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Few data are available on the body composition of pole dancers. Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) is a method that is used to estimate fat-free mass (FFM) and fat mass (FM), while raw BIA variables, such as the impedance ratio (IR) and phase angle (PhA), are markers of body cell mass and the ratio between extracellular and total body water. The aim of this study was to evaluate the body composition of pole dancers compared to controls, in particular, those raw BIA variables that are considered as markers of muscle composition. Forty female pole dancers and 59 controls participated in the study. BIA was performed on the whole body and upper and lower limbs, separately, at 5, 50, 100 and 250 kHz. The FFM, FFM index, FM and body fat percentage (BF%) were predicted. The bioelectrical impedance indexes IR and PhA were also considered. Pole dancers exhibited higher FFMI and BI indexes and lower BF%. PhA was greater and IRs were smaller in pole dancers than in controls for the whole body and upper limbs. Considering the training level, FFM, whole-body IR and PhA were higher in the professionals than non-professionals. Raw BIA variables significantly differed between the pole dancers and controls, suggesting a higher BCM; furthermore, practicing pole dancing was associated with a greater FFM and lower FM.

Background: Pole dance is a type of functional training whose effects on body composition have been only poorly explored. Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA)is a field method to estimate fat-free mass (FFM), fat mass (FM), etc. In addition, of particular interest for athletes, raw BIA variables such as impedance ratio =IR (between impedance-Z at high frequencies and Z at low frequencies) and phase angle=PhA may be considered as promising markers of muscle quality since they arerelated to body cell mass (BCM) and the ratio between extracellular water and intracellular water.The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of pole dancing training on body composition and especially on IR and PhA of the whole body, upper limbs and lower limbs. Methods: Forty female pole dancers (age 27.4±5.1 years, body weight 57.0±6.9 kg, body mass index-BMI 22.2±2.3 kg/m²) and fifty-nine control young women (26.8±4.7 years, 58.6±6.4 kg, BMI 22.3±1.8 kg/m²) participated in the study.BIA was performed on the whole body, upper limbs and lower limbs at 5-50-100-250 kHz. FFM, FFM index, FMand percentage of FM were then predicted. Raw BIA variables were also considered: IR and PhA, and also bioelectrical impedance indexes (stature²/Z, related to body water compartments). Arm muscle area (AMA) and arm fat area (AFA) were calculated from triceps skinfold and arm circumference. Results: Compared to controls pole dancers exhibited higher FFM index and BI indexes at low and high frequencies as well as lower percentage of FM. Whole-body BI indexes correlated with AMA but not with AFA. PhA was greater and IRs were smaller in pole dancers than controls for the whole body and more markedly for upper limbs, whereas there were no differences for lower limbs. When considering training level, professional and amateur pole dancers did not differ with respect to body weight and BMI. After adjusting for weight, FFM and FFMI were greater in the more trained than in the less trained group, while FM and %FM were smaller. Whole-body PhA and IRs as well as BI indexes tended to be higher in the professionalsthan amateurs, with much more significant differences in upper limb PhA and IRs. Conclusions: Pole dance training has a significant effect, possibly depending also on training level, not only on FFM and FM, but also on those raw BIA variables that may be considered as markers of muscle quality.

This paper presents an investigation of a novel development of a multi-functional mobile platform for agriculture applications. This is achieved through a reinven-tion process of a mechatronic design by spinning off space robotic technologies in terrestrial applications in the AgriRover project. The AgriRover prototype is the first of its kind in exploiting and applying space robotic technologies in precision farming. To optimize energy consumption of the mobile platform, a new dynamic total cost of transport algorithm is proposed and validated. An autonomous navi-gation system has been developed to enable the AgriRover to operate safely in unstructured farming environments. An object recognition algorithm specific to agriculture- has been investigated and implemented. A novel soil sample collect-ing mechanism has been designed and prototyped for on-board and in-situ soil quality measurement. The design of the whole system has benefited from the use of a mechatronic design process known as the Tiv model through which a plane-tary exploration rover is reinvented into the AgriRover for agricultural applica-tions. The AgriRover system has gone through three sets of field trials in the UK and some of these results are reported.

