State-of-the-Art on Wound Vitality Evaluation: A Systematic Review

The vitality demonstration refers to determining if an injury has been caused ante- or post-mortem, while wound age means to evaluate how long a subject has survived after the infliction of an injury. Histology alone is not enough to prove the vitality of a lesion. Recently, immunohistochemistry, biochemistry, and molecular biology have been introduced in the field of lesions vitality and age demonstration. The study was conducted according to the preferred reporting items for systematic review (PRISMA) protocol. The search terms were “wound”, “lesion”, “vitality”, “evaluation”, “immunohistochemistry”, “proteins”, “electrolytes”, “mRNAs”, and “miRNAs” in the title, abstract, and keywords. This evaluation left 137 scientific papers. This review aimed to collect all the knowledge on vital wound demonstration and provide a temporal distribution of the methods currently available, in order to determine the age of lesions, thus helping forensic pathologists in finding a way through the tangled jungle of wound vitality evaluation.     

昨天/明天: 意大利城市保护与发展50年

本文记录了意大利城市保护的理论和文化信息,更重要的是,它展示了由城市和区域部门执行的具体保护案例,并展示了大学研究中心在保护技术和方法上的进步。主要分为4个部分：历史、城市议题、景观议题、培训和国际合作。从城市设计的理念和技术的角度,向世人解析意大利古罗马建筑如何在现代化城市进程中愈加焕发时尚气息的领先技术。中国现阶段正经历着经济快速发展所带来的种种迷惑,或许能从分享中找到答案。     

Optimal control of advertising and production of a seasonal product with nondifferentiable demand

We consider an application of optimal control theory to a marketing problem, in which a firm seeks the maximum profit by producing and selling a seasonal product. We assume that the firm can advertise its product in order to improve the firm goodwill and affect the product demand positively. In particular the demand is zero when the goodwill is less than a fixed threshold. The original optimal control problem is shown to be equivalent to a nonlinear programming problem, which has an optimal solution, possibly not unique. Editor: G. Leitmann     

Protecting shared information in networks: A network security game with strategic attacks

A digital security breach, by which confidential information is leaked, does not only affect the agent whose system is infiltrated but is also detrimental to other agents socially connected to the infiltrated system. Although it has been argued that these externalities create incentives to underinvest in security, this presumption is challenged by the possibility of strategic adversaries that attack the least protected agents. In this paper we study a new model of security games in which agents share tokens of sensitive information in a network of contacts. The agents have the opportunity to invest in security to protect against an attack that can be either strategically or randomly targeted. We show that, in the presence of random attack, underinvestments always prevail at the Nash equilibrium in comparison with the social optimum. Instead, when the attack is strategic, either underinvestments or overinvestments are possible, depending on the network topology and on the characteristics of the process of the spreading of information. Actually, agents invest more in security than socially optimal when dependencies among agents are low (which can happen because the information network is sparsely connected or because the probability that information tokens are shared is small). These overinvestments pass on to underinvestments when information sharing is more likely (and therefore, when the risk brought by the attack is higher). In order to keep our analysis tractable, some of our results on strategic attacks make an assumption of homogeneity in the network, namely, that the network is vertex‐transitive. We complement these results with an analysis on star graphs (which are nonhomogeneous), which confirms that the essential lines of our findings can remain valid on general networks.     

Stereo Light Probe

In this paper we present a practical, simple and robust method to acquire the spatially‐varying illumination of a real‐world scene. The basic idea of the proposed method is to acquire the radiance distribution of the scene using high‐dynamic range images of two reflective balls. The use of two light probes instead of a single one allows to estimate, not only the direction and intensity of the light sources, but also the actual position in space of the light sources. To robustly achieve this goal we first rectify the two input spherical images, then, using a region‐based stereo matching algorithm, we establish correspondences and compute the position of each light. The radiance distribution so obtained can be used for augmented reality applications, photo‐realistic rendering and accurate reflectance properties estimation. The accuracy and the effectiveness of the method have been tested by measuring the computed light position and rendering synthetic version of a real object in the same scene. The comparison with standard method that uses a simple spherical lighting environment is also shown.     

