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The South-East Crater (SEC) at Mt. Etna started a period of lava fountaining in December 2020, producing over 60 paroxysms until February 2022. The activity had an intense sequence from February 16 to April 1, 2021, totaling 17 paroxysmal events separated by repose times varying from 1 to 7 days. The eruptive sequence was extensively monitored, providing a unique opportunity to relate the chemistry and texture of the erupted products to eruption dynamics. We investigate the temporal evolution of the magmatic system through this eruptive sequence by quantifying variations in the composition and texture of clinopyroxene. Clinopyroxene major element transects across crystals from five representative lava fountains allow us to determine the relative proportions of deep versus shallow-stored magmas that fed these events. We use hierarchical clustering (HC), an unsupervised machine learning technique, to objectively identify clinopyroxene compositional clusters and their variations during this intense eruptive phase. Our results show that variations of monitoring parameters and eruption intensity are expressed in the mineral record both as changes in cluster proportions and the chemical complexity of single crystals. We also apply random forest thermobarometry to relate each cluster to P-T conditions of formation. We suggest that the February–April 2021 eruptive sequence was sustained by the injection of a hotter and deeper magma into a storage area at 1–3 kbar, where it mixed with a slightly more evolved magma. The February 28 episode emitted the most mafic magma, in association with the highest mean lava fountain height and highest time–averaged discharge rate, which make it the peak of the analyzed eruptive interval. Our results show that after this episode, the deep magma supply decreased and the erupted magma become gradually more chemically evolved, with a lower time–average discharge rate and fountain height. We propose this approach as a means to rapidly, objectively, and effectively link petrological and geophysical/geochemical monitoring during ongoing eruptions. We anticipate that the systematic application of this approach will serve to shed light on the magmatic processes controlling the evolution of ongoing eruptions.

The issue of poor aqueous solubility is often a great hitch in the development of liquid dosage forms for those drugs that the Biopharmaceutics Classification System (BCS) includes in classes II and IV. Among the possible technological solutions, inclusion of the drug molecule within polymeric micelles, and particularly nanomicelles, has been proposed in the last years as a valid strategy. Our attention has been recently attracted by Soluplus®, an amphiphilic polyvinyl caprolactam-polyvinyl acetate-polyethylene glycol graft copolymer able to form small and stable nanomicelles. The aim of this study was to characterize Soluplus® nanomicelles to enhance the apparent solubility of three model APIs, categorized in BCS class II: ibuprofen (IBU), idebenone (IDE), and miconazole (MIC). Drug-loaded Soluplus® micelles with a mean size around 60–70 nm were prepared by two methods (direct dissolution or film hydration method). The prepared nanosystems were characterized in terms of mean particle size and Zeta potential, physical stability, drug solubility, and in vitro drug release. The solubility of the tested APIs was shown to increase linearly with the concentration of graft copolymer. Soluplus® can be easily submitted to membrane filtration (0.2 µm PES or PTFE membranes), showing the potential to be sterilized by this method. Freeze-drying enabled to obtain powder materials that, upon reconstitution with water, maintained the initial micelle size. Finally, viscosity studies indicated that these nanomicelles have potential applications where a bioadhesive material is advantageous, such as in topical ocular administration. Graphical abstract

The rapid diffusion of the Covid-19 worldwide has accelerated the need for companies to address the sustainability issue at different levels, as nowadays the attention of stakeholders with respect to this theme has grown considerably. As a result, companies had to set up CSR communication strategies to build and strengthen their legitimacy and reputation. Among the communication channels to convey messages of firms’ CSR initiatives, social media are becoming increasingly important and, particularly, Twitter is the social media platform where more CSR-related content is generated. By adopting the theoretical lens of constitutive communication of organization, the aim of this paper is to investigate with a textual approach how the CSR communication in the energy sector has evolved in the post Covid-19 scenario. Specifically, our attention will be focus on: (1) the exploratory analysis based on the hashtags; (2) the identification of CSR communication topics and (3) the proposal of topics network in order to discover subgroups of topics. Findings of this research show that the CSR communication on Twitter has undergone changes compared to the pre Covid-19 era. Particularly, we identified 11 CSR related-topics which, as the proposed topic network demonstrates, are interconnected. On the one hand, our results corroborate previous research regarding some CSR-related issues; on the other hand, we identified some topics such as safety, people and work which have exploded in Twitter conversations in the post Covid-19 scenario. Finally, this study provides managerial implications for professionals dealing with CSR communication, digital communication and social media marketing activities.

