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It is commonly accepted that there is a two-way relationship between land use and transport in urban areas. Land use affects transport, conditioning travel demand. Conversely, transport affects land use, conditioning spatial distribution of activities and land market. The problem of simulating mutual interactions between land use and transport has been tackled by so-called Land Use Transport Interaction (LUTI) models. Different modelling approaches are present in literature, which are generally grouped into three main categories: spatial micro-economic, spatial interaction and spatial accounting models. The paper presents a spatial accounting LUTI model, which relies on Multi-Regional-Input-Output (MRIO) framework. The model has two main interacting components: an activity model and a transport model, which allow to endogenously estimating activities generation and location, land prices, travel demand and transport accessibility. The proposed LUTI model has been specified and applied in an urban area, more particularly to the town of Reggio Calabria (Italy). The objective of the application is the estimation of long-term impacts on land use and passenger travel demand patterns when interventions on transport facilities and services are planned at a strategic scale. The results confirm that MRIO framework offers the potentialities to bring activity location, land use in line within travel demand modelling.

This study focuses on risk management and specifically the exposure component. The exposure may be reduced by means of evacuation. This measure allows people and goods to be rescued from the area where the calamitous effects are announced. In the past years, many models have been proposed to simulate and design transport system under evacuation conditions. It must be underlined that the models applied to ordinary conditions cannot be directly applied to evacuation conditions due to very strong differences in demand, supply and interaction. Other models have been developed for emergency conditions. Nevertheless they consider only specific aspects and do not provide a comprehensive framework. This study presents the main quantitative results of a long-lasting research project for which a unifying approach for the simulation and design of a transportation system under evacuation conditions is adopted. In this project, an intelligent transportation system (ITS) is implemented to monitor real evacuation tests in a town where an emergency event has been simulated and experimented. In this study, a general methodology is reported with the description of the main models and procedures. Models are calibrated and validated by means of observed data obtained from ITS.

1999/2000 XII Ciclo 1969 Versione digitalizzata della tesi di dottorato cartacea.

A general description of container traffic relationships, that involve the European area, constitutes a fundamental element for the evaluation of actual and potential traffic flows through Gioia Tauro hub port. According to many researchers, container traffic volumes via sea concerning the European continent have increased from 11.3 to 15.8 million of TEUs (around 40%) during the period 1991-'96. European traffic travels through two separate port systems: the first one corresponds to the coastal range from Le Havre to Hamburg, known as 'Northern Range'; while the second, denominated 'Southern Range', includes ail Mediterranean ports from Algerians to Piraeus. This paper firstly illustrates the traffic dynamics of container freights in the European context and secondly presents the container traffic flow through the port of Gioia Tauro. The spatial, temporal and modal split of arriving and departing containers to/from Gioia Tauro are considered. Finally, the development perspectives of traffic volumes are outlined, in relation to the forecasted growth of the European port system. Analyses have been conducted during a two-year research project, whose title is: ".Evaluation of the potentialities of the Gioia Tauro intermodal terminal for the development of the Calabrian economy and role of minor Calabrian ports". The research was supported by Calabrian Region Administration (RO.R European Program).

In the last years the containerized maritime freight transport has significantly increased. The phenomenon had also interested Italy, through dominant roles assumed by Gioia Tauro and Genova harbours, but also through the revival of many other harbours. A rearrangement of the international system is in progress and seems to assign to national and Mediterranean portuality new opportunities of development. In this paper the attention is addressed to the analysis of the maritime transport costs faced by a transport operator (shipowner, charterer, liner). The transportation of containerized freights depends on the generalized cost, which results from the sum of monetary costs, taxes, travel times, waiting and intermodal exchange times, guarantees in terms of respect of the scheduled programs and service reliability. The model calibration presented is based upon data referred to single ships, which carry out a feeder service in the Mediterranean basin. They have been opportunely organized and elaborated in order to define the structure of a complete model, which can be an useful tool for scenario evaluations.

Circulating endothelial cells (CEC) represent a restricted peripheral blood (PB) cell subpopulation with high potential diagnostic value in many endothelium-involving diseases. However, whereas the interest in CEC studies has grown, the standardization level of their detection has not. Here, we undertook the task to align CEC phenotypes and counts, by standardizing a novel flow cytometry approach, within a network of six laboratories. CEC were identified as alive/nucleated/CD45negative/CD34bright/CD146positive events and enumerated in 269 healthy PB samples. Standardization was demonstrated by the achievement of low inter-laboratory Coefficients of Variation (CVL), calculated on the basis of Median Fluorescence Intensity values of the most stable antigens that allowed CEC identification and count (CVL of CD34bright on CEC ~ 30%; CVL of CD45 on Lymphocytes ~ 20%). By aggregating data acquired from all sites, CEC numbers in the healthy population were captured (medianfemale = 9.31 CEC/mL; medianmale = 11.55 CEC/mL). CEC count biological variability and method specificity were finally assessed. Results, obtained on a large population of donors, demonstrate that the established procedure might be adopted as standardized method for CEC analysis in clinical and in research settings, providing a CEC physiological baseline range, useful as starting point for their clinical monitoring in endothelial dysfunctions.

Lapatinib enhances antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC) activity of trastuzumab. FcγR polymorphisms have been associated with both ADCC and clinical activity of trastuzumab in HER2+ breast cancer (BC) patients (pts). We analyzed FcγRIIa-H131R and FcγRIIIa-V158F polymorphisms in the CHER-LOB trial population of HER2+ BCs treated with preoperative chemotherapy plus trastuzumab (arm A), lapatinib (arm B) or both (arm C). Genotyping was successfully performed in 73/121 (60%) pts. A significant improvement in pathological complete response (pCR) rate was observed for the