Novel LDL-cholesterol lowering therapies: A step forward a personalized medicine

2023

WRITTEN REFLECTION AS A “MOVEMENT” IN A QUALITY SERVICE-LEARNING PROCESS

2023

Nowadays, Service Learning (SL) is considered as a form of experiential education. This perspective is based on the recognition and enhancement of experience as an ordering criterion of teaching and learning methods. In these terms, learning offers students the opportunity to experience a deeper understanding of personal competences. Thus, the central element of the SL is the link between personal and interpersonal development with cognitive development and the curricular path. Investing in authentic conditions of subjectivity and consequently promoting the production of significant knowledge towards research parameters encompass the possibility of collaborating and interacting with a plura…

Roboception and adaptation in a cognitive robot

2023

In robotics, perception is usually oriented at understanding what is happening in the external world, while few works pay attention to what is occurring in the robot’s body. In this work, we propose an artificial somatosensory system, embedded in a cognitive architecture, that enables a robot to perceive the sensations from its embodiment while executing a task. We called these perceptions roboceptions, and they let the robot act according to its own physical needs in addition to the task demands. Physical information is processed by the robot to behave in a balanced way, determining the most appropriate trade-off between the achievement of the task and its well being. The experiments show …

Design of a Planar Sensor Based on Split-Ring Resonators for Non-Invasive Permittivity Measurement

2023

The permittivity of a material is an important parameter to characterize the degree of polarization of a material and identify components and impurities. This paper presents a non-invasive measurement technique to characterize materials in terms of their permittivity based on a modified metamaterial unit-cell sensor. The sensor consists of a complementary split-ring resonator (C-SRR), but its fringe electric field is contained with a conductive shield to intensify the normal component of the electric field. It is shown that by tightly electromagnetically coupling opposite sides of the unit-cell sensor to the input/output microstrip feedlines, two distinct resonant modes are excited. Perturb…

Pedagogical approaches to surface phenomena in liquids: Investigation-based laboratory and modelling activities to improve students’ learning

2023

Paperclips can float on water, mercury drops do not spread on solid surfaces, and fluids can flow against gravity in capillary tubes. Surface tension can be used to explain these phenomena that are macroscopic manifestations of microscopic molecular interactions. At both school and university levels, surface phenomena are introduced through traditional macroscopic or microscopic approaches. However, since explanations based on microscopic models are often in conflict with common macroscopic interpretations, the traditional teaching of the basic concepts related to surface phenomena can be unclear and can prevent students from an effective understanding of the topic. However, since surface p…

The influence of business groups on board composition in offshore financial multinational enterprises

2023

Based on resource dependence theory we argue for an influence of business groups (BGs) on the board composition of constituent offshore financial multinational enterprises (FMNEs). Using a unique sample of 171 Caribbean FMNEs in an inter-island BG setting, we find BGs’ control in constituent firms to be indicative of the importance of the internal financing and intermediation within the group network. This control leads to a higher proportion of lawyers hired to the boards of directors in BG-constituent firms and supports the argument that lawyers provide skills in complex offshore regulatory frameworks that facilitate BGs’ optimal tax management. Furthermore, we observe that an increased a…

Photoplethysmograhic sensors, potential and limitations: Is it time for regulation? A comprehensive review

2023

Healthcare is expected to increasingly shift care out of inpatient settings thanks to wearable monitoring systems. Photoplethysmography (PPG) is an optical technique already integrated into wrist-worn commercial products which presents significant advantages in terms of cost and dimensions. PPG-based devices, despite their ability to detect multiple cardiovascular parameters, are affected by several influencing conditions that depend both on technological or environmental variables, and on intra- and inter-subject variability that influences the whole measurement chain and reliability, hindering an objective characterization of PPG devices. Plus, the lack of standardization for data collect…

Mercato delle idee e fake news. Note su un problema di esternalità negative nell’ambiente digitale

2023

The spread of fake news in the digital arena has put into question the traditional idea of the self-regulation of public debate: the well-known metaphor of “free market of ideas”. Because of the availability of digital media, the reduction of the overall cost in producing and disseminating false news has dramatically fallen. Everybody at any time can enter the public debate, even though with bad arguments. At the same time, the competition between traditional and digital media has produced an astonishing reduction of the average incomes of the professional journalists. This paper aims to bring to the fore the metaphor of the market of ideas, metaphor that has been used in the US for reducin…

Social media, percorsi e narrazioni: una geografia digitale del turismo naturalistico

