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Aims.To evaluate treatment decision-making capacity (DMC) to consent to psychiatric treatment in involuntarily committed patients and to further investigate possible associations with clinical and socio-demographic characteristics of patients.Methods.131 involuntarily hospitalised patients were recruited in three university hospitals. Mental capacity to consent to treatment was measured with the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool for Treatment (MacCAT-T); psychiatric symptoms severity (Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale, BPRS-E) and cognitive functioning (Mini Mental State Examination, MMSE) were also assessed.Results.Mental capacity ratings for the 131 involuntarily hospitalised patients showed that patients affected by bipolar disorders (BD) scored generally better than those affected by schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) in MacCAT-T appreciation (p< 0.05) and reasoning (p< 0.01). Positive symptoms were associated with poorer capacity to appreciate (r= −0.24; p< 0.01) and reason (r= −0.27; p< 0.01) about one's own treatment. Negative symptoms were associated with poorer understanding of treatment (r= −0.23; p< 0.01). Poorer cognitive functioning, as measured by MMSE, negatively affected MacCAT-T understanding in patients affected by SSD, but not in those affected by BD (SSD r= 0.37; p< 0.01; BD r= −0.01; p= 0.9). Poorer MacCAT-T reasoning was associated with more manic symptoms in the BD group of patients but not in the SSD group (BD r= −0.32; p< 0.05; SSD r= 0.03; p= 0.8). Twenty-two per cent (n= 29) of the 131 recruited patients showed high treatment DMC as defined by having scored higher than 75% of understanding, appreciating and reasoningMacCAT-T subscales maximum sores and 2 at expressing a choice. The remaining involuntarily hospitalised patients where considered to have low treatment DMC. Chi-squared disclosed that 32% of BD patients had high treatment DMC compared with 9% of SSD patients (p< 0.001).Conclusions.Treatment DMC can be routinely assessed in non-consensual psychiatric settings by the MacCAT-T, as is the case of other clinical variables. Such approach can lead to the identification of patients with high treatment DMC, thus drawing attention to possible dichotomy between legal and clinical status.

Aims. XTE J1810-197 is the first transient anomalous X-ray pulsar ever discovered. Its highly variable X-ray flux allowed us to study the timing and spectral emission properties of a magnetar candidate over a flux range of about two orders of magnitude.

Abstract: This paper describes the damage survey in the city of L’Aquila after the 6 April 2009 earthquake. The earthquake, whose magnitude and intensity reached Mw = 6.3 and Imax = 9–10 MCS, struck the Abruzzi region of Central Italy producing severe damage in L’Aquila and in many villages along the Middle Aterno River valley. After the event, a building-to-building survey was performed in L’Aquila downtown aiming to collect data in order to perform a strict evaluation of the damage. The survey was carried out under the European Macroseismic Scale (EMS98) to evaluate the local macroseismic intensity. This damage survey represents the most complex application of the EMS98 in Italy since it became effective. More than 1,700 buildings (99% of the building stock) were taken into account during the survey at L’Aquila downtown, highlighting the difficult application of the macroseismic scale in a large urban context. The EMS98 revealed itself to be the best tool to perform such kind of analysis in urban settings. The complete survey displayed evidence of peculiar features in the damage distribution. Results revealed that the highest rate of collapses occurred within a delimited area of the historical centre and along the SW border of the fluvial terrace on which the city is settled. Intensity assessed for L’Aquila downtown was 8–9 EMS.

Novel therapeutic strategies are urgently needed for the treatment of serious diseases caused by viral, bacterial and parasitic infections, because currently used drugs are facing the problem of rapidly emerging resistance. There is also an urgent need for agents that act on novel pathogen-specific targets, in order to expand the repertoire of possible therapies. The high throughput screening of diverse small molecule compound libraries has provided only a limited number of new lead series, and the number of compounds acting on novel targets is even smaller. Natural product screening has traditionally been very successful in the anti-infective area. Several successful drugs on the market as well as other compounds in clinical development are derived from natural products. Amongst these, many are macrocyclic compounds in the 1-2 kDa size range. This review will describe recent advances and novel drug discovery approaches in the antiinfective area, focusing on synthetic and natural macrocyclic compounds for which in vivo proof of concept has been established. The review will also highlight the Protein Epitope Mimetics (PEM) technology as a novel tool in the drug discovery process. Here the structures of naturally occurring antimicrobial and antiviral peptides and proteins are used as starting points to generate novel macrocyclic mimetics, which can be produced and optimized efficiently by combinatorial synthetic methods. Several recent examples highlight the great potential of the PEM approach in the discovery of new anti-infective agents.

