1,721,369 research outputs found
Reshuffling community prevention and care: a new model for healthy ageing
No full textAbstract
Europe is facing a unprecedented change of the population structure due to demographic transition, that makes the European countries a laboratory for implementing policies aimed at healthy ageing. However, there is a paucity of evidence-based interventions, except for the ones focussed on changing individuals' life style, the main ones being nutrition, physical activities, smoking and drinking. Even in the case of life habits, there are no structured interventions, while health promotion activities are mainly entrusted to the GPs, who are responsible for communicating the needed changes of behaviours to the patients they meet. The increase of chronic diseases prevalence claims for rethinking this approach in order to set up structured prevention activities to mitigate the impact of diseases on functional decline.
Based on the available data some elements to rethink community care and prevention can be identified. Bio-psycho-social frailty represents a synthetic indicator of the risk of negative events like the worsening of functional status, hospitalization, institutionalization and death, far more effective than single diseases or comorbidities or even than disabilities. The assessment of frailty should be pursued through a pro-active approach in order to fill the gap of the lack of awareness about frailty which is common. This approach should be reserved to the population with the highest risk of negative events, namely the over-75 one. At side of already well-known interventions on physical activities and malnutrition other risk factors for negative events such as social isolation or polypharmacotherapy should be considered. The increased frequency of heat waves should also be at the basis of yearly intervention able to reduce the risk of death and hospitalization, always associated to climate stressors. A schedule of prevention intervention should be formally structured in order to put the basis for a better aging in Europe as a model for other continents
RETTORIA DI CASA PROFESSA - PALERMO LE TERMITI SUGLI ARREDI LIGNEI DELLA SACRESTIA
No full text"Rettoria di Casa Professa" - Palermo. The Termites on Wooden Forniture of the Sacristy.
Termites are among the most important agents of wood degradation. They can
attack wooden structures (roofs ceiling) or works of art (choirs, altars,wardrobes) causing serious damage to the historical, artistic and ethno-anthropological heritage especially when there are favourable environmental conditions for their growth.
High wood moisture is the most important factor that favours termite settlements, it is frequently due to water condensation which is related to the closely contact of the wood with materials (masonry, metal, plastic) having a different thermal coefficient.
Observations were carried out during the restoration work which covered only
the visible structures of the wardrobes in the sacristy of "Casa Professa" in
Palermo. In palticular, it was decided to investigate the inner structures of the same furnishings to detect the presence of xylophagous insects or favourable condition for their development.
The results of the survey showed that many places were seriously damaged by
termites, attributable to the species Reticulitermes lucifugus Rossi (Isoptera,Rhinotermitidae).
In same locations the infestation was recent but no termite in foraging activity was found probability because of restoration activities (removal of branches and platforms) which created temporary disturbance. It cannot be excluded that infestation resume, therefore, it is necessary to provide appropriate measures of sanitation, preservation and conservation
Evolution of the in-patient hospital expenditure for the elderly in Italy: 1996-2001 comparison
No full textHospital expenditure constitutes the main component of public health spending in Western countries. Among the elements most frequently indicated as a cause of the increase in expenditure is the aging of the population. All Italian hospitalizations of more than one day during the year 2001, involving persons over 65 years of age, were analyzed on the basis of the data gathered by the Ministry of Health, starting from the hospital discharge forms. A comparison between the same data gathered for the 1996 has been carried out. The analysis reveals the impact of both the aging of the population and the use of more expensive technology on the cost increase related to 30 most frequent diagnosis-related groups (DRG) reported from the hospital discharge form. The comparison highlight the relation between the level of the fee assigned to each DRG and the size of the percentage variation of cases between 2001 and 1996 expressed by a linear regression model (R-2 = 0.45; p < 0.00 1). The results of the study rise questions about the impact of several factors on the increase of hospitalization cost: notably the DRG-based payment system could affect negatively the cost of inpatient services if an outside supervision will not allow the needed correction. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All fights reserved
Ortho-polygon visibility representations of 3-connected 1-plane graphs