2023

Il turismo, soprattutto quello di massa, può avere un impatto negativo sull’ambiente e sulle culture locali. Al fine di superare questa criticità negli ultimi anni si sono moltiplicate le proposte di forme di turismo alternativo. Tra queste il turismo naturalistico offre delle interessanti opportunità, oggi accentuate dalla diffusione dei social media e da piattaforme digitali realizzate per aiutare e incentivare gli utenti propensi ad esplorare gli ambienti naturali. In questo lavoro, oltre a descrivere le più comuni dinamiche e criticità riguardanti il turismo naturalistico, si approfondisce il caso della piattaforma digitale AllTrails. Social media, routes and narrations: a digital geogr…

First record of hypopigmentary anomaly in the Moorish gecko Tarentola mauritanica with an overview of the cases reported for wild geckos

2023

We report the first record of hypopigmentary anomaly in the Moorish gecko

Rare earths release from dissolving atmospheric dust and their accumulation into crystallising halite. The dead-sea example

2023

: The industrial extraction of Y and lanthanides (hereafter defined as Rare Earth Elements, REE) often requires the achievement of leaching procedures removing these metals from primary rocks and their transfer in aqueous leachates or incorporated in newly forming soluble solids. These procedures are the most dangerous to the environment in relation to the composition of leachates. Hence, the recognition of natural settings where these processes currently occur, represents a worthy challenge for learning how to carry out similar industrial procedures under natural and more eco-friendly conditions. Accordingly, the REE distribution was studied in the brine of Dead Sea, a terminal evaporating…

Paesaggi, territori e immaginari nella transizione digitale

2023

Short introduction to the conference session

Prefazione a: Disaster Resilience and Human Settlements. Emerging Perspectives in the Anthropocene

2023

Preface to the volume "Disaster Resilience and Human Settlements. Emerging Perspectives in the Anthropocene"

La via sovversiva della «poesia onesta». La lezione di Saba nel secondo Novecento

2023

The essay highlights how Saba's poetry has been reinterpreted by poets and storytellers of the late twentieth century also from a civil perspective, and has established itself as the object of a rethinking that involves the very function of literature as a (residual) ambition for truth and as disobedience in the face of the semantic seduction of the «sign language of the strongest» (to use Nietzsche's formula).

The EU-funded I3LUNG Project:Integrative Science, Intelligent Data Platform for Individualized LUNG Cancer Care With Immunotherapy

2023

Although immunotherapy (IO) has changed the paradigm for the treatment of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancers (aNSCLC), only around 30% to 50% of treated patients experience a long-term benefit from IO. Furthermore, the identification of the 30 to 50% of patients who respond remains a major challenge, as programmed Death-Ligand 1 (PD-L1) is currently the only biomarker used to predict the outcome of IO in NSCLC patients despite its limited efficacy. Considering the dynamic complexity of the immune system-tumor microenvironment (TME) and its interaction with the host's and patient's behavior, it is unlikely that a single biomarker will accurately predict a patient's outcomes. …

P-749 Increased accuracy in infertility workup by the additional use of new modern diagnostic methods (“diagnostic TRIO”): results from a large retro…

2023

Study question Is there any positive effect of adding new modalities to the traditional infertility work-up, like 3D sonography, office hysteroscopy and endometrial biopsy? Summary answer During infertility workup conventional diagnostic tests should be combined with new approaches (3D-TVS, OHSC and endometrial biopsy) to achieve more accurate and less invasive diagnostics. What is known already Female infertility can be explained by functional or organic abnormalities affecting the reproductive system. The most common organic causes include abnormalities within the uterine cavity (e.g. endometrial polyp, submucosal fibroid, intrauterine adhesion), morphological disorders (e.g. dysmorphic u…

ReO as a Brønsted acidic modifier in glycerol hydrodeoxygenation : Computational insight into the balance between acid and metal catalysis

2023

A computational study for the competitive conversion of glycerol to 1,2-propanediol and 1,3-propanediol is presented, considering a two-step sequence of dehydration followed by hydrogenation. The elementary steps for dehydration, i.e., breaking of C–H followed by C–OH or vice versa, were studied computationally both on the Rh metal surface and the acid-modified ReOH–Rh surface in order to understand the role of the acid promoter. While the acid modifier can catalyze the C–OH cleavage, the activation energy for the C–H cleavage was found to be considerably smaller on both pure and acid-doped Rh(111) surfaces, and breaking the secondary C–H bond is kinetically favored over breaking the termin…

Phasor-FLIM for a direct investigation of Transportan 10 interactions with model membranes

2023

Transportan 10 (TP10), a short and positive charged peptide, belonging to the family of the cell penetrating peptides has gained increasing attention for its antimicrobial and anticancer activity but also for its applications in drug delivery as it is able to translocate therapeutic molecules in cellular environment. Due to the complexity of the phenomena involved in cellular uptake and following processes, which strongly depend on the membrane lipid composition, structural details of the peptide (e.g., charge, hydrophobicity, steric hindrance) and environmental conditions, it is not easy to understand the general rules governing them. Here, we combine spectroscopic techniques and fluoresce…