In this chapter, we present an autonomous monitoring robot platform for agricultural farms and fields that is built using low-cost off-the-shelf hardware and open source software so as to be affordable for farmers. We provide a review of the current state of the art in autonomous agricultural robots and summarize the challenges that they must overcome. Our work comprises two main components: (1) the system architecture and hardware selected for a fully autonomous agricultural robot platform for automated monitoring and intervention tasks, and (2) the sensor fusion, local planning, and navigation software based on the Robot Operating System (ROS) framework with inclusion of design details and testing results. The challenges faced, solutions tested, and successes achieved with respect to the hardware and software architectures for this robot are presented in the interest of guiding future solutions for autonomous agricultural navigation and planning. We evaluate our approaches in outdoor farm field environments as well as indoor environments serving as an analogue for greenhouse navigation, and show how the properties of the environment affect the accuracy of the mapping and localisation tasks.

Food-waste is produced throughout all the food supply chain, with a large part already achieved at farm level. In fact, fruits and vegetables, which do not satisfy aesthetic demands, cannot be marketed, but their recovery could favour their valorisation for the obtainment of highly qualified goods. In this context, faulty zucchini fruits (cultivar &lsquo, Lungo Fiorentino&rsquo, ), intended for disposal, were rescued as effective, inexpensive and bio-sustainable source for cosmeceutical purposes. Zucchini fruits underwent extraction and fractionation to obtain ZLF-O and ZLF-A extracts, which were chemically characterized by UHPLC-HRMS. ZLF-A extract, rich in flavonols and flavones, scavenged massively DPPH&bull, and ABTS&bull, +, and was not cytotoxic at doses up to 200 &mu, g/mL. Thus, ZLF-A was incorporated into a base cream formula. Zucchini-based emulsion was deeply screened for its antiradical properties and cytotoxicity towards human keratinocytes and fibroblasts. ZLF-A-enriched cream, whose chemical stability was assessed over time and mimicking different storage conditions, was further tested on reconstructed epidermis disks (EpiskinTM). The recovery of valuable chemical substances from zucchini agro-food waste, complying with the principles of valorisation and sustainable development, can represent a new market force for local farmers. Data acquired were eager to convey a suitable reuse of nutraceuticals rich zucchini waste.

A large range of chronic and degenerative diseases can be prevented through the use of food products and food bioactives. This study reports the health benefits and biological activities of the Urtica dioica (U. dioica) edible plant, with particular focus on its cancer chemopreventive potential. Numerous studies have attempted to investigate the most efficient anti-cancer therapy with few side effects and high toxicity on cancer cells to overcome the chemoresistance of cancer cells and the adverse effects of current therapies. In this regard, natural products from edible plants have been assessed as sources of anti-cancer agents. In this article, we review current knowledge from studies that have examined the cytotoxic, anti-tumor and anti-metastatic effects of U. dioica plant on several human cancers. Special attention has been dedicated to the treatment of breast cancer, the most prevalent cancer among women and one of the main causes of death worldwide. The anti-proliferative and apoptotic effects of U. dioica have been demonstrated on different human cancers, investigating the properties of U. dioica at cellular and molecular levels. The potent cytotoxicity and anti-cancer activity of the U. dioica extracts are due to its bioactive natural products content, including polyphenols which reportedly possess anti-oxidant, anti-mutagenic and anti-proliferative properties. The efficacy of this edible plant to prevent or mitigate human cancers has been demonstrated in laboratory conditions as well as in experimental animal models, paving the way to the development of nutraceuticals for new anti-cancer therapies.

We consider finite graphs whose edges are labeled with elements, called colors, taken from a fixed finite alphabet. We study the problem of determining whether there is an infinite path where either (i) all colors occur with a fixed asymptotic frequency, or (ii) there is a constant that bounds the difference between the occurrences of any two colors for all prefixes of the path. These properties can be viewed as quantitative refinements of the classical notion of fair path in a concurrent system, whose simplest form checks whether all colors occur infinitely often. Our notions provide stronger criteria, particularly suitable for scheduling applications based on a coarse-grained model of the jobs involved. In particular, they enforce a given set of priorities among the jobs involved in the system. We show that both problems we address are solvable in polynomial time, by reducing them to the feasibility of a linear program. We also consider two-player games played on finite colored graphs where the goal is one of the above frequency-related properties. For all the goals, we show that the problem of checking whether there exists a winning strategy is Co-NP-complete.

