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Cooperation is one of the most advantageous strategies to have evolved in small- and large-scale human societies, often considered essential to their success or survival. We investigated how cooperation and the mechanisms influencing it change across the lifespan, by assessing cooperative choices from adolescence to old age (12–79 years, N = 382) forcing participants to decide either intuitively or deliberatively through the use of randomised time constraints. As determinants of these choices, we considered participants’ level of altruism, their reciprocity expectations, their optimism, their desire to be socially accepted, and their attitude toward risk. We found that intuitive decision-making favours cooperation, but only from age 20 when a shift occurs: whereas in young adults, intuition favours cooperation, in adolescents it is reflection that favours cooperation. Participants’ decisions were shown to be rooted in their expectations about other people’s cooperative behaviour and influenced by individuals’ level of optimism about their own future, revealing that the journey to the cooperative humans we become is shaped by reciprocity expectations and individual predispositions.

Purpose: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) spreads from contact with blood of an infected person. HCV infections are common among people who use drugs (PWUDs), when sharing needles, syringes, or other equipment for injected drugs. The advent of pangenotypic direct-antiviral agents (DAA) in 2017 transformed the treatment landscape for HCV, but PWUDs remain a complex and hard-to-treat population with high risk of HCV reinfection. The aim of this real-world analysis was to characterize the demographic and clinical features of PWUDs in Italy, also focusing on comorbidity profile, treatment with DAAs, resource consumptions for the National Health System (NHS). Patients and Methods: During 01/2011–06/2020, administrative databases of Italian healthcare entities, covering 3,900,000 individuals, were browsed to identify PWUDs with or without HCV infection. Among HCV+ patients, a further stratification was made into treated and untreated with DAAs. The date of PWUD or HCV first diagnosis or DAA first prescription was considered as index-date. Patients were then followed-up for one year. Alcohol-dependency was also investigated. Results: Total 3690 PWUDs were included, of whom 1141 (30.9%) PWUD-HCV+ and 2549 (69.1%) PWUD-HCV-. HCV-positive were significantly older (43.6 vs 38.5 years, p < 0.001), had a worse comorbidity profile (Charlson-index: 0.8 vs 0.4, p < 0.001), and high rates of psychiatric, respiratory, dermatological, musculoskeletal diseases and genitourinary (sexually transmitted) infections. Moreover, they received more drug prescriptions (other than DAAs, like anti-acids, antiepileptics, psycholeptics) and had undergone more frequent hospitalization, predominantly for hepatobiliary, respiratory system and mental disorders. DDA-untreated had significantly higher Charlson-index than DAA-treated (0.9 vs 0.6, p = 0.003). Alcoholism was found in 436 (11.8%) cases. Conclusion: This Italian real-world analysis suggests that PWUDs with HCV infection, especially those untreat

Background: It has been estimated that the incidence of chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) will not decline over the next 10 years despite the improved efficacy of antiviral therapy because most patients remain undiagnosed and/or untreated. This study aimed to investigate the opinion of relevant target populations on the practicability, effectiveness and best modalities of the test-and-treat approach in the fight against HCV in Italy. Methods: A survey was delivered to patients with HCV from the general population, patients from drug addiction services, hospital physicians and healthcare providers for drug addiction services. Results: For both hospital clinicians and SerD HCPs, tolerability is shown as the most important feature of a suitable treatment. Time to treatment (the time from first contact to initiation of treatment) is deemed important to the success of the strategy by all actors. While a tolerable treatment was the main characteristic in a preferred care pathway for general patients, subjects from drug addiction services indicated that a complete Meet–Test–Treat pathway is delivered within the habitual care center as a main preference. This is also important for SerD HCPs who are a strong reference for their patients; hospital clinicians were less aware of the importance of the patient-HCP relationship in this process. Conclusion: The health system is bound to implement suitable pathways to facilitate HCV eradication. A Meet–Test–Treat program within the drug addiction services may provide good compliance from subjects mainly concerned with virus transmission.

This article depicts an integrated system capable of generating virtual stereo scenes, reconstructing a three-dimensional map of distances, and calculating the accuracy of the results obtained. This tool is particularly useful for verifying the validity of distance reconstruction techniques, and is robust enough to use in a wide variety of scenarios since it avoids the need for an image-capture system in laboratory simulations. The importance of the distance reconstruction problem lies in the range of its applications: industrial inspection and quality control, surveillance and security, autonomous vehicles, robotic systems, medical image analysis, image databases, virtual reality, telepresence, and telerobotics. The system is based on the VRML standard for three-dimensional geometric scene representation, on OpenGL for rendering virtual scenes, and on the TRW algorithm for the problem of three-dimensional reconstruction. © 2006 IEEE.

Il saggio indaga la storia della diocesi di Crema nel XVIII secolo

Introduction and Aims. People who inject drugs (PWID) constitute the largest reservoir of hepatitis C virus (HCV). Although effective medications are available and access to care is universal in Italy, the proportion of PWID receiving appropriate care remains low. Design and Methods. To identify the major barriers for PWID to HCV treatment we surveyed a large sample of practitioners working in outpatient addiction centres (SerDs). The survey was conducted in two stages and involved 30.3% of SerDs operating in Italy. In the first, SerD physicians completed a questionnaire designed with a Delphi structure. In the second, SerD practitioners completed a targeted questionnaire to identify barriers to four SerD services in HCV management: screening, referral, treatment and harm reduction. Results. The first-stage questionnaire, in which a Delphi and RAND-UCLA method was used, revealed a lack of agreement among the physicians about barriers to health care. The more detailed second-stage questionnaire indicated the barriers to delivering specific SerD services. As regarded the delivery of all four services, the major reasons for treating <50% of patients were: physician and nurse understaffing, technical,economic and logistic issues. In contrast, the practitioners who responded that they follow protocol recommendations often deliver all four services to >50% of patients. Discussion and Conclusions. HCV treatment remains out of reach for many PWID attending a drug treatment centre in Italy. To meet the World Health Organisation (WHO) target, there is a need to increase economic, technical and staff support at treatment centres using the protocols and the universal health care already in place.

