Francesco Fichera e il Palazzo delle Poste per Noto: studio grafico su un edificio mai realizzato

2022

Si può parlare di dialogo in architettura? Il disegno può essere considerato come la traduzione in forma grafica dei rapporti dialogici in architettura e tra architettura e città? Con questo scritto si tenterà si rispondere ai due quesiti appena formulati attraverso lo studio del caso di un edificio non realizzato dell’architetto catanese Francesco Fichera (1881-1950) per la città emblema del barocco siciliano, Noto: il Palazzo delle Poste e Casa Littoria nella centralissima piazza del Municipio. L’approfondimento sulla documentazione progettuale ritrovata e la successiva fase di ridisegno critico restituiscono una possibile chiave di lettura su un metodo compositivo fortemente ancorato a r…

AR/VR Contextualization of the Statue of Zeus from Solunto

2022

The aim of the research is to test how VR and AR technologies can contribute to a virtuous reconnection between the museums, where archaeological works of art are exhibited, and the sites where these works come from. The connection between the museum and the site will be operated with panoramic images generated with SfM photogrammetric tools; these images will set up a twofold reconnection: i) between the work of art and the building where it was hosted; ii) between the building and the site, with the landscape around. The connection between the site and the museum will be operated with Augmented Reality, through the visualization on site of the works of Art exhibited in the archaeological …

Gradient-Based Automatic Lookup Table Generator for Radiative Transfer Models

2022

Physically based radiative transfer models (RTMs) are widely used in Earth observation to understand the radiation processes occurring on the Earth’s surface and their interactions with water, vegetation, and atmosphere. Through continuous improvements, RTMs have increased in accuracy and representativity of complex scenes at expenses of an increase in complexity and computation time, making them impractical in various remote sensing applications. To overcome this limitation, the common practice is to precompute large lookup tables (LUTs) for their later interpolation. To further reduce the RTM computation burden and the error in LUT interpolation, we have developed a method to automaticall…

OBSTRUCTED DEFECATION SYNDROME AND CHRONIC CONSTIPATION: CLINICAL AND SURGICAL ANALYSIS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

2022

Chronic constipation and Obstructed defecation Syndrome (ODS) represent a high-incidence pathological status that severely compromise of Quality of Life (QoL). Our multidisciplinary study is aimed to investigate how the resolution of ODS by surgical technique can improve long-term clinical symptoms and the state of physical and mental health and QoL, focusing on the dual interaction between psyche and intestine Chronic constipation and Obstructed Defectaion Syndrome represent a high-incidence pathological status that severely compromise of Quality of Life. Our multidisciplinary study is aimed to investigate how the resolution of ODS by surgical technique can improve long-term clinical sympt…

Il reliquiario a sarcofago di Santa Ninfa a Palermo

2022

In full affirmation of the themes of the Counter-Reformation, the city of Palermo pays homage to one of its Patronesses with the creation of a monumental silver urn. Through the analysis of documentary sources and the necessary formal and stylistic surveys, the history of the precious sacred goldsmith's work is reconstructed

Use of Digital Resources in Higher Education during COVID-19: A Literature Review

2022

The sudden transition from face-to-face education to remote education under the international-level restrictions imposed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic—a transition made in the spirit of achieving and developing accessible education—involved the application of methodologically diverse resources and strategies. The objective of this article is to investigate the digital resources that have been applied in higher education institutions, paying special attention to the type and frequency of use of resources. A literature review was carried out on a total of 44 articles. The main results show that the primary resources applied in higher education institutions were videoconferencing tools,…

IJIR Title Page and Table of Contents Vol. 3

2022

Alcohol binge drinking in adolescence and psychological profile: Can the preclinical model crack the chicken-or-egg question?

2022

During adolescence, internal and external factors contribute to engaging with alcohol binge drinking (ABD), putting at risk the neurodevelopment of brain regions crucial for emotional control and stress coping. This research assessed the prevalence of ABD in late adolescent students of Southern Italy and characterized their psychological profile and drinking motives. Translational effects of alcohol binge drinking in the animal model were also studied. Seven hundred and fifty-nine high school students of both sexes (aged 18–20) were recruited. Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test-Consumption (AUDIT-C), Drinking Motives Questionnaire-Revised Short Form, Millon Clinical Multiaxial Invento…

Internet of Things-Based Fire Alarm Navigation System: A Fire-Rescue Department Perspective

