Development Scenarios for Eastern European Cities and Regions in the New Europe

In this paper we focus on urban growth dynamics of Eastern European cities and regions in the past and in the new Europe. This work is a part of on-going research in the field of urban and regional development, carried out in Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. Eastern European cities experienced similar and very turbulent historical and political development during 20th century. The policies during the communist period with planned economy has clearly reflected in the land use pattern development, e.g. the absence of large suburbs and underdeveloped transport networks around cities. In contrast to other European cities, no or very few commercial zones and commercial centres were built in suburban areas. In addition, satellite cities were built only on a limited scale. With the collapse of communist regimes cities and regions in Eastern Europe have entered into a new phase of urbanisation, which changes dramatically land use patterns. The liberalization of economy and the membership of the EU has led to the growing involvement to the European market and EU development schemes (e.g. TEN/T, ERDF, etc.). In spite of the expected decrease of population in the new EU countries the average gross domestic product is projected to triple and the number of households per capita is projected to double between 2000 and 2030 (EEA, 2005¬/4). Among the consequences of socio-economic development the continuous growth of urban areas can be foreseen. What shapes urban sprawl will take and will it cause new threads to sustainability remains to be seen. In this paper we focus on two study cases (1) the Dresden – Prague transport corridor in Germany and in the Czech Republic (Barredo et al, 2005) and (2) the Harjumaa region and the city of Tallinn in Estonia. The objective of this work is to test the impact of diverse economic development trends on urbanisation processes. Several development scenarios are produced in order to model the spatial pattern of urban land use. The MOLAND urban and regional growth simulation model (Lavalle et al, 2004), based on “cellular automata†(CA), is a key instrument in the forecasting land use development. The model operates at two levels. At the micro- level, the CA-based model determines the fate of individual land use cells based on the type of the activities in their neighbourhood. At the macro- level, various additional factors such as overall land use demand, effects of the transportation network as well as legislative, environmental and institutional characteristics (e.g. environmental protection, zoning) constrain the behaviour of the CA-model. This approach allowed us to integrate “physicalâ€, environmental, socio-economic development as well as institutional aspect of territorial development. The scenarios offer a useful approach to analysing and understanding urban land use dynamics and can also serve for landscape management at the local and regional scales, complementing existing policies and programmes. In both study cases we evaluate the impact newly developed motorways’ supported by EU Structural Funds. Very important feature of Dresden-Prague corridor is the extreme flood events in 2002. The increasing vulnerability to natural hazards due to rapid urban development in flood-prone area is also discussed in the paper.

Swallowing Disorders in Newborn and Small Children

This chapter reviews the main aspects of dysphagia in children: epidemiology, etiology, physiopathology, bedside assessment, and instrumental assessment in the perspective of planning treatment. More details will be given on the endoscopic assessment in children of different ages in consideration of the information useful in planning treatment. This chapter offers a review of the literature on the topic and a simple diagram of the main aspects of the management of dysphagia in children. This chapter aims to offer a simple and useful guide for students and professionals working in the field and suggestions for the implementation of clinical steps in daily practice when and where managing children with swallowing disorders is a reality

Advanced learning and ICT: new teaching experiences in university setting

The digital board is thought of as a tool that has limited use, primary or secondary school or in a situation of learning for the handicapped. This case study aims to show how these new tools can be used in for higher learning, in scientific and technical universities. The current software available on the market and its use with these tools foresees originality in the approach to teaching in the future. The article explores the use of advanced innovative technology in the lecture hall for effective teaching and learning. The digital whiteboard tool is a flexible and powerful didactic instrument that can greatly enrich the experience of both the learner and the lecturer. This article will explore a completed case study, a case study still in progress and future possibilities

Towards an Integrated Scenario Approach for Spatial Planning and Natural Hazards Mitigation

In the frame of the support to the conception, definition and implementation of European policies, the Land Management Unit of the Institute for Environment and Sustainability (Directorate General Joint Research Centre (DG-JRC) of the European Commission (EC)) is developing an integrated framework to evaluate and propose strategies for the sustainable management of the European territory. An important tool within this framework is the MOLAND (Monitoring Land Use/Cover Dynamics) model for urban and regional growth forecast. The model is part of an integrated methodology based on a set of spatial planning tools that can be used for assessing, monitoring and modelling the development of urban and regional environments. The MOLAND model has been specifically designed for urban and regional development assessment. It is based on a spatial dynamics bottom-up approach. The model takes as input several georeferenced datasets for the future simulation of urban areas and/or regions. Thus, future urban scenarios can be produced by taking into account land use development trends, population growth, socio-economic factors and spatial planning policies. Urban simulations offer a useful approach to understanding the consequences of current spatial planning policies. Among other causes the analysis of urban areas and their development has particular relevance because of their growing exposure to natural hazards, particularly floods and forest fires. Inappropriate regional and urban planning can exacerbate the negative effects of natural hazards. On the other hand, good land management and planning practices, including appropriate land use and development control in flood-prone areas, represent suitable non-structural solutions to minimise flood damage. The effects of urban and regional development on flood risk should be evaluated to support both flood protection and spatial planning policies. This work supports policies such as the 6th Environment Action Program (Thematic Strategy on the Urban Environment; Thematic Strategy on Soil Protection), the forthcoming Floods Directive “Reducing the risks of floods in Europe”, the ESPON (European Spatial Planning Observation Network) programme, and the growing awareness at local level amongst spatial policy-makers of the close connections between world-wide land degradation and global change, as underpinned by the European Climate Change Programme. The new regulations for renewed Structural Funds and instruments for the period 2007-2013, adopted by the EC on 14 July 2004, foresee specific measures for “developing plans and measures to prevent and cope with natural risks”.JRC.H.7-Land management and natural hazard