Half positionality is the property of a language of infinite words to admit positional winning strategies, when interpreted as the goal of a two-player game on a graph. Such problem applies to the automatic synthesis of controllers, where positional strategies represent efficient controllers. As our main result, we describe a novel sufficient condition for half positionality, more general than what was previously known. Moreover, we compare our proposed condition with several others, proposed in the recent literature, outlining an intricate network of relationships, where only few combinations are sufficient for half positionality.

Graded path quantifiers have been recently introduced and investigated as a useful framework for generalizing standard existential and universal path quantifiers in the branching-time temporal logic CTL (GCTL), in such a way that they can express statements about a minimal and conservative number of accessible paths. These quantifiers naturally extend to paths the concept of graded world modalities, which has been deeply investigated for the mu-Calculus (Gmu-Calculus) where it allows to express statements about a given number of immediately accessible worlds. As for the “non-graded” case, it has been shown that the satisfiability problem for GCTL and the Gmu-Calculus coincides and, in particular, it remains solvable in ExpTime. However, GCTL has been only investigated w.r.t. graded numbers coded in unary, while Gmu-Calculus uses for this a binary coding, and it was left open the problem to decide whether the same result may or may not hold for binary GCTL. In this paper, by exploiting an automata theoretic-approach, which involves a model of alternating automata with satellites, we answer positively to this question. We further investigate the succinctness of binary GCTL and show that it is at least exponentially more succinct than Gmu-Calculus. Finally, we discuss the extension of the exploited technique to the case of binary graded CTL* (GCTL*). In this case, the satisfiability problem becomes solvable in 3ExpTime.

We consider two-player games played on finite colored graphs where the goal is the construction of an infinite path with one of the following frequency-related properties: (i) all colors occur with the same asymptotic frequency, (ii) there is a constant that bounds the difference between the occurrences of any two colors for all prefixes of the path, or (iii) all colors occur with a fixed asymptotic frequency. These properties can be viewed as quantitative refinements of the classical notion of fair path in a concurrent system, whose simplest form checks whether all colors occur infinitely often. In particular, the first two properties enforce equal treatment of all the jobs involved in the system, while the third one represents a way to assign a given priority to each job. For all the above goals, we show that the problem of checking whether there exists a winning strategy is CoNP-complete.

Summary Coeliac disease (CD) is considered a T cell-mediated autoimmune disease, and up-regulation of T-bet and phosphorylated signal transducers and activators of transcription (pSTAT)1, key transcription factors for the development of T helper type 1 (Th1) cells, has been described in the mucosa of patients with untreated CD. Using transcription factor analysis, we investigated whether T-bet and pSTAT1 expressions are up-regulated in the peripheral blood of CD patients and correlate with disease activity. Using flow cytometry, we analysed T-bet, pSTAT1 and pSTAT3 expression in CD4+, CD8+ T cells, CD19+ B cells and monocytes from peripheral blood of 15 untreated and 15 treated CD patients and 30 controls, and longitudinally in five coeliac patients before and after dietary treatment. We evaluated using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), interferon (FN)-γ, interleukin (IL)-17 and IL-10 production by peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) cultures. T-bet expression in CD4+, CD8+ T cells, CD19+ B cells and monocytes and IFN-γ production by PBMC was higher in untreated than in treated CD patients and controls. pSTAT1 expression was higher in CD4+T cells, B cells and monocytes from untreated than from treated CD patients and controls. pSTAT3 was increased only in monocytes from untreated patients compared with CD-treated patients and controls. The data obtained from the longitudinal evaluation of transcription factors confirmed these results. Flow cytometric analysis of pSTAT1 and T-bet protein expression in peripheral blood mononuclear cells could be useful and sensible markers in the follow-up of CD patients to evaluate disease activity and response to dietary treatment.

