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Le malattie e i disturbi muscoloscheletrici da sovraccarico biomeccanico sono una delle maggiori cause di assenza per malattia in diverse attività lavorative. Alcune stime epidemiologiche riportano che cinque milioni di lavoratori italiani svolgono abitualmente attività che comportano la movimentazione manuale dei carichi. Le categorie di lavoratori esposti a questo rischio sul lavoro soffrono di frequenti disturbi con dolori muscolari per lesioni acute e croniche della schiena, degli arti superiori, con conseguente perdita di produttività per l’azienda. La normativa italiana in merito alla sicurezza degli ambienti di lavoro detta un approccio chiaro e non fraintendibile rispetto alla gestione dei rischi. In particolare, l’Art.15 del D.Lgs.81/08 impone l’eliminazione dei rischi, o la loro riduzione quando ciò non fosse possibile, adottando le soluzioni tecnologiche e gli strumenti messi a disposizione dal progresso scientifico e tecnico. La progettazione, la valutazione e la scelta delle modalità di lavoro per le proprie attività produttive non può che tener conto delle tecnologie disponibili per la messa in sicurezza in quanto rappresentano precisi obblighi del datore di lavoro. Presentata per la prima volta lo scorso novembre 2015 a Bologna, la Banca delle Soluzioni è una raccolta di soluzioni tecniche e tecnologiche in grado di eliminare, ridurre o limitare il rischio in condizioni lavorative particolarmente critiche per la salute e la sicurezza dei lavoratori, quali la movimentazione manuale carichi (sezione Ergonomia – Sovraccarico Biomeccanico) e il lavoro negli ambienti confinati (sezione Ambienti Confinati). Il Progetto è nato nel marzo del 2014 dalla collaborazione tra l’Azienda USL di Bologna e il Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale (DIN) della Scuola di Ingegneria e Architettura dell’Università di Bologna. L’obiettivo del Progetto è di fornire uno strumento utile alle aziende, ai datori di lavoro, agli operatori della sicurezza affinché conoscano lo stato dell’arte sul grado di sviluppo tecnologico e possano così individuare gli strumenti idonei alla eliminazione dei rischi alla fonte o alla loro riduzione. Le soluzioni tecniche contenute all’interno della Banca delle Soluzioni sono state individuate attraverso molteplici canali di ricerca, quali ad esempio la letteratura scientifica e di settore, i rapporti delle attività di vigilanza e controllo sulla sicurezza nei luoghi di lavoro e i motori di ricerca internazionali. Relativamente alla sezione Ergonomia – Sovraccarico Biomeccanico, le ricerche sono state condotte allo scopo di individuare lo stato dell’arte rispetto alle soluzioni utili ad evitare l’insorgenza di disturbi o di malattie professionali riconducibili al sovraccarico biomeccanico dell’apparato muscoloscheletrico. La Banca delle Soluzioni è uno strumento online accessibile gratuitamente a lavoratori, datori di lavoro, professionisti della sicurezza, privati, progettisti e a chiunque sia alla ricerca di soluzioni efficaci per la progettazione delle postazioni di lavoro e delle attrezzature, in grado di migliorare le condizioni di salute e sicurezza dei lavoratori. La raccolta si propone come un elenco non esaustivo ma come un documento in continuo aggiornamento, espressione del progresso tecnico. A testimonianza della dinamicità del progetto e della necessità di un suo continuo sviluppo è disponibile sul sito un modulo per la raccolta di nuove soluzioni ergonomiche da condividere e diffondere.

Introduction: Griffin and Neal’s model is a useful model to understand workers’ different safety behaviour (com- pliance and participation) starting from their mastery of safety procedures (safety knowledge) and the motivation to put them in place (safety motivation). Although the theoretical model has proven to be adequate and is widely used in research, two problems arise: 1) there is no Italian validation of the four scales measuring the key constructs of the model; 2) the hypothesis regarding the differential impact of the determinants on the components of safety perfor- mance produced mixed evidence. Objectives: The study had a twofold objective: 1) validate an Italian version of the four scales, primarily assessing their construct validity; 2) verify the relationships between the constructs accord- ing to the assumptions made within the theoretical model. Methods: The psychometric properties of the scales as well as the relationships between the constructs were investigated in a sample of 277 workers in the construction and logistics sectors, using questionnaires. The analyses were based on the use of structural equation modelling tech- nique. Results: Results confirmed the validity and reliability of the Italian scales, showing indices that were both satisfactory and aligned with those from previous studies. The relationships between the constructs were substan- tially consistent with the safety model. Conclusions: The study provided a valid version of the scales measuring determinants and components of individual safe performance. Such scales can be appropriately used in the Italian context for the development of theoretical as well as practical contributions on work safety. The results suggest that interventions to increase overall safe performance should address both knowledge and motivation for safety.