Estimating soil moisture content under grassland with hyperspectral data using radiative transfer modelling and machine learning

2023

The monitoring of soil moisture content (SMC) at very high spatial resolution (10m) using unmanned aerial systems (UAS) is of high interest for precision agriculture and the validation of large scale SMC products. Data-driven approaches are the most common method to retrieve SMC with UAS-borne data at water limited sites over non-disturbed agricultural crops. A major disadvantage of data-driven algorithms is the limited transferability in space and time and the need of a high number of ground reference samples. Physically-based approaches are less dependent on the amount of samples and are transferable in space and time. This study explores the potential of (1) a hybrid method targeting the…

Abitare la transizione nei Centri minori in Sicilia

2023

The proposal aims to develop concrete experience on possible ways of living from a framework of national and international references on the theme of the Social Housing Community to define a specific methodology on strategies to be tested on the theme of residence temporary in small towns in Sicily. The provision of minimum and adequate space for short and long periods of welcome is thus intended for new temporary residents (returning young people, migrant families, the elderly, travellers in transit) which can also be used to meet the needs of migrants, under the public direction of the municipal administration. The issue of residency is back in the disciplinary debate after the health eme…

The legacy of human use in Amazonian palm communities along environmental and accessibility gradients

2023

Aim: Palms are iconic and dominant elements of neotropical forests. In the Amazon region, palms have been used and managed by humans for food, material, medicine and other purposes for millennia. It is, however, debated to what extent the structure of modern palm communities reflects long-term human modification. Here, we investigate the complex interplay of ecological and societal factors that influence the distributions of both human-used and non-used palms in western Amazonia. Location: Amazonia. Time period: Present. Major taxa studied: Palms (Arecaceae). Methods: We used Bayesian hierarchical joint species distribution models to predict the distributions and environmental niche dimensi…

THE ROLE OF PATIENT-PHYSICIAN RELATIONSHIP IN CARE PROCESSES AND IN THE TECHNOLOGICAL TRANSITION OF HEALTHCARE

2023

Moving forward the Italian nursing education into the post-pandemic era: findings from a national qualitative research study

2023

Background: During the CoronaVIrus-19 (COVID-19) pandemic, nursing education has been dramatically transformed and shaped according to the restrictions imposed by national rules. Restoring educational activities as delivered in the pre-pandemic era without making a critical evaluation of the transformations implemented, may sacrifice the extraordinary learning opportunity that this event has offered. The aim of this study was to identify a set of recommendations that can guide the Italian nursing education to move forward in the post-pandemic era. Methods: A qualitative descriptive design was undertaken in 2022–2023 and reported here according to the COnsolidated criteria for REporting Qual…

Understanding the consumption of plant-based meat alternatives and the role of health-related aspects. A study of the Italian market

2023

One possible solution to address some of the current health and environmental challenges we are facing is to choose plant-based meat alternatives (PBMAs). However, from the literature, the role of PBMA products in the consumer’s diet and whether they are a substitute for red meat consumption or if they only represent an enrichment function is not clear. Moreover, little is known about how health-related aspects affect consumer choices. This study tries to understand the role of PBMAs in consumption habits and the effects of health-related aspects in PBMA consumption. The results show that PBMA consumption occurs in substitution to red meat, and it is associated mainly with healthy and susta…

Il genere, anche quando non si vede, ha effetti reali. Perché questo libro è da prendere sul serio

2023

Afterword to the volume: The genre taken seriously

StateOS : A Memory-Efficient Hybrid Operating System for IoT Devices

2023

The increasing significance of operating systems (OSs) in the development of the internet of things (IoT) has emerged in the last decade. An event-driven OS is memory efficient and suitable for resource-constrained IoT devices and wireless sensors, although the program’s control flow, which is determined by events, is not always obvious. A multithreaded OS with sequential control flow is often considered clearer. However, this approach is memory-consuming. A hybrid OS seeks to combine the strengths of the event-driven approach with multithreaded approach. An event-driven cooperative threaded OS represents a hybrid approach that supports concurrency by explicitly yielding control to another …

COMUNICAZIONE MULTILINGUE FRA APPRENDIMENTO E USO. IN ITALIA MA SENZA ITALIANI

2023

Young new migrants. Multilingual commmunication

Assessment of MOSFET switching losses in an LLC converter by a calorimetric method

2023

The present work aims to implement a calorimetric method to measure the power dissipated during MOSFET switching in a high efficiency LLC resonant converter. The power dissipated from switching can significantly impact the total power dissipated by the device and consequent efficiency, so correct quantification is fundamental for optimizing the devices and increasing the efficiency of the converters. In LLC converters, this type of dissipated power cannot be measured with standard methods such as measurement with oscilloscopes as some of the energy that is recovered and not dissipated. The calorimetric method requires reasonably accurate measurement of thermal resistance and the temperature…