The southernmost sector of the Italian peninsula is crossed by an almost continuous seismogenic belt capable of producing M ∼ 7 earthquakes and extending from the Calabrian Arc, through the Messina Straits, as far as Southeastern Sicily. Though large earthquakes occurring in this region during the last millennium are fairly well known from the historical point of view and seismic catalogues may be considered complete for destructive and badly damaging events (IX ≤ Io≤ XI MCS), the knowledge and seismic completeness of moderate earthquakes can be improved by investigating other kinds of documentary sources not explored by the classical seismological tradition. In this paper, we present a case study explanatory of the problem, regarding the Ionian coast between the Messina Straits and Mount Etna volcano, an area of North-eastern Sicily lacking evidence of relevant seismic activity in historical times. Now, after a systematic analysis of the 18th century journalistic sources (gazettes), this gap can be partly filled by the rediscovery of a seismic sequence that took place in 1780. According to the available catalogues, the only event on record for this year is a minor shock (Io = VI MCS, Mw= 4.8) recorded in Messina on March 28, 1780. The newly discovered data allow to reinstate it as the mainshock (Io = VII–VIII MCS, Mw= 5.6) of a significant seismic period, which went on from March to June 1780, causing severe damage along the Ionian coast of North-eastern Sicily. The source responsible for this event appears located offshore, 40-km south of the previous determination, and is consistent with the Taormina Fault suggested by the geological literature, developing in the low seismic rate zone at the southernmost termination of the 1908 Messina earthquake fault.

The aim of this study is to shed light ontwo important destructive seismicsequences, about 20 years apart (1138–1139and 1156–1159), which hit the northernsector of the Dead Sea transform faultsystem(DSTFS), in the easternMediterranean region. Although some ofthese earthquakes were already known to thescholarly tradition, the interpretationsprovided until today have largely beenpartial and characterised by uncertaintiesand discrepancies among the variousauthors. Our study has developed throughresearch into the original Arabic, Syriac,Armenian and Latin texts and a criticalanalysis relating to a territory fragmentedby the presence of the Christian-Latinstates. This analysis has allowed us toshed light on the already existing, albeitoften uncertain, information and to add newelements of these two important series ofearthquake shocks to our knowledge base.As regards the first seismic sequence(October 1138–June 1139), apart from havingdefined the date with greater accuracy,eight new locations affected have beenidentified, unknown to previous studies.The shocks jolted a vast area withdestructive effects, including theterritory of Aleppo (modern Halab, Syria)and the western part of the region ofEdessa (modern Urfa, Turkey).The second seismic sequence (September1156–May 1159) was much longer anddevastating, and hit a huge area, includedbetween the present-day territories ofnorth-western Syria, northern Lebanon andthe region of Antioch (modern Antakya, insouthern Turkey). A detailed analysis ofthe primary sources has allowed toreconstruct the series of shocks withchronological detail of the effects,improving our previous knowledge. Lastly,the authors formulate an hypothesis as tothe possible seismogenic zones affected.

We investigate spontaneous and piezoelectric polarization in wurtzite III–V nitride ternary alloys as a function of composition and microscopic structure, using ab initio density-functional techniques and Berry phase method. We find a strong nonlinear dependence of spontaneous polarization on composition in chemically disordered alloys. Nonlinearity is quite pronounced in those alloys (e.g. AlInN and InGaN) made of largely lattice-mismatched binaries. Spontaneous polarization bowing strongly depends on the microscopic structure of the alloy. Chemical ordering in the form of super-lattice structure may increase the bowing up to a factor of five. Piezoelectric polarization is also nonlinear, in random alloys the nonlinearity is entirely due to a nonlinear strain dependence on piezoelectric polarization in pure binary compounds, therefore piezoelectric coefficients follow Vegard's law. In chemically ordered InGaN and AlInN alloys piezoelectric coefficients deviate from Vegard's law, and this effect reduces the strength of the piezoelectric polarization up to 38% of its value in AlInN alloy.

