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Mandibular distraction osteogenesis (MDO) has been widely adopted in modern maxillofacial surgery due to its less invasive approach and the consistent aesthetic and functional improvements obtained. The aim of the present systematic review was to analyze the available evidence on the skeletal and soft tissue effects of MDO. The medical literature was searched to identify all peer-reviewed papers meeting the selection criteria for the final review process. A three-point grading system was used to rate the methodological quality of the selected papers. The PICO approach was used to extract data from the selected papers. The search strategy yielded eight relevant publications. The quality of the collected evidence was low to moderate. Vertical and sagittal skeletal dimensions increased significantly, by a mean of 5–10 mm ( P < 0.05). Regarding the sagittal positioning of the lips and surrounding structures, a 90% correspondence between skeletal and soft tissue cephalometric points was observed. Significant skeletal relapse was reported, however it did not worsen the results of treatment significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chikungunya is a mosquito-borne infection of humans, and its diffusion has increased worldwide. In 2007 an outbreak occurred in Italy. In this study, the antibody response of 133 patients followed up starting from the acute phase of infection was investigated. Antibody titres were periodically scored up to 1 year since the infection: 82.7% of the IgM antibody disappeared within 12 months, and the IgG response lasted longer than 12 months. Nevertheless, the IgG mean titre was lower in 95.5% of patients at the end of follow-up, thus suggesting a decrease within a relatively short period. New Microbes and New Infections @ 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European policy promotes renewable energies and sets specific targets. Solid biofuels can play a significant role and the quality is an important aspect to be checked. Quality parameters such as origin and source are also required by specific biofuel standards. Therefore it could be useful to develop a rapid and cheap tool to distinguish between hardwoods and softwoods especially in unstructured, milled or densified wood in order to check the compliance of producer's declarations. Compared to other analytical methods, infrared spectroscopy is fast, non-destructive and low cost. In this study Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy coupled with Soft Independent Modelling of Class Analogy (SIMCA) has been evaluated as a method for discrimination purpose. A large dataset of 110 wood samples belonging to 12 species were analysed. In addition 4 blends were also analysed to test the discrimination performance of the tool. FTIR-SIMCA has correctly classified 93% of hardwood samples and 100% of softwood samples at high significance level. Furthermore, 100% of tested blends were associated with no class, showing a discrimination ability of the technique in recognizing blends from pure material. This method could be useful to verify the compliance of producer declarations about wood origin and source. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the renewable energy production solid biomass has became one of the most important source for power and heat generation, in particular woody materials in the form of wood chips, pellet and briquette. Technical standards on solid biofuels require information about origin and source of the biomass, differentiating for example between coniferous and broadleaf. In this work different wood samples were classified employing a method based on thermogravimetric analysis followed by Principal Component Analysis and Soft Independent Modeling of Class Analogy as supervised pattern recognition method. The best results were obtained considering the temperature range between 200 and 300 °C, corresponding to hemicellulose degradation. The method results very efficient (100% recognition) at identifying between hardwood and softwood. Nevertheless it shows a good potential to classify single species. This method can be used to assess the quality of solid biofuels with respect to the requirements defined by the specific technical standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clin Microbiol Infect 2011; 17: 1349-1352 Abstract Dengue is a significant mosquito-borne infection in humans, and its worldwide prevalence is rapidly increasing. In 2010, 83 serum samples from febrile travellers returning from dengue-endemic countries to a region in north-eastern Italy, densely infested with Aedes albopictus, were analysed for dengue virus (DENV). DENV RNA was detected in 20.5% of patients. By RT-PCR, DENV serotypes 1 and 3 were the most common. DENV must be identified early in symptomatic travellers returning from high-risk countries, to prevent outbreaks where potential vectors exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vine is one of the most widespread crop cultivated in Italy. The management of these residues is linked to an additional cost for the operator and determines environmental issues mainly due to open field combustion. A better exploitation of these residues could be the use for thermal