Screened Coulomb interaction in insulators with strong disorder

2023

We study the effect of disorder on the excitons in a semiconductor with screened Coulomb interaction. Examples are polymeric semiconductors and/or van der Waals structures. In the screened hydrogenic problem, we consider the disorder phenomenologically using the so-called fractional Scrödinger equation. Our main finding is that joint action of screening and disorder either destroys the exciton (strong screening) or enhances the bounding of electron and hole in an exciton, leading to its collapse in the extreme case. Latter effects may also be related to the quantum manifestations of chaotic exciton behavior in the above semiconductor structures. Hence, they should be considered in device ap…

Prospects for the inference of inertial modes from hypermassive neutron stars with future gravitational-wave detectors

2023

Some recent, long-term numerical simulations of binary neutron star mergers have shown that the long-lived remnants produced in such mergers might be affected by convective instabilities. Those would trigger the excitation of inertial modes, providing a potential method to improve our understanding of the rotational and thermal properties of neutron stars through the analysis of the modes' imprint in the late post-merger gravitational-wave signal. In this paper we assess the detectability of those modes by injecting numerically generated post-merger waveforms into colored Gaussian noise of second-generation and future detectors. Signals are recovered using BayesWave, a Bayesian data-analysi…

Heavy-Ion-Induced Defects in Degraded SiC Power MOSFETs

2023

Cathodoluminescence spectroscopy is used to investigate the formation of point- and extended defects in SiC power MOSFETs exposed to heavy-ions. Devices showing single event leakage current (SELC) effects are analysed and compared to pristine samples. Common luminescence peaks of defect centers localized in the thermal-SiO2 are identified, together with peaks at the characteristic wavelength of extended defects.

Acculturation Orientations among Russian Youth in Finland

2023

Despite the fact that much academic attention has been directed to the acculturation of immigrants in Finland, the need to more fully understand how immigrants cope with acculturation is timely. Since the Russian-speaking immigrants represent the biggest immigrant group in Finland, this chapter explores the acculturation orientations among Russian immigrant youth approached from the angle of the festive culture. The findings are based on the data of ethnographic observation and qualitative interviews (n 16) conducted in the central part of Finland. To capture the nuances of dynamic acculturation experiences, the authors applied a bottom-up methodological approach which gives voice to young …

Formare gli studenti universitari alla Cittadinanza Digitale

2023

Today digital media are configured as social environments that expand our personal, cultural, social and educational reality, therefore measuring citizens’ activities in online environments is of fundamental importance. In the last decade, different scholars have proposed different definitions of the digital citizenship and different measurement tools. Most definitions focus on two conceptions of digital citizenship, some more inherent in digital skills and others centered on critical aspects and civic engagement. In this study, we present the translation and Italian adaptation of two scales: the Digital Citizenship Scale by Al-Zahrani (2015) and the Digital Citizenship Scale by Choi, Glass…

The use of TikTok in Initial Teacher Training

2023

The continuous evolution of technology and the increasingly massive use of visual content have given way to an era characterized by the use of short videos mainly through social media. Among these applications, TikTok has been chosen primarily by young people thanks to the unique communication strategies it offers. This paper presents the activities that have involved and will involve first-year students enrolled in the single-cycle master’s degree course in Primary Education Sciences of the University of Palermo in the a.y. 2022/2023. This study aims primarily at investigating the perceptions that university students have regarding the use of TikTok to implement learning and to highlight t…

Risks and benefits of animal-assisted interventions for critically ill patients admitted to intensive care units

2023

Abstract Background Pets offer significant health benefits, from decreased cardiovascular risks to anxiety and post-traumatic stress improvements. Animal-assisted interventions (AAI) are not frequently practiced in the intensive care unit (ICU) for fear of health risk for critical patients because there is a hypothetical risk of zoonoses. Objectives This systematic review aimed to collect and summarize available evidence about AAI in the ICU. The Review questions were “Do AAI improve the clinical outcome of Critically Ill Patients admitted to ICUs?” and “Are the zoonotic infections the cause of negative prognosis?”. Methods The following databases were searched on 5 January 2023: Cochrane C…

Formazione Service e-Learning: esperienza media-educativa

2023

The use of technology is an interesting device, which constitutes a useful self-training approach, related to an experience, from which to extract significant materials and traces of their personal learning. In Italy, Service Learning (SL) projects that use digital media in the university environment are still rare and therefore there are not many data and research results related to the introduction of SL in the training of future teachers. On the contrary, at the international level we find a vast scientific literature on SL and its applications, also in the academic field. Service e-Learning (Se-L) can in fact represent an essential approach for university education, which allows student…