Search results for "USA"
showing 10 items of 3178 documents
Preventive effect of risedronate on bone loss and frailty fractures in elderly women treated with anastrozole for early breast cancer.
2011
The aim of this study was to assess the effect of adjuvant anastrozole, alone or associated with risedronate, on BMD and bone fracture risk in women more than 70 years old with hormone receptor-positive early breast cancer (EBC). In a group of 51 elderly women (aged 76.4 ± 5.0 years) considered for adjuvant aromatase inhibitors for EBC, 24 patients with T-scores ≥ -2 and no prevalent fractures received anastrozole 1 mg/day (group A), and 27 patients with T-scores < -2, or with T-scores ≥ -2 and prevalent fractures (group B), received anastrozole (1 mg/day) plus risedronate (35 mg/week). Both groups received supplementation with 1 g calcium carbonate and 800 IU vitamin D per day. Differen…
Cardiovascular diseases and apical periodontitis: association not always implies causality.
2020
Background: Several studies published in the last two decades have found an association between the prevalence of apical periodontitis (AP) or root canal treatment (RCT) and cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). However, the demonstration of association does not prove by itself the existence of a cause–effect relationship. Two diseases can appear as statistically related without any of them directly affecting the values of the other, resulting in a non-causal relationship. The aim of this narrative review is to summarize the current state of knowledge regarding the association between AP and CVDs, analysing it according to the Hill’s causality criteria. Materials and Methods: Epidemiological stud…
Desalination in small islands: the case study of Lampedusa (Italy)
2018
Desalination represents a common solution to overcome the water scarcity in small island. A case study is presented, considering the island of Lampedusa, located at south of Sicily (Italy). As many small islands in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Lampedusa presents a small standalone electrical grid, entrusted to old diesel engines. For more, the renewable energy sources are extremely underdeveloped in this territory. Lampedusa is regularly affected by water scarcity, so freshwater is produced by desalination plant and sometimes transported by boat from Sicily. As sustainable solution, the paper firstly analyses the energy demand for desalination and then proposes the installation of a…
Information as an essential link between natural science and human science : main focus : the impact of information on the functioning and behaviour …
2016
This thesis aims at considering the information as essential link between the sciences of the nature and the human sciences. It is mainly refered to principles of the natural science, allied in a set of scientific stemming approaches, in particular, theories of the complexity, of chaos, of information, auto-organization, emergences and ecosystems. The laws of the thermodynamics play a central role in this context, where the organization and the negentropy make directly part of the field of information production. There is in particular refered to Law of maximization of entropy Production (or, in other words, of energy dissipation), among which the incidence on the functioning and the behavi…
Conquering Fine-Grained Blends of Design Patterns
2008
The reuse of design patterns in realistic software systems is often a result of blending multiple pattern elements together rather than instantiating them in an isolated manner. The explicit description of pattern compositions is the key for (i) documenting the structure and the behavior of blended patterns and, (ii) more importantly, supporting the reuse of composite patterns across different software projects. In this context, this paper proposes a fine-grained composition language for describing varying blends of design patterns based on their structural and behavioural semantics. The reusability and expressiveness of the proposed language are assessed through its application to 32 compo…
Integrating usability work into a large inter-organisational agile development project: Tactics developed by usability designers
2015
We examined how usability activities were integrated in a large inter-organisational agile development project.The collaboration between the usability designers and agile team members was affected by the size and nature of the project.Results showed integration was achieved through 5 tactics employed by the usability designers.Three propositions for organising usability activities in agile projects were derived. In this paper we examine the integration of usability activities into a large inter-organisational agile development project. Inter-organisational agile projects possess unique attributes. They involve multiple stakeholders from different organisational contexts and are thus charact…
Definition of Seismic Vulnerability Maps for Civil Protection Systems: The Case of Lampedusa Island
2016
The opportunity to locate and quantify the major criticalities associated to natural catastrophic events on a territory allows to plan adequate strategies and interventions by civil protection bodies involved in local and international emergencies. Seismic risk depends, most of all, on the vulnerability of buildings belonging to the urban areas. For this reason, the definition, by a deep analysis of the territory, of instruments identifying and locating vulnerability, largely favours the activities of institutions appointed to safeguard the safety of citizens. This paper proposes a procedure for the definition of vulnerability maps in terms of vulnerability indexes and critical peak ground …
THE METAMODEL: A STARTING POINT FOR DESIGN PROCESSES CONSTRUCTION
2010
The construction of ad-hoc design processes following the Situational Method Engineering (SME) paradigm is currently carried out by adopting a set of phases for which, until now, no well defined techniques and guidelines have been established. The consequence is that organizations are very dependent on method designers' skills. In this paper, we propose an approach based on SME for constructing customized agent oriented design processes. Our approach adopts the metamodel as the most important factor leading to the selection and assembly of method fragments and an algorithm for establishing the instantiation order of metamodel elements. The algorithm makes the proposed approach repeatable a…
Testing the usability of the Rapid Impact Assessment Matrix (RIAM) method for comparison of EIA and SEA results
2008
Abstract This study examines how the results of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) could be compared using the Rapid Impact Assessment Matrix (RIAM) method. There are many tools and techniques that have been developed for use in impact assessment processes, including scoping, checklists, matrices, qualitative and quantitative models, literature reviews, and decision-support systems. While impact assessment processes have become more technically complicated, it is recognized that approaches including simpler applications of available tools and techniques are also appropriate. The Rapid Impact Assessment Matrix (RIAM) is a tool for organizing, a…
Multicriteria evaluation of carbon-neutral heat-only production technologies for district heating
2018
Climate change mitigation requires reducing dependence on fossil fuels and transition to low carbon energy production technologies. Nearly half of the global final energy consumption is thermal energy produced from technologies with high carbon dioxide emission. As such, it is imperative to employ carbon-neutral heat production to achieve a sustainable energy system. This paper presents a real-life case of applying multicriteria decision analysis for evaluating carbon-neutral heat-only production technologies in a major district heating system in Finland. A group of 10 experts from the energy company contributed in defining the alternative technologies and multiple economic, technological, …