Exposure to fine and ultrafine particles from secondhand smoke in public places before and after the smoking ban, Italy 2005

Background

A smoking ban in all indoor public places was enforced in Italy on 10 January 2005.

Methods

We compared indoor air quality before and after the smoking ban by monitoring the indoor concentrations of fine (<2.5 μm diameter, PM_2.5) and ultrafine particulate matter (<0.1 μm diameter, UFP). PM_2.5 and ultrafine particles were measured in 40 public places (14 bars, six fast food restaurants, eight restaurants, six game rooms, six pubs) in Rome, before and after the introduction of the law banning smoking (after 3 and 12 months). Measurements were taken using real time particle monitors (DustTRAK Mod. 8520 TSI; Ultra‐fine Particles Counter‐TRAK Model 8525 TSI). The PM_2.5 data were scaled using a correction equation derived from a comparison with the reference method (gravimetric measurement). The study was completed by measuring urinary cotinine, and pre‐law and post‐law enforcement among non‐smoking employees at these establishments

Results

In the post‐law period, PM_2.5 decreased significantly from a mean concentration of 119.3 μg/m³ to 38.2 μg/m³ after 3 months (p<0.005), and then to 43.3 μg/m³ a year later (p<0.01). The UFP concentrations also decreased significantly from 76 956 particles/cm³ to 38 079 particles/cm³ (p<0.0001) and then to 51 692 particles/cm³ (p<0.01). Similarly, the concentration of urinary cotinine among non‐smoking workers decreased from 17.8 ng/ml to 5.5 ng/ml (p<0.0001) and then to 3.7 ng/ml (p<0.0001).

Conclusion

The application of the smoking ban led to a considerable reduction in the exposure to indoor fine and ultrafine particles in hospitality venues, confirmed by a contemporaneous reduction of urinary cotinine.     

Nutrition-based health: cell-based bioassays for food antioxidant activity evaluation

Food science has progressively evolved and now there are wide evidences that foods have biological activities that are beyond their classical nutritional value. In this field, the antioxidant activity of pure compounds, food, feed, and dietary supplements has been extensively studied and numerous analytical approaches and assay models have been developed, involving various systems from simple chemical assays to animal models and human studies. This article is an overview of different cell-based models that have been used for testing the antioxidant properties of food, feed, and dietary supplements. Advantages, drawbacks, and technical problems to develop and validate suitable, robust, and high-throughput cell-based bioassays for screening food antioxidant activity will be discussed.     

Long Non-Coding RNAs and p53 Regulation

The advent of novel and high-throughput sequencing (next generation) technologies allowed for the sequencing of the genome at an unprecedented depth. The majority of transcribed RNAs have been classified as non-coding RNAs. Among them, long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are emerging as important regulators in many biological processes. Here, we discuss the role of those lncRNAs which are under the control of p53 or that are able to regulate its activity, due to the central role of p53 pathway in many conditions. We also briefly discussed the emerging need of having novel strategies and computational tools to completely unravel the multifaceted roles of lncRNAs and to pave the way to the development of novel diagnostic and therapeutic applications based on these peculiar molecules.     

Making a mesh router/gateway from a smartphone: Is that a practical solution?

This paper aims at answering the question whether it is practical to build a mesh-phone or not. A mesh-phone is a smartphone acting as a mesh router, i.e. either actively participating in the process of packet forwarding towards a mesh gateway, or acting itself as a gateway toward the Internet. Technical aspects of the mesh-phone implementation, such as design constraints and implementation details, are addressed. The technical feasibility is validated by describing the implementation of a prototype of the mesh-enabled phone over the Openmoko^TM open platform. Besides technical feasibility also convenience of the addressed solution is analyzed in terms of the consumed power, and some “energy-saving” related enhancements are suggested to be applied to future user’s devices.     

