Grading of Low-Quality Wood for Use in Structural Elements

Timber is a sustainable resource, environmentally friendly and aesthetically pleasing. Using locally grown timber as building material leads to economic, social and environmental benefits. Being an organic material, timber is not homogeneous; hence, it is crucial to predict the base material quality. International codes require the use of wood previously graded according to the current regulations in order to verify its reliability when used as structural material. An exhaustive analysis of the state of art of different methodologies and code requirements for structural timber grading is presented herein. Structural timber grading methods and their applicability to low-strength timber is analysed and discussed with reference to Maritime Pine locally grown in Sardinia (Italy). Several physical and morphological parameters such as density, the presence of knots, clusters of knots, grain deviation, warping, annual ring width and moisture content had to be measured. Moreover, mechanical parameters (tensile strength and modulus of elasticity in tension) were measured and analysed in order to identify the strength class of Sardinian Maritime Pine. The operational issues related to the application of the different methodologies and code requirements for structural grading of low-quality wood are also discussed and analysed

Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine retinal safety concerns during COVID-19 outbreak

Purpose: The current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been declared by the World Health Organization a global pandemic. Chloroquine (CQ) and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) have been largely adopted in the clinical setting for the management of SARS-CoV-2 infection; however, their known retinal toxicity has raised some safety concerns, especially considering the higher-dosage employed for COVID-19 patients as compared with their suggested posology for their usual indications, including systemic lupus erythematosus and other rheumatic diseases. In this review, we will discuss the optimal dosages recommended for COVID-19 patients when treated with HCQ and CQ. Methods: A comprehensive literature search was performed in PubMed, Cochrane library, Embase and Scopus, by using the following search terms: "chloroquine retinal toxicity" and "hydroxychloroquine retinal toxicity" alone or in combination with "coronavirus", "COVID-19", " SARS-CoV-2 infection " from inception to August 2020. Results: Although there is still no consistent evidence about HCQ/CQ retinal toxicity in patients with COVID-19, these possible drug-related retinal adverse events may represent a major safety concern. For this reason, appropriate screening strategies, including telemedicine, should be developed in the near future. Conclusion: A possible future clinical perspective for patients with COVID-19 treated with HCQ/CQ could reside in the multidisciplinary collaboration between ophthalmologists monitoring the risk of HCQ/CQ-related retinal toxicity and those physicians treating COVID-19 infection

Visually evoked responses from the blind field of hemianopic patients

Hemianopia is a visual field defect characterized by decreased vision or blindness in the contralesional visual field of both eyes. The presence of well documented above-chance unconscious behavioural responses to visual stimuli presented to the blind hemifield (blindsight) has stimulated a great deal of research on the neural basis of this important phenomenon. The present study is concerned with electrophysiological responses from the blind field. Since previous studies found that transient Visual Evoked Potentials (VEPs) are not entirely suitable for this purpose here we propose to use Steady-State VEPs (SSVEPs). A positive result would have important implications for the understanding of the neural bases of conscious vision. We carried out a passive SSVEP stimulation with healthy participants and hemianopic patients. Stimuli consisted of four black-and-white sinusoidal Gabor gratings presented one in each visual field quadrant and flickering one at a time at a 12Hz rate. To assess response reliability a Signal-to-Noise Ratio analysis was conducted together with further analyses in time and frequency domains to make comparisons between groups (healthy participants and patients), side of brain lesion (left and right) and visual fields (sighted and blind). The important overall result was that stimulus presentation to the blind hemifield yielded highly reliable responses with time and frequency features broadly similar to those found for cortical extrastriate areas in healthy controls. Moreover, in the intact hemifield of hemianopics and in healthy controls there was evidence of a role of prefrontal structures in perceptual awareness. Finally, the presence of different patterns of brain reorganization depended upon the side of lesion

Procalcitonin Reveals Early Dehiscence in Colorectal Surgery: The PREDICS Study

Objectives: We designed a multicentric, observational study to test if Procalcitonin (PCT) might be an early and reliable marker of anastomotic leak (AL) after colorectal surgery (ClinicalTrials.govIdentifier:NCT01817647). Background: Procalcitonin is a biomarker used to monitor bacterial infections and guide antibiotic therapy. Anastomotic leak after colorectal surgery is a severe complication associated with relevant short and long-term sequelae. Methods: Between January 2013 and September 2014, 504 patients underwent colorectal surgery, for malignant colorectal diseases, in elective setting. White blood count (WBC), C-reactive protein (CRP) and PCT levels were measured in 3rd and 5th postoperative day (POD). AL and all postoperative complications were recorded. Results: We registered 28 (5.6%) anastomotic leaks. Specificity and negative predictive value for AL with PCT less than 2.7 and 2.3 ng/mL were, respectively, 91.7% and 96.9% in 3rd POD and 93% and 98.3% in 5th POD. Receiver operating characteristic curve for biomarkers shows that in 3rd POD, PCTand CRP have similar area under the curve (AUC) (0.775 vs 0.772), both better than WBC (0.601); in 5th POD, PCT has a better AUC than CRP and WBC (0.862 vs 0.806 vs 0.611). Measuring together PCT and CRP significantly improves AL diagnosis in 5th POD (AUC: 0.901). Conclusions: PCTand CRP demonstrated to have a good negative predictive value for AL, both in 3rd and in 5th POD. Low levels of PCT, together with low CRP values, seem to be early and reliable markers of AL after colorectal surgery. These biomarkers might be safely added as additional criteria of discharge protocols after colorectal surgery

The AGILE Pipeline for Gravitational Waves Events Follow-up

The first direct detection of gravitational waves (GW) by Advanced LIGO detectors in September 2015 has drawn the attention of the astrophysical community that is now searching for the electromagnetic counterparts of the detected GW events. The AGILE (Astro-Rivelatore Gamma a Immagini Leggero) mission is primarily devoted to the high-energy astrophysical study of gamma-ray sources in the 30 MeV to 30 GeV energy range. The capability of the AGILE satellite for the discovery of transients is unique: the actual spinning configuration of the satellite, together with a large field of view and a good sensitivity of F =(1-2) ×10-8ergcm-2 s-1 for 100s integrations, provides a coverage of 80% of the sky, with each position exposed for 100 seconds, 200 times a day. The AGILE team signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the LIGO/Virgo collaboration to follow the GW notices provided through the GCN network. In this paper we describe our automated pipeline that reacts to LIGO/Virgo GW notices and performs different kind of automated analysis to boost the search for of GW event counterparts

The Online Observation Quality System for the ASTRI Mini-Array

The ASTRI Mini-Array is an international collaboration led by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), aiming to construct and operate an array of nine Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) to study gamma-ray sources at very high energy (TeV) and to perform stellar intensity interferometry observations. This contribution describes the design and the technologies used by the ASTRI team to implement the Online Observation Quality System (OOQS). The main objective of the OOQS is to perform data quality analyses in real-time during Cherenkov and intensity interferometry observations to provide feedback to both the Central Control System and the Operator. The OOQS performs the analysis of key data quality parameters and can generate alarms to other sub-systems for a fast reaction to solve critical conditions. The results from the data quality analyses are saved into the Quality Archive for further investigations. The Operator can visualise the OOQS results through the Operator Human Machine Interface as soon as they are produced. The main challenge addressed by the OOQS design is to perform online data quality checks on the data streams produced by nine telescopes, acquired by the Array Data Acquisition System and forwarded to the OOQS. In the current OOQS design, the Redis in-memory database manages the data throughput generated by the telescopes, and the Slurm workload scheduler executes in parallel the high number of data quality analyses.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, Proceedings of the 37th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2021), Berlin, German