This randomized experiment explored the impact of hot spots policing (HSP) strategies on criminal offenses and calls for service within chronic, persistent violent crime clusters in Las Vegas, NV. Forty-four street segments were randomized into treatment (N = 22) and control (N = 22) conditions across nine chronic, persistent violent crime areas. The conditions (foot patrols, stationary patrol vehicles, and business-as-usual) were active for 6 months. Over 90% of the hot spots experienced an average of 1.5 h or greater of patrol dosage per day. In terms of impact, the mixed effects negative binomial regression results showed that the addition of HSP had a marginally significant reduction on overall crime (− 21%), a statistically significant reduction on overall calls for service (− 25.7%), and a statistically significant reduction of 34% on violent calls for service. Reductions in crime and calls for service occurred in settings where enhanced patrol resources were already deployed. The findings did not demonstrate any evidence of a ceiling effect for HSP to impact crime and violence, even where additional patrol resources were already higher than normal.

Natural language object retrieval is a highly useful yet challenging task for robots in human-centric environments. Previous work has primarily focused on commands specifying the desired object’s type such as “scissors” and/or visual attributes such as “red,” thus limiting the robot to only known object classes. We develop a model to retrieve objects based on descriptions of their usage. The model takes in a language command containing a verb, for example “Hand me something to cut,” and RGB images of candidate objects; and outputs the object that best satisfies the task specified by the verb. Our model directly predicts an object’s appearance from the object’s use specified by a verb phrase, without needing an object’s class label. Based on contextual information present in the language commands, our model can generalize to unseen object classes and unknown nouns in the commands. Our model correctly selects objects out of sets of five candidates to fulfill natural language commands, and achieves a mean reciprocal rank of 77.4% on a held-out test set of unseen ImageNet object classes and 69.1% on unseen object classes and unknown nouns. Our model also achieves a mean reciprocal rank of 71.8% on unseen YCB object classes, which have a different image distribution from ImageNet. We demonstrate our model on a KUKA LBR iiwa robot arm, enabling the robot to retrieve objects based on natural language descriptions of their usage (Video recordings of the robot demonstrations can be found at https://youtu.be/WMAdGhMmXEQ ). We also present a new dataset of 655 verb-object pairs denoting object usage over 50 verbs and 216 object classes (The dataset and code for the project can be found at https://github.com/Thaonguyen3095/affordance-language ).

The sales function is experiencing a process of transformation developing across different industries and company types. This transformation redefines the role of salespeople and organizations within the broader service ecosystem by introducing new technological applications and enhancing relationships with customers, internal and external stakeholders. As many companies are facing challenges related to sales transformation, this phenomenon requires further investigation from a practical and theoretical standpoint. This paper proposes a theoretical framework to understand the nature and the dimensions contributing to sales transformation. Based on thirty in-depth interviews and two focus groups, the study identifies four dimensions of sales transformation (1) People, (2) Digitalization, (3) Integration, (4) Acceleration and discusses fifteen factors driving this phenomenon. The study offers insights on relevant factors for successfully implement sales transformation within companies and enhance the value generated through the sales function.

Group 1 acanthamoebae are morphologically and phylogenetically distinct from all other Acanthamoeba species. They include five species, each labelled by its genotype: A. astronyxis (T7), A. tubiashi (T8), A. comandoni (T9), unnamed Acanthamoeba sp. (T17), and A. byersi (T18). Thought only environmental, they have recently attracted attention due to their recovery in cases of human keratitis and encephalitis, the main diseases caused by Acanthamoeba, where the usual causative agents are mainly species of Groups 2 and 3. Analysis of the available data confirms the pathogenic importance of these species, although it is probably minor compared to that of the species in Groups 2 and 3. In addition, it should be noted that there are difficulties in identifying genotypes by widely used molecular methods, and some misidentifications are revealed.

The Rozellomycota form a lineage basal or sister to the Fungi, ancestor of Microsporidia. Their biodiversity is very rich but remains poorly characterized. The few known species are all parasites, whether of water molds and algae (Rozella), crustaceans (Mitosporidium), or as endonuclear parasites of amoebae (Nucleophaga, Paramicrosporidium). Since the nineteenth century, intracytoplasmic parasites of various protozoa have been described as species of the same genus Sphaerita. However, it was later thought possible to separate these parasites into at least two distinct groups, those forming flagellated zoospores, prevalent in Euglena and other flagellates, and those forming immobile spores, found mainly in free-living and endozoic amoebae. Herein, we report the recovery of a strain of the free-living amoeba species Saccamoeba lacustris, naturally infected by an intracytoplasmic parasite, which under light microscope has a morphology consistent with that of Sphaerita. Biomolecular analyses were thus performed. Our results show that the intracytoplasmic parasite of Saccamoeba belongs to the same subgroup of Mitosporidium and that it forms a new genus within Rozellomycota, Morellospora, that corresponds to the former spore-forming Sphaerita-like parasites of amoebae.

