Food and Foods : Toward a Definition

When I\u2019m hungry, I try to seek some food, namely an object that is edible and that can feed me and preferably it has to be tasty. It seems a very easy task to find it for there is an alleged natural boundary between what counts as food and what does not. I can naturally pinpoint that boundary. Nevertheless, at a closer inspection, such boundary turns out to be suspicious: a roasted human being is both edible and nutritious, and someone may even find it tasty, and yet it can be hardly considered as food. Likewise, a rotten food item is neither edible, nor nutritious and however it can be sometimes considered as food, such as marcescent cheese. Our aim in this paper is to nail down the different conceptions which regulate our conception of what is a food and then come up with a proper definition. We set forth four different stances: a biological one, i.e., food is what holds certain natural properties, an individual one, i.e., food is what can be eaten by at least one person, an authority one, i.e., food is what is considered so by an authority, and a social one. i.e., food is what is institutionally recognized as food

Binding of αvβ3 Integrin-Specific Radiotracers Is Modulated by Both Integrin Expression Level and Activation Status

Open Access via Springer Compact Agreement Acknowledgements We are very grateful to Prof. Calderwood (Yale University, USA) for providing the THD DNA construct, Dr. Massimiliano Baldassarre (University of Aberdeen) for useful discussions on integrin regulation and Charlie Taylor for helping to optimise the THD transfection experiments. We thank the NHS Grampian Endowment Fund for funding this research and CRANES and the Roland Sutton Academic Trust for financial support for AA.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Smartphone-based photogrammetry for the 3D modeling of a geomorphological structure

The geomatic survey in the speleological field is one of the main activities that allows for the adding of both a scientific and popular value to cave exploration, and it is of fundamental importance for a detailed knowledge of the hypogean cavity. Today, the available instruments, such as laser scanners and metric cameras, allow us to quickly acquire data and obtain accurate three-dimensional models, but they are still expensive, require a careful planning phase of the survey, as well as some operator experience for their management. This work analyzes the performance of a smartphone device for a close-range photogrammetry approach for the extraction of accurate three-dimensional information of an underground cave. The image datasets that were acquired with a high-end smartphone were processed using the Structure from Motion (SfM)-based approach for dense point cloud generation: different image-matching algorithms implemented in a commercial and an open source software and in a smartphone application were tested. In order to assess the reachable accuracy of the proposed procedure, the achieved results were compared with a reference dense point cloud obtained with a professional camera or a terrestrial laser scanner. The approach has shown a good performance in terms of geometrical accuracies, computational time and applicability

Relationship between blood remifentanil concentration and stress hormone levels during pneumoperitoneum in patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy

The effect of remifentanil on stress response to surgery is unclear. However, there are not clinical studies investigating the relationship between blood remifentanil concentrations and stress hormones. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to assess the association between blood remifentanil concentrations measured after pneumoperitoneum and cortisol (CORT) or prolactin (PRL) ratio (intraoperative/preoperative value), in patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectom

CHARACTERIZATION OF A MOBILE MAPPING SYSTEM FOR SEAMLESS NAVIGATION

Abstract. Mobile Mapping Systems (MMS) are multi-sensor technologies based on SLAM procedure, which provides accurate 3D measurement and mapping of the environment as also trajectory estimation for autonomous navigation. The major limits of these algorithms are the navigation and mapping inconsistence over the time and the georeferencing of the products. These issues are particularly relevant for pose estimation regardless the environment like in seamless navigation. This paper is a preliminary analysis on a proposed multi-sensor platform integrated for indoor/outdoor seamless positioning system. In particular the work is devoted to analyze the performances of the MMS in term of positioning accuracy and to evaluate its improvement with the integration of GNSS and UWB technology. The results show that, if the GNSS and UWB signal are not degraded, using the correct weight to their observations in the Stencil estimation algorithm, is possible to obtain an improvement in the accuracy of the MMS navigation solution as also in the global consistency of the final point cloud. This improvement is measured in about 7 cm for planimetric coordinate and 34 cm along the elevation with respect to the use of the Stencil system alone

