Search

The global warming effect represents an increasingly severe environmental issue in the contemporary world, with the construction industry contributing up to 40% of greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, as advancements in technology have enabled the realization of net-zero energy buildings, there has recently been a growing focus on research primarily aimed at reducing the embodied carbon (EC) of building materials. Assessment and calculation of EC emissions in buildings typically utilize life cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies, evaluating both direct and indirect carbon emissions throughout all stages, from raw material extraction to end-of-life demolition. However, the substantial potential of carbon reduction within the material beyond life cycle stage in the building, which is the decisive process of closing the loop of circular economy, is often overlooked. This paper examines a large number of research cases on EC in buildings over the past 20 years, selectively identifying those including the benefits beyond life cycle of buildings. By conducting a case-by-case analysis of methods and tools employed for the assessment of circular practices, their respective strengths, weaknesses, and variances are evaluated. Following the normalization of EC in phase A-D, a significant research finding revealing that buildings can offset an average of -113.9 kg CO2e/m2 of carbon emissions through recycling and reuse in phase D, accounting for 16.85% of the total EC assessed in LCA. Steel recycling offsets the highest amount of carbon emissions, with an average number of -183.86 kg CO2e/m2. The objective of this paper is to identify the key factors that influence carbon emissions in the circular economy and to identify methods and tools for integrating building materials at the early design stage to minimize EC emissions throughout the entire lifecycle of buildings.

Backgrounds and Aims: Hypertension is a risk factor for renal, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. It is responsible for a large proportion of overall morbidity and mortality every year. Hypertension-mediated organ damage is largely not reversible. For these reasons, prevention has primary importance: sensibilization of population on hypertension-related consequences is essential for therapeutic adherence and reduction of unhealthy lifestyle behaviour. This study aimed to evaluate awareness about hypertension among community pharmacies customers., Methods and Results: A questionnaire about hypertension was collected by 2731 customers from 94 community pharmacies in North West Italy, during a hypertension screening program. Hypertension awareness was unsatisfactory in a large proportion of the sample, with only 15% of subjects having an overall good level of knowledge. Furthermore, lower awareness was associated to higher blood pressure values (132/79 ± 19/11 mmHg vs 128/78 ± 18/10 mmHg, p < 0.001) and subjects resulted hypertensive or uncontrolled despite antihypertensive therapy, presented worse questionnaire scores (4.7 ± 1.9 vs 4.9 ± 2.0, p = 0.03)., Conclusion: Knowledge about hypertension is largely unsatisfactory among population. Community pharmacies may play as a setting for health education and hypertension screening., (Copyright © 2021 The Italian Diabetes Society, the Italian Society for the Study of Atherosclerosis, the Italian Society of Human Nutrition and the Department of Clinical Medicine and Surgery, Federico II University. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

In the last years, the need for new efficient video compression methods grown rapidly as frame resolution has increased dramatically. The Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) effort produced in 2013 the H.265/High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard, which represents the state of the art in video coding standards. Nevertheless, in the last years, new algorithms and techniques to improve coding efficiency have been proposed. One promising approach relies on embedding direction capabilities into the transform stage. Recently, the Steerable Discrete Cosine Transform (SDCT) has been proposed to exploit directional DCT using a basis having different orientation angles. The SDCT leads to a sparser representation, which translates to improved coding efficiency. Preliminary results show that the SDCT can be embedded into the HEVC standard, providing better compression ratios. This paper presents a hardware architecture for the SDCT, which is able to work at a frequency of 188 M Hz , reaching a throughput of 3.00 GSample/s. In particular, this architecture supports 8k UltraHigh Definition (UHD) (7680 × 4320) with a frame rate of 60 Hz , which is one of the best resolutions supported by HEVC.

