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Introduction and objectives Inguinal hernia repair is associated with significant postoperative pain. We assessed the analgesia efficacy of unilateral Erector Spinae Plane block (ESP) performed under ultrasound guidance in patients submitted to open unilateral inguinal hernia repair, comparing ESP to spinal anesthesia administered with or without opioid. Methods Forty-five patients with ages ranging from 27 to 83 years were randomly allocated into three groups: control group receiving spinal anesthesia (n = 14), ESP group receiving ESP block combined with spinal anesthesia (n = 16), and spinal morphine group receiving spinal anesthesia with morphine 1 mcg.kg-1 as adjuvant drug (n = 15). ESP was performed at the T8 level using 0.5% ropivacaine, 20 mL. We assessed the pain intensity in the initial 24 hours after surgery using the Visual Analogue Scale - VAS and rescue opioid requirement. Results The ESP group showed four times higher consumption of rescue opioids than the spinal morphine group, or 26.7% vs. 6.2%, respectively (RR = 4.01; 95% CI: 0.82 to 19.42; p = 0.048). The spinal morphine group showed higher incidence of adverse effects than the ESP group, 37.5% vs. 6.7%, respectively (p = 0.039). There were no statistically significant differences among groups for the mean values of VAS score at 24 hours after surgery (p = 0.304). Conclusion At the doses used in this study, the ESP block was an ineffective technique for providing postoperative analgesia in unilateral open inguinal hernioplasty and was associated with higher consumption of rescue opioids when compared to spinal anesthesia with or without opioid.

Introduction: Peripheral nerve lesions are frequent in clinical practice, causing hyperalgesia and loss of motor function. Gabapentin (GABAP) is used in this condition for the treatment of pain, while statins such as atorvastatin (ATORV) have been demonstrating neuroprotective effects in preclinical nerve injury studies. Objective: To investigate the influence of treatment with GABAP and ATORV on aspects related to nerve regeneration. Methods: Male Swiss mice (25-35 g) were subjected to nerve injury by partial ligation of the sciatic nerve. The influence of the drugs on mechanical hyperalgesia and grip force was assessed at baseline (before injury), 7, 14 and 21 days after injury, following daily treatment (intragastric) with GABAP (30 mg / kg) and ATORV (3 or 10 mg/kg), alone or in combination. Data were evaluated by 1 or 2-way ANOVA (Tukey or Dunnett, respectively, p< 0.05). Results: GABAP (26.67  4.21% of response) and ATORV (36.67  10.85% of response), alone or in combination, reduced mechanical hyperalgesia (vehicle: 76.00  11.66% of response); besides of this, there was an important effect for the association of these drugs on the grip force (vehicle: -4.19  0.5 g; GABAP+ATORV: -1.29  1.22g). The two agents also influenced the levels of brain derived neurotrophic factor, BDNF, (vehicle: 105.30  12.53 pg/mg of protein; GABAP: 34.92  5.92 pg/mg of protein; ATORV: 33.77  4.20 pg/mg of protein) and and insulin-like growth factor-1, IGF-1, (vehicle: 399.60  61.30 pg/mg of protein; GABAP: 388.30  38.57 pg/mg of protein; ATORV: 306.50  16.72 pg/mg of protein), while levels of interleucin 10 (IL-10), were not affected by treatments. Conclusion: It is suggested that the association of these substances of different pharmacological classes, GABAP and ATORV, may bring benefits on hyperalgesia and motor function associated with nerve lesions. Introdução: As lesões nervosas periféricas são frequentes na prática clínica, causando hiperalgesia e perda da função motora. A gabapentina (GABAP) é utilizada nesta condição para o tratamento da dor, enquanto as estatinas como a atorvastatina (ATORV) vêm demonstrando efeitos neuroprotetores em estudos pré-clínicos de lesão nervosa. Objetivo: Investigar a influência do tratamento com GABAP e ATORV sobre aspectos relacionados à regeneração nervosa. Métodos: Utilizou-se camundongos Swiss, machos (25-35 g), com lesão nervosa por ligadura parcial do nervo isquiático. A influência dos fármacos sobre a hiperalgesia mecânica e a força de preensão foi avaliada nos dias zero (basal), 7, 14 e 21 após a lesão, após tratamento diário (via intragástrica) com GABAP (30 mg/kg) e ATORV (3 ou 10 mg/kg), isoladamente ou em associação. Dados avaliados por ANOVA de 1 ou 2 vias (Tukey ou Dunnett, respectivamente, p< 0,05). Resultados: A GABAP (26,67  4,21 % de resposta) e a ATORV (36,67  10,85 % de resposta), isoladamente, reduziram a hiperalgesia mecânica (veículo: 76,00  11,66 % de resposta) e, além disso, houve um importante efeito para a associação destes fármacos sobre a força de preensão (veículo: -4,19  0,57 g; GABAP+ATORV: -1,29  1,22 g). Os dois agentes influenciaram também os níveis de fator neurotrófico derivado do encéfalo, BDNF, (veículo: 105,30  12,53 pg/mg de proteína; GABAP: 34,92  5,92 pg/mg de proteína; ATORV: 33,77  4,20 pg/mg de proteína) e fator de crescimento semelhante à insulina-1, IGF-1, (veículo: 399,60  61,30 pg/mg de proteína; GABAP: 388,30  38,57 pg/mg de proteína; ATORV: 306,50  16,72 pg/mg de proteína), já os níveis de interleucina 10 (IL-10), não foram alterados pelos tratamentos. Conclusão: Sugere-se que a associação destas substâncias de diferentes classes farmacológicas, GABAP e a ATORV, pode trazer benefícios sobre a hiperalgesia e a função motora associadas às lesões nervosas.