In EU Countries in the last decade there has been a reduction of the number of farms, combined with a significant increase in their average size. First response to crisis in EU agriculture is the enhancement the competitiveness of farms in bio-economy issues, i.e. quality: EU farmers must build on high quality reputation to sustain competitiveness and profitability. Main goal of this work is to measure the level of competitiveness of Italian farms, focusing on environmental efforts and food quality issues and taking into account rural-urban areas diversity. It has been used two synthetic indices (for environment and for food quality), based on basic indicators. To ensure the comparability of the different target areas, it has been used the NSP 2007/2013 classification with Italian areas aggregated in four major local categories (A, B, C, D). Here it has been chosen to use and exploit the 6th General Agricultural Census data (2010). For the analysis, it was applied the software "Ranker" developed by Istat with three different methods used. Results show that the D area of Sicilia is the first one in the ranking of Environmental Index, while the A area of Sardegna is the last one (69° place); in the Food Quality Index the A area of Bolzano is at the top and the B area of Sicilia is at the last place. In addition, it has been focused on the basic indicators that influenced the final results. Moreover, it has been shown the results of the two indices for each area (A, B, C, D) together with a comparison with their economic value (standard output). This work could be the starting point for considering the possibility to use synthetic indices to study just some aspects of a so complex theme as development, competitiveness and grow for farms.

Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) is considered a universal marker of developmental dyslexia (DD) and could also be helpful to identify a reading deficit in minority-language children (MLC), in which it may be hard to disentangle whether the reading difficulties are due to a learning disorder or a lower proficiency in the language of instruction. We tested reading and rapid naming skills in monolingual Good Readers (mGR), monolingual Poor Readers (mPR), and MLC, by using our new version of RAN, the RAN-Shapes, in 127 primary school students (from 3rd to 5th grade). In line with previous research, MLC showed, on average, lower reading performances as compared to mGR. However, the two groups performed similarly to the RAN-Shapes task. On the contrary, the mPR group underperformed both in the reading and the RAN tasks. Our findings suggest that reading difficulties and RAN performance can be dissociated in MLC; consequently, the performance at the RAN-Shapes may contribute to the identification of children at risk of a reading disorder without introducing any linguistic bias, when testing MLC.

We study the trace and chiral anomalies of Weyl fermions in a non-abelian gauge background in four dimensions. Using a Pauli-Villars regularization we identify the trace anomaly, proving that it can be cast in a gauge invariant form, even in the presence of the non-abelian chiral anomaly, that we rederive to check the consistency of our methods. In particular, we find that the trace anomaly does not contain any parity-odd topological contribution, whose presence has been debated in the recent literature., 14 pages

Background: Workplace physical aggressions determine severe consequences for people and organizations. Previous studies reported their spread in organizations and described factors related to their occurrence (e.g. aggressor within/ outside the organization, type of activity, etc.). However, such data are not available in the Italian work contexts, limiting the possibility of intervention. Objectives: This study aims to provide a description of workplace physical aggressions in the Italian context and the Emilia-Romagna region, considering the main variables described in the literature. Methods: We used data available from the "Flussi informativi" database, containing national data provided by INAIL (National Institute for Insurance against Accidents at Work), which concern all injuries, occupational illness and insured companies’ information, from 2000 to 2018. Information about aggressions in the workplace in Italy and Emilia-Romagna are derived from a subset of these data, coded according to ESAW (European Statistics for Accidents at Work) requirements. The number of events per year per 100,000 estimated insured employees by INAIL is considered as an indicator. Results: In the period 2014-2018, 23,084 injures from aggression were registered in Italy (an average of 28.7 events per 100,000 employees) and 2,308 in Emilia Romagna (30.2). Aggressions by people outside the organization accounted for 85.14 % in Italy and 87.87 % in Emilia-Romagna region. “Health and social services”, “Offices and other activities” and “Transportation” were the sectors that showed the highest numbers of events and rates. Furthermore, we reported detailed results about the variation of the events between professions, the site and nature of the lesion and gravity of events. Discussion: The study provides a description of workplace physical aggressions in the Italian context and we discuss the implication of these results for primary, secondary and tertiary prevention strategies of intervention.

