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Does body composition matter in patients with systemic sclerosis?
No full textObjectives: Body composition plays a significant role in various rheumatic and autoinflammatory diseases. The aim of our study was to assess the impact of muscle mass and subcutaneous adipose tissue quality and quantity in patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc). Methods: Adults with SSc referring to our tertiary center who underwent high-resolution chest computed tomography (HRCT) to assess pulmonary involvement were included. A semi-automatic segmentation of the subcutaneous fat and paravertebral muscle was performed at the level of the 12th dorsal vertebra, and body composition metrics were collected (subcutaneous fat and paravertebral muscle area and density). Stepwise linear regression analysis was applied to evaluate if body composition, demographics, and pulmonary function tests acted as predictors of mortality. Considering patients with muscle Hu values <30 as affected by myosteatosis, we used the odds-risk ratio to assess if it is associated with a higher risk of mortality. Results: Eighty-seven SSc patients (77 females, age 60±15 years, 61% affected by limited cutaneous SSc) were included. The linear model demonstrated that lower DLCO (p = 0.047), higher BMI (p = 0.013), higher density of the subcutaneous fat (p = 0.005), and lower skeletal-muscle index (p < 0.001) acted as predictors of mortality. Overall, 63 patients (72%) were affected by myosteatosis (ie, Hu < 30 Hu) and patients affected by muscle fat infiltration at CT showed a 3.345 times higher mortality risk (95% CI 0.396-28.295). Conclusion: Patients with systemic sclerosis are affected by myosteatosis and pre-sarcopenia and body composition seems to influence the overall outcome
Intelligenza artificiale generativa e scrittura giuridica. Dalla logica degli algoritmi alla topica delle fonti
No full text1. Chatbot e scrittura giuridica. – 2. Logica degli algoritmi e intelligenza artificiale
generativa. – 3. Informatica giuridica e logica della controversia. – 4. Topica delle fonti. – 5. Que-
stioni di metodo e casi giudiziari. – 6. Conclusioni
Definition of a reference standard for performance evaluation of autonomous vehicles real-time obstacle detection and distance estimation in complex environments
No full textEffective obstacle detection is vital for autonomous agricultural robots in complex environments. Due to tree occlusion and varying lighting conditions, current systems need help with misidentifying obstacles, particularly in orchards. This study presents a novel methodology for real-time obstacle detection and distance estimation, improving the YOLOv8n architecture with the Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) to improve feature representation. Additionally, the Non-Maximum Suppression (NMS) technique is enhanced with Soft DIou-NMS to minimize redundant detections for overlapping objects. A comprehensive dataset of common orchard obstacles was utilized for evaluation, measuring performance through Precision (P), Recall (R), F1-score, and confusion matrices. Experimental results showed that the improved YOLOv8n model outperforms baseline models, including YOLOv5s and various YOLOv8 variants (n, s, m, l, x), achieving a 92.7 % mean Average Precision (mAP) at IoU 0.5 and an F1-score of 87 % at a confidence threshold of 42.1 %. Inference time was reduced to 3.3 ms (ms), and the model size to 20.1 MB. The model was evaluated under various lighting conditions, achieving mAP-50 scores of 96.5 % in daylight and 91.4 % in low light, with minimal performance drops. Testing across distance ranges (close: 1–3 m, medium: 3–7 m, long: 7–12 m) showed strong performance in close and medium ranges. Real-time validation indicated a detection time of 20.1 ms per frame, making it suitable for agricultural vehicles. These findings provide a reference standard for obstacle detection and distance estimation in orchard environments, contributing to the safety and autonomy of agricultural vehicles in complex settings
La cittadinanza lavorata. Trasformazioni del welfare tra Italia e Polonia
No full textThis study investigates the interrelationship between labour, citizenship and welfare systems by analysing labour practices and the processes of social construction of the sphere of citizenship that occur within the welfare services. The thesis aims to understand how the transformations in the working conditions within the welfare services affect the forms of citizenship by examining the interactions between the staff and the beneficiaries as a terrain in which citizenship is socially constructed through labour processes. The analytical purposes of the thesis are twofold. First, it aims to investigate how the activity in support of social citizenship rights carried out by welfare institutions shapes the organization of labour processes in this sector, affecting the working conditions of the workforce, the daily practices and activities, as well as the forms of agency