Microwave pre-treatment of model food waste to produce short chain organic acids and ethanol via anaerobic fermentation

Funding This study was funded by LEVERHULME TRUST. Serena Simonetti, a Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Scholar, is part of the 15 PhD scholarships of the “Leverhulme Centre for Doctoral Training in Sustainable Production of Chemicals and Materials” at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland, UK).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Product Concentration, Yield and Productivity in Anaerobic Digestion to Produce Short Chain Organic Acids : A Critical Analysis of Literature Data

Funding: This study was funded by LEVERHULME TRUST. Serena Simonetti, a Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Scholar, is part of the 15 PhD scholarships of the “Leverhulme Centre for Doctoral Training in Sustainable Production of Chemicals and Materials” at University of Aberdeen (Scotland, UK).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Tractor cabin ergonomics analyses by means of Kinect motion capture technology

Kinect is the de facto standard for real-time depth sensing and motion capture cameras. The sensor is here proposed for exploiting body tracking during driving operations. The motion capture system was developed taking advantage of the Microsoft software development kit (SDK), and implemented for real-time monitoring of body movements of a beginner and an expert tractor drivers, on different tracks (straight and with curves) and with different driving conditions (manual and assisted steering). Tests show how analyses can be done not only in terms of absolute movements, but also in terms of relative shifts, allowing for quantification of angular displacements or rotations

A modular telerehabilitation architecture for upper limb robotic therapy

Several factors may prevent post-stroke subjects from participating in rehabilitation protocols, for example, geographical location of rehabilitation centres, socioeconomic status, economic burden and lack of logistics surrounding transportation. Early supported discharge from hospitals with continued rehabilitation at home represents a well-defined regimen of post-stroke treatment. Information-based technologies coupled with robotics have promoted the development of new technologies for telerehabilitation. In this article, the design and development of a modular architecture for delivering upper limb robotic telerehabilitation with the CBM-Motus, a planar unilateral robotic machine that allows performing state-of-the-art rehabilitation tasks, have been presented. The proposed architecture allows a therapist to set a therapy session on his or her side and send it to the patient's side with a standardized communication protocol; the user interacts with the robot that provides an adaptive assistance during the rehabilitation tasks. Patient's performance is evaluated by means of performance indicators, which are also used to update robot behaviour during assistance. The implementation of the architecture is described and a set of validation tests on seven healthy subjects are presented. Results show the reliability of the novel architecture and the capability to be easily tailored to the user's needs with the chosen robotic device

The avid eaters of lives. New and old infectious diseases in Italy at the time of World War 1: a historical overview of military medicine and public health

World War I bursted Italy from different perspectives. The one here described under an historical point of view reguards health of military and civil population, with a special focus on infective diseases. The 20th Century was the fuse of degeneration and eugenetics theories; which grew in the meliè of war and technological innovation. Indeed, war is interestingly depicted as an entity capable of blooming the differences between those who wore a uniform and those who do not. As a matter of fact, some infection spared the civilian population while others felt with greater vengeance on this subgroup. Moreover, the incidence of different feared diseases was brought back to the rates of the late 19th Century. Thanks to a statistician, Giorgio Mortara (1885-1967) the impact of infective diseases in Wolrd War I on Italian demography is well established. Moreover, different military and civilian contribute to enrich the picture of the consequences of war. In conclusion World War I could see considered as a litmus paper. The litmus paper of successes and failures of italian public health management to face new medical challenges exacerbated by the crisis

Multi-isotopic regional-scale screening on drinking groundwater in Lombardy Region (Italy)

Groundwater represents the main and safest source of water that supply, for drinking purposes, numerous urban and rural communities all over the world. A deep knowledge of aquifer systems in terms of quality, vulnerability and renewability is fundamental to preserve groundwater resources. Thanks to the contribution of different members of Water Alliance in synergy with Sapienza University, during November 2019 a multi-isotopic analysis at regional scale on groundwater tapped for drinking purposes in a wide area of Lombardy Region, has been carried out. The study aimed to improve knowledge about recharge mechanisms, groundwater relative age and impact of human activities on groundwater quality Each Water Alliance supplier selected wells and springs for a total of 121 samples, catching different aquifer groups and distributed from North to South. Groundwater stable isotope analyses were performed on all the monitoring points, instead tritium, nitrogen isotopes (15N and 18O in nitrates), sulphate isotopes (34S and18O) and 13C isotope in Dissolved Inorganic Carbon (DIC), were analysed in selected monitoring wells basing on previous data and major ions concentrations results. Therefore, results confirmed the key role of multi-isotopic approach in defining aquifer recharge processes, relative groundwater age and origin of pollutants, offering a useful tool to point out local issues which can be deeply investigated by each water supplier

Therapeutic Targeting of Acute Myeloid Leukemia by Gemtuzumab Ozogamicin

Simple Summary Gemtuzumab Ozogamicin (GO) is a drug approved for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). It targets leukemic cells that express the CD33 molecule on their surface and brings the toxic agent calicheamicin inside the cell to kill it. Several studies have shown that AML patients can benefit of the addition of GO to chemotherapy during induction regimens, pre- and post-transplantation. Moreover, some disease features have been addressed or are under investigation for their capacity to predict response to GO, with the future aim of selecting AML patients that can mostly benefit of GO treatment. Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a complex hematological malignancy characterized by genetic and clinical heterogeneity and high mortality. Despite the recent introduction of novel pharmaceutical agents in hemato-oncology, few advancements have been made in AML for decades. In the last years, the therapeutic options have rapidly changed, with the approval of innovative compounds that provide new opportunities, together with new challenges for clinicians: among them, on 1 September, 2017 the Food and Drug Administration granted approval for Gemtuzumab Ozogamicin (GO) in combination with daunorubicin and cytarabine for the treatment of adult patients affected by newly diagnosed CD33(+) AML. Benefits of GO-based regimens were also reported in the pre- and post-transplantation settings. Moreover, several biomarkers of GO response have been suggested, including expression of CD33 and multidrug resistance genes, cytogenetic and molecular profiles, minimal residual disease and stemness signatures. Among them, elevated CD33 expression on blast cells and non-adverse cytogenetic or molecular risk represent largely validated predictors of good response

Bio-Cooperative Approach for the Human-in-the-Loop Control of an End-Effector Rehabilitation Robot

The design of patient-tailored rehabilitative protocols represents one of the crucial factors that influence motor recovery mechanisms, such as neuroplasticity. This approach, including the patient in the control loop and characterized by a control strategy adaptable to the user's requirements, is expected to significantly improve functional recovery in robot-aided rehabilitation. In this paper, a novel 3D bio-cooperative robotic platform is developed. A new arm-weight support system is included into an operational robotic platform for 3D upper limb robot-aided rehabilitation. The robotic platform is capable of adapting therapy characteristics to specific patient needs, thanks to biomechanical and physiological measurements, and thus closing the subject in the control loop. The level of arm-weight support and the level of the assistance provided by the end-effector robot are varied on the basis of muscular fatigue and biomechanical indicators. An assistance-as-needed approach is applied to provide the appropriate amount of assistance. The proposed platform has been experimentally validated on 10 healthy subjects; they performed 3D point-to-point tasks in two different conditions, i.e., with and without assistance-as-needed. The results have demonstrated the capability of the proposed system to properly adapt to real needs of the patients. Moreover, the provided assistance was shown to reduce the muscular fatigue without negatively influencing motion execution