2022

In the past few years, fire alarm systems have become increasingly sophisticated and more capable and reliable. The two main objectives are the protection of life and property. As a result of state and local codes, fire protection has become more concerned with life safety over the past two decades. Several safety measures have been implemented to address the problems caused by the fires and reduce the number of fatalities and property damage. Our project is to develop and review a fire alarm navigation system and application that uses the internet of things. Fire alarm systems are designed to warn people about fires in advance so that they can evacuate the fire-affected area and take immed…

MEXICO AND ITS “LIBERAL TRIENNIUM”: LIBERALISM, LOCAL POWER AND SUFFRAGE

2022

Resumen El segundo momento constitucional que se va a desarrollar en la monarquía española a partir de 1820 tuvo importantes consecuencias para la configuración de México como estado independiente. Si, inicialmente, el territorio mexicano transitaría hacia formas políticas liberales insertado en el conjunto de la monarquía, poco después, a partir de 1821, se proclamaría la independencia. Esto no significó el abandono de las prácticas liberales implementadas a partir de la aplicación de la Constitución de 1812, sino su extensión en los primeros compases de la nación independiente. A partir de los proyectos políticos de autogobierno que los mexicanos plantearon en las Cortes de Madrid de esto…

The AutoInflammatory Diseases Alliance Registry of monogenic autoinflammatory diseases

2022

ObjectiveThe present manuscript aims to describe an international, electronic-based, user-friendly and interoperable patient registry for monogenic autoinflammatory diseases (mAIDs), developed in the contest of the Autoinflammatory Diseases Alliance (AIDA) Network.MethodsThis is an electronic platform, based on the Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) tool, used for real-world data collection of demographics, clinical, laboratory, instrumental and socioeconomic data of mAIDs patients. The instrument has flexibility, may change over time based on new scientific acquisitions, and communicate potentially with other similar registries; security, data quality and data governance are corner …

A Relational Approach to Networks in a Tourism Destination: Business and Family Networks in San Vito Lo Capo, Sicily

2022

This article constructs a relational framework using the principles of the Network Approach to examining the business exchange structure of a tourist destination. Network Analysis is the methodology to analyse the metrics of collaboration and cooperation among destination companies. The model was applied in a remote tourist destination named San Vito Lo Capo on the island of Sicily, where tourism has significantly expanded in the last twenty years. The focus is on how groupings of small companies within family relations can govern and be responsible for tourism destination cooperation. As the main result, the existence was identified, of a relational framework where three clusters of famili…

Fake News Spreaders Detection: Sometimes Attention Is Not All You Need

2022

Guided by a corpus linguistics approach, in this article we present a comparative evaluation of State-of-the-Art (SotA) models, with a special focus on Transformers, to address the task of Fake News Spreaders (i.e., users that share Fake News) detection. First, we explore the reference multilingual dataset for the considered task, exploiting corpus linguistics techniques, such as chi-square test, keywords and Word Sketch. Second, we perform experiments on several models for Natural Language Processing. Third, we perform a comparative evaluation using the most recent Transformer-based models (RoBERTa, DistilBERT, BERT, XLNet, ELECTRA, Longformer) and other deep and non-deep SotA models (CNN,…

Interfirm Network Analysis in Marginal Tourist Destinations: The Mediator Company in Business Relationships

2022

The literature on tourist destinations and the use of empirical approaches evidence the need to adopt this model to increase tourism economies. In model application, the enterprises, and local stakeholders, sometimes represent limitations or opportunities. This article opens the view to tourist destination networks, described as relational structures that can influence and determine the destination-building process. The Network Analysis methodology offers a better understanding of inter-firm relational dynamics when applied in a small context, and in this case, the application was undertaken on the island of Sicily, in Menfi town and its hinterland. Findings show the presence of a company t…

Impact of the terrestrial reference frame on the determination of the celestial reference frame.

2022

Currently three up-to-date Terrestrial Reference Frames (TRF) are available, the ITRF2014 from IGN, the DTRF2014 from DGFI-TUM, and JTRF2014 from JPL. All use the identical input data of space-geodetic station positions and Earth orientation parameters, but the concept of combining these data is fundamentally different. The IGN approach is based on the combination of technique solutions, while the DGFI is combining the normal equation systems. Both yield in reference epoch coordinates and velocities for a global set of stations. JPL uses a Kalman filter approach, realizing a TRF through weekly time series of geocentric coordinates. As the determination of the CRF is not independent of the T…

