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Digital Health Tools for the Screening and Management of Malnutrition Risk in the Older Adults: A Narrative Review
No full textEnvironmental sustainability of Artificial Intelligence: A GUM-based, user-centered measurement framework
No full textGiven the increasing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) across a broad spectrum of applications, along with the urgent need for sustainable development, understanding the environmental sustainability of AI pipelines has become increasingly relevant. In this regard, however, the current state of the art lacks a reliable methodology for measuring environmental sustainability from a user-centered perspective (i.e., by considering all the operations typically performed by end users), which is essential for achieving awareness of the actual sustainability in the development and adoption of AI models. Starting from these considerations, this paper employs a rigorous methodology based 1) on the ISO standards for sustainability assessment and 2) on the Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement (GUM) to measure and aggregate the Carbon Footprint required by each stage of an AI pipeline. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work constitutes the first to integrate GUM-based approaches into a user-driven AI pipeline. To illustrate the methodology, a case study on the use of AI models in biosignal processing is presented. Without losing generality, the results provide useful insights for implementing more sustainable AI practices, enabling a reliable, environment-oriented assessment of AI pipelines and guiding decisions toward reduced environmental impact
Enhanced Weibull Formulation for Capturing Fatigue Life Scatter in AM Alloys Supported by Fractographic Analysis
No full textThe fatigue performance of components produced via selective laser melting technology is strongly influenced by several factors as printing process parameters, build orientation and internal defects. This study investigates the fatigue behavior of AlSi10Mg specimens with machined surfaces, emphasizing the unusually high variability in lifetimes observed in samples built in the Z direction. A refined Weibull statistical approach, accounting for defect-induced scatter and supported by fractographic analysis, is proposed. The novel bimodal probabilistic framework, calibrated through maximum likelihood estimation method, distinguishes between two dominant defect types—porosity and lack of fusion—enabling a more accurate description of fatigue life distributions. The model successfully captures defect-specific fatigue limits and offers a robust method for integrating defect morphology into lifetime predictions, with strong implications for engineering design and reliability assessment of additively manufactured components
Alimenti e sanzioni amministrative: modelli procedurali e fattispecie di rilievo
No full textLe sanzioni amministrative sono strettamente connesse al sistema dei controlli ufficiali disciplinato dal regolamento (UE) 2017/625, che ha ridefinito, a livello europeo, i principi e le modalità di vigilanza lungo la filiera agroalimentare. In Italia, i decreti legislativi nn. 23, 24, 27 e 32 del febbraio 2021 hanno dato attuazione e integrazione a tali disposizioni, contribuendo a garantire uniformità, efficacia e trasparenza nell’esercizio dei controlli. Il sistema così delineato si fonda sul rispetto dei principi di proporzionalità e ragionevolezza nell’azione amministrativa, nonché sui requisiti di adeguata professionalità e formazione del personale incaricato delle attività di vigilanza
Antibody Responses to 11 Fusobacterium Proteins and Colorectal Cancer-Specific and Overall Survival in the EPIC Cohort
No full textBACKGROUND: Although there is evidence that Fusobacterium spp. in colon tissue is associated with prognosis, less is known about the association between antibody response to antigens expressed by fusobacteria and colorectal cancer-specific mortality. METHODS: Antibody responses to 11 Fusobacterium nucleatum (ATCC 25586) antigens were measured in prediagnostic blood for 471 incident colorectal cancer cases (median time to diagnosis = 3.4 years), among whom 188 colorectal cancer-specific deaths and 250 total deaths were confirmed over a median follow-up of 9.2 years in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition cohort. Cox models were conducted to examine associations between antigen seropositivity and colorectal cancer-specific mortality. RESULTS: Seropositivity to fusobacterial antigens was not associated with overall or colorectal cancer-specific mortality, individually or combined. Similar results were observed when restricting to patients who donated blood <3 years prior to cancer diagnosis. When restricting to individuals diagnosed at an earlier age of onset (<55 years; N = 74), we observed positive associations for seropositivity to three fusobacteria antigens reflecting different putative autotransporter adhesins. The strongest association was for Fn1893 antigen seropositivity (HR, 6.95; 95% confidence interval, 1.78-27.2, compared with none) and colorectal cancer-specific mortality, but confidence intervals were wide. CONCLUSIONS: Although null overall, this is the first study to observe an association between antibody response to fusobacteria and colorectal cancer-specific mortality among individuals with earlier-onset colorectal cancer. Future studies are needed to confirm these findings and understand the role of systemic antibody responses to fusobacteria in cancer. IMPACT: Specific antigens expressed by fusobacteria may play a role in mortality from earlier-onset colorectal cancers