A 42-year-old woman presented with acute bullous skin lesions and angio-oedema that had developed 3 months after initiation of treatment with carbamazepine for epilepsy. Chromatographic analysis of urinary porphyrins was compatible with variegate porphyria. This was manifested initially by neurological symptoms that were mistaken for epilepsy and later by cutaneous symptoms also. Histological findings excluded hepatic porphyria, but revealed severe fatty changes thought to be caused by idiosyncratic metabolism of carbamazepine. While the porphyrinogenicity of carbamazepine is well known, the presence of variegate porphyria has not been reported. The toxic hepatic effects of the drug on hepatic cytochrome P-450, which is involved in haem metabolism, could have aggravated the pre-existent porphyria, provoking the onset of skin lesions.

20 subjects with severe hepatic failure have been studied by means of all night polygraphic sleep recordings. Base night recordings have been made, as well as registrations after treatment with drugs that are known to improve the clinical conditions of these patients, especially concerning the psychic performances. Base night recordings show sleep disruption, with a large amount of wakefulness at the beginning of the registrations and during the night itself; sleep stages are strongly reduced, especially REM sleep. After L-dopa treatment, these negative patterns are furthermore enhanced and the percentage incidence of the REM stage is very low; nevertheless, this behaviour goes side by side with a light improvement in psychological performances. On the contrary, therapy with lactulose seems to improve the neuropsychiatric state and the sleep organization; as a matter of fact, wakefulness is lower in the night records after lactulose treatment, whilst the percentage incidence of sleep stages tends back toward normality; REM sleep has clearly risen.

Autonomous space vehicles such as orbital servicing satellites and planetary exploration rovers must be comprehensively aware of their environment in order to make appropriate decisions. Multi-sensor data fusion plays a vital role in providing these autonomous systems with sensory information of different types, from different locations, and at different times.

A 65-year-old woman with POEMS syndrome (polyneuropathy, organomegaly, endocrinopathy, monoclonal gammopathy and skin changes) developed severe upper right quadrant colic with jaundice, massive haematemesis and melaena following an apparently uncomplicated percutaneous liver biopsy performed for suspected liver involvement. Symptom onset occurred about 18 hours after the procedure. Haemobilia was diagnosed on endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography. An arteriovenous fistula in the third hepatic segment was demonstrated by transfemoral arteriography and successfully embolized using Gelfoam pledgets mixed with Ivalon fragments. A review of percutaneous liver biopsy related haemobilia is presented.

Diabetic gastropathy (DG) is the most serious neuromuscular dysfunction of the stomach that may affect diabetic patients. DG is a syndrome of delayed gastric emptying correlated to alterations of gastric tone, contractility, and myoelectrical activity. Gastric dysrhythmias, antral hypomotility, antral dilation, antroduodenal incoordination, and pylorospasm variously relate to DG. DG pathogenesis is multifactorial: autonomic neuropathy, microangiopathy, and the degenerative impairment of gastric neuromuscular structure are possible mechanisms of gastric dysfunction. Also, the acute increase in blood glucose might reversibly delay gastric emptying (1,2). Gastric dysrhythmias correlate with a disturbance of gastric electrical slow waves (ESWs). ESW rhythm, which is generated by interstitial cells of Cajal, coordinates gastric peristalsis (3,4). Cajal cells, distributed in specific locations …

Autonomous monitoring of agricultural farms and fields has recently become feasible due to continuing advances in robotics technology, but many notable challenges remain. In this paper, we describe the state of ongoing work to create a fully autonomous ground rover platform for monitoring and intervention tasks on modern farms that is built using inexpensive and off the shelf hardware and Robot Operating System (ROS) software so as to be affordable to farmers. The hardware and software architectures used in this rover are described along with challenges and solutions in odometry and localization, object recognition and mapping, and path planning algorithms under the constraints of the current hardware. Results obtained from laboratory and field testing show both the key challenges to be overcome, and the current successes in applying a low-cost rover platform to the task of autonomously navigating the outdoor farming environment.