Ozone Infiltration for Osteonecrosis of the Jaw Therapy: A Case Series

2022

Medication-related osteonecrosis of the jaw (MRONJ) is a serious adverse reaction, mainly due to bone-modifying agents (BMA), and it is a potentially painful and debilitating condition. To date, the literature has reported a 90% rate of successful outcomes for MRONJ patients undergoing surgical treatment. Particularly for patients with advanced disease stages who are unsuitable for surgery, prolonged medical treatment is required, with a consequent risk of the overuse of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance. The aim of this study is to evaluate the efficiency and safety of ozone, via oral mucosal infiltrations, in seven cancer patients with MRONJ, who are not eligible for surgery. The prot…

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2022

Clinical Manifestation and Obstetric Outcomes in Pregnant Women with SARS-CoV-2 Infection at Delivery: A Retrospective Cohort Analysis

2022

This retrospective cohort study aimed to analyze the clinical manifestations, complications, and maternal-fetal outcomes in patients affected by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection during delivery. The cohort included 61 pregnant women positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection at the time of delivery. Patients were divided into two groups: symptomatic and asymptomatic. We found a significantly higher rate of leukocytosis (p < 0.00078) and lymphopenia (p < 0.0024) in symptomatic women compared with asymptomatic ones. Other laboratory parameters, such as CRP (p = 0.002), AST (p = 0.007), LDH (p = 0.0142), ferritin (p = 0.0036), and D-dimer (p = 0.00124), were …

Genetic structure and differentiation from early bronze age in the mediterranean island of sicily: Insights from ancient mitochondrial genomes

2022

Sicily is one of the main islands of the Mediterranean Sea, and it is characterized by a variety of archaeological records, material culture and traditions, reflecting the history of migrations and populations’ interaction since its first colonization, during the Paleolithic. These deep and complex demographic and cultural dynamics should have affected the genomic landscape of Sicily at different levels; however, the relative impact of these migrations on the genomic structure and differentiation within the island remains largely unknown. The available Sicilian modern genetic data gave a picture of the current genetic structure, but the paucity of ancient data did not allow so far to make p…

Performances Recovery of Flax Fiber Reinforced Composites after Salt-Fog Aging Test

2022

In the present paper, the performance recovery under conditions of discontinuous exposure to a marine environment of a natural fiber-reinforced composite (NFRC) reinforced by flax fibers was assessed. In particular, this laminate was initially exposed to salt-fog for 15 and 30 days, and then stored in a controlled air condition for up to 21 days. The flax fiber-reinforced composite showed coupled reversible and irreversible aging phenomena during the wet stage, as well as evidencing a significant mechanical recovery during the dry stage. Unlike the stiffness, the laminate showed a noticeable recovery of its flexural strength. This behavior affected the composite material toughness. A simpli…

Pustular lesions and itching in a couple of young migrants

2022

Two teenage illegal migrants from Bangladesh coming from a Libyan port arrived at Lampedusa Island-Italy. The health authorities, having noticed the presence of pustules on the limbs and genitals, suspecting a monkeypox virus infection, have urgently transferred them to the University Hospital of Palermo. They mentioned itching and prior sexual contact. On inspection, itching lesions and pustular lesions with central crusted umbilication and erythematous bases were detected. One of them had also fever and increased c-reactive protein. A real-time polymerase chain reaction assay on vesicle swabs to research monkeypoxvirus DNA and HIV serology was performed for both patients.

Proposed Polish Advertisement Levies – An Efficient Source of Public Income or Instruments of the Political Battle?

2022

This article analyses the bill of 2nd February 2021 on additional revenues of the National Health Fund, the National Fund for the Protection of Historical Monuments and the establishment of a Fund for the Support of Culture and National Heritage in the Media Area. The draft legislation, the announcement of which has triggered an unprecedented blackout protest in private media as well as a mass anti-government protest on the Internet, provides for the introduction of new public levies called advertisement contributions and the establishment of a new state special-purpose fund – the Fund for the Support of Culture and National Heritage in the Media Area. The aim of the article is to identify …

Mediated by the giants: Tracing practices, discourses, and mediators of platform isomorphism in a media organization

2022

News media are increasingly interwoven with social media platforms. Building on institutional theory, we trace the repercussions of the platform infrastructure inside a media organization by focusing on organizational discourses and practices in connection with the journalistic use of social media. The empirical material includes interviews, field notes, chat logs, and documents collected from a public service media organization during a 6-month on-site and virtual ethnography. The findings show how platform pressures intertwine with content production, audience representation, journalistic values, and organizational development, thus manifesting the infrastructuralization and institutional…