Environmental data processing by clustering methods for energy forecast and planning

This paper presents a statistical approach based on the k-means clustering technique to manage environmental sampled data to evaluate and to forecast of the energy deliverable by different renewable sources in a given site. In particular, wind speed and solar irradiance sampled data are studied in association to the energy capability of a wind generator and a photovoltaic (PV) plant, respectively. The proposed method allows the sub-sets of useful data, describing the energy capability of a site, to be extracted from a set of experimental observations belonging the considered site. The data collection is performed in Sicily, in the south of Italy, as case study. As far as the wind generation is concerned, a suitable generator, matching the wind profile of the studied sites, has been selected for the evaluation of the producible energy. With respect to the photovoltaic generation, the irradiance data have been taken from the acquisition system of an actual installation. It is demonstrated, in both cases, that the use of the k-means clustering method allows data that do not contribute to the produced energy to be grouped into a cluster, moreover it simplifies the problem of the energy assessment since it permits to obtain the desired information on energy capability by managing a reduced amount of experimental samples. In the studied cases, the proposed method permitted a reduction of the 50% of the data with a maximum discrepancy of 10% in energy estimation compared to the classical statistical approach. Therefore, the adopted k-means clustering technique represents an useful tool for an appropriate and less demanding energy forecast and planning in distributed generation systems.     

Patulin in apple-based foods: occurrence and safety evaluation

Patulin is a mycotoxin produced by certain species of Penicillium and Aspergillus, often detectable in mouldy fruits and their derivatives. On the basis of a PMTDI of 0.4 mu g/kg bw, limit values of 50 mu g/kg or 50 mu g/l of patulin have been set in fruit derivatives. To estimate the quantity of patulin that can be taken in with the diet, we analysed by HPL C samples of apples and apple derivatives which are most likely to be contaminated with patulin. In apple juices and in homogenized babyfoods, the mycotoxin concentration was always below the established limits, while in some samples of juice with pulp the mycotoxin content exceeded the safe levels. In rotten apples, not only was the amount of patulin extraordinarily high in the rotten area, but the mycotoxin had also spread to the part unaffected by mould. The data presented in this study indicate that the intake of patulin with apple derivatives is usually below the tolerable level of 0.4 mu g/kg bw/day, but since the patulin content in apples can vary considerably, the quality of fruits used in the production of apple derivatives should be strictly controlled in order not to exceed the safe limits.     

Use of a toasted durum whole meal in the production of a traditional Italian pasta: chemical, mechanical, sensory and image analyses

The characterisation of traditional Italian pasta obtained by mixing amounts of toasted whole meal with re-milled semolina and other ingredients was obtained by means of physico-chemical, rheological, mechanical, sensory and image analyses. The toasted meal showed higher ash, fibre and protein contents than re-milled semolina. The replacement of percentages of re-milled semolina with the toasted meal and soft flour increased tenacity and decreased extensibility and strength, making the dough less suitable for pasta-making. The P / L values were indices of high starch damage. The replacement of part of re-milled semolina and water with toasted whole wheat meal, soft flour and eggs increased the optimal cooking time and the amount of water absorbed during cooking but made the other cooking parameters worse. The image analysis provided evidence of the changes induced by the use of toasted wholemeal, soft flour and eggs in the microscopic structure of pasta protein and starch.     

A comparison of fitting algorithms for diffusion-weighted MRI data analysis using an intravoxel incoherent motion model

Object

The objective of this study is to propose a modified VARiable PROjection (VARPRO) algorithm specifically tailored for fitting the intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) model to diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DW-MRI) data from locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC).

Materials and methods

The proposed algorithm is compared with classical non-linear least squares (NLLS) analysis using the Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) algorithm and with two recently proposed algorithms for ‘segmented’ analysis. These latter two comprise two consecutive steps: first, a subset of parameters is estimated using a portion of data; second, the remaining parameters are estimated using the whole data and the previous estimates. The comparison between the algorithms was based on the \(R^2\) goodness-of-fit measure: performance analysis was carried out on real data obtained by DW-MRI on 40 LARC patients.

Results

The performance of the proposed algorithm was higher than that of LM in 64 % of cases; ‘segmented’ methods were poorer than our algorithm in 100 % of cases.

Conclusion

The proposed modified VARPRO algorithm can lead to better fit of the IVIM model to LARC DW-MRI data compared to other techniques.