In this article, after a historiographical introduction, a state of the art concerning the analysis of the Turin Shroud is represented, with an exposition of the main results obtained in recent ...decades by scientific research on the Shroud and its image. The studies and experiments conducted by the author are therefore briefly described, employing neutron techniques for the analysis of new and old linen fibers and considering these techniques for a potential investigation of the Shroud. The activity is aimed at providing useful and suitable information to be included in the complex mosaic of data to understand the mystery of the Shroud.
Landslide early warning systems (LEWS) can be categorized into two groups: territorial and local systems. Territorial landslide early warning systems (Te-LEWS) deal with the occurrence of several ...landslides in wide areas: at municipal/regional/national scale. The aim of such systems is to forecast the increased probability of landslide occurrence in a given warning zone. The performance evaluation of such systems is often overlooked, and a standardized procedure is still missing. This paper describes a new Excel user-friendly tool for the application of the EDuMaP method, originally proposed by (Calvello and Piciullo 2016). A description of indicators used for the performance evaluation of different Te-LEWS is provided, and the most useful ones have been selected and implemented into the tool. The EDuMaP tool has been used for the performance evaluation of the “SMART” warning model operating in Piemonte region, Italy. The analysis highlights the warning zones with the highest performance and the ones that need threshold refinement. A comparison of the performance of the SMART model with other models operating in different Te-LEWS has also been carried out, highlighting critical issues and positive aspects. Lastly, the SMART performance has been evaluated with both the EDuMaP and a standard 2 × 2 contingency table for comparison purposes. The result highlights that the latter approach can lead to an imprecise and not detailed assessment of the warning model, because it cannot differentiate among the levels of warning and the variable number of landslides that may occur in a time interval.
This study assessed the feasibility of using the Milano-Torino staging (MiToS) system for conducting economic evaluation to measure health outcomes in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
A Markov ...model was developed using the MiToS system and evaluated with a hypothetical treatment versus standard of care. Health utilities and transition probabilities were derived from the literature. Four-time horizons (1, 5, 10, and 20 years) were examined. Treatment effects of 20-35% relative risk reduction (RRR) of progressing to the next MiToS stage were assessed. Three patient distribution scenarios were tested: (1) all patients began in stage 0; (2) patient distribution based on real-world TONiC study; (3) distribution based on the PRO-ACT database. Health outcomes (quality-adjusted life-years QALYs, life-years LYs) were reported with a 3% discount rate.
A time horizon of 10 years fully captured treatment benefits: incremental QALYs were 0.28-0.60, 0.21-0.45, and 0.26-0.55 for scenarios 1-3, respectively; incremental LYs were 0.56-1.17, 0.46-0.97, and 0.53-1.11, respectively.
MiToS-based staging can be used for conducting economic analyses in ALS. Estimated incremental QALY and LY gains were meaningful within the context of ALS, for hypothetical treatments with RRR of 20-35%.
The aim of this work was the calibration and validation of mathematical models based on a quantitative structure–activity relationship approach to discriminate sweet, tasteless and bitter molecules. ...The sweet-tasteless and the sweet-bitter datasets included 566 and 508 compounds, respectively. A total of 3763 conformation-independent Dragon molecular descriptors were calculated and subsequently reduced through both unsupervised reduction and supervised selection coupled with the
k
-nearest neighbors classification technique. A model based on nine descriptors was retained as the optimal one for sweet and tasteless molecules, while a model based on four descriptors was calibrated for the sweetness-bitterness dataset. Models were properly validated through cross-validation and external test sets. The applicability domain of models was investigated, and the interpretation of the role of the molecular descriptors in classifying sweet and non-sweet tastes was evaluated. The classification and the performance of the models presented in this paper are simple but accurate. They are based on a relatively small number of descriptors and a straightforward classification approach. The results presented here indicate that the proposed models can be used to accurately select new compounds as potential sweetener candidates.
Structural, elastic and thermodynamic properties of the orthorhombic CaSnO
3
perovskite are theoretically investigated at the ab initio level as a function of temperature and pressure. Harmonic and ...quasi-harmonic lattice dynamical calculations are performed with the
Crystal
program, by explicitly accounting for thermal expansion effects and by exploring the effect of several DFT functionals. The anisotropic, directional elastic response of the system is characterized up to 20 GPa of pressure. The thermal lattice expansion and elastic bulk modulus are described at simultaneous temperatures up to 2000 K and pressures up to 20 GPa. The Gibbs free energy of formation of CaSnO
3
from CaO and SnO
2
as a function of temperature is also addressed by means of fully converged phonon dispersion calculations on the three systems.
Research funding is essential to promote the scientific activity of researchers and the dissemination of their results. Simplifying, funding schemes can be classified in two categories—
competitive
...and
non-competitive
—with several corresponding advantages and shortcomings, which are widely discussed in the scientific literature. The researchers of Politecnico di Torino (i.e., one of the major Italian technical universities) have recently been funded through a non-competitive research funding, consisting of 14k€ for every single researcher in each of the last three years (i.e., from 2017 to 2019), for a total of 42k€. This somewhat unusual initiative—also called “diffused funding” (DF)—represents an important opportunity to investigate the effects of the relatively large allocation of non-competitive funding to single researchers. In this regard, this paper investigates the effects of the DF on the researchers’ scientific output, according to four dimensions of analysis:
publishing productivity
,
publishing diffusion/impact
,
journal reputation
, and
international research relations
. Preliminary results do not indicate any improvement in the publication output, at least in the short term.
Designing a Bundle of Rights Campobenedetto, Daniele; Robiglio, Matteo
Ardeth (Print),
03/2019, Letnik:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Within the debate around urban commons in Italy, it has been argued that the overlapping of public property and common use is needed in order to set a common. This article questions that perspective ...through the case of the masterplan for the Cavallerizza Reale complex in Turin (2016), by considering space as a key factor in the understanding of a bundle of rights.The masterplan proposes the reorganisation of the right of use to establish a specific urban space as a common, through different tools acting in the fields of property regime, planning regulation and preservation regulation.
The role of the acid–base equilibria and the sequential proton loss electron transfer mechanism (SPLET) on the free radical scavenging activity of six melatonin-related compounds was investigated ...using the density functional theory. It was found that this chemical route is particularly important for about half of the studied compounds. Some of their pKa values are reported here for the first time. In addition, our results also indicate that anionic species, presenting the phenolate moiety, may be crucial to scavenge peroxyl radicals albeit their populations are relatively low at physiological pH. The key number to consider in this context should be the product of the molar fraction of the reacting compound, at the pH of interest, by the corresponding rate constant.
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