Assessment of Organic Carbon Sequestration from Romanian Degraded Soils: Livada Forest Plantation Case Study

2022

To analyse the capacity of a soil to sequester organic carbon and the impact that deforestation and reforestation can have on its physical and chemical properties, specific laboratory analyses are necessary. According to a standard methodology, a number of 16 samples were taken from two different depths (0–10 cm, 10–20 cm) and from two different areas (degraded area and forest area) to identify if the type of land use and sampling depth are the key factors in changing the obtained values and also to prove the hypothesis according to which forest lands may have a higher carbon sequestration capacity. The highest value of soil organic carbon was identified in the forest area at a …

Últimas Tendencias en el Análisis Técnico-Táctico del Voleibol de Alto Nivel. Revisión Sistemática (Latest Trends in Technical-Tactical Analysis of H…

2022

El análisis técnico-táctico se ha convertido en una pieza clave en el rendimiento del voleibol. Por tal motivo, el objetivo de esta revisión sistemática fue profundizar en las últimas tendencias de investigación aplicadas al análisis técnico-táctico del voleibol de alto nivel. Para ello, se llevó a cabo una revisión sistemática de la literatura siguiendo los criterios PRISMA, en el mes de febrero de 2022. Las bases de datos consultadas fueron SPORTDiscus, Web of Science y Scopus. Como resultado se obtuvieron un total de 1087 artículos, de los cuales finalmente 45 formaron parte de la revisión. Se identificaron tres tipos de variables independientes relacionadas con: el contexto social (rank…

Circulating tumor and immune cells for minimally invasive risk stratification of smoldering multiple myeloma

2022

Abstract Purpose: Early intervention in smoldering multiple myeloma (SMM) requires optimal risk stratification to avoid under- and overtreatment. We hypothesized that replacing bone marrow (BM) plasma cells (PC) for circulating tumor cells (CTC), and adding immune biomarkers in peripheral blood (PB) for the identification of patients at risk of progression due to lost immune surveillance, could improve the International Myeloma Working Group 20/2/20 model. Experimental Design: We report the outcomes of 150 patients with SMM enrolled in the iMMunocell study, in which serial assessment of tumor and immune cells in PB was performed every 6 months for a period of 3 years since enrollment. Resul…

On the Convergence of Tsetlin Machines for the XOR Operator.

2022

The Tsetlin Machine (TM) is a novel machine learning algorithm with several distinct properties, including transparent inference and learning using hardware-near building blocks. Although numerous papers explore the TM empirically, many of its properties have not yet been analyzed mathematically. In this article, we analyze the convergence of the TM when input is non-linearly related to output by the XOR-operator. Our analysis reveals that the TM, with just two conjunctive clauses, can converge almost surely to reproducing XOR, learning from training data over an infinite time horizon. Furthermore, the analysis shows how the hyper-parameter T guides clause construction so that the clauses c…

Biodegradation of Synthetic Organic Compounds by Methanogenic Microbiome as an Alternative Approach for Wastewater Purification and Energy Production

2022

The use of fossil fuels (methane, oil, etc.) is undergoing an unprecedented crisis now. There is the urgent need to search for alternative energy sources. A wide range of degraded organic materials can be effectively used to provide energy together with environmental protection. Soapstock is a hazardous waste containing a high concentration of toxic organic compounds of man-made origin (fatty acids, surfactants, dyes, etc.). To prevent environmental contamination such substances require an effective treatment approach. The goal of the study was to isolate the adapted-to-fatty-acids methanogenic microbiome and investigate the patterns of sodium acetate and soapstock degradation with simultan…

Walking a tightrope - as a next-of-kin to an adolescent or young adult with cancer facing eating difficulties

2022

Purpose: Eating difficulties cause reduced food intake and poor quality of life among adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with cancer. Therefore, next-of-kin eating support is crucial. The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of being close to AYAs with cancer in the context of eating when they are at home between high-emetogenic chemotherapy (HEC) sessions. Method: In-depth interviews were conducted with 12 next-of-kin to AYAs (15–29 years old) with oncological or haematological diseases, treated with HEC. Van Manen’s hermeneutic-phenomenological approach guided the design. Results: The essential meaning of the next-of-kin experiences is reflected in the overarching t…

Co-existing with the alien: evidence for environmental control on trophic interactions between a native (Atherina boyeri) and a non-indigenous fish s…

