The birth of Consultation-Liaison (CLP) in Italy was made possible thanks to Act 180/1978, which started a 20-year-process that led to closing asylums and fostered the implementation of small ...psychiatric units within the general hospitals. In the meantime, Italian CLP grew steadily, fostered also by the enactment of two “Objective Mental Health Care” Plans (1994-1996 and 1998-2000), that led to the implementation of the organizational model of the mental health department (MHD).As far as psychiatric referrals are concerned, the first Plan states that the MHD covers all territorial and hospital-based activities, in order to assure, among other services, the integration with hospital (with special attention paid to the Emergency Department and to consultation activity in non-psychiatric hospital wards) and general medicine (as well as other sectors, including mother and child health care).With respect to psychiatric referral, the Second Plan states that “In the 24 months following the entry into force of the Plan, MHDs will adopt guidelines and procedure concerning several issues, including consultation-liaison activity in non-psychiatric hospital wards (which also includes mental health care for “psychiatric” patients hospitalized for non-psychiatric disease in the general hospital) and in Department of Addictions (for alcohol and other substances use disorders. According to the second Plan, Community Mental Health Services (CMHCs) provide, among other performances, CLP activity for general practitioners. Inside general hospitals, psychiatric referrals to non-psychiatric wards are provided by inpatient psychiatric units, when CLP Services are not available.Since a standard definition of psychiatric consultation is not available, the one provided by the Italian region Emilia-Romagna will be used. The Region includes “consultation” among mental health services provided by CMHCs, and defines it as follows: “Psychiatric or psychological assessment carried out upon request from other non psychiatric Departments. The consultation includes both clinical interview with the patient and the medical report for the department that referred the patient.” The ways to identify consultation as one among other types of services provided by the MHD are defined, to count the overall number of consultations and monitor the clinical activity of health professional working in the different branches of the MHD. The following types of consultations are reckoned: consultations requested by general practitioners (who work within the Primary Care Department); consultations requested by the Department of Addiction (a branch of the MHD); and consultations requested by the Department of Child-Adolescent Psychiatry (which, as the previous one, is a branch on the MHD).Disclosure of InterestNone Declared
COVID-19 pandemic had an important impact in mental health across all countries and populations. However, health care professionals, particularly those in the front line have been subjected to ...increased levels of stress, workload, deterioration of work environment and working conditions while potentially being afraid of contracting the infection themselves or infecting love ones due to the higher risk of contagion when dealing with infected patients. Some studies have stressed out this impact showing increased levels of burnout, depression, hopelessness, stress and post-traumatic stress in all physicians however, the impact of the pandemic may have been different depending on the specialty. We intended to study the impact of COVID-19 pandemic for doctors working at general hospitals and liaison psychiatrists dealing with COVID-19 patients in Europe. We developed and applied online questionnaires to physicians working at general hospitals and psychiatrists working at liaison services, in different European countries (Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Greece, Poland, Croatia), in order to determine what were their working conditions and it they reported mental health symptoms during the pandemic. This questionnaire included demographic data, questions about working conditions when dealing with general and COVID patients and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HADS). It was distributed thought email and social media platforms used by doctors. This work has been approved by each local Ethics committee and all participants signed an informed consent.
Disclosure
No significant relationships.
Abstract Chirality, the lack of mirror symmetry, can be mimicked in nanophotonics and plasmonics by breaking the symmetry in light-nanostructure interaction. Here we report on versatile use of ...nanosphere lithography for the fabrication of low-cost metasurfaces, which exhibit broadband handedness- and angle-dependent extinction in the near-infrared range, thus offering extrinsic chiro-optical behavior. We measure wavelength and angle dependence of the extinction for four samples. Two samples are made of polystyrene nanospheres asymmetrically covered by silver and gold in one case and silver only in the other case, with a nanohole array at the bottom. The other two samples are nanohole arrays, obtained after the nanosphere removal from the first two samples. Rich extrinsic chiral features are governed by different chiro-optical mechanisms in the three-dimensional plasmonic semi-shells and planar nanohole arrays. We also measure Stokes parameters in the same wavelength and incidence angle range and show that the transmitted fields follow the extrinsic chirality features of the extinction dissymmetry. We further study the influences of the nanostructured shapes and in-plane orientations on the intrinsic vs extrinsic chirality. The nanoholes are modelled as oval shapes in metal, showing good agreement with the experiments. We thus confirm that nanosphere lithography can provide different geometries for chiral light manipulation at the nanoscale, with the possibility to extend functionalities with optimized oval shapes and combination of constituent metals.