Background: Moebius syndrome (MBS) is rare disease characterized by nonprogressive congenital uni- or bi-lateral facial (i. e. VII cranial nerve) and abducens (i. e. VI cranial nerve) palsy. Although the neurological and ophthalmological findings are quite well-known, data concerning the attendant functional difficulties and their changes over time are seldom addressed. In this study we attempt to estimate the prevalence of clinical and functional data in an Italian cohort affected by MBS., Methods: The study included 50 children, 21 males and 29 females, aged 1 month to 14 years. The patients entered into a multidisciplinary diagnostic and follow-up protocol that had the specific purpose of detecting clinical and developmental deficits related to MBS., Results: Involvement of the VII cranial nerve (total/partial, bilateral or unilateral) was present in 96 % of patients, and of the VI nerve in 85 %. Two patients were without impairment of the VII nerve and seven patients had no involvement of the VI nerve and were thus classified as Moebius-like because of the involvement of other CNs. Additional affected CNs were numbers III-IV in 16 %, V in 11 %, VIII and X each in 8 %, the XI in 6 %, the IX, most often partially, in 22 %, and the XII in 48 % of cases. Their development was characterized by global delay at one year of age, motor, emotional and speech difficulties at two years of age, a trend toward normalization at three years of age but with weakness in hand-eye coordination, and achieving average results at five years of age. Overall 90 % of children had a normal developmental quotient whereas only 10 % manifested cognitive deficits., Conclusion: Early rehabilitation may enhance the recovery of normal function, particularly in vulnerable areas of development. It is possible that early intervention that integrates sensory and visual information with emotional difficulties can improve the prognosis of the child with MBS.

In Paraguay, cancer is among the leading causes of death among children. We report challenges and solutions for building the country's first pediatric cancer center at the National University School of Medicine (PCC-SM) and describe the outcomes of the National Network for Pediatric Cancer. We found that children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia treated between 2008 and 2012 had higher 3-year survival rates and lower treatment abandonment rates than did children treated between 2000 and 2007 before the network was established. This improvement directly coincided with the increased treatment capacity of the PCC-SM. Herein, we describe the role of local, national, and international contributors in improving the health care at Paraguay's PCC-SM and discuss how expediting access to specialized cancer diagnosis and care and implementing a system for referral and follow-up visits can improve cancer outcomes in other low-resource countries.

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to explore, investigate and describe experiences and points of view of foreign nurses working in the area of Parma. We focalize particularly on two areas of interest: negativities and positivities in experiences related to the process of integration into the new working environment., Background: The literature search has revealed that the phenomenon of "nursing immigration" is numerically significant in Italy and more particularly in Emilia Romagna. From studies conducted in other countries (UK, USA, Canada, Australia and Iceland) there are two categories of factors which influence the process of integration of foreign nurses in the new working environment, facilitators and barriers., Method: For this study we followed the phenomenological method . A total of twelve foreign nurses were interviewed in the months of October and November 2013 in the territory of Parma working in various professional fields (medicine, critical care and surgery). We did not impose any structure to interviews so that respondents were free to express their lived experiences spontaneously. All interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim and analyzed by the method of Giorgi (1970)., Results: Results obtained from the analysis of interviews revealed seven themes, divided in positivities and negativities. Positivities are psycho-social support (Italian colleagues, fellow countrymen, patients), opportunities of cultural enrichment, positive work ethic. negativities are difficulty of language and communication, and inequalities racial prejudice, differences in care practices and inadequate opportunities for professional growth related to the Italian working environment., Conclusions: The study concludes by pointing out the importance of the role that foreign nurses can play in our health care system and how the results of this search can help all professionals in the health sector to have a greater understanding of their experiences. This knowledge can make a contribution to the development of new quantitative research in the same area and then to the formation of new strategies for hospitality and support.

