Digital services for an internet of places: urban digital nodes for a smart region between Milan and Turin

This paper presents the outcomes of a three-year research project developed by the Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani (DAStU), in collaboration with Telecom Italia. Looking at territorial smartness from a spatial perspective, that leaves aside the purely technological aspects, the research aims at exploring different ICT potentialities: from new uses of space, to socio-economic and physical regeneration. With this goal, it reflects about the possible updating of concepts, which are widely used in urban planning: (i) from smart city to smart region, to deal with the regional scale of contemporary cities, thus including peripheral and marginal ‘in-between’ spaces; (ii) from urban nodes to urban digital nodes, to design multi-scalar smart spaces able to integrate traditional and digital services; (iii) from Internet of Things to Internet of Places, to make spaces able to interact through (at the same time) real and virtual experiences of users. These theoretical references are explored within the scenario of the metropolitan region between Milan and Turin. According to these issues, this paper presents the research process to the UDN localization along the infrastructural bundle between Milan and Turin: from the identification of urban/infrastructural nodes, to the selection of potential Urban Digital Nodes. Furthermore, it highlights the UDN contribution to a smart region development through the spatial implementation of an Internet of Places

Factores de riesgo para macrosomia fetal en el Hospital Maria Auxiliadora: enero – diciembre 2016

Introducción: La macrosomía fetal representa un problema de salud pública. Objetivos: Determinar los factores de riesgo asociados a macrosomía fetal en el Hospital María Auxiliadora en el periodo comprendido de enero a diciembre del 2016. Materiales y Métodos: Estudio analítico de casos y controles en el que se calcularon medidas descriptivas y se realizó un modelo bivariado. Para el análisis de datos se utilizó SPSS v22.0. Para la obtención de los datos se procedió a la revisión de las historias clínicas, utilizando una ficha de recolección de datos. Resultados: De los 380 pacientes, se tuvieron 95 casos y 285 controles. El 19,21% tenían menos de 20 años, 63,68% eran gestantes entre 20 y 34 años de edad y 17,11% tenían más de 35 años. El antecedente de parto macrosómico, estuvo presente en el 10,79% de los recién nacidos no macrosómicos y en el 8,42% de los recién nacidos macrosómicos. El 52,89% de la población tuvo sexo masculino. Se encontró asociación estadísticamente significativa entre macrosomía fetal y las siguientes variables: antecedente de parto macrosomico (OR: 3,02; IC 95%: [1,7-5,18]), ganancia ponderal durante la gestación (OR: 3,6; IC 95%: [2,1-6,1]) y altura uterina (OR: 7,1; IC 95%: [4,0-12,9]). Conclusiones: La prevalencia de macrosomía fetal fue de 9,83%. Los factores de riesgo más importante para macrosomía fetal son altura uterina, antecedente de parto macrosómico y ganancia ponderal mayor de 12 kg durante la gestación.Tesi

Target cell-specific plasticity rules of NMDA receptor-mediated synaptic transmission in the hippocampus

Long-term potentiation and depression of NMDA receptor-mediated synaptic transmission (NMDAR LTP/LTD) can significantly impact synapse function and information transfer in several brain areas. However, the mechanisms that determine the direction of NMDAR plasticity are poorly understood. Here, using physiologically relevant patterns of presynaptic and postsynaptic burst activities, whole-cell patch clamp recordings, 2-photon laser calcium imaging in acute rat hippocampal slices and immunoelectron microscopy, we tested whether distinct calcium dynamics and group I metabotropic glutamate receptor (I-mGluR) subtypes control the sign of NMDAR plasticity. We found that postsynaptic calcium transients (CaTs) in response to hippocampal MF stimulation were significantly larger during the induction of NMDAR-LTP compared to NMDAR-LTD at the MF-to-CA3 pyramidal cell (MF-CA3) synapse. This difference was abolished by pharmacological blockade of mGluR5 and was significantly reduced by depletion of intracellular calcium stores, whereas blocking mGluR1 had no effect on these CaTs. In addition, we discovered that MF to hilar mossy cell (MF-MC) synapses, which share several structural and functional commonalities with MF-CA3 synapses, also undergoes NMDAR plasticity. To our surprise, however, we found that the postsynaptic distribution of I-mGluR subtypes at these two synapses differ, and the same induction protocol that induces NMDAR-LTD at MF-CA3 synapses, only triggered NMDAR-LTP at MF-MC synapses, despite a comparable calcium dynamics. Thus, postsynaptic calcium dynamics alone cannot predict the sign of NMDAR plasticity, indicating that both postsynaptic calcium rise and the relative contribution of I-mGluR subtypes likely determine the learning rules of NMDAR plasticity.This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), R01-NS113600, R01-MH125772, R01-MH116673, and R01-MH081935 to PC, and by The Basque Government (IT1620-22), Red de Investigación en Atención Primaria de Adicciones (RIAPAd), Instituto de Salud Carlos III (RD21/0009/0006), and Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2019-107548RB-I00) to PG