Caregiving and elderly health in Mexico

Using the National Mexican Health and Aging Study panel dataset, the authors estimate the effect of having informal care on the probability of dying and on the change in elderly health over a two-year period. Three measures of functional health were used: self-reported health, activities of daily living, and instrumental activities of daily living. We develop an empirical strategy that relies on the panel structure of the dataset to sort out the possible correlation between unobservable characteristics that affect both elderly health and an individual’s decision to provide informal care. Our findings suggest that informal care provided by daughters reduces the probability of dying. In addition, informal care provided by daughters reduces the probability of having a decline in activities of daily living and instrumental activities of daily living, while it has no effect on the observed changes in self-reported health status. The protective effect of informal care provided by sons is not statistically significant for any health outcomes. A discussion of the policy options to increase elderly health and to improve the role of caregivers is included

Survey solutions for 3D acquisition and representation of artificial and natural caves

A three-dimensional survey of natural caves is often a difficult task due to the roughness of the investigated area and the problems of accessibility. Traditional adopted techniques allow a simplified acquisition of the topography of caves characterized by an oversimplification of the geometry. Nowadays, the advent of LiDAR and Structure from Motion applications eased three-dimensional surveys in different environments. In this paper, we present a comparison between other three-dimensional survey systems, namely a Terrestrial Laser Scanner, a SLAM-based portable instrument, and a commercial photo camera, to test their possible deployment in natural caves survey. We presented a comparative test carried out in a tunnel stretch to calibrate the instrumentation on a benchmark site. The choice of the site is motivated by its regular geometry and easy accessibility. According to the result obtained in the calibration site, we presented a methodology, based on the Structure from Motion approach that resulted in the best compromise among accuracy, feasibility, and cost-effectiveness, that could be adopted for the three-dimensional survey of complex natural caves using a sequence of images and the structure from motion algorithm. The methods consider two different approaches to obtain a low resolution complete three-dimensional model of the cave and ultra-detailed models of most peculiar cave morphological elements. The proposed system was tested in the Gazzano Cave (Piemonte region, Northwestern Italy). The obtained result is a three-dimensional model of the cave at low resolution due to the site’s extension and the remarkable amount of data. Additionally, a peculiar speleothem, i.e., a stalagmite, in the cave was surveyed at high resolution to test the proposed high-resolution approach on a single object. The benchmark and the cave trials allowed a better definition of the instrumentation choice for underground surveys regarding accuracy and feasibility

LASER-VISUAL-INERTIAL ODOMETRY BASED SOLUTION FOR 3D HERITAGE MODELING: THE SANCTUARY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN OF TROMPONE

Abstract. The advent of new mobile mapping systems that integrate different sensors has made it easier to acquire multiple 3D information with high speed. Today, technological development has allowed the creation of portable systems particularly suitable for indoor surveys, which mainly integrating LiDAR devices, chambers and inertial platforms, make it possible to create in a fast and easy way, full 3D model of the environment. However, the performance of these instruments differs depending on the acquisition context (indoor and outdoor), the characteristics of the scene (for example lighting, the presence of objects and people, reflecting surfaces, textures) and, above all, the mapping and localization algorithms implemented in devices. The purpose of this study is to analyse the results, and their accuracy, deriving from a survey conducted with the KAARTA Stencil 2 handheld system. This instrument, composed of a 3D LiDAR Velodyne VLP-16, a MEMS inertial platform and a feature tracker camera, it is able to realize the temporal 3D map of the environment. Specifically, the acquisition tests were carried out in a context of metrical documentation of an architectural heritage, in order extract architectural detail for the future reconstruction of virtual and augmented reality environments and for Historical Building Information Modeling purposes. The achieved results were analysed and the discrepancies from some reference LiDAR data are computed for a final evaluation. The system was tested in the church and cloister of the Sanctuary of the Beata Vergine del Trompone in Moncrivello (VC) (Italy).</p