Average consensus of heterogeneous nonlinear multi-agent systems over directed topologies in non-ideal, uncertain and faulty environment via distributed resilient adaptive PID control
No full textAlthough the average consensus is a fundamental topic in distributed control of Multi-Agent Systems, the design of resilient control strategies over directed communication topologies in the presence of different sources of uncertainty and adversarial effects, is still lacking. The purpose of this article is to bridge this gap by proposing a novel adaptive protocol that enables a MAS to achieve and preserve the mean value of the agent initial conditions against the following factors: i) heterogeneous unknown and nonlinear agent dynamics; ii) actuator faults and external disturbances; iii) inter-agent communication networks described by directed topologies. A fully-distributed and resilient Proportional-Integral-Derivative controller, in combination with a synchronized reference generator, is proposed for the robust average consensus achievement in these non-ideal environments. This is ensured while avoiding any knowledge of global information on communication graphs and without exploiting additional state-observers, thus alleviating the computational load. Adaptive mechanisms are established via the Lyapunov theory, proving the stability of the overall networked system and the boundedness of all closed-loop signals. Moreover, the proposed approach can be tailored for different kinds of PID-like strategies and any of their combinations. Finally, extensive simulation results highlight the efficacy of the developed methodology
Induced Drag and Vorticity in Viscous and Inviscid Flows
No full textAerodynamic drag prediction and decomposition into physical constituents is a fundamental research topic, and a clear identification of lift-induced drag in viscous and compressible flows is still an open issue. The recent vortical force theory by Wu et al., based on the Lamb vector field integration, allowed for new induced drag definitions to be proposed for viscous and compressible flows, although inconsistencies were reported in their application, with ambiguities on the physical or non-physical role of a non-zero induced drag found in two-dimensional flows. Domain variations of the drag breakdown in induced and parasite contributions also raised questions on the objective or quasi-objective nature of the two drag concepts. In this paper, classical far-field formulas, thermodynamic-based and Lamb-vector-based drag decompositions are analyzed for both inviscid and viscous flows, at low and high Reynolds number, to clearly identify the conditions for induced drag definitions to provide consistent estimates of the drag due to reversible flow phenomena. A spurious induced drag contribution is otherwise computed, resulting in negative induced drag values in two-dimensional flows. This will be shown to be related to the axial velocity perturbation, while thermodynamic methods will confirm the whole drag being of irreversible nature in all analyzed two-dimensional cases, leaving no space to any non-zero reversible drag
Hypomethylation of the MEG8:Int2-DMR in patients with pathogenic PLAG1 variants suggests new role of the chr14q32 imprinting cluster in Silver-Russell syndrome
No full textBackground: Silver-Russell syndrome (SRS) is a clinically and genetically heterogeneous imprinting disorder. The most common molecular defects are loss of methylation of the H19/IGF2:IG-DMR on chromosome 11p15.5, followed by maternal uniparental disomy of chromosome 7. Further molecular lesions are genetic variants in the PLAG1 oncogene, as well as in the transcription factor HMGA2 and the fetal growth factor IGF2. A phenotypic overlap exists between SRS and Temple syndrome (TS14) that is also characterized by growth restriction but associated with abnormalities in the imprinted chromosome 14q32 gene cluster. In TS14 patients, the germline MEG3/DLK1: IG-DMR is hypomethylated and the MEG8:Int2-DMR gains methylation probably as consequence of transcriptional readthrough from the MEG3 promoter on the paternal chromosome. However, the functional role of the MEG8 DMR remains unknown. Results: We analysed the DNA methylation of 11–12 imprinted regions in 17 cases with clinical SRS features and heterozygous for a PLAG1 variant. We observed a specific loss of methylation of the MEG8:Int2-DMR in the ten cases carrying pathogenic PLAG1 variants that result in stable aberrant proteins. Normal MEG8 methylation was observed in the cases carrying variants of uncertain pathogenicity or gene deletions. Most of the PLAG1 cases are familial and both epigenetic and genetic defects co-segregated within the families. Additionally, we assessed the methylation status of the MEG8:Int2-DMR in several SRS patients with HMGA2 or IGF2 variants, H19/IGF2:IG-DMR-LoM and upd(7)mat and all of them showed normal methylation. Conclusions: Our results indicate that pathogenic PLAG1 variants leading to stable aberrant PLAG1 proteins and possibly acting in a dominant-negative manner influence methylation of the MEG8 locus. This study suggests a new pathogenetic mechanism of the PLAG1 gene in SRS, involving imprinted genes in the chr14q32 cluster through deregulation of the MEG8:Int2-DMR and provides an epigenetic signature that may be used to assess the damaging potential of the PLAG1 variants