2022

Biological invasions are a widespread problem worldwide, as invasive non-indigenous species (NIS) may affect native populations through direct (e. g., predation) or indirect (e.g., competition) trophic interactions, leading to changes in the food web structure. The trophic relationships of the invasive eastern mosquitofish Gambusia holbrooki and the native big-scale sand smelt Atherina boyeri coexisting in three Mediterranean coastal ponds characterized by different trophic statuses (from oligotrophic to hypereutrophic) were assessed in spring through isotopic niche analysis and Bayesian mixing models. The two fish relied on the distinctive trophic pathways in the different ponds, with the …

Modified ent-Abietane Diterpenoids from the Leaves of Suregada zanzibariensis

2022

The leaf extract of Suregada zanzibariensis gave two new modified ent-abietane diterpenoids, zanzibariolides A (1) and B (2), and two known triterpenoids, simiarenol (3) and β-amyrin (4). The structures of the isolated compounds were elucidated based on NMR and MS data analysis. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction was used to establish the absolute configurations of compounds 1 and 2. The crude leaf extract inhibited the infectivity of herpes simplex virus 2 (HSV-2, IC50 11.5 μg/mL) and showed toxicity on African green monkey kidney (GMK AH1) cells at CC50 52 μg/mL. The isolated compounds 1–3 showed no anti-HSV-2 activity and exhibited insignificant toxicity against GMK AH1 cells at ≥100 μM. p…

Invisible Rulers: The ‘Latent Power Structure’ in Two Spanish Governments (2004 and 2012)

2022

Abstract Beyond the observation of official positions and incorporating the ‘Latent Power Structure’ (LPS), this article offers a broadened view of the organization of democratic governments. We define the LPS as a set of former officials, parliamentary and party members, and business directors who are closely related to government members, since they have recruited one or more of them for certain positions in the past. Applied to a Social Network Analysis of two Spanish governments, the LPS reveals a more concentrated structure of power with a far greater range of resources. The LPS analysis shows that governments rely on certain influential organizations in the social structure, to a grea…

Association between spinal disorders and different domains of physical activity among young adult men

2022

BackgroundThere is limited evidence of how physical activity (PA) associates with low back pain (LBP) and neck pain (NP). Particularly, the association between occupational or commuting PA and LBP/NP is unclear. The aim of the present cross-sectional study was to investigate the association between spinal disorders and different physical activity domains in young and healthy adult men.MethodsSelf-reported leisure time, occupational and commuting PA, as well as LBP and NP, were studied using questionnaires among young Finnish males (n = 1,630). Logistic regression analysis was used to study the associations of PA domains, physical fitness, and spinal disorders. Regression models were adjuste…

A decomposition approach for multidimensional knapsacks with family-split penalties

2022

The optimization of Multidimensional Knapsacks with Family-Split Penalties has been introduced in the literature as a variant of the more classical Multidimensional Knapsack and Multi-Knapsack problems. This problem deals with a set of items partitioned in families, and when a single item is picked to maximize the utility, then all items in its family must be picked. Items from the same family can be assigned to different knapsacks, and in this situation split penalties are paid. This problem arises in real applications in various fields. This paper proposes a new exact and fast algorithm based on a specific Combinatorial Benders Cuts scheme. An extensive experimental campaign computational…

Fluvial activity of the late-glacial to Holocene “Bergstraßenneckar” in the Upper Rhine Graben near Heidelberg, Germany – first results

2022

Abstract. The term “Bergstraßenneckar” (BSN) refers to an abandoned course of the river Neckar. It flowed in a northern direction east of the river Rhine in the eastern part of the northern Upper Rhine Graben in southwestern Germany. The former meandering course merged with the Rhine ca. 50 km further north of the site of the present-day confluence near Mannheim. The palaeo-channels are still traceable by their depressional topography, in satellite images and by the curved boundaries of adjacent settlements and land parcels. In the plan view, satellite and aerial images reveal a succession of meander bends, with older bends being cut off from younger channels. Based on stratigraphic investi…

Rethinking clinical decision-making to improve clinical reasoning

2022

Improving clinical reasoning techniques is the right way to facilitate decision-making from prognostic, diagnostic, and therapeutic points of view. However, the process to do that is to fill knowledge gaps by studying and growing experience and knowing some cognitive aspects to raise the awareness of thinking mechanisms to avoid cognitive errors through correct educational training. This article examines clinical approaches and educational gaps in training medical students and young doctors. The authors explore the core elements of clinical reasoning, including metacognition, reasoning errors and cognitive biases, reasoning strategies, and ways to improve decision-making. The article addres…