Digital Transformation in the Construction Sector: From BIM to Digital Twin

In the next years, perhaps more than ever before, a technological revolution will transform the construction sector in all its aspects, greatly affecting services, production, and supplies. With BIM, and even more considering the Digital Twin topic, the innovation of tools has entailed a methodological innovation for the whole sector, owing to virtual reality simulations and actual dynamic real-time monitoring. This research, starting from an integrated analysis between the current research trends and some relevant national and European projects about the digitalization of construction sector, aims at providing a systematic analysis of some of the pillars that are guiding this phenomenon. In detail, the state of the art, activities, and trends of standardization and platform development in construction sector are considered and intersected to provide a clear background towards the future trends in the sector

AN AUTOMATED FRAMEWORK FOR ENSURING INFORMATION CONSISTENCY IN PRICE LIST TENDERING DOCUMENT

Effective cost estimation for tendering plays a critical role in the building construction process, enabling efficient investment management and ensuring successful execution of the construction phase. Traditional cost estimation procedure involves manual information processing to extract and match technical data from textual description construction resources. This activity requires practitioner deep experience and manual effort, often resulting in errors and, in the worst scenario, judicial disputes. In response to the increasing demand for structured information and automated processes, this study addresses the need for Public Administrations to achieve better control over the data contained in public tendering documents provided to practitioners. To fulfill this objective, a framework is proposed to automatically retrieve information from these documents, serving as a support tool to map items within the documents, highlight missing data, and critical semantic ambiguity. The designed framework aims to develop a tool for automatically identifying similarities between work items and their corresponding elementary resource items in Price List tendering documents. By leveraging the information retrieval NLP technique of cosine similarity through TF-IDF, a methodology was developed to support and facilitate practitioners' activities. Finally, the framework was tested on four case studies extracted from Lombardy Regional Italian price list documents showing that the resulting support tool is able to automate the analysis process and efficiently reveal inconsistency. The model successfully extracted and correctly matched the elementary resource to the corresponding work query in 75% of the cases where the elementary resource was present in the list. Additionally, the model proved to be a valuable tool in helping practitioners identify missing resources

Vitamin d3 enriches ceramide content in exosomes released by embryonic hippocampal cells

The release of exosomes can lead to cell\u2013cell communication. Nutrients such as vitamin D3 and sphingolipids have important roles in many cellular functions, including proliferation, dif-ferentiation, senescence, and cancer. However, the specific composition of sphingolipids in exo-somes and their changes induced by vitamin D3 treatment have not been elucidated. Here, we ini-tially observed neutral sphingomyelinase and vitamin D receptors in exosomes released from HN9.10 embryonic hippocampal cells. Using ultrafast liquid chromatography tandem mass spec-trometry, we showed that exosomes are rich in sphingomyelin species compared to whole cells. To interrogate the possible functions of vitamin D3, we established the optimal conditions of cell treatment and we analyzed exosome composition. Vitamin D3 was identified as responsible for the vitamin D receptor loss, for the increase in neutral sphingomyelinase content and sphingomyelin changes. As a consequence, the generation of ceramide upon vitamin D3 treatment was evident. Incubation of the cells with neutral sphingomyelinase, or the same concentration of ceramide pro-duced in exosomes was necessary and sufficient to stimulate embryonic hippocampal cell differen-tiation, as vitamin D3. This is the first time that exosome ceramide is interrogated for mediate the effect of vitamin D3 in inducing cell differentiation

Relationship between fatty acids composition/antioxidant potential of breast milk and maternal diet: Comparison with infant formulas

The fatty acid composition of human breast milk is relevant for the energy, immunity and eicosanoid production in infants. Additionally, the antioxidant properties of foods are essential for human health. Therefore, in the present study we aimed to investigate the relationship between maternal diet and fatty acids composition as well as the antioxidant potential of breast milk from donors to human milk bank of Perugia\u2019s hospital, Italy. Results were compared with infant formulas. We observed increased levels of total fatty acids and, in particular, saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids in milk from mothers fed on a vegetable and fruit-rich diet compared with a Mediterranean diet. In the same milk, a reduced antioxidant potential was found. All infant formulas resulted in richer total fatty acid content than human breast milk. Only some formulas were qualitatively similar to breast milk. Of note, the antioxidant potential of the formulas was higher or lower than the human milk with the exception of one sample. The antioxidant potential of four formulas was very high. Dietary supplementation with antioxidants has been shown to have a teratogenic effect and to increase the formation of metastases in adult. There are no data on the effects of excess antioxidants in the infants, but the possibility that they can be harmful cannot be excluded