energy production in residential heating devices fuelled with pellet. In the present work vineyard pruning residues were collected, pelletised, then characterised according to the standard for solid biofuels. Combustion tests were performed in a 150 kW th boiler fuelled with pruning pellet and the related TSP, CO, NO x emissions were measured. In order to make a comparison with the open field combustion emissions of the vineyard pruning residues, simulation tests were conducted at lab scale. Open field emissions are up to 120 times for CO emission and 30 times for TSP more than the boiler emission. Results highlighted that by avoiding open field combustion and using this residual biomass for energy production, a significant reduction of environmental pollution together with an increase in renewable energy production can be obtained. The results can be useful as support for policy makers engaged in developing the strategy for the promotion of renewable energy and air quality improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing concern regarding energy supply and the consequent rapid growth of the pellet market lead to the need to classify the product quality. To this aim, chemical-physical parameters and qualitative attributes are defined by the technical standards EN ISO 17,225 to classify the quality of biofuels, but, while the former can be determined by traditional chemical analysis, no methodologies have been set for the latter one. Hence, near-infrared spectroscopy was tested to obtain information about the origin and the source of the pellet, at the moment only declared by the producers and difficult to be achieved by conventional analysis. In fact, the great strength of the technique is based on the fact that biomass features could be read simultaneously with a rapid and cheap NIR measurement. Checking the presence of treated wood (e.g. residues from wood processing industry) especially in densified products, such as pellets and briquettes, is particular important since in several European countries, e.g. Italy, these materials are considered as waste. In this study more than a hundred samples of virgin and treated wood (residues from wood processing industries) were analysed by means of FT-NIR. Partial Least Square regression – Discriminant Analysis was used in order to classify samples between the two classes and different variables selection methods were tested in order to improve the classification performance of the models. The results obtained demonstrated that near infrared analysis coupled with multivariate analysis can be used in screening applications to classify virgin wood from glue-laminated wood and treated wood. In particular, the model for the discrimination of treated wood (except glue-laminated samples) from virgin wood performs 100% correct classification and the model for the discrimination between virgin wood and glue-laminated wood only has a 3.6% misclassification rate. The methodology can be considered as the first one able to provide information about the origin of the biomass in a rapid and cheap way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biomass is an important renewable energy source, in particular if obtained by residues it becomes even more sustainable. In Italy, residual biomass coming from olive oil industry, i.e. olive pomace, is produced in a significant amount and is concentrated in olive oil extraction sites, making interesting a possible valorisation of these residues. The different extraction processes employed influence the pomace quality and, consequently, it is fundamental to find a rapid technique to assess its physical and chemical characteristics for a correct valorisation. The aim of the work was to develop a NIR-based methodology to obtain in a fast and cheap way information about olive pomace. Several samples (n = 104) were collected in Marche region and analysed according to standards methods. NIR spectra were acquired using both fiberoptic probe and integrating sphere and subsequently were elaborated with multivariate techniques, i.e. principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least square regression (PLS). Results show that information on extraction process and composition of the pomace can be obtained. Prediction models with performance suitable for quality control applications were obtained for moisture and ash contents, whereas gross calorific value model was suitable only for screening application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives Among sandfly-borne pathogens, Toscana virus (TOSV) is a prominent cause of summer meningitis in Mediterranean Europe. Here, we assessed the kinetics of anti-TOSV antibodies over time in 41 patients diagnosed with TOSV meningitis or meningoencephalitis in northeastern Italy. Methods Acute and follow-up serum samples were collected up to 20 months after diagnosis of TOSV infection and tested for the presence of specific antibody using immunoenzymatic and indirect immunofluorescence assays. In addition, maturation of anti-TOSV IgG over time was evaluated as well as production of neutralizing antibodies. Results Specific IgM and IgG response was present at diagnosis in 100% of patients; TOSV-specific IgM and IgG were detected in patients' sera up to 6 and 20 months