involving the social workers. Second, it aims to analyse how the labour process within the welfare services interacts with the dynamics of social construction of citizenship in the everyday sphere, shaping the ways in which the beneficiaries access the sphere of social citizenship rights. The thesis moves from the idea that, in the welfare services, the sphere of citizenship is the product of labour processes and is shaped by organizational constraints and dynamics, subjective practices and behaviours, and the forms of agency and resistance emerging within these workplaces. To develop this analytical perspective, the present study draws on citizenship studies, labour process theory and social reproduction theory by bringing these three strands of literature into dialogue. Underlying the present study is an empirical research carried out through qualitative technique – especially interviews conducted with social workers, representatives of labour organizations active in this field, and representatives of local institutions – in Italy (especially in the city of Bologna) and Poland (especially in the cities of Wrocław and Warsaw) between September 2022 and September 2023. The fieldwork was carried out in two different national contexts in order to empirically analyse the transformations of welfare systems, working conditions and labour processes, and social citizenship models, in two countries characterized by different historical, institutional, and political paths. The thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter delves into the theoretical perspective behind the study, discussing the three strands of literature considered and conceptualizing citizenship as the product of a labour process. In addition, the first chapter explores from a historical perspective the changes involving welfare systems in Western European and Eastern European countries by showing their impact on the sphere of labour and citizenship. The second chapter describes the field in which the empirical research was carried out, analysing the transformations of welfare systems that have affected the Italian and Polish contexts and delving into the methodological perspectives employed in the fieldwork. The third chapter opens the discussion of the results of the empirical research by showing how the citizenship-producing activity carried out by social services affects working conditions and labour processes in the sector, mainly due to a repositioning of the different actors that contribute to the welfare provision. The fourth chapter continues the discussion of the empirical results by highlighting how the features of the labour process affect the forms of citizenship emerging in the social services, constituting both workers and beneficiaries as welfare subjects. The fifth chapter concludes the discussion of the empirical data by analysing how the forms of agency and the use of various power resources by the workforce shape the processes of social construction of citizenship within the services
Knowledge Graphs for the Web Economy: The CHiPS&BITS Project on Cultural Heritage
No full textThe growing demand for Cultural Heritage fruition is making it a major economic driver, also in connection with its tourism-related aspects. The current solutions available on the Web are still unable to provide satisfactory support to the various kinds of stakeholders and to the different applications. The History of Computing, as a peculiar, relevant and currently underinvestigated branch of Cultural Heritage, raises additional challenges and provides new opportunities, also in connection with a significant economic flow it generates. The variety and complexity of issues connected to this domain call for even more advanced solutions. In this paper we introduce the CHIPS&BITS project, which tackles these problems using a knowledge-based approach and leverages a novel framework that can meet the needs associated to this specific domain in a better way compared to standard Semantic Web approaches. We describe the contributions of the project to overcome the limitations of the state of the art, and focus on some of its more peculiar and original features, among which the definition of suitable ontologies to describe the complexity of the domain and the use of Artificial Intelligence algorithms for giving the users an advanced and personalized experience
Enhanced Gate Reliability of p-GaN/AlGaN/GaN HEMTs Due to Gate Hole Injection and Recombination
No full textThis letter substantially improves the understanding on the degradation of normally-OFF GaN HEMTs with p-GaN gate subject to forward gate stress, and demonstrates that a significant reliability enhancement can be obtained at high bias through hole injection from the gate terminal. Key results are: (i) for the first time we adopt an experimental setup capable of investigating the threshold voltage shift of the devices during time-dependent breakdown tests in a wide time window (from μs to failure). (ii) Remarkably, we demonstrate that the acceleration factor for gate breakdown is substantially lower at high stress voltage. (iii) The lower acceleration factor of degradation at high voltages is correlated to the number of holes which are injected and trapped in the gate stack. The results give strong experimental evidence that the injection of holes from the p-GaN contact can have a beneficial effect on device robustness, by reducing - through recombination - the amount of hot electrons responsible for degradation