Damage Assessment from Storm Surge to Coastal Cities: Lessons from the Miami Area

Coastal cities are growing at a very rapid pace, both in population and in terms of assets ; therefore, flood risk is likely to increase substantially in these areas in the absence of specific protections. In addition, great uncertainty surrounds the future evolution of hurricane intensity and sea level rise. The area of Miami represents a clear hotspot of human and economic coastal flood exposure : there are more than 5 million inhabitants in the Miami metropolitan area and the population is growing. It is also a low-lying city with most of the population living below an elevation of 10m and is located in a region where tropical cyclones hit frequently. The present study is focused on the two contiguous counties of Miami, Dade and Broward. In this analysis, we consider the impact of different storm surges predicted by the computerized model SLOSH and investigate flood risks with current sea level, considering different hurricane parameters (storm category and direction, wind speed, and tide level). For each impact, we apply a damage function and determine if the considered storm surges potentially lead to asset loss, considering both properties and their contents. The results show that, in absence of protections, losses will be very high for large storm surges reaching up to tens of billions USD. In the second part of the analysis, we demonstrate how the economic impact changes when protections are built up, considering different dams' heights. We conclude that raising flood defences would be beneficial, since the consequences of a storm surge could be enormous

Vertigo and Dizziness in Children: An Update

Background: Vertigo and dizziness are relatively infrequent in paediatric patients, but specific data on the prevalence of these disorders are limited and influenced by various factors, including the age of the examined population. These conditions often have a significant impact on patients' and parents' quality of life. The aim of this paper is to investigate the prevalence of different aetiologies of vertigo in the paediatric population through a systematic review. Methods: According to PRISMA guidelines, a systematic review of the literature was performed. Medline and Embase were searched from January 2011 through to 10 September 2021. The search yielded 1094 manuscripts, which were reduced to 7 upon the application of inclusion criteria. Results: A total of 2470 paediatric patients were evaluated by the selected papers. Vestibular Migraine was the most frequently diagnosed condition, occurring alone or in association with other diseases. Overall, audio-vestibular disorders represented the second cause of vertigo, and the prevalence appears to increase according to age growth. Over the years, even though we assisted in the amelioration of diagnostic rates, partially related to an improvement in diagnostic tools, the aetiology of vertigo remains still unclear in a variable percentage of patients. Conclusion: Vertigo in children, despite being an uncommon symptom, requires a multidisciplinary approach, often involving Paediatricians, Neurologists and Otorhinolaryngologists. A comprehensive evaluation of children suffering from vertigo is crucial for establishing a successful therapy and reducing parental worries

An Assessment of Weather-Related Risks in Europe: Maps of Flood and Drought Risks

This technical report describes the adopted methodology and the outputs produced during the first 18 months of life of the 'ADAM' project. ADAM (Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies: Supporting European Climate Policy) is an Integrated Project financed under thematic priority 'Global Change and Ecosystems' of the 6th framework programme (for further information, see www.adam.info) The task 'A2.1 - An assessment of weather-related risks in Europe' has the following main objective: 'Quantify and map weather-related extreme-event risks to public and private capital assets, human lives, and agriculture/forestry/tourism, and identify high-risk areas (hot spots) on which to focus more detailed analysis.' The key innovative aspects of the work herein presented are manifold: - the quantification of the probabilistic monetary impact of extreme events; - the combined use of modelling techniques and of observed data to supply the lack of information at the various scales of relevance of the study; - the estimation of uncertainty arising from limitations in data availability and modelling assumptions; - the geographical scale (continental) of the exercise. The key outputs of task A2.1 are digital maps of risks from natural extremes at European scale identifying monetary/economic losses. The maps are furnished as input to other tasks of package A2 for successive modelling exercises and analysis. As defined in the project work-plan, task A.21 has duration of 24 months. The 18-month deliverables are maps of flood and drought risks. The report focuses on inland river flood damage to properties and infrastructures and on climatic stresses (drought and heat waves) in agriculture. Population exposure has only been addressed in a partial study and it's therefore not included in the final monetary losses assessment. The work on floods has been carried out by the Institute for Environment and Sustainability of the Joint Research Centre; the work on droughts and heat waves by the Department of Agronomy and Land Management - University of Florence. The methodology is centred on the risk paradigm of the research community. The risk is defined as a product of hazard, exposure and vulnerability where: - Hazard is the threatening natural event including its probability/magnitude of occurrence; - Exposure is the values/humans that are present at the location related to a given event; - Vulnerability is the lack of resistance to damaging/destructive forces (damage function). This definition has been applied to extreme events such as floods and heat/water stresses, with the due adjustments required by data availability and specific modelling techniques.JRC.H.7-Land management and natural hazard

