Long-lasting activation of inflammation leads to chronic conditions and is particularly common in autoimmune diseases. The causes of this self-activation in those conditions are still unknown, but these diseases are often also associated with an increase in oxidative stress. In fact, reactive oxygen species (ROS) are released during the inflammatory response and can cause oxidative damage, which in turn can lead to maintenance of inflammation. However, ROS are not only toxic species but can also act as signalling molecules to regulate immune responses, for instance via thiol modification. Thiols present in the cysteine residues of protein are among the most sensitive targets of ROS. They can undergo many redox changes, including glutathionylation or disulphide-linked dimerisation, all of which alter the protein and thus its function, localisation and secretion. This “redox regulation” regulates many cellular processes such as apoptosis, cell development and differentiation, homoeostasis and the immune response. In this project, we hypothesise that changes in thiol oxidation affect the inflammatory response and two different approaches have been set up to track redox changes in inflammatory conditions. Firstly, the role of endogenous glutathione (GSH), the main thiol antioxidant, was investigated. For this purpose, we used RAW cells, a mouse macrophage cell line. Cells were depleted of endogenous GSH and then stimulated with a standard inflammatory stimulus, bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS). A microarray analysis was then performed to identify changes in the gene expression profile. Results indicated that endogenous GSH does not decrease the inflammatory response but, on the contrary, favours the host antiviral response as its depletion results in an impaired LPS-induced increase in gene expression of genes in the interferon pathway, including oas2, mx2 and irf9. The biological significance of these results was later confirmed in cells infected with influenza A, showing that the antiviral response elicited by LPS was inhibited by GSH depletion. The second approach of this work was the use of a pegylated maleimide (MalPEG – 10kDa) to determine the redox state of three “redoxkines”, protein thiol/disulphide oxidoreductases with inflammatory properties: Trx, Prx1 and Prx2. MalPEG covalently binds to free thiols causing a mobility shift that can be detected by Western blot, leading to differences in the migration of oxidised and reduced proteins. After LPS stimulation, clear changes in the redox state were detected both intracellularly and in secreted proteins. To identify potential membrane targets of redoxkines, we set up a technique to identify proteins with redox-sensitive exofacial thiols on the cell surface. The results of this work show that activation of inflammatory pathway in macrophages brings about a number of redox changes in protein thiols, some of which may be related to GSH signalling, which are important in the regulation of both inflammation and host defence

Evaluation of policy measures for agri-food networks in Italian rural development programmes

The agri-food sector is characterized by very heterogeneous agreements and formal and informal contracts aimed to create stable relationships among firms. In this scenario, the actors are linked by common interest in creating and distributing added value. In the network, the risk and the responsibilities are shared by the participants and the transaction costs are reduced by the presence of dynamic flows of information and knowledge. Consequently, the creation and development of agri-food networks is a main objective of regional administration in their Rural Development Plans. The article item is the presentation and the discussion of the methodology used for the evaluation of Integrated Measures Project (Progetti Integrati di Filiera, PIF) presented by firm networks and agri-food chains in Veneto. The result are demonstrated extremely interesting about the understanding of PIF. Moreover, the comparative study serve to understand the result in terms of competitive advantage and income for the farmers.agri-food networking, food-chain policy, Rural Development Programme, Agricultural and Food Policy, Q18,

Inelastic hard-rods in a periodic potential

A simple model of inelastic hard-rods subject to a one-dimensional array of identical wells is introduced. The energy loss due to inelastic collisions is balanced by the work supplied by an external stochastic heat-bath. We explore the effect of the spatial non uniformity on the steady states of the system. The spatial variations of the density, granular temperature and pressure induced by the gradient of the external potential are investigated and compared with the analogous variations in an elastic system. Finally, we study the clustering process by considering the relaxation of the system starting from a uniform homogeneous state.Comment: RevTex4, 10 pages, 14 eps-figures, new versio

Foundation Soil Influence on the Seismic Response of Piers

Significant experimental dynamic tests by vibrodyne were conducted on single piers of a motorway near Livomo (Italy). Tests were conducted on structures similar to each other but founded on two different type of soils (under consolidated silts below the water table and over consolidated clays) and very different dynamic responses were found in terms of damping and natural frequencies. This effect was particularly evident for single piles proving the importance of soil characteristics upon the dynamic response of the structure. It is refere also a numerical investigation about the behavior of identical structures founded on different soils and subjected to the same seismic input