Purpose of review Concussion is a complex injury that may present as a variety of clinical profiles, which can overlap and reinforce one another. This review summarizes the medical management of patients with concussion and persistent post-concussive symptoms (PPCS). Recent findings Management of concussion and PPCS relies on identifying underlying symptom generators. Treatment options include sub-symptom threshold aerobic exercise, cervical physical therapy, vestibular therapy, vision therapy, cognitive rehabilitation, cognitive behavioral therapy, pharmacological management, or a combination of treatments. Evidence-based treatments have emerged to treat post-concussion symptom generators for sport-related concussion and for patients with PPCS.

We consider the $$l_1$$ -regularized Markowitz model, where a $$l_1$$ -penalty term is added to the objective function of the classical mean-variance one to stabilize the solution process, promoting sparsity in the solution. The $$l_1$$ -penalty term can also be interpreted in terms of short sales, on which several financial markets have posed restrictions. The choice of the regularization parameter plays a key role to obtain optimal portfolios that meet the financial requirements. We propose an updating rule for the regularization parameter in Bregman iteration to control both the sparsity and the number of short positions. We show that the modified scheme preserves the properties of the original one. Numerical tests are reported, which show the effectiveness of the approach.

Water is a fascinating material. Its composition is simple—one oxygen andtwo hydrogen atoms—but its chemistry and physics are extremely complex andexhibit 75 documented anomalies. Although these anomalies and theirmolecular origin are not completely understood, we know that hydrogen bondsplay key roles in all of the phases of water. Moreover, there isexperimental evidence that the polymorphism of the ice structure extendsinto the liquid phase and is associated with a liquid-liquid coexistenceline. This is currently a topic of great interest in water research becausethere are indications that the end point of the coexistence line correspondsto a second critical point inside the supercooled liquid regime. We examinethe recent progress in understanding water anomalies and the liquid-liquidphase transition hypothesis, including the results of recent experimentalwork and molecular simulations of both bulk and confined water. We examineexperimental results that test whether the behavior of liquid water isconsistent with the textquotedblleft liquid polymorphismtextquotedblrighthypothesis that liquid water can exist in two distinct phases of differingdensities. We also examine recent research on the anomalies of nanoconfinedwater and, in particular, on water in biological environments. We find thatthe concept of liquid polymorphism can also describe the properties of otherliquids that have two characteristic length scales.

Microsporidia are intracellular eukaryotic parasites of animals, characterized by unusual morphological and genetic features. They can be divided in three main groups, the classical microsporidians presenting all the features of the phylum and two putative primitive groups, the chytridiopsids and metchnikovellids. Microsporidia originated from microsporidia-like organisms belonging to a lineage of chytrid-like endoparasites basal or sister to the Fungi. Genetic and genomic data are available for all members, except chytridiopsids. Herein, we filled this gap by obtaining the rDNA sequence (SSU-ITS-partial LSU) of Chytridiopsis typographi (Chytridiopsida), a parasite of bark beetles. Our rDNA molecular phylogenies indicate that Chytridiopsis branches earlier than metchnikovellids, commonly thought ancestral, forming the more basal lineage of the Microsporidia. Furthermore, our structural analyses showed that only classical microsporidians present 16S-like SSU rRNA and 5.8S/LSU rRNA gene fusion, whereas the standard eukaryote rRNA gene structure, although slightly reduced, is still preserved in the primitive microsporidians, including 18S-like SSU rRNA with conserved core helices, and ITS2-like separating 5.8S from LSU. Overall, our results are consistent with the scenario of an evolution from microsporidia-like rozellids to microsporidians, however suggesting for metchnikovellids a derived position, probably related to marine transition and adaptation to hyperparasitism. The genetic and genomic data of additional members of Chytridiopsida and Rozellomycota will be of great value, not only to resolve phylogenetic relationships but also to improve our understanding of the evolution of these fascinating organisms.

Lipid A is the lipophilic region of lipopolysaccharides and lipooligosaccharides, the major components of the outer leaflet of most part of Gram-negative bacteria. Some lipid As are very promising immunoadjuvants. They are obtained by extraction from bacterial cells or through total chemical synthesis. A novel, semisynthetic approach to lipid As is ongoing in our laboratories, relying upon the chemical modification of a natural lipid A scaffold for the fast obtainment of several other lipid As and derivatives thereof. The first requisite for this strategy is to have this scaffold available in large quantities through a scalable process. Here, we present an optimized fed-batch fermentation procedure for the gram-scale production of lipid A from Escherichia coli K4 and a suitable phenol-free protocol for its purification. A study for regioselective de-O-phosphorylation reaction was then performed to afford pure monophosphoryl lipid A with an attenuated endotoxic activity, as evaluated by cytokine production in human monocytic cell line THP-1 in vitro. The reported method for the large-scale obtainment of monophoshoryl lipid A from the fed-batch fermentation broth of a recombinant strain of E. coli may permit the access to novel semisynthetic lipid A immunoadjuvant candidates.