after diagnosis, respectively. The avidity index (AI) increased over the first month after infection in 100% of patients and most cases exceeded 60% by Day 30 post infection. The AI subsequently plateaued then declined at 20 months after diagnosis. Finally, neutralization assay to TOSV was performed in 217 sera collected from 41 patients; 69.6% of tested samples resulted in reactive and moderate levels of neutralizing antibodies observed during all phases of infection despite high titres of total anti-TOSV IgG. Conclusions Specific antibody response develops rapidly and is long-lasting for neuroinvasive TOSV infection. Serodiagnosis of neuroinvasive TOSV requires simultaneous detection of specific IgM and IgG. Moderate levels of neutralizing antibodies were maintained over the study period, while the protective role of antibodies lacking neutralizing activity is unclear and requires further evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ongoing outbreak of Monkeypoxvirus (MPXV) turned the spotlight back on zoonotic poxviruses (ZPs). MPXV, Cowpoxvirus (CPXV) and Vaccinia Virus (VV) are the zoonotic species belonging to the Orthopoxvirus (OPXV) genus in the Poxviridae family. The diagnostics currently available are designed for specialised laboratories and are unsuitable for field and point of care use. Here we present a sensitive and specific low-tech workflow for the rapid identification of ZPs. An isothermal (Hyperfluux) multiple dye assay, targeting the OPXV RNA Polimerase (RPO) was designed and validated. Analytical sensitivity was assessed by using both a sintetic dsDNA fragment and MPXV field samples. Standards were assigned to absolute values by using digital PCR and a probe- based assay. LOD was estimated by fitting a probit regression model with a prediction level of 95% after running a negative sample and 5 low positive samples in 5 replicates. Specificity was assessed by using bacterial and viral DNA from herpesviruses, zoonotic parapoxviruses and orthopoxviruses. For field applications, Xample Prep tool was employed to treat MPXV clinical samples prior amplification; the results were then compared to those obtained with DNAs extracted with standard method. The assay resulted highly sensitive with estimated LOD of 18,6 DNA copies/μl and rapid being performed in 35 minutes overall from samples to results. Only Zoonotic OPXV DNA was amplified showing a high specificity and comparable results were obtained from purified viral DNA and Xample Prep treated samples. For its performances, rapidity, thermostable reagents, and ability to efficiently amplify clinical samples, without prior DNA extraction, the assay is suitable for use in low-resource settings, in the field and in community clinics. Besides clinical applications, to allow proper patients' management, the availability of such a diagnostic workflow can be critical to understand the real incidence and prevalence of zoonotic OPXV among humans and animal reservoirs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the global warming and the climate change of the past few decades, European public policies have been established in order to increase the share of renewable energy sources. In the European context, one of the most interesting alternatives is woodchip. The present investigation provides an evaluation of woodchip quality underlining the relationships between the most important chemical and physical parameters, in particular between ash and some elements. Results highlight that the quality of woodchip is good even if some samples have very high ash content. Statistical analysis demonstrated that ash and moisture contents are highly linked to the net calorific value and a specific regression equation (R 2 = 0.983) has been identified. Considering the chemical characteristics, statistical analyses pointed out the correlation between elements and ash content demonstrating that the quality classes of woodchip can be reasonably divided based on ash content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The standardization is an important aspect for fuel products. Some residual biomass are highly heterogeneous making their energy use rather difficult. Torrefaction can represent an interesting process to improve the standardization and quality of the lignocellulosic biomass. In the present research torrefaction has been applied on tomato peels, an important Italian industry residue. Different residence times and torrefaction temperatures have been employed in a bench top torrefaction reactor. Proximate, ultimate, thermogravimetric and infrared analyses of raw and torrefied material have been performed to evaluate the influence of the process. From the mildest condition studied to the most severe one, mass yield, energy yield and energy densification vary in the ranges of 94.7–69.9%, 98.0–86.0% and 1.04–1.23 respectively. According to mass and energy yields, ultimate analysis and thermogravimetric profiles, temperature parameter results more significant than residence time. Torrefaction makes the material increasingly hydrophobic as torrefaction temperature increases. This results in a more biologically stable and standardized material suitable to be employed as fuel for energy application. The results of this paper provide useful