Vanadium dioxide has attracted much interest due to the drastic change of the electrical and optical properties it exhibits during the transition from the semiconductor state to the metallic state, ...which takes place at a critical temperature of about 68 °C. Much study has been especially devoted to developing advanced fabrication methodologies to improve the performance of VO2 thin films for phase-change applications in optical devices. Films structural and morphological characterisation is normally performed with expensive and time consuming equipment, as x-ray diffractometers, electron microscopes and atomic force microscopes. Here we propose a purely optical approach which combines Polarized Raman Mapping and Phase-Transition by Continuous Wave Optical Excitation (PTCWE) to acquire through two simple measurements structural, morphological and thermal behaviour information on polycrystalline VO2 thin films. The combination of the two techniques allows to reconstruct a complete picture of the properties of the films in a fast and effective manner, and also to unveil an interesting stepped appearance of the hysteresis cycles probably induced by the progressive stabilization of rutile metallic domains embedded in the semiconducting monoclinic matrix.
The generation of physiologically relevant in-vitro models of biological barriers can play a key role in understanding human diseases and in the development of more predictive methods for assessing ...toxicity and drug or nutrient absorption. Here, we present an advanced cell culture system able to mimic the dynamic environment of biological barriers while monitoring cell behaviour through real-time impedance measurements and imaging. It consists of a fluidic device with an apical and a basal flow compartment separated by a semi-permeable membrane. The main features of the device are the integration of sensing through transepithelial electrical impedance (TEEI) measurements and transparent windows for optical monitoring within a dual flow system.
Caco-2 cells were cultured in the TEEI bioreactor under both flow and static conditions. Although no differences in the expression of peripheral actin and occludin were visible, the cells in dynamic conditions developed higher impedance values at low frequencies, indicative of a higher paracellular electrical impedance with respect to the static cultures. TEEI measurements at high frequency also enabled monitoring monolayer formation, which can be correlated with the observation of an RC behaviour in the impedance spectra. In particular, the cells subject to flow showed accelerated barrier formation and increased vitality with respect to the static controls, again highlighting the importance of dynamic conditions for epithelial cells.
•A dual-flow bioreactor with integrated impedance monitoring for real-time evaluation of barrier quality.•TEEI provides specific information on tight junction formation with respect to standard TEER.•Live-imaging in fluidic systems allows non-destructive optical monitoring.•Shear stress is fundamental for developing physiologically relevant in-vitro barrier models.
We introduce a new function, the apparent elastic modulus strain-rate spectrum,
E
app
(
ε
˙
)
, for the derivation of lumped parameter constants for Generalized Maxwell (GM) linear viscoelastic ...models from stress-strain data obtained at various compressive strain rates (
ε
˙
). The
E
app
(
ε
˙
)
function was derived using the tangent modulus function obtained from the GM model stress-strain response to a constant
ε
˙
input. Material viscoelastic parameters can be rapidly derived by fitting experimental
E
app
data obtained at different strain rates to the
E
app
(
ε
˙
)
function. This single-curve fitting returns similar viscoelastic constants as the original epsilon dot method based on a multi-curve global fitting procedure with shared parameters. Its low computational cost permits quick and robust identification of viscoelastic constants even when a large number of strain rates or replicates per strain rate are considered. This method is particularly suited for the analysis of bulk compression and nano-indentation data of soft (bio)materials.
We report on the nonlinear optical properties of Au-Ag nanoplanets produced by ion implantation and irradiation in silica, experimentally investigated by means of the single beam z-scan technique. ...The measurements provided experimental evidence of the intense local-field enhancement effect theoretically demonstrated for these plasmonic nanosystems. In particular, this has a dramatic impact on their nonlinear absorption behavior and results in a tunable changeover from reverse saturable absorption to saturable absorption by slightly varying the pump intensity and in the possibility to activate and observe nonlinear phenomena of the electron dynamics otherwise unaccessible in the intensity range that can be employed to study these materials. Finally, for the nanoplanet configuration we found a dramatic decrease of the intensity-dependent absorption coefficient, which could be very promising for obtaining optical gain materials.
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