Amoebophagous fungi are represented in all fungal groups: Basidiomycota, Ascomycota, Zygomycota, and Chytridiomycota. The amoebophagous fungi, within the zygomycota (Zoopagales, Zoopagomycota), mainly affect naked amoebae as ectoparasites or endoparasites. It is rather difficult to isolate members of the Zoopagales, because of their parasitic lifestyle, and to bring them into culture. Consequently, gene sequences of this group are undersampled, and its species composition and phylogeny are relatively unknown. In the present study, we were able to isolate amoebophagous fungi together with their amoeba hosts from various habitats (moss, pond, bark, and soil). Altogether, four fungal strains belonging to the genera Acaulopage and Stylopage plus one unidentified isolate were detected. Sequences of the 18S rDNA and the complete ITS region and partial 28S (LSU) rDNA were generated. Subsequent phylogenetic analyses showed that all new isolates diverge at one branch together with two environmental clonal sequences within the Zoopagomycota. Here, we provide the first molecular characterization of the genus Stylopage. Stylopage is closely related to the genus Acaulopage. In addition, taxonomy and phylogeny of amoebophagous fungi and their ecological importance are reviewed based on new sequence data, which includes environmental clonal sequences.

The utility of police consolidation, and in particular police contracting of services, has received widespread attention in academic and practitioner circles. However, the bulk of empirical research centers on potential fiduciary benefits; only limited scholarship has explored the possibility that changes in police services may correspond with differences in crimes solved and offenses observed. To address this gap, we examine consolidation in police services in a historically high crime, disadvantaged urban setting (Compton, California), which began contracting with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LACSD) after the closure of Compton Police Department in 2000. Independent samples difference in means tests are used to examine variations in crime clearance rates prior to and following the transition in Compton. Group-based trajectory analysis combined with difference-in-difference regression estimation is used to assess changes in criminal offenses while minimizing selection differences in comparison settings. With the exception of homicide, clearance rates for six Part I crimes experienced statistically significant improvements in Compton’s post-contractual period. Additionally, while the vast majority of Part I offenses remained stable during the transition to LACSD policing, burglary crime rates experienced a statistically significant and sustained decline, net of controls. A primary concern with police contracting centers on a lack of local police control, disconnect between local needs and actual services provided, and the potential for backlash related to a reduction in the quality of police services. Our findings from Compton suggest that contracting with a well-resourced agency experienced in police consolidation has the ability to maintain and, in some circumstances, improve the quality of law enforcement services.

Background The raising of disability and chronic illness burden among European population is calling for a new paradigm of care, focused on primary health care interventions. Engage-In-Caring is a novel multicomponent intervention clearly dedicated to improve family caregiver engagement in the care of patients with complex care needs, by supporting them to develop a stronger consciousness of their role, needs and skills. Method Engage-In-Caring intervention’s efficacy and feasibility have been evaluated through a single arm pre-post observational pilot study settled in Rome. A qualitative phase, consisting of literature analysis of caregivers’ unmet needs and a final revision from an experts’ group, led to the structuration of the intervention, following the Caregiver Health Engagement Model (CHE-Model). Afterwards, a quantitative phase allowed understanding the feasibility of the intervention through Kruskal-Wallis test on a sample of 47 caregivers. Results Results showed a reduction of the physical burden (Chi Squared = 6,483; p = .01) perceived by the caregivers and increase of the health literacy (Chi Squared = 3,560; p = .059) after the intervention. Conclusions Feasibility tests on caregivers of patients with complex care needs are promising: this pilot study suggests a first effectiveness evidence, particularly concerning aspects related to burden perception and improvements in health literacy. Randomised controlled trials on larger samples are needed.

We study the evolution of the Boson peak for water confined in cement paste obtained by means of Inelastic Neutron Scattering from room temperature to the deep supercooled regime. We analyze the data in terms of a universal-like model, developed for glass forming liquids in the frame of the energy landscape. In such a way it is possible to discriminate between the fragile and strong glass forming character of supercooled liquids and the dynamical crossover, fragile to strong, between them. Hence, we confirm the linkbetween the Boson peak and the water polymorphism. In particular, the main result is represented by a crossover from a local energetic minima configuration to that characteristic of saddle points on going towards the deep supercooled regime up to the dynamical arrest.

We study the hydrogen bonds effect on the water density as a function of temperature and pressure from the supercritical region to the metastable supercooled and amorphous phases. We identify two important thermodynamic thresholds, that is $P^{\ast~}\simeq2~{~\rm~kbar}$ and $T^{\ast~}\simeq~315~{~\rm~K}$, that separate two different water behaviors in terms of hydrogen bonding capability. For $T