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While violence against health care workers is being progressively recognised as a serious problem in the healthcare industry, it remains an under-studied area of enquiry in global public health. Anthropologists have long observed that violence toward patients is tied to institutional care practises in multiple ways, including repression, misrecognition and silencing. But research on health care staff's experience of violence is still lacking. This article aims to address this literature gap by providing research on the daily experience of vulnerability to violence that health care providers face during their work. To do so, the paper ethnographically explores the effects and perception of violence against health care workers in an emergency department (ED) in northern Italy, a place with a dramatic escalation of violent incidents. The article illustrates how the ED staff attended to the experience of suffering of potentially violent patients. In so doing, ED professionals shifted the responsibility of violence against them from violent individuals to violent structures shaping health inequities. The paper thus argues that ED professionals display a structural competence perspective when dealing with violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to the workplace is one of the most important rights of citizenship. In some areas, the unavailability of job opportunities pushes people to commute. Nevertheless, there are areas where even commuting does not allow the improvement of individuals' economic and social conditions. This locks residents into a local job market that can be, in many cases, limited, low-income, or just unsatisfying. In this paper, we focus on the latest conditions in the Lombardia region (Italy). In order to identify marginal areas where low transport accessibility and high commuting cost may represent a barrier to territorial disparities in job access, we compare different classifications of marginality: socioeconomic indicators, an institutional one (SNAI), and, finally, one based on an indicator of marginal commuting gain (MCG). Evidence from this work will show an almost perfect match between very-fragile territories in socioeconomic terms and areas characterized by a low MCG indicator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is having significant impacts on health and mental health across Europe and globally. Such effects are likely to be more severe in climate change hotspots such as the Mediterranean region, including Italy. To review existing literature on the relationship between climate change and mental health in Italy, with a particular focus on trauma and PTSD. A scoping review methodology was used. We followed guidance for scoping reviews and the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) checklist. We searched for literature in MEDLINE, Global Health, Embase and PsycINFO. Following screening, data was extracted from individual papers and a quality assessment was conducted. Given the heterogeneity of studies, findings were summarized narratively. We identified 21 original research articles investigating the relationship between climate change and mental health in Italy. Climate change stressors (heat and heatwaves in particular) were found to have several negative effects on various mental health outcomes, such as a higher risk of mortality among people with mental health conditions, suicide and suicidal behaviour and psychiatric morbidity (e.g. psychiatric hospitalization and symptoms of mental health conditions). However, there is little research on the relationship between climate change and trauma or PTSD in the Italian context. More attention and resources should be directed towards understanding the mental health implications of climate change to prevent, promote, and respond to the mental health needs of Italy and the wider Mediterranean region. • Climate change stressors in Italy were found to have detrimental impacts on various mental health outcomes, such as psychiatric mortality and morbidity. • Little research on the relationship between climate change stressors and PTSD exists in Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present work contributes to the process of modernization of traditional geomorphological mapping, a fundamental tool for the assessment of the hazard degree of natural processes for the planning, of works and infrastructures. Starting from a traditional and detailed geomorphological survey and through elaborations in a GIS environment, this paper presents a multiscalar cartography model, characterized by a 'full coverage' representation of landforms. These characteristics make it possible to upscale or downscale processes and landforms and to use different information levels created in a hierarchical form. The test site for the experimentation is located on the Adriatic side of central Italy and is represented by a small catchment, about 13 km2 large. All geomorphological features and information have been organized as elements and attributes within digital geomorphological information layers, following structured on a Digital Terrain Model derived from LiDAR; this new product is here proposed also as web-browser version. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the hydrogeological map of the western Po Plain, located in Piedmont (north-western Italy). Po plain represents a hydrogeological system of European relevance, and the Piedmont Plain is the most important groundwater reservoir of the Region. The 1:300,000 scale map was realised using previous and new data to update the knowledge of this area. The map provides information about the hydrogeological complexes and their type and degree of permeability, water table levels and depth, piezometric level fluctuation, lithostratigraphic cross-sections, thickness, and percentage of the permeable deposits between 0 and 50 m from the ground surface. All this information is essential to public administrations, stakeholders, researchers, and professionals for defining possible tools for groundwater protection and management and for planning new groundwater exploitation (i.e. municipal drinking water supplies). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a short history of Italian marine biology, starting from the mid 16th century. During the Renaissance, a profound curiosity for marine sciences animated the scientific thought and several Italian naturalists started to collect rare and unusual marine items, sometimes acting with little critical sense towards medieval unbelievable legends. The 17th and 18th centuries saw a development of botany and zoology as modern disciplines and Italian scholars started to study the Mediterranean fauna and flora. They became active mainly at the Universities of Trieste, Venice, Palermo, Naples, Rome and Genoa and in other scientific institutions that arose under the different political regimes in which Italy was divided at that time. The Kingdom of Italy, born in 1861 with enormous financial difficulties, was interested in reaching an international scientific limelight: hence, some oceanographic expeditions were organized all around the world with a significant collection of data and specimens. The scientific interest for sea life increased and became at international level at the end of the 19th century, with the foundations of the first shore-based Zoological Stations in Trieste and Naples. At the beginning of the 20th century, intensive studies of inshore benthic communities by dredging