COVID-19 VACCINES: EVIDENCE, CHALLENGES AND THE FUTURE

Through an unprecedented research and development process, in early 2021, just one year after the COVID-19 pandemic started devastating the world, there are several vaccines commercially available or in advanced phase of testing, each with its own characteristics and challenges. For the first time in the history of vaccination, a global immunization programme has started at a time of intense pandemic activity characterized by high virus transmission, facilitating selection of variants potentially able to escape the vaccine-induced antibody response. The reality is that one cannot rely on a single vaccine when dealing with a pandemic emergency: the urgent need of billions of doses clashes with the production capacity of the pharmaceutical industry. There is therefore no ideal vaccine, but there are many good vaccines to be used immediately. Today,  the international debate about COVID-19 vaccines is the hottest topic in global health whether it relates to technical and scientific issues or to the ethical aspects of access to vaccinations for all. This article aims at reviewing the status of vaccines that are used, or about to be used, in immunization campaigns worldwide

Role of osteocyte apoptosis in peculiar ossicles of the hearing sense organ: preliminary observations on hearing loss and osteoporosis

Starting point of the present study is the osteocyte role in bone remodelling that allows bone adaptation to mechanical load [1-3]. Bone remodelling has been investigated in relation to the occurrence of apoptosis [4] to understand if and how the process of programmed cell death interferes with bone turnover. In 1998, in a study on human middle ear, Marotti et al. [5] demonstrated that: 1) over 40% of osteo-cytes are dead within the 2nd year of age (but the authors were not able to demonstrate if osteocyte death occurred by degeneration or apoptosis); 2) bone remodelling occurs only occasionally. Recently [6], we showed that: 1) osteocytes of human auditory ossicles die by apoptosis; 2) also osteocytes located inside scleral ossicles of lower vertebrate eye (reptiles and birds) phylogenetically so far from human auditory ossicles are widely affected by apoptosis (about 60%); 3) in scleral ossicles bone turnover never occur. It is to be noted that both auditory ossicles of human ear and scleral ossicles of vertebrate eye are peculiar bony segments continuously submitted to stereotyped stresses and strains, with specialized func-tions: the first are involved in sound wave transmission and the latter protect the eyeball against deformation during the movement and have a role in visual accomodation, providing attachment for the ciliary muscles. In both cases, bone remodelling might severely impair, by resorption, the mechanical resistance of these extremely small specialized bony segments. Thus, we suggested that in auditory and scleral ossicles, submitted to stereotyped loading for all life, bone mechanical adaptation is not needed and osteocyte programmed death could represent the mechanism to avoid bone remodelling and to make stable, when necessary, bone structure and mechanical resistance. More recently, to confirm this hypothesis, clinical data were collected from a cohort of patients aged 55-85 years affected by hearing loss. The main target of the present study is to exclude any correlation between hearing loss and osteoporosis. During osteoporosis, unbalanced bone turnover causes the bone depletion in skeletal segments; such condition, in the peculiar ossicles of human middle ear, should imply hearing impairment. Our preliminary observations indicate, instead, that osteoporotic patients do not show higher percentage of hearing loss with respect to non osteoporotic ones. This evidence is ascribable to osteocyte apoptosis of auditory ossicles that avoid bone remodelling, thus assuring the integrity of such bony segments also in osteoporotic conditions. References [1] Turner (1991) Omeostatic control of bone structure: an application of feed-bach theory. Bone 12: 203-217. [2] Turner and Forwood (1995) What role does the osteocyte network play in bone adaptation? Bone 16: 283-285. [3] Marotti (1996) The structure of bone tissue and the cellular control oftheir deposition. IJAE 101(4): 26-79. [4] Noble et al. (1997) Identification of apoptotic changes in osteocytes in normal and pathological human bone. Bone 20: 273-282. [5] Marotti et al. (1998) Morphometric investigation on osteocytes in human auditory ossicles. Ann Anat 180: 449-453. [6] Palumbo et al. (2012) Osteocyte apoptosis in human auditory ossicles and scleral ossicles of lower ver-tebrates: a mere coincidence or linked processes? Calcif. Tissue Int. 90: 211-218