Necessary Conditions in Adolescent Eating Disorders: A Novel Approach to Early Detection and Prevention
No full text[18F]FDG PET/MR to assess disease extension and inflammation in children and young adults with primary ciliary dyskinesia
Get PDFBackground: Primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) is a rare condition characterized by ciliary dysfunction, impaired mucociliary clearance and mucus accumulation in the airways. Purpose: Our aim was to evaluate the performance of [18F]FDG PET/MR in assessing structural and inflammatory pulmonary features in patients with PCD, using high-resolution CT (HRCT) as the gold-standard reference. Materials and methods: We recruited patients with PCD (≥ 7 years) regularly followed at our Regional Center for PCD. They underwent chest HRCT and [18F]FDG PET/MR using sequences optimized for the morpho-functional study of the lung. Parametric PET images were obtained by dividing each voxel by the mean value in a reference area. The volume of interest (VOI in cm3), named Metabolic Inflammatory Volume (MIV), was calculated by thresholding the PET parametric image using a value twice the mean of the reference area. Standardized Uptake Value (SUV) Max, SUV mean, Total Lesion Glycolysis (TLG) and MIV were recorded. HRCT and MR were analyzed using the Eichinger score. Results: Sixteen patients were enrolled. The Bland-Altman plot showed good agreement between HRCT and MR scores. Cumulative HRCT and MR scores correlated significantly with SUV mean score (HRCT: p = 0.02, rs=0.6; MR: p = 0.006, rs=0.66) and MIV (HRCT: p = 0.003, rs =0.7; MR: p = 0.004, rs =0.69). Total HRCT and MR scores and MIV score inversely correlated with spirometric parameters. Conclusion: PET/MR proved to be accurate in evaluating disease extent in PCD. It enabled the simultaneous assessment of structural damage and lung inflammation, both of which resulted inversely related to lung function. PET/MR is a promising tool for PCD monitoring
Cross-disciplinary awareness of healthcare associated infections (HAIs): insights from a university-wide survey
Get PDFMore than a symptom: qualitative exploration of embodied control and restlessness in compulsive movement in eating disorders
Get PDFBackground: Compulsive physical activity is a common but underexplored feature of eating disorders (ED). Beyond calorie expenditure, it often serves complex psychological, symbolic, and embodied functions. Understanding how these behaviors are experienced and change during treatment can guide more effective interventions. This study explored the lived experience of compulsive movement in individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN), bulimia nervosa (BN) and binge eating disorder (BED), and examined whether diagnosis or duration influenced narrative change during inpatient care. Methods: Sixty-five inpatients with EDs (mean age = 22.15 years; range 16–33) completed an open-ended questionnaire within the first week of admission (T0) and during the final week of hospitalization (T1). The Clinical Interview for Compulsive Exercise [10] was adapted to a written format to elicit spontaneous narratives about movement. Reflexive thematic analysis identified shared themes in T0. For the longitudinal analysis, the T0 and T1 narratives were compared between individuals to capture changes in meaning, content, and emotional tone. The original interview domains were merged into five thematic categories to describe improvement, persistence, or worsening, and subgroup comparisons were made by diagnosis and duration (≤ 3 vs. >3 years). Results: Five overarching themes emerged at T0: control and compensation, emotional regulation, rigidity and rituality, motor restlessness and bodily discomfort, and covert activity/non-exercise movement. By T1, most of the participants described reduced guilt, greater flexibility, and increased self-awareness. However, persistent restlessness and subtle compensatory activity were reported, particularly in the long-duration group (> 3 years). Diagnostic subgroups differed in emphasis: AN participants often framed movement as a moral duty, BN participants as a means of regulating mood, and BED participants in relation to body image concerns or “getting back on track” with healthy routines. Conclusions: Compulsive movement in EDs is a multifaceted, transdiagnostic phenomenon. Inpatient care can foster meaningful narrative change, although embodied restlessness may require longer-term treatment. Clinicians should address both the behavioral and symbolic dimensions of movement to support long-lasting recovery