PRESENTAZIONE ECOGRAFICA DELL’EPATOCARCINOMA: ESPERIENZA DI UN SINGOLO CENTRO NELL’ARCO DI TRE DECENNI

Valutare i cambiamenti della presentazione ecografica (US) degli epatocarcinomi (HCC) diagnosticati presso la nostra UO di Medicina Interna in tre periodi:1993-98, 2003-2008,2013-18. Il Gruppo 1 (G1) (1993-1998) comprendeva 174 HCC, il Gruppo 2 (G2) (2003-08) 96, il Gruppo 3 (G3) (2013-2018) 102. Sono stati registrati età, sesso, markers HBV, HCV, uso di alcol, alfafetoproteina (AFP), test di funzionalità epatica, autoanticorpi, ferritinemia. La diagnosi di HCC in G2 e G3 è stata posta secondo le linee guida EASL, in G1 con istologia o citologia nel 40%, nel resto con multiple tecniche di imaging concordanti (ecografia, TC, TC con lipiodol, angiografia), livelli sierici di AFP>200 ng/ml. La presentazione US veniva classificata secondo Otho in: Singolo, Multipli, Diffusi (Dig. Liv. Dis. 43 (2011) 875–880). Nel gruppo 1: 11.5% dei pazienti risultava in sorveglianza, meno che nel G2 (66%) e nel G3 (76.4%) (p<0.0001), G2 vs G3 (P=ns). L’età media aumentava progressivamente da G1 a G3 (rho=0.45; P<0.0001), gli HCC Singoli erano più frequenti in G2 (63.5%) e in G3 (65.6 %) vs G1 (40 %) (P<0.0001), G2 vs G3 P=ns. La frequenza dei Multipli era maggiore in G1 (50 %) vs G2 (34.4%) e G3 (33.3%) (entrambi P<0.02), G2 vs G3 P=ns. Il Diffuso prevaleva in G1 (16 %) vs G2 (2 %) e G3 (1 %), (entrambi P<0.001), G2 vs G3 P=ns. L’ecostruttura nei tre periodi era sovrapponibile, risultava maggiore l’ipocogena (50-70%), la meno frequente l’isoecogena (7-12%). L’eziologia più frequente nei tre G era HCV, la post Non Alcoholic Steatohepatitis/ criptogenetica (NASH/C) nel G3 era significativamente maggiore vs G2 e vs G1 (entrambi P<0.05). Nel G3 gli HCC-NASH/C vs i virali avevano una severità secondo Otho maggiore (rho=0.3, P<0.02) e il diametro dei noduli neoplastici era più grande (P<0.0001). I programmi di vaccinazione contro l’HBV, le terapie antivirali, l’aumentata prevalenza della cirrosi postNASH, la sorveglianza US, hanno modificato il ruolo dei fattori di rischio e la severità dell’epatocarcinoma (HCC) al momento della diagnosi. I nostri risultati confermano che la presentazione US dell’HCC negli anni è diventata meno severa, effetto della sorveglianza ecografica semestrale. I nostri dati mostrano inoltre nel G3 un aumento della prevalenza degli HCC-postNASH/C, questi alla diagnosi hanno una presentazione più severa se confrontati con i virali, probabilmente conseguenza di un ritardo diagnostico, infatti pochi pazienti (6/14) erano in sorveglianza US. Sono necessari ulteriori studi per definire le politiche di sorveglianza ecografica per gli HCC nella NASH

User needs elicitation via analytic hierarchy process (AHP). A case study on a Computed Tomography (CT) scanner

Background: The rigorous elicitation of user needs is a crucial step for both medical device design and purchasing. However, user needs elicitation is often based on qualitative methods whose findings can be difficult to integrate into medical decision-making. This paper describes the application of AHP to elicit user needs for a new CT scanner for use in a public hospital. Methods: AHP was used to design a hierarchy of 12 needs for a new CT scanner, grouped into 4 homogenous categories, and to prepare a paper questionnaire to investigate the relative priorities of these. The questionnaire was completed by 5 senior clinicians working in a variety of clinical specialisations and departments in the same Italian public hospital. Results: Although safety and performance were considered the most important issues, user needs changed according to clinical scenario. For elective surgery, the five most important needs were: spatial resolution, processing software, radiation dose, patient monitoring, and contrast medium. For emergency, the top five most important needs were: patient monitoring, radiation dose, contrast medium control, speed run, spatial resolution. Conclusions: AHP effectively supported user need elicitation, helping to develop an analytic and intelligible framework of decision-making. User needs varied according to working scenario (elective versus emergency medicine) more than clinical specialization. This method should be considered by practitioners involved in decisions about new medical technology, whether that be during device design or before deciding whether to allocate budgets for new medical devices according to clinical functions or according to hospital department

The UA9 experimental layout

The UA9 experimental equipment was installed in the CERN-SPS in March '09 with the aim of investigating crystal assisted collimation in coasting mode. Its basic layout comprises silicon bent crystals acting as primary collimators mounted inside two vacuum vessels. A movable 60 cm long block of tungsten located downstream at about 90 degrees phase advance intercepts the deflected beam. Scintillators, Gas Electron Multiplier chambers and other beam loss monitors measure nuclear loss rates induced by the interaction of the beam halo in the crystal. Roman pots are installed in the path of the deflected particles and are equipped with a Medipix detector to reconstruct the transverse distribution of the impinging beam. Finally UA9 takes advantage of an LHC-collimator prototype installed close to the Roman pot to help in setting the beam conditions and to analyze the efficiency to deflect the beam. This paper describes in details the hardware installed to study the crystal collimation during 2010.Comment: 15pages, 11 figure, submitted to JINS