and, afterwards by diving, started concurrently with those on structure and dynamics of plankton and fish populations which yielded a significant knowledge of the marine life from the Mediterranean continental platform. After the Second World War, the fundamental studies conducted at the Zoological Station of Naples on genetics, embryology and developmental biology using marine organisms as study models, were spread to different universities, going to constitute an Italian school of experimental embryology of international value. Today, the modern Italian marine biology is increasingly multi-disciplinary, requiring the participation of biochemists, geneticists and mathematicians and it opens up to new frontiers often linked to the global changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dermanyssus gallinae (De Geer, 1778) is a major problem for the poultry industry worldwide, as it negatively affects virtually all kinds of rearing systems. Therefore, the control of infestation has become a routine process, and its economic cost is constantly increasing. Until now, most of the control strategies have relied on the use of synthetic chemical drugs, but their efficacy is often questioned by the emergence and diffusion of resistant mite populations. With this in mind, the efficacy of λ-cyhalothrin, amitraz, and phoxim has been verified by testing them against 86 mite populations collected from the same number of poultry farms in Italy from 2008 to 2015. Assays were performed according to the filter paper method using the recommended, half, quarter, double and quadruple doses. The results showed that phoxim and amitraz were the most effective acaricides (median efficacies 80.35% and 80.83%, respectively), but amitraz exhibited a sharp fall in its efficacy during 2011 and 2012, while phoxim maintained its high effectiveness up to 2015, when it dropped. The overall median efficacy of λ-cyhalothrin was 58.33%. The data also highlighted the importance of the use of the right concentration, as an increase in dosage was not always useful against resistant populations, while its reduction also diminished efficacy, simultaneously increasing the risk for the development of resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results obtained by the elaboration of an artificial neuronal network for the creation of a rockfall susceptibility map. The analysis was carried out by analysing the predisposing and triggering factors of the rockfall phenomenon. The parameters considered for this study and representing the input data of the artificial neural network are factors such as: gradient, soil use, lithology, rockfall source areas and kinetic energy values obtained by considering the probable pathways of the blocks through simulations with dedicated softwares, DEMs and niches of the rockfalls that have already occurred in the past. The processing of this data (required in a versatile dedicated software for the realization of the artificial neural network in ASCII format) is done using GIS softwares, useful tools for the creation of hazard maps. An important step is the realization of the rockfall inventory map: it allows to identify the training set (consisting of 50% of the pixels relative to the rockfall niches) for the network training and the testing set (considering the remaining 50% of the pixels relative to the rockfall niches) to assess the network accuracy by overlaying the rockfall niches belonging to the testing set with the obtained susceptibility map. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A few hydrogeological studies have been carried out worldwide in peridotite aquifer systems, despite their wide distribution. The ophiolites are one of the main groundwater reservoir within the northern Apennines (Italy). This paper suggests the graphical solution to set the hydrogeological map of heterogeneous, multi-layered ophiolitic aquifers mapped on large scale (1:1600). The site investigation area is an ophiolite outcrop of the External Ligurian of the northern Apennines: the Mountain Prinzera rock complex area (44°38′30″N, 10°5′E; Parma Province, Emilia-Romagna Region). The hydrogeological characteristics of the tested aquifer system do not allow setting a hydrogeological map by applying usual graphical approaches. The hydrogeological map in such complex aquifer systems will show the classic hydrogeological data but must put in evidence above all (i) the main heterogeneities of the system, from the hydraulic point of view and (ii) the modifications of groundwater scenarios and pathways over time. The hydrogeological database of Mt Prinzera aquifer was managed in ESRI ArcGIS 10.0 software. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sinkholes are common in the Friuli Venezia Giulia (FVG) Region (NE Italy), where the presence of karstifiable rocks favours their occurrence accelerated by intense rainfalls. Their existence has been reported since the end of the 1800s along the Tagliamento Valley, in correspondence with the mantled evaporites (gypsum). Furthermore, tens of evaporite sinkholes have been documented on the reliefs adjacent to the village of Sauris and along the narrow W-E-oriented valleys, where regional faults have played a major role in their spatial distribution. This paper reports for the first time an inventory of the sinkholes affecting the evaporites of the FVG Region. These phenomena were mapped and categorised using a genetic classification. The main output is an A0-format map, which incorporates a 1:50,000 scale Sinkhole Inventory Map (SIM). The SIM encompasses 552 sinkholes. The cover suffosion sinkholes are the most abundant, followed by bedrock collapses. There is a clear prevalence of the circular shape (65%) over other shapes. Diameters are 1–140 m, with depths ranging 0.1–40 m with a mean value of 4.5 m. The SIM can motivate regional planning authorities to perform further investigations aimed to understand the geomorphological evolutions of these phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper aims to present the geology of the western part of the Classical Karst (NW Dinarides), located at the border between Slovenia and Italy. The work is based on archive, published and new data collected by Slovenian and Italian researchers within several scientific national and Cross Border Cooperation projects. The map, produced at a scale of 1:50,000, summarizes the lithological and structural setting and is supplemented by three geological cross-sections of the study area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of geomorphological investigations carried out in Basilicata region (Southern Italy) in the sector of the youngest foredeep (Bradano trough) relative to most of the communal territory of Pisticci. The importance of the chosen area mostly lies in the presence of diffuse running-water landforms and landslides affecting urban areas. The geomorphological processes are linked with Quaternary tectonic uplift affecting the Apennine front-Bradanic foredeep sectors. A series of field surveys, supported by aerial photo interpretation, have led to the production of a geomorphological map at 1:35,000 scale which outlines the main processes and related landforms recognised in the study area. The latter are the result of the complex interplay of structural, gravitational and fluvial processes. Particular attention has been devoted to the recognition, identification and mapping of landslides which affect the slope, locally giving rise to hazardous conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]