We consider a Dirac fermion in a metric-axial-tensor (MAT) background. By regulating it with Pauli-Villars fields we analyze and compute its full anomaly structure. Appropriate limits of the MAT background allows to recover the anomalies of Dirac and Weyl fermions in the usual curved spacetime, obtaining in particular the trace anomaly of a chiral fermion, which has been the object of recent analyses., 13 pages

We study the trace anomaly of a Weyl fermion in an abelian gauge background. Although the presence of the chiral anomaly implies a breakdown of gauge invariance, we find that the trace anomaly can be cast in a gauge invariant form. In particular, we find that it does not contain any odd-parity contribution proportional to the Chern-Pontryagin density. The latter would be allowed by the consistency conditions. We perform our calculations using Pauli-Villars regularization and heat kernel methods. The issue is analogous to the one recently discussed in the literature about a conjectured contribution of an odd-parity term to the trace anomaly of a Weyl fermion in curved backgrounds., 26 pages, minor changes and reference added

The Health and Safety Executive Stress Indicator Tool is a short questionnaire developed in the UK for the screening of common psychosocial risk factors leading to work-related stress. Previous research showed that in both the UK and Italy this test fits the same seven-factor solution. Building upon previous findings and by using multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis we investigated the degree of measurement equivalence of the Italian version of the test with its original UK version. Furthermore, we advanced the validation of the tool in Italy by exploring the correlations of its subscales with stress-related outcomes. Two samples of workers were available for analyses: 1,298 Italian employees of private-sector organizations and a sample of 7,589 UK employees from organizations of the same type. Results replicated previous findings: A 7-factor solution of the Indicator Tool was found to be equivalent across the Italian and UK samples. Furthermore, the analyses supported factor variance and factor covariance equivalence in addition to metric equivalence. The Indicator Tool subscales showed significant correlations in the expected direction with stress-related outcomes. The Italian version of the Indicator Tool behaves very consistently with its UK version and may be used for the screening of psychosocial risks in Italian workplaces.

Intestinal inflammation is accompanied by excessive production of reactive oxygen and nitrogen radical species because of the massive infiltration of polymorphonuclear and mononuclear leukocytes. Antioxidant compounds seem to protect against experimental colitis. Here we investigated the effects of the innovative non-peptidyl, low molecular weight radical scavenger bis(1-hydroxy-2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-4-piperidinyl)decandioate (IAC), which is highly reactive with most oxygen, nitrogen and carbon centred radicals and is easily distributed in cell membranes and intra-extra cellular compartments, in the DNBS model of colitis. Colitis was induced in male SD rats by intrarectal administration of DNBS (15 mg/rat). IAC (30 mg/kg b.w., hydrophilic or lipophilic form) was administered daily (orally or i.p.) starting from the day before the induction of colitis for 7 days (n=6-8 per group). Colonic damage was assessed by means of macroscopic and histological scores, myeloperoxidase activity (MPO) and TNF-alpha tissue levels. Colitis impaired body weight gain and markedly increased all inflammatory parameters. IAC significantly counteracted the reduction in body weight gain, decreased colonic damage and inflammation and TNF-alpha levels in DNBS-colitis. The antioxidant IAC significantly ameliorates experimental colitis in rats. This strengthens the notion that antioxidant compounds may have therapeutic potential in inflammatory bowel disease.

Epidemiological evidence suggests a link between consumption of chlorinated drinking water and various cancers. Chlorination of water rich in organic chemicals produces carcinogenic organochlorine by-products (OBPs) such as trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids. Since the discovery of the first OBP in the 1970s, there have been several investigations designed to determine the biological effects of single chemicals or small artificial OBP combinations. However, there is still insufficient information regarding the general biological response to these compounds, and further studies are still needed to evaluate their potential genotoxic effects. In the current study, we evaluated the effect of three drinking water disinfectants on the activity of cytochrome P450 (CYP)-linked metabolizing enzymes and on the generation of oxidative stress in the livers of male and female Cyprinus carpio fish (carp). The fish were exposed in situ for up 20 days to surface water obtained from the Trasmene lake in Italy. The water was treated with 1-2 mg/L of either sodium hypochlorite (NaClO) or chlorine dioxide (ClO2) as traditional disinfectants or with a relatively new disinfectant product, peracetic acid (PAA). Micronucleus (MN) frequencies in circulating erythrocytes from the fish were also analysed as a biomarker of genotoxic effect. In the CYP-linked enzyme assays, a significant induction (up to a 57-fold increase in the deethylation of ethoxyresorufin with PAA treatment) and a notable inactivation (up to almost a 90% loss in hydroxylation of p-nitrophenol with all disinfectants, and of testosterone 2beta-hydroxylation with NaClO) was observed in subcellular liver preparations from exposed fish. Using the electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy radical-probe technique, we also observed that CYP-modulation was associated with the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS). In addition, we found a significant increase in MN frequency in circulating erythrocytes after 10 days of exposure of fish to water treated with ClO2, while a non-significant six-fold increase in MN frequency was observed with NaClO, but not with PAA. Our data suggest that the use of ClO2 and NaClO to disinfect drinking water could generate harmful OBP mixtures that are able to perturb CYP-mediated reactions, generate oxidative stress and induce genetic damage. These data may provide a mechanistic explanation for epidemiological studies linking consumption of chlorinated drinking water to increased risk of urinary, gastrointestinal and bladder cancers.