indications and suggest a mild torrefaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arboviruses with neuroinvasive potential are gaining more attention due to the increased number of cases of autochthonous and imported infections in the human host. Diagnosis of infection caused by these viruses in patients with central nervous system ( CNS) diseases is still underestimated and these infections represent an emerging threat to public health. We describe a model suitable for the laboratory surveillance of neuro-arbovirosis that was applied in the Emilia- Romagna region, north-eastern Italy, during the 2012 summer season. One hundred and twenty cases of suspected neuroinvasive infection were tested for arboviral agents on the basis of clinical and laboratory signs and epidemiological data. The most common virus detected was Toscana virus ( TOSV): anti- TOSV specific antibodies or viral components were detected in 28.3% of the cases; 79.4% of the TOSV cases were in the acute phase of infection. No cases resulted in acute phase for West Nile ( WNV), Usutu ( USUV), Chikungunya ( CHIKV) or Dengue ( DENV) virus infection. Conversely, two patients with a history of staying in a tick-borne encephalitis virus ( TBEV) endemic area showed a probable TBEV infection. These results emphasize the importance of a complete and 'ready to act' laboratory diagnostic system to be implemented within the larger frame of a regional integrated surveillance system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In Italy 1.5 Tg dry matter of residues are estimated to be produced by the agri-food sector. Approximately 30% of them are represented by residues of wine industry sector: grape marc. Referring to its production, it is possible to evaluate about 10 Mg of grapes from each vineyard hectare that generate, as wine industry residue, 2.7 Mg of grape marc, corresponding to about 19 GJ in terms of energy content. This kind of biomass is heterogenous and composed of stalks, grape skins and seeds. In this paper, in order to investigate the possibility of an energy and industrial utilization, the physical-chemical characteristics of each single component of grape marc are examined. In addition, a mechanical extraction test on the seed was performed to evaluate the vegetable oil production and the characteristics of the cake. Results on grape marc components put in evidence some difference in terms of ash and chemical elements content, which represent, specifically for these materials, the most critical aspects to take into account in combustion heating systems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

West Nile virus ( WNV), a mosquito-borne flavivirus in the Japanese encephalitis antigenic group, has caused sporadic outbreaks in humans, horses and birds throughout many of the warmer regions of Europe for at least 20 years. Occasional cases of West Nile encephalitis have also been associated with infected blood transfusions and organ donations. Currently, WNV appears to be expanding its geographical range in Europe and causing increasing numbers of epidemics/outbreaks associated with human morbidity and mortality. This brief review reports on the current epidemic situation regarding WNV in Europe, highlighting the clinical, diagnostic and preventive measures available for controlling this apparently emerging human pathogen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neutralizing antibodies against West Nile ( WNV) and Usutu ( USUV) viruses were measured in 6000 samples collected, between 1 September 2010 and 30 June 2011, from blood donors living in different districts of Emilia- Romagna, northeastern Italy. On the basis of the microneutralization assay ( MNTA), 47 (0.78%) subjects were positive for WNV and 14 (0.23%) for USUV. These results were compared with those obtained 2 years ago and suggest an increased circulation of USUV among humans in Emilia- Romagna. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Long-term outcomes of renal transplantation using kidneys from donors >60 years old are generally considered to be poor. This retrospective study included 265 living donor (LD) transplants in adult recipients with a mean follow-up of 13.1 ± 6.1 years (range, 1.3–25.8), all of them under CNI. They were grouped according to the donor age at least (n = 49) or less (n = 216) than 60 years. Graft and patient survivals were compared using the Kaplan-Meier method and Cox multiple regression. At 1, 3, and 10 years, postoperatively patient survivals in the group of older LD recipients were 97%, 96%, and 93%, versus 98%, 97% and 92% among the younger LD recipients. At 1, 3 and 10 years, postoperatively graft survivals uncensored for death were 94%, 92%, and 81% among the older LD recipients versus 93%, 89%, 75% among the control group, respectively, despite a slightly increased creatininemia observed at 10 years among the older LD recipients. Deaths censored graft survivals were 96%, 96%, and 87% among the older versus 94%, 91% and 78% among the younger LD recipients, respectively. Therefore, significantly better noncensored death-censored graft survivals, were observed among the recipients of older LD compared with recipients of the younger donor group. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]