I numerosi studi condotti fino ad oggi sul tema della schiavitù all’interno dei confini dello Stato della Chiesa di età moderna hanno portato all’attenzione della comunità scientifica l’evidenza documentale della presenza sul lungo periodo di una minoranza composta da schiavi islamici che, pur non passando attraverso la conversione al cristianesimo e pur mantenendo la propria identità religiosa d’origine, costituiscono parte integrante di una complessa rete sociale ed economica. Ciò che è rimasto scoperto è, invece, lo studio dell’approccio istituzionale al fenomeno. Come era regolamentata la vita dei musulmani all’interno dei confini dello Stato del papa? Quali magistrature avevano la giurisdizione su di loro e in quali modalità la esercitavano? La seconda parte di questa comunicazione intende quindi presentare i primi risultati di una ricerca condotta sulle fonti normative prodotte dalle varie autorità centrali e periferiche dello Stato, in merito alla regolamentazione di una parte certamente esigua della popolazione ma estremamente significativa sul piano simbolico e teologico., Venire a Roma, restare a Roma. Forestieri e stranieri fra Quattro e Settecento

Sampling from very large spatial populations is challenging. The solutions suggested in recent literature on this subject often require that the randomly selected units are well distributed across the study region by using complex algorithms that have the feature, essential in a design-based framework, to respect the fixed first-order inclusion probabilities for every unit of the population. The size of the frame, $N$, often causes some problems to these algorithms since, being based on the distance matrix between the units of the population, have at least a computational cost of order $N^2$. In this paper we propose a draw-by-draw algorithm that randomly selects a sample of size $n$ in exactly $n$ steps, updating at each step the selection probability of not-selected units depending on their distance from the units already selected in the previous steps. The performance of this solution is compared with those of other methods derived from the {\it spatially balanced sampling} literature in terms of their root mean squared error (RMSE) using the simple random sampling (SRS) without replacement as benchmark. The fundamental interest is not only to evaluate the efficiency of a such different procedure, but also to understand if similar results can be obtained even with a notable reduction in the computational burden needed to obtain more efficient sampling designs. Repeated sample selections on real and simulated populations support this perspective. An application to the Land Use and Land Cover Survey (LUCAS) 2012 data-set in an Italian region is presented as a concrete and practical illustration of the capabilities of the proposed sample selection method.

The presence and the status of the Christian slaves in Mediterranean during modern period have been the subject of many and deep studies and publications. But the characteristics of the women’s role in complex system of redemption of slaves from North African’s Muslim reigns, don’t received right attention. The article offers an analysis of this specific issue, focusing for its observations on memories for the redemption of Christian slaves sended to Roman Arciconfraternita of the Gonfalone, in 18th century, a source which until now has been not, or very seldom used. Coming from an unusual point of view, these documents introduce us to the world of early modern slavery in Mediterranean and also define a large number of different subjects more accurately, like conditions, rates and stages of negotiation. The results of this research seem to suggest, that these memories have to be considered as a very interesting and reliable source, specially compared with judicial sources. Moreover, it offers a new change to increase the frontiers of gender studies, especially for female writing. Keywords: Arciconfraternita del Gonfalone, scrittura femminile, schiavitù, riscatto degli schiavi, Nordamerica, regni islamici, memorie, Roma; Arciconfraternita of the Gonfalone, female writing, slavery, redemption of slaves, North Africa, Muslim reigns, memories, Rome., Storia delle Donne, Vol. 5 (2009): Schiave

We report a course on teaching in physics lab for teachers enrolled in Formative Active Training, which actually allows to obtain the teacher qualification in Italy. The course was designed with the purpose of showing in practice what means active learning in physics and how effective activities can be realized in practice. Two different type of teachers attended to the course, a small group, with physics or mathematics degree, for teacher qualification in secondary school of second grade (age 14-19) and a more numerous group for qualification in secondary school of first grade (age 11-14), usually with a different science degree such as biology, environmental sciences and so on. We compare this training in physics lab between the two groups and with other experiences we performed in previous years in pre-service education and updating courses for teachers in-service., 8 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables, presented to ICPE-EPEC 2013 The International Conference on Physics Education PRAHA, CZECH REPUBLIC August 5-9, 2013 to appear in the ICPE-EPEC 2013 Conference Proceedings