Tripeptidyl-peptidase I (TPP-I) is an exopeptidase which removes tripeptides from the N-terminus of peptides.Mutations in TPP-I are responsible for late infantile neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (CLN2). The nature of the physiological substrates and the range and specificity of the enzyme are unclear. Previous experiments suggest that the enzyme can degrade small peptides but not proteins. Digestion of a range of peptides of different size by TTP-I suggests that the enzyme will degrade small peptides with an extended N-terminal domain but not structured peptides. In general, this cut-off occurs between masses of 4.5 kDa and 6 kDa. Reference to the structures of other peptidases suggests a mechanism for this size selectivity.

Macroscopic polarization plays a major role in determining the optical and electrical properties of nitride nanostructures via polarization-induced built-in electrostatic fields. While currently fashionable, this field of endeavour is still by far in its early infancy. Here we contribute some clarifications on the conceptual issues involved in determining built-in fields in III–V nitride nanostructures, sorting out in particular the roles of spontaneous and piezoelectric polarization.

The paper is based on accurate measurements of the optical response of SSFLC cells driven by specially designed test waveforms. Switching slopes are measured under different conditions and the balance of elastic, dielectric and ferroelectric torques is experimentally studied. The results are given as functions of a normalized optical transmission and the applied voltage.

The theoretical analysis of two different wires of size 5 × 4 and 3 × 4, simulating porous Si has been performed through the linear muffin tin orbitals method in the atomic sphere approximation. We show that the opening of the local density approximation gap is asymmetric: 13of the widening is in the valence band, while 23is in the conduction band; the near-bandgap states originate from Si atoms located at the centre of the wire; the imaginary part of the dielectric function shows a strongly anisotropic low-energy side structure, identified as responsible for the luminescence transition; the spatial localization of the valence and conduction band states involved in the luminescence transition shows that all the Si atoms of the wire are collectively involved.

In order to evaluate the switching properties of FLC mixtures in their relation to addressing waveforms, alignment layers and general cell construction we have built an experimental setup which allows for dynamic measurements of the optical response of a test cell under real addressing conditions. In synchronisation with a selection voltage different data pulses can be sequentially applied and the corresponding optical response of a test cell can be recorded under computer control. Thank to this equipment we are able to record hysteresis curves of the response. On this basis we introduce some useful parameters (switching amplitude, image sticking) which can be measured and compared for different cells.The setup can provide several selection and data waveforms so that influence of their choice can also be studied.

Abstract.: Creating a computer model from an existing part is a common problem in reverse engineering. The part might be scanned with a device like the laser range scanner, or points might be measured on its surface with a mechanical probe. Sometimes, not only the spatial location of points, but also some associated physical property can be measured. The problem of automatically reconstructing from this data a topologically consistent and geometrically accurate model of the object and of the sampled scalar field is the subject of this paper. The proposed algorithm can deal with connected, orientable manifolds of unrestricted topological type, given a sufficiently dense and uniform sampling of the object's surface. It is capable of automatically reconstructing both the model and a scalar field over its surface. It uses Delaunay triangulations, Voronoi diagrams, and α-shapes for efficiency of computation and theoretical soundness. It generates a representation of the surface and the field based on Bernstein—Bézier polynomials, with the surface modeled by implicit patches (A-patches), that are guaranteed to be smooth and single-sheeted.

The atomic geometry and the electronic structure of GaAs(1 1 0) and Si(1 1 1) with full coverage of chemisorbed hydrogen is described in the scheme of the density functional theory and using norm-conserving pseudopotentials, as ideal prototypes of semiconductor surfaces interacting with hydrogen. The removal of relaxation or reconstruction, the bond geometry and the stretching frequencies can be described in a full ab initio approach.

To describe the clinical features and management of a patient with an extralacrimal dacryolith.

Murepavadin (POL7080) represents the first member of a novel class of outer membrane protein-targeting antibiotics. It specifically interacts with LptD and inhibits lipopolysaccharide (LPS) transport.

Context.With two consecutive outbursts recorded in four months (October 2008 and January 2009), and a possible third outburst in 2007, 1E 1547.0-5408 is one of the most active transient anomalous X-ray pulsars known so far.