14 research outputs found
Practical perspectives on older people, caregivers, families and organisations. Special issue of Working with Older People
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Further considerations on the role of vanadyl pyrophosphate properties in the catalytic oxidation of n-pentane to maleic and phthalic anhydrides”
No full textConference Institutional archives for research: experiences and projects in Open Access Istituto Superiore di Sanità Rome, 30 November - 1 December 2006
No full textThe Congress was organised into four sessions: 1) Open Access (OA) and authors: support from the international community; 2) OA in Italy: knowledge and tools to write and search; 3) institutional policies for OA; 4) opportunities and services to develop OA. It was aimed at achieving the following objectives: a) make authors of biomedical publications aware of the benefits of depositing research material in digital open archives and publishing in OA peer-reviewed journals; b) outline the impact of the OA publishing model on the assessment of research output; c) enhance the adoption of policies encouraging the OA paradigm; d) promote cooperation between research institutions in Italy and abroad to share resources and experiences on institutional repositories. A useful introductory bibliography on the OA publishing model in the biomedical field is included in the Appendix
Evaluation of the expression of matrix metalloproteinase 9 and neutrophil gelatinase associated lipocalin in serum, urine and tumoral tissues of female dogs suffering from mammary gland tumors
No full textIn human medicine, it has been shown recently that the level of expression of matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) and neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL) in serum, urine, and breast tissue were significantly increased in patients with breast cancer and correlated to several prognostic factors. In the first part, the author presents the MMP-9 and NGAL as a synthesis of current knowledge on their ability to serve as biomarkers of breast cancer in women. In the second, the author presents the production of canine MMP9 and NGAL recombinant proteins, the production of polyclonal antibodies, and their use in various techniques (ELISA, western blot, immunohistochemistry) to assess the level of expression of these proteins in the blood, urine and breast tissue of dogs suffering from mammary gland tumors and demonstrate a positive correlation between these proteins and the presence of a tumor disease of the mammary gland
Overall mortality in combined pulmonary fibrosis and emphysema related to systemic sclerosis
No full textObjectives: This multicentre study aimed to investigate the overall mortality of combined pulmonary fibrosis and emphysema (CPFE) in systemic sclerosis (SSc) and to compare CPFE-SSc characteristics with those of other SSc subtypes (with interstitial lung disease - ILD, emphysema or neither). Methods: Chest CTs, anamnestic data, immunological profile and pulmonary function tests of patients with SSc were retrospectively collected. Each chest CT underwent a semiquantitative assessment blindly performed by three radiologists. Patients were clustered in four groups: SSc-CPFE, SSc-ILD, SSc-emphysema and other-SSc (without ILD nor emphysema). The overall mortality of these groups was calculated by Kaplan-Meier method and compared with the stratified log-rank test; Kruskal-Wallis test, t-Student test and χ 2 test assessed the differences between groups. P<0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: We enrolled 470 patients (1959 patient-year); 15.5 % (73/470) died during the follow-up. Compared with the SSc-ILD and other-SSc, in SSc-CPFE there was a higher prevalence of males, lower anticentromere antibodies prevalence and a more reduced pulmonary function (p<0.05). The Kaplan-Meier survival analysis demonstrates a significantly worse survival in patients with SSc-CPFE (HR vs SSc-ILD, vs SSc-emphysema and vs other-SSc, respectively 1.6 (CI 0.5 to 5.2), 1.6 (CI 0.7 to 3.8) and 2.8 (CI 1.2 to 6.6). Conclusions: CPFE increases the mortality risk in SSc along with a highly impaired lung function. These findings strengthen the importance to take into account emphysema in patients with SSc with ILD
The HARPA Approach to Ensure Dependable Performance
No full textThe goal of the HARPA solution is to overcome the performance variability (PV) by enabling next-generation embedded and high-performance platforms using heterogeneous many-core processors to provide cost-effectively dependable performance: the correct functionality and (where needed) timing guarantees throughout the expected lifetime of a platform. This must be accomplished in the presence of cycle-by-cycle performance variability due to time-dependent variations in silicon devices and wires under thermal, power, and energy constraints. The common challenge for both embedded and high-performance systems is to harness the unsustainable increases in design and operational margins and yet provide dependable performance. For example, resources that are statically determined based on worst-case execution time for real-time applications or lower clock frequency to satisfy excessive timing margins in high-performance processors
The Age.Vol.A App and Weportal: Bridging the communicative gap between the elderly, their families and foreign caregivers
No full textWith this paper, we wish to present the Age.Vol.A (Ageing, Volunteers, Assistants. Multilingual Tools for Assisting the Ageing) App, whose pilot version is currently being finalized at the Universities of Varese and Milan (Italy), and is being released in June 2022. The App is the main practical output of a four-year research project bearing the same name (2018-2022) that received major funding by Fondazione Cariplo (2021), one of the world’s main philanthropic organizations. The project’s aim consists in facilitating communication between elderly Italian citizens living in the northern Province of Varese (Italy) and assisted by foreign caregivers, the elderly’s families and the foreign caretakers themselves. The wider scope of the project is to ultimately improve the health and wellbeing of all the social actors involved in these often delicate family settings (Vicentini/Grego 2019). For example, (foreign) caregivers, who “are not family members but often end up making up for weak or non-existent family networks, and their relationship with the older people they look after often merges into that of an unofficial relative. They are relied upon, confided in” (Brannigan et al. 2020).