Introduction and Objetive: Prevalence of dental caries appears to be increasing, and determinants are not well established. To determine the prevalence of dental caries in adolescents and its association with sex, maternal education and family socioeconomic status. Materials and Methods: This a cross-sectional study of 1.893 adolescent students, age 13 to 18 years. Dental caries was assessed by an intra-oral examination. Logistical regression was used to determine the association between sex, maternal schooling, family socioeconomic status and caries. Decay rate was measured as the number of teeth with decay (C), filled (O), extracted (P), (COP-D) or surfaces (COP-S). Results: Dental caries prevalence was 48,2%. Percentage of caries was similar in boys (48,3% vs. 48,2%) and in girls. In the overall population studied, the mean value of COP-D was 1,68±0,52 and the corresponding mean value of COP-S was 2,47±1,08. Approximately 52,2% of mothers of adolescents had completed High School and 44,5% of adolescents lived in a family with low economic status. According to the data, gender, maternal education and socioeconomic status were not related to dental caries in adolescents. Conclusions: Our data show no association between sex, maternal education, family low socioeconomic status and dental caries in adolescents. Dental caries affects a large percentage of adolescents., Introducción y Objetivo: La prevalencia de caries dental parece estar aumentando y los determinantes no están bien establecidos. Determinar la prevalencia de la caries dental en adolescentes y su asociación con el género, escolaridad materna y el estatus socioeconómico familiar. Materiales y Métodos: Es un estudio transversal de 1.893 adolescentes escolares, en edades de 13 a 18 años. La caries se identificó por exploración física directa. Se utilizó modelo de regresión logística para determinar la asociación entre el sexo, escolaridad materna, estatus socioeconómico familiar y la caries. El índice de caries fue medido como el número de dientes con caries (C), obturados (O), perdidos por caries (P), (COP-D) o superficies (COP-S) Resultados: La prevalencia de caries dental fue de 48,2%. El porcentaje de caries fue similar en hombres y en mujeres (48,3 vs. 48,2%). En la población total estudiada, el valor medio de COP-D fue 1,68±0,52 y el correspondiente valor medio de COP-S fue 2,47±1,08. Aproximadamente, 52,2% de las madres de los adolescentes tenían estudios menores a los de secundaria y 44,5% de los adolescentes vivían en el seno de una familia con nivel económico bajo. De acuerdo a los datos, el sexo, la escolaridad materna, el nivel socioeconómico no se encuentran relacionados con la caries dental en adolescentes. Conclusiones: Nuestros datos muestran que no existe asociación entre el sexo, escolaridad materna, nivel socioeconómico bajo y la caries dental en adolescentes. La caries dental afecta a un porcentaje importante de adolescentes.

An option of increasing the luminosity of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN to 1035 cm-2 s-1 has been envisaged to extend the physics reach of the machine. An efficient tracking down to a few centimetres from the interaction point will be required to exploit the physics potential of the upgraded LHC. As a consequence, the semiconductor detectors close to the interaction region will receive severe doses of fast hadron irradiation and the inner tracker detectors will need to survive fast hadron fluences of up to above 1016cm-2. The CERN-RD50 project "Development of Radiation Hard Semiconductor Devices for Very High Luminosity Colliders" has been established in 2002 to explore detector materials and technologies that will allow to operate devices up to, or beyond, this limit. The strategies followed by RD50 to enhance the radiation tolerance include the development of new or defect engineered detector materials (SiC, GaN, Czochralski and epitaxial silicon, oxygen enriched Float Zone silicon), the improvement of present detector designs and the understanding of the microscopic defects causing the degradation of the irradiated detectors. The latest advancements within the RD50 collaboration on radiation hard semiconductor detectors will be reviewed and discussed in this work. 2005 Published by Elsevier B.V.

The electronic and optical properties of several (medium to high quality) 4H-SiC epitaxial sensors for particle detection have been studied. The samples are n -doped Schottky diodes with different nitrogen concentrations (6× 1013 cm-3 -5× 1015 cm-3) and thicknesses (20-40 µm). A full electrical and optical characterization has been performed by capacitance versus voltage measurements and near-band-edge low-temperature photoluminescence. The effective doping along the epilayer and the depletion width have been determined and data are consistent with the charge collection efficiency characterization performed with a minimum ionizing ? -source. All the investigated samples exhibit a 100% collection efficiency. In particular, the best samples yield a highly reproducible signal, well separated from the pedestal. Photoluminescence results show a linear relationship between the effective doping and the ratio of nitrogen-bound excitonic emission (Q0) and free excitonic line (I76), in agreement with a previous work on 4H-SiC with a higher doping concentration [I. G. Ivanov, C. Hallin, A. Henry, O. Kordina, and E. Janzn, J. Appl. Phys. 80, 3504 (1996)]. Moreover we show that the dependence of the major spectral features as a function of the penetration depth of the exciting laser beam can quantitatively provide information on substrate contribution to the photoluminescence. In conclusion, we bring evidence that a detailed characterization of SiC-based detectors, by all optical techniques, yields an accurate value for the net doping and gives a qualitative information on the epilayer thickness prior to any electrical wafer tests. © 2005 American Institute of Physics.