Physics is introduced as a basic matter in the curricula of professional schools (i.e. schools for agriculture, electronic or chemistry experts). Students meet physics in the early years of their training and then continue in vocational subjects where many physics' topics can be useful. Rarely, however, the connection between physics and professional matters is quite explicit. Students often feel physics as boring and useless, i.e. very far from their interests. In these schools it is almost always required the physics lab, but it does not always exist. The physics teachers of a local Agricultural Technical Institute asked us to realize a learning path in laboratory for their students, since in their school the physics lab was missing. This institute is the only public school in the Chianti area specializing in Viticulture and Enology, and attending a further year post diploma, allows the achievement of the qualification of Enologist. We report a learning path realized starting from thermal equilibrium to a full understanding of the measures made with the Malligand's ebulliometer, used for determining the alcoholic strength (alcohol concentration by volume) of an alcoholic beverage and water/alcohol solutions in general. The aim was to make interesting measures of physical quantities, calorimetry and state transitions connecting them to the functioning of an instrument that students use in their professional career. The feedback of students and the interests of their teachers convinced us to go further in this way. We intend in the next future to involve teachers of physics and vocational subjects in the design of a physics curriculum spread over two years in which the main physics topics will be introduced to explain the functioning of tools and equipment used, normally, in the winery., 9 pages, 4 figures, presented to The World Conference on Physics Education (WCPE), July 1-6, 2012, Istanbul

Since 2006, the Pigelleto's Summer School of Physics is an important appointment for orienting students toward physics. It is organized as a full immersion school on actual topics in physics or in fields rarely pursued in high school, i.e. quantum mechanics, new materials, energy resources. The students, usually forty, are engaged in many activities in laboratory and forced to become active participants. Furthermore, they are encouraged in cooperating in small groups in order to present and share the achieved results. In the last years, the school became a training opportunity for younger teachers which are involved in programming and realization of selected activities. The laboratory activities with students are usually supervised by a young and an expert teacher in order to fix the correct methodology., Comment: 3 pages, Twelfth International Symposium Frontiers of Fundamental Physics (FFP12), Udine 21-23 November 2011

The problem of computing risk measures associated to flood events is extremely important not only from the point of view of civil protection systems but also because of the necessity for the municipalities of insuring against the damages. In this work we propose, in the framework of an integrated strategy, an operating solution which merges in a conditional approach the information usually available in this setup. First we use a Logistic Auto-Logistic (LAM) model for the estimation of the univariate conditional probabilities of flood events. This approach has two fundamental advantages: it allows to incorporate auxiliary information and does not require the target variables to be independent. Then we simulate the joint distribution of floodings by means of the Gibbs Sampler. Finally we propose an algorithm to increase ex post the spatial autocorrelation of the simulated events. The methodology is shown to be effective by means of an application to the estimation of the flood probability of Italian hydrographic regions.

In sampling theory the large concentration of the population with respect to most surveyed variables constitutes a problem which is difficult to tackle by means of classical tools. One possible solution is given by cut-off sampling, which explicitly prescribes to discard part of the population; in particular, if the population is composed by firms or establishments, the method results in the exclusion of the “smallest” firms. Whereas this sampling scheme is common among practitioners, its theoretical foundations tend to be considered weak, because the inclusion probability of some units is equal to zero. In this paper we propose a framework to justify cut-off sampling and to determine the census and cut-off thresholds. We use an estimation model which assumes as known the weight of the discarded units with respect to each variable; we compute the variance of the estimator and its bias, which is caused by violations of the aforementioned hypothesis. We develop an algorithm which minimizes the MSE as a function of multivariate auxiliary information at the population level. Considering the combinatorial optimization nature of the model, we resort to the theory of stochastic relaxation: in particular, we use the simulated annealing algorithm.

Available in the .pdf file

La necessità di disporre di mappe di probabilità di sito archeologico è un tema attualmente al centro di un rinnovato interesse anche grazie alla disponibilità di una moltitudine di informazioni territoriali gestite ed elaborate con l’ausilio della tecnologia GIS. Gli studi che finora si sono occupati del problema, hanno fatto riferimento a modellistiche di tipo regressivo od autoregressivo che, sebbene centrate sulle peculiarità del fenomeno, si sono dimostrate sensibilmente dipendenti dalla presenza di dati anomali nella stima dei parametri e da ipotesi specifiche sui casi in esame. L’intento del presente lavoro è invece quello di proporre una soluzione più robusta e generalizzabile in linea con i recenti sviluppi nel campo della modellistica non parametrica la quale potrebbe dare un forte impulso all’uso congiunto della statistica e della tecnologia GIS. L’informazione geografica ricavabile dai dati fisici e satellitari relativi all’area di studio rappresenta infatti, grazie al dettaglio che la caratterizza, una fonte ausiliaria insostituibile per spiegare la presenza o meno di un sito in una data posizione della mappa. L’approccio proposto è stato sviluppato ed applicato per l’area test di Cures Sabini ottenendo dei risultati abbastanza incoraggianti, soprattutto se letti in termini della estrema facilità di interpretazione dei risultati da parte di non statistici e della riscontrata possibilità di rendere automatico il processo di produzione delle mappe di probabilità. Questa evidenza permetterebbe ad operatori del settore non professionalmente preparati da un punto di vista metodologico, di estendere il modello a situazioni anche molto diverse da quella analizzata.