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We investigated the contribution of variants of tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha and MDR1 genes in the predisposition and response to medical therapy in a large pediatric cohort of patients with Crohn disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC).In this study, 200 patients with CD, 186 patients with UC, 434 parents (217 trios), and 347 healthy unrelated controls were investigated. Single-nucleotide polymorphisms -G308A and -C857T of the TNF-alpha gene and C3435T of the MDR1 gene were investigated and correlated with clinical subphenotypes and efficacy of medical therapy.The frequency of the -308A allele of the TNF-alpha gene was significantly increased in both patients with CD (15%; odds ratio [OR] = 2.79; P0.01) and patients with UC (11%; OR = 1.96; P0.003) compared with controls (6%). Carriers of this allele were 27% in CD (OR = 2.94; P0.01) and 19% in UC (OR = 1.86; P = 0.015) compared with 11% in healthy controls. No significant difference was found for both the -C857T and C3435T single-nucleotide polymorphisms. With the genotype/phenotype analysis, no correlation in patients with UC with the MDR1 gene was found. CD carriers of the -308A allele had a higher frequency of surgical resection (35% vs 20%; OR = 2.1; P = 0.035) and more frequent resistance to steroids (22% vs 8%; OR = 0.29; P = 0.032) compared with noncarriers. These findings were confirmed by stepwise logistic regression.In our pediatric cohort, the promoter -308A polymorphism of TNF-alpha but not the MDR1 gene is significantly involved in the predisposition to both CD and UC. This polymorphism carries a significant reduction in response to steroid therapy, probably leading to a more frequent need for surgical resection.

In the frame of the project to develop large-area linear drift detectors few prototypes have been designed and produced. The function of these prototypes is to allow the evaluation of the solutions chosen for the geometry of the an-board electrodes and the production process. On these prototypes we have studied the static characteristics and measured time-of-flight and charge collection injecting charges with an IR laser source. We report the results from one of the prototypes.

This paper proposes an innovative system for monitoring domestic energy consumptions and for verifying the behavior of less-sufficient people during their everyday home life, on the basis of their interaction with surrounding environment and with household electrical appliances. It is composed by three different acquisition sections, a remote server for data storage and processing and an Android mobile application for remote data access. The remote application allows the user to check in almost real time the power absorptions of the monitored house, in addition to other environmental parameters acquired through different sensing technologies.

Aim of the present manuscript is to summarize the multi-disciplinary activities related to the research project called POIROT that proposes to design a platform for transforming the organic waste into an inert, odorless and sanitized material, employable for building applications or as thermal acoustic insulator. The platform prototype is equipped with Arduino-based electronic sensing stations for characterizing the material during the different steps of the transformation process. Further innovation introduced by the proposed system is the integration of the platform with a RFID (radio frequency identification)-based user-recognition and products traceability system, allowing both to identify the enabled users and to track the produced panels/bricks along the whole supply chain. Therefore, a proper software on-cloud application was developed for supporting the products’ traceability functionality.

The "Medical Assistance in Contextual awareness" (AMICO) project is the result of synergistic collaboration between international industrial partner, operating in the electronics and biomedical fields and Italian academic institutions. The AMICO project aims to create an e-Medicine precision platform, in the Internet of Things field, which ensures to the patient, especially those affected by cardiovascular diseases, the integration of the hospital rehabilitation model with his or her daily life in the domestic environment. The real-time acquisition of clinical data, supplemented by a mood recognition, will allow doctors to follow patients, verify pharmacological compliance and recognize a worsening in the clinical outcomes. On the other hands, a friendly-use e-Medicine platform will help and motivate patients in their rehabilitation path. This project is an absolute novelty in the national and international field as it will permit a strong interaction between specialist structures and Doctors, even in emergency and/or urgency conditions, from the patient domicile.

Background: To date, a number of high-profile studies have yielded over 50 inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) disease genes/loci. The polymorphisms rs9858542 (BSN) and rs3197999 (MST1), on 3p21 locus, have been found associated with susceptibility to IBD. We aimed to replicate these associations in adult and early-onset cohorts of IBD Italian patients, by analyzing also potential gene–gene interactions with variants in NOD2/CARD15, IL23R, ATG16L1, and IRGM genes, and investigating genotype–phenotype correlation. Methods: In all, 1808 patients with IBD, 855 with Crohn's disease (CD) and 953 with ulcerative colitis (UC), including 539 patients with their initial diagnosis