Set up of a simple, fast and cheap liquid chromatographic method to separate four macrolides and to quantify their concentrations. It was optimised evaluating mobile phase composition, column temperature and pH to provide the best resolution of these analytes. Preliminary assays are promising and the method is under validation for application to real food samples.

Il metodo Management Standards, dell'ente inglese HSE, e tra quelli utilizzabili per l'attivita di gestione dei rischi psicosociali, prevista dal D.Lgs. 81/08. Esso si fonda su due aspetti: la definizione di Standard per i fattori psicosociali; il questionario Indicator Tool (IT), che valuta la prestazione di un'organizzazione rispetto agli standard di riferimento. L'obiettivo di questo studio e di presentare brevemente il metodo e proporre una prima versione italiana dell'IT, valutandone le caratteristiche psicometriche e la struttura fattoriale. Il questionario a 35 item e stato somministrato a 1298 lavoratori di 45 aziende. I risultati avvalorano la struttura fattoriale della versione inglese e mostrano buoni indici di affidabilita delle scale, anche se si evidenziano alcuni punti di criticita, che vengono discussi.

AIM: To investigate the effects of the free radical scavenger bis(1-hydroxy-2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-4-piperidinyl)decandioate (IAC) in the dextran sodium sulphate (DSS) experimental model of ulcerative colitis. METHODS: Colitis was induced in Sprague Dawley male rats by administration of 5% DSS in drinking water. IAC (30 mg/kg, lipophilic or hydrophilic form) was administered daily (orally or ip) for 6 d until sacrifice. Colonic damage was assessed by means of indirect (Disease Activity Index score) and direct measures (macroscopic and microscopic scores) and myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity. Neutrophil infiltration within the tissue and glutathione S-transferase activity were also investigated. RESULTS: DSS-induced colitis impaired body weight gain and markedly increased all inflammatory parameters. Six-day treatment with lipophilic IAC significantly reduced intestinal damage caused by inflammation, induced a down-regulation in MPO activity (0.72 +/- 0.12 and 0.45 +/- 0.12 with lipophilic IAC po and ip, respectively, vs 1.10 +/- 0.27 in untreated DSS colitis animals) and minimized DSS-induced neutrophil infiltration, while hydrophilic IAC administered orally did not ameliorate DSS-induced damage. CONCLUSION: These results support the hypothesis that reactive oxygen metabolites contribute to inflammation and that the radical scavenger IAC has therapeutic potential in inflammatory bowel disease.

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Brassica vegetables are an important dietary source of glucosinolates (GLs), whose breakdown products exhibit anticancer activity. The protective properties of Brassicaceae are believed to be due to the inhibition of Phase-I or induction of Phase-II xenobiotic metabolizing enzymes (XMEs), thus enhancing carcinogen clearance. To study whether GLs affect XMEs and the role of their chemical structure, we focused on two alkylthio GLs differing in the oxidation degree of the side chain sulfur. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were supplemented (per oral somministration by gavage) with either glucoraphasatin (4-methylthio-3-butenyl GL; GRH) or glucoraphenin (4-methylsulfinyl-3-butenyl GL; GRE), at 24 or 120 mg/kg body weight in a single or repeated fashion (daily for four consecutive days), and hepatic microsomes were prepared for XME analyses. Both GLs were able to induce XMEs, showing different induction profiles. While the inductive effect was stronger after multiple administration of the higher GRH dosage, the single lower GRE dose was the most effective in boosting cytochrome P-450 (CYP)-associated monooxygenases and the postoxidative metabolism. CYP3A1/2 were the most affected isoforms by GRH treatment, whereas GRE induced mainly CYP1A2 supported oxidase. Glutathione S-transferase increased up to approximately 3.2-fold after a single (lower) GRE dose and UDP-glucuronosyl transferase up to approximately 2-fold after four consecutive (higher) GRH doses. In conclusion, the induction profile of these GLs we found is not in line with the chemopreventive hypothesis. Furthermore, the oxidation degree of the side chain sulfur of GLs seems to exert a crucial role on XME modulation.

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