Unlabelled: There is a steady rise in the number of overseas students taking degree courses at the Medicine and Surgery faculties of Italian Universities. Numerous scholars, mainly from the English speaking world, have testified to the fact that a university teaching organisation aimed at attaining good levels of integration among students of differing cultural appurtenance is a prerequisite for success in the acquisition of good treatment practices., Aim: To explore the experience of students from Cameroon studying on the degree courses in Medicine and Surgery and in Nursing at the University of Parma, in order to discover the strong and weak points of the organisation of the courses so as to achieve a good process of integration., Materials and Methods: An ethnographic study plan was adopted. In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 students from Cameroon enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine of Parma University: 10 in the Degree Course in Medicine and Surgery and 10 in the Degree Course in Nursing. The interviews were recorded and analysed independently by two researchers, who then pooled their results. The age of the interviewed ranges from 24 to 31, the average age is 26,5., Results: Independently from the attended degree course, most of the students interviewed claim that the process of integration has not been very successful: despite attempts to open up a dialogue with their Italian counterparts in order to get to know them, the latter showed no signs of willingness to integrate. Some students develop a self-critical attitude, maintaining that it would be a good idea to strengthen their awareness of their own cultural identity so as to start from a firm base in the attempt to open up to the host society without defensive attitudes that lead to ostracism. The difficulties of socialisation are compounded by those of learning, which many attribute to the language difficulties and some to the differing academic organisation between country of origin and host country., Discussion: The problem of the difficulties of integration of overseas students is not new. In other geographical locations, changes to syllabuses designed to solve the problem, at least in part, have been proposed and successfully implemented. The Italian situation is a particular one, and this preliminary study yields some ideas for the implementation of changes to the syllabuses of the Italian universities.

Introduction: The "Human Caring" model is a philosophy of care based on individual centrality and which, although developed within nursing discipline, could be used by all professionals who take care of individuals. Nurses who work within the field of Mental Health, is subjected to a considerable emotional burden and it is believed that the introduction of this model can have a positive impact., Objective: To evaluate the effects of the introduction of the model Human Caring in the Department of Mental Health Asl Cuneo 1, in order to improve health care professionals' well-being and patients' perception with respect to care and assistance., Method: A pre and post intervention design approach with control group where variables were measured before (T0) and after (T1) the implementation of the model of care Human Caring., Results: 80 health care professionals and 125 clients were observed. Results show a non statistically significant difference between the pre and post test both for health care professionals and clients., Conclusions: Human Caring model does not seem to have a positive impact in the short term. However, it is arguably a protective action for health care professionals that further studies should deeply explore with longer period of follow-up.

Background: Aetiology of childhood leukaemia and childhood neoplasm is poorly understood. Information on the prevalence of risk factors in the childhood population is limited. SETIL is a population based case-control study on childhood leukaemia, conducted with two companion studies on non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL) and neuroblastoma. The study relies on questionnaire interviews and 50 Hz magnetic field (ELF-MF) indoor measurements. This paper discusses the SETIL study design and includes descriptive information., Methods: The study was carried out in 14 Italian regions (78.3% of Italian population aged 0-10). It included leukaemia, NHL and neuroblastoma cases incident in 0-10 year olds in 1998-2001, registered by the Italian Association of Paediatric Haematology and Oncology (AIEOP) (accrual over 95% of estimated incidence). Two controls for each leukaemia case were randomly sampled from the Local Health Authorities rolls, matched by gender, birthdate and residence. The same controls were used in NHL and neuroblastoma studies. Parents were interviewed at home on: physical agents (ELF-MF and ionizing radiation), chemicals (smoking, solvents, traffic, insecticides), occupation, medical and personal history of children and parents, infectious diseases, immunizations and associated factors. Occupational exposure was collected using job specific modules. ELF-MF was measured in the main rooms (spot measurement) and close to child's bed (48 hours measurement)., Results: The study included: 683 leukaemia cases (87% ALL, 13% AnLL), 97 NHL, 155 neuroblastomas, and 1044 controls., Conclusions: SETIL represents a data source on exposure of Italian children to a broad array of potential carcinogenic factors.