Age.Vol.A started off with the objective of shedding light on the experience of assisted ageing in a country which ranks among the four oldest countries in the world (Istat 2020) and provide technological tools for bridging the communicative and cultural gaps between the three above mentioned social groups. Specifically, the Age.Vol.A App is introduced, illustrating the mixed-method – linguistic, statistical and sociological – research applied in the collection of the data, administration of interviews and needs analysis carried out among the interested social groups, in order to determine the content of the App (Russo et al. 2020). The selection process of the material to include is then described, together with the recommendations received by local institutional parties (the Varese Town Council, health authority and welfare institute) about specific themes and aspects they considered relevant. Finally, the step of translation and localization into six languages (English included) of the output of the research is outlined, focusing on how the actual languages (e.g. Ukranian rather than lingua-franca Russian), or even the local varieties of the standard languages (e.g. Spanish and Russian) spoken by the caregivers in the Varese Province were specifically targeted, based on the statistical research carried out at the beginning.
The Age.Vol.A. App shall be distributed free of charge to all involved social actors, and is hoped to represent a practical output of multi-disciplinary, applied research that is beneficial to society, albeit at a limited local level thus far, and that brings the academia closer to the needs and expectations of their territory-s population.
Keywords: Northern Italy, elderly care, foreign caregivers, sociolinguistics, statistics, translation.
References
Brannigan Michael, Vicentini Alessandra, Grego Kim, Bacchini Simone C. (2020) (eds), Practical perspectives on older people, caregivers, families and organisations, Special issues, “Working with Older People”, 5(3), Emerald, London.
Fondazione Cariplo (2021), https://www.fondazionecariplo.it/en/the-foundation/la-fondazione.html).
Istat (2020), Rapporto annuale 2020. La situazione del Paese, https://www.istat.it/storage/rapporto-annuale/2020/Rapportoannuale2020.pdf.
Russo Daniel, Grechi Daniele, Vicentini Alessandra, Grego Kim (2020), ‘Sociolinguistic and statistical methods to survey the communicative needs of home-assisted elderly, their families, and foreign caregivers in Northern Italy’, in Davis Boyd, Vicentini Alessandra, Grego Kim (2020) (eds), Seniors, foreign caregivers, families, institutions: Linguistic and multidisciplinary perspectives, Mimesis international, Milan/London.
Vicentini Alessandra, Grego Kim (2019) (eds), Linguistic perspectives on ageing issues, ethics and ideology, “EXPRESSIO”, 3, Mila
The Italian arm of the PREPARE study: an international project to evaluate and license a maternal vaccine against group B streptococcus.
No full textBACKGROUND: Group B streptococcus (GBS) is a leading cause of sepsis, pneumonia and meningitis in infants, with long term neurodevelopmental sequelae. GBS may be associated with poor pregnancy outcomes, including spontaneous abortion, stillbirth and preterm birth. Intrapartum antibiotic prophylaxis (IAP) is currently the only way to prevent early-onset disease (presenting at 0 to 6 days of life), although it has no impact on the disease presenting over 6 days of life and its implementation is challenging in resource poor countries. A maternal vaccine against GBS could reduce all GBS manifestations as well as improve pregnancy outcomes, even in low-income countries. MAIN BODY: The term "PREPARE" designates an international project aimed at developing a maternal vaccination platform to test vaccines against neonatal GBS infections by maternal immunization. It is a non-profit, multi-center, interventional and experimental study (promoted by the St George University of London. [UK]) with the aim of developing a maternal vaccination platform, determining pregnancy outcomes, and defining the extent of GBS infections in children and mothers in Africa. PREPARE also aims to estimate the protective serocorrelates against the main GBS serotypes that cause diseases in Europe and Africa and to conduct two trials on candidate GBS vaccines. PREPARE consists of 6 work packages. In four European countries (Italy, UK, Netherlands, France) the recruitment of cases and controls will start in 2020 and will end in 2022. The Italian PREPARE network includes 41 centers. The Italian network aims to collect: GBS isolates from infants with invasive disease, maternal and neonatal sera (cases); cord sera and GBS strains from colonized mothers whose infants do not develop GBS infection (controls). SHORT CONCLUSION: PREPARE will contribute information on protective serocorrelates against the main GBS serotypes that cause diseases in Europe and Africa. The vaccine that will be tested by the PREPARE study could be an effective strategy to prevent GBS disease
The burden of early-onset sepsis in Emilia-Romagna (Italy): a 4-year, population-based study
No full textObjective: To provide the first Italian data on pathogens causing early-onset sepsis (EOS) and their antimicrobial susceptibility, after the successfully prevention of Group B streptococcus (GBS) EOS. Methods: Retrospective area-based cohort study from Emilia-Romagna (Italy). Cases of EOS registered (from 2009 to 2012) in all gestational age neonates were reviewed. Results: Live births (LB) numbered 146 682. Ninety neonates had EOS and 12 died (incidence rates of 0.61 and 0.08/1000 LB, respectively). EOS and mortality were the highest among neonates with a birth weight <1000 g (20.37/1000 LB and 8.49/1000 LB, respectively). The most common pathogens were GBS (n = 27, 0.18/1000 LB) and Escherichia coli (n = 19, 0.13/1000 LB). Most infants affected by E. coli EOS were born preterm (n = 13), had complications (n = 4) or died (n = 7). Among 90 isolates tested, only 3 were resistant to both first line empirical antibiotics. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that low gestational age, caesarean section and low platelet count at presentation were significantly associated with death or brain lesions (area under ROC curve = 0.939, H-L = 0.944, sensitivity 76.0%, specificity 90.7%). Conclusions: GBS slightly exceeds E. coli as a cause of EOS. However, E. coli is the prominent cause of death, complications and in most cases affects preterm neonates. Empirical antimicrobial therapy of EOS seems appropriate