No full textAn ortho-polygon visibility representation (OPVR) of an embedded graph G is an embedding-preserving drawing that maps each vertex of G to a distinct orthogonal polygon and each edge of G to a vertical or horizontal visibility between its end-vertices. An OPVR Γ has vertex complexity k if every polygon of Γ has at most k reflex corners. A 1-plane graph is an embedded graph such that each edge is crossed at most once. It is known that 3-connected 1-plane graphs admit an OPVR with vertex complexity at most 12, while vertex complexity at least 2 may be required in some cases. In this paper, we reduce this gap by showing that vertex complexity 5 is always sufficient, while vertex complexity 4 may be sometimes required. These results are based on the study of the combinatorial properties of the B-, T-, and W-configurations in 3-connected 1-plane graphs. An implication of the upper bound is the existence of a O ̃(n[Formula presented])-time drawing algorithm that computes an OPVR of an n-vertex 3-connected 1-plane graph on an integer grid of size O(n)×O(n) and with vertex complexity at most 5
Simultaneous FPQ-ordering and hybrid planarity testing
No full textWe introduce and study a constrained planarity testing problem, called 1-FIXED CONSTRAINED PLANARITY, and prove that this problem can be solved in quadratic time for biconnected graphs. Our solution is based on a novel definition of fixedness that makes it possible to simplify and extend known techniques about SIMULTANEOUS PQ-ORDERING. We exploit this result to study different versions of the hybrid planarity testing problem. Namely, we show polynomial-time solutions for a variant of NODETRIX PLANARITY with fixed sides, for POLYLINK PLANARITY, and for CLIQUE PLANARITY with fixed sides. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
PALAZZO STERI DI PALERMO, SOFFITTO LIGNEO DELLA SALA MAGNA INDAGINE FITOSANITARIA
No full textABSTRACf - Steri Palace of Palermo; Wooden Ceiling of the "Sala Magna ",
Phytosanitary Survey.
The Steri Palace (from Hosterium = fortified residence) of Palermo was built in
the early fourteenth century, exactly from 1307 to 1320, it was Chiaramonte's
family residence.
Later, it became the seat of the viceroy of Sicily (from 1412 to 1577), of the
Director of the Royal "Magna Curia", and Royal Customs (until 1698), of the
Inquisition Tribunal (from 1701 to 1792), of the Judicial offices and Custom
offices (from 1800 to 1958). Today it is the Centre of the Chancellor's offices of
the University of Palermo. It contains several interesting cultural heritage artefacts,
including the beautiful decorated wooden ceiling of the "Sala Magna".
The ceilings structures were investigated in order to know the state of preservation.
Several attacks due to Anobiidae and Cerambycidae beatles as well as
Isoptera such as Kalotermitidae and Rhinotermitidae were found. The entomologic
attack was in the primary and secondary beams and in the decorated panels.
The possible causes of the establishment and development of the species
responsible for the deterioration and the extent of the damage suffered by supporting
structures (primary and secondary beams) and decorated panels are
examined. Particularly, termites infestation, was taken into account because it
was the main reason of biodeterioration. In this particular instance
Reticulitermes lucifugus (Rossi), the most worrying termites species, was especially
investigated with regard to the other entomologic entities found in the
same monument. In the Ceiling attacks are found in the beams and in the panels
of the north-east and south-west zones. The termite infestations are relatively
recent and they are located on the wooden materials introduced with the last
restorations, which were carried out in the seventies of the past century. The
control methods are described and the defence methods to create hostile
microclimatic conditions for survival of the termite colonies. According to this
purpose some essays for a better conservation and maintenance have been
performed in a zone among two of the 24 existing beams in the Ceiling in
order to show the good practice for the safeguard of this precious artefact
Sketched Representations and Orthogonal Planarity of Bounded Treewidth Graphs
No full textGiven a planar graph G and an integer b, OrthogonalPlanarity is the problem of deciding whether G admits an orthogonal drawing with at most b bends in total. We show that OrthogonalPlanarity can be solved in polynomial time if G has bounded treewidth. Our proof is based on an FPT algorithm whose parameters are the number of bends, the treewidth and the number of degree-2 vertices of G. This result is based on the concept of sketched orthogonal representation that synthetically describes a family of equivalent orthogonal representations. Our approach can be extended to related problems such as HV-Planarity and FlexDraw. In particular, both OrthogonalPlanarity and HV-Planarity can be decided in time for series-parallel graphs, which improves over the previously known bounds
The Community of Sant’Egidio program for the elderly in sub-Saharan Africa: caring the weakest to add value to the society
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