Computational aspects of the mechanics of complex materials

Summary Bodies with exotic properties display material substructural complexity from nano to meso-level. Various models have been built up in condensed matter physics to represent the behavior of special classes of complex bodies. In general, they fall within the setting of an abstract model building framework which is not only a unifying structure of existing models but—above all—atool to construct special models of new exotic materials. We describe here basic elements of this framework, the one ofmultifield theories, trying to furnish a clear idea of the subtle theoretical and computational problems arising within it. We present the matter in a form that allows one to construct appropriate algorithms in special cases of physical interest. We discuss also issues related to the construction of compatible and mixed finite elements in linearized setting, the extension of extended finite element methods to analyze the influnce of material substructures on crack growth, the evolution of sharp discontinuity surfaces in complex bodies. Concrete examples of complex bodies are also presented with a number of details. Dedicated to Gianfranco Capriz on occasion of his eightieth birthday     

Gel mechanical properties of milk whey protein–dextran conjugates obtained by Maillard reaction

The effect of Maillard reaction on the mechanical properties of whey protein isolate (WPI) heat-induced gels was evaluated. WPI and dextran (15–25 kDa) conjugates were obtained by controlled dry heating during storage at 60 °C and 63% relative humidity for 2, 5 and 9 days. Changes in browning intensity and content of free amino groups were used to estimate the Maillard reaction. A decrease in free amino groups of WPI was observed when increasing polysaccharide concentration and reaction time. An increase in both a* and b* CIE Lab colour parameters indicated the development of a reddish-brown colour, typical of the Maillard reaction. Uniaxial compression and stress relaxation tests were performed to measure the mechanical properties of mixed and conjugate gels. Maillard reaction significantly modified the mechanical properties of WPI/DX gels, and even prevented fracture when conjugate gels were subjected to 80% deformation in uniaxial compression test.     

Susceptibility of Listeria monocytogenes isolated from food in Italy to antibiotics

The susceptibility of 148 strains of Listeria monocytogenes isolated from food to antibiotics currently used in veterinary and human therapy was determined by standard agar dilution and disk diffusion methods. The antibiotics included amikacin, amoxicillin, cefazolin, chloramphenicol, erythromycin, flumequine, fosfomycin, gentamicin, kanamycin, lincomycin, oxytetracycline, rifampicin, spiramycin, streptomycin, tetracycline, tobramycin and vancomycin. Soussy's breakpoints and MIC(50)-MIC(90) values were used to classify the strains into sensitive, moderately sensitive and resistant groups.This work is part of a wider surveillance program on listeriosis started in Italy in 1995.     

Comparing sensitivities of differently oriented multi-walled carbon nanotubes integrated on silicon wafer for electrochemical biosensors

In this study, we report on multi-walled carbon nanotubes fabricated on silicon substrate with four different orientations via chemical vapor deposition. It is well-known that chemical treatments improve the nanotube electrochemical reactivity by creating edge-like defects on their exposed sidewalls. Before use, we performed an acid treatment on carbon nanotubes. To prove the effect of the treatment on these nanostructured electrodes, contact angles were measured. Then, sensitivities and detection limits were evaluated performing cyclic voltammetry. Two target molecules were used: potassium ferricyanide, an inorganic electroactive molecule, and hydrogen peroxide that is a product of reactions catalyzed by many enzymes, such as oxidases and peroxidases. Carbon nanotubes with tilted tips become hydrophilic after the treatment showing a contact angle of 22° ± 2°. This kind of electrode has shown also the best electrochemical performance. Sensitivity and detection limit values are 110.0 ± 0.5 μA/(mM cm²) and 8 μM for potassium ferricyanide solutions and 16.4 ± 0.1 μA/(mM cm²) and 24 μM using hydrogen peroxide as target compound. Considering the results of wettability and voltammetric measurements, nanotubes with tilted tips-based electrodes are found to be the most promising for future biosensing applications.