The emergent city. Interactive relational systems between public administration and citizen to foster sustainable processes of urban development

The widespread of Information and Communication Technologies and the consequently redefinition of roles in the usage and management of the city brought along new systems of relationships and interactions that produce an auto-organisation of territories or communities, showed also through temporary transformation of the environment. In effect, cities are continuously redefined by emergent properties that may, both be originated and then impact on social, political, cultural, and economical people practices. On the other hand, through the arrangement of its patterns the city shapes the social and connective relations occurring among people. So, the city can be regarded as a complex system, that in the last years has been expanded by the widespread of communication devices and sensors connected to the Internet. In this context, the design of new patterns of interactions that focuses on the new relationship opportunities, in part offered by the Information and Communication Technologies, but not limited to them, may significantly affect sustainable processes of urban development. This paper focuses on the civic aspect of the so-called smart cities, and, in details, on the relation between citizens and Public Administration. Some existing interaction patterns are illustrated in order to support the visualisation of the dynamic relationships between citizens and Public Administration, while new possible relations derived by the interaction with the urban space are supposed

Unilateral condylar hyperplasia recurrence after orthognathic surgery: a case report

Introduction: Unilateral Condylar Hyperplasia (UCH) is an uncommon condition resulting in facial asymmetry and malocclusion. At the time of diagnosis, an accurate evaluation of condylar activity through bone SPECT is necessary to determine the most appropriate surgical treatment. The Authors present a case of a UCH recurrence after orthognathic surgery in order to discuss about the clinical role of condylar SPECT in UCH therapeutic management. Case report: A 60-years old female patient was referred to the Department of Maxillo-Facial Surgery of Sapienza University of Rome for a relapse of mandibular laterodeviation. At the age of 24, she underwent orthognathic surgery after a diagnosis of UCH without condylar SPECT evaluation. As part of our clinical routine, condylar SPECT was performed and a significant difference in radiotracer uptake (20%) was found between the left condylar region and the contralateral one. She underwent high condilectomy and Bilateral Mandibular Sagittal Osteotomy. She had no evidence of recurrence till today. Discussion: Optimal surgical management of UCH is still controversial. In the diagnostic phase of UCH, a functional evaluation of condylar growth status by bone SPECT is an essential step to avoid long-term recurrence of mandibular asymmetry. On the basis of condylar metabolic activity, UCH can be classified in an active phase or a stationary phase. Clinical and functional evaluation of patients with mandibular asymmetry should be standardized in order to plan the most appropriate surgical and orthodontic treatment

Defining a roadmap for harmonizing quality indicators in Laboratory Medicine: A consensus statement on behalf of the IFCC Working Group "laboratory Error and Patient Safety" and EFLM Task and Finish Group "performance specifications for the extra-analytical phases"

The improving quality of laboratory testing requires a deep understanding of the many vulnerable steps involved in the total examination process (TEP), along with the identification of a hierarchy of risks and challenges that need to be addressed. From this perspective, the Working Group \u201cLaboratory Errors and Patient Safety\u201d (WG-LEPS) of International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC) is focusing its activity on implementation of an efficient tool for obtaining meaningful information on the risk of errors developing throughout the TEP, and for establishing reliable information about error frequencies and their distribution. More recently, the European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (EFLM) has created the Task and Finish Group \u201cPerformance specifications for the extraanalytical phases\u201d (TFG-PSEP) for defining performance specifications for extra-analytical phases. Both the IFCC and EFLM groups are working to provide laboratories with a system to evaluate their performances and recognize the critical aspects where improvement actions are needed. A Consensus Conference was organized in Padova, Italy, in 2016 in order to bring together all the experts and interested parties to achieve a consensus for effective harmonization of quality indicators (QIs). A general agreement was achieved and the main outcomes have been the release of a new version of model of quality indicators (MQI), the approval of a criterion for establishing performance specifications and the definition of the type of information that should be provided within the report to the clinical laboratories participating to the QIs project

Defining a roadmap for harmonizing quality indicators in Laboratory Medicine: A consensus statement on behalf of the IFCC Working Group "laboratory Error and Patient Safety" and EFLM Task and Finish Group "performance specifications for the extra-analytical phases"

The improving quality of laboratory testing requires a deep understanding of the many vulnerable steps involved in the total examination process (TEP), along with the identification of a hierarchy of risks and challenges that need to be addressed. From this perspective, the Working Group “Laboratory Errors and Patient Safety” (WG-LEPS) of International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC) is focusing its activity on implementation of an efficient tool for obtaining meaningful information on the risk of errors developing throughout the TEP, and for establishing reliable information about error frequencies and their distribution. More recently, the European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (EFLM) has created the Task and Finish Group “Performance specifications for the extraanalytical phases” (TFG-PSEP) for defining performance specifications for extra-analytical phases. Both the IFCC and EFLM groups are working to provide laboratories with a system to evaluate their performances and recognize the critical aspects where improvement actions are needed. A Consensus Conference was organized in Padova, Italy, in 2016 in order to bring together all the experts and interested parties to achieve a consensus for effective harmonization of quality indicators (QIs). A general agreement was achieved and the main outcomes have been the release of a new version of model of quality indicators (MQI), the approval of a criterion for establishing performance specifications and the definition of the type of information that should be provided within the report to the clinical laboratories participating to the QIs project

Serverless Scheduling Policies based on Cost Analysis

Current proprietary and open-source serverless platforms follow opinionated, hardcoded scheduling policies to deploy the functions to be executed over the available workers. Such policies may decrease the performance and the security of the application due to locality issues (e.g., functions executed by workers far from the databases to be accessed). These limitations are partially overcome by the adoption of APP, a new platform-agnostic declarative language that allows serverless platforms to support multiple scheduling logics. Defining the "right" scheduling policy in APP is far from being a trivial task since it often requires rounds of refinement involving knowledge of the underlying infrastructure, guesswork, and empirical testing. In this paper, we start investigating how information derived from static analysis could be incorporated into APP scheduling function policies to help users select the best-performing workers at function allocation. We substantiate our proposal by presenting a pipeline able to extract cost equations from functions' code, synthesising cost expressions through the usage of off-the-shelf solvers, and extending APP allocation policies to consider this information.Comment: In Proceedings TiCSA 2023, arXiv:2310.1872

Geo-archaeology of the Roman palaeosurface of Sena Gallica (Senigallia, Italy)

ABSTRACTSena Gallica (Senigallia), in the northern Marche region, was the first Roman colony on the Adriatic coast founded at the beginning of the third century BC. This research adopted an integrated approach to different information sources that combines old and new data, archaeological excavations, topographic and geophysical surveys, and geological and geomorphological analyses. The data are managed within a GIS and supported by 3D modelling. One of the results of this work is a map which represents the geomorphological setting of the Roman colony, close to the mouth of the Misa river. The settlement exploited the top-surface of the uppermost Pleistocene–early Holocene coastal fan of the Misa river, now only preserved at the apex sector truncated seaward by wave erosion. The top-surface of the fan apex, in turn, was partly re-incised by stream erosion producing a series of slight topographic mounds, which were selected for the earliest human settlement (V-IV c. BC). Some of the mounds resulted in a pr..

Thermal Dynamic Insulation: Numerical Modeling in a Transient Regime and Application to Alternative Aviary Houses

Abstract The paper proposes a numerical model for investigating the energy performance of thermal dynamic insulation in transient conditions. This technology consists of porous building components that are permeable to airflow, ensuring high levels of energy performance and IAQ. The model is implemented in MATLAB environment and allows an accurate evaluation of heat transfer through porous media, with the final purpose of quantifying the energy benefits deriving from dynamic insulation. Beyond its presentation, the model is used to investigate the implementation of a dynamically-insulated ceiling to an alternative aviary house for laying-hens, located in Des Moines, Iowa (U.S.). The proposed system produces thermal, energy and economical savings in both cold and warm seasons

Plasma antioxidants from chocolate

There is some speculation that dietary flavonoids from chocolate, in particular (-)epicatechin, may promote cardiovascular health as a result of direct antioxidant effects or through antithrombotic mechanisms. Here we show that consumption of plain, dark chocolate results in an increase in both the total antioxidant capacity and the (-)epicatechin content of blood plasma, but that these effects are markedly reduced when the chocolate is consumed with milk or if milk is incorporated as milk chocolate. Our findings indicate that milk may interfere with the absorption of antioxidants from chocolate in vivo and may therefore negate the potential health benefits that can be derived from eating moderate amounts of dark chocolate

Measuring the Three-Dimensional Structure of Galaxy Clusters. I. Application to a Sample of 25 Clusters

We discuss a method to constrain the intrinsic three-dimensionale shapes of galaxy clusters by combining X-Ray and Sunyaev-Zeldovich observations. The method is applied to a sample of 25 X-Ray selected clusters, with measured Sunyaev-Zeldovich temperature decrements. The sample turns out to be slightly biased, with strongly elongated clusters preferentially aligned along the line of sight. This result demonstrates that X-Ray selected cluster samples may be affected by morphological and orientation effects even if a relatively high threshold signal-to-noise ratio is used to select the sample. A large majority of the clusters in our sample exhibit a marked triaxial structure, with prolate-like shapes being slightly more likely than oblate-like ones; the spherical hypothesis is strongly rejected for most sample members. Cooling flow clusters do not show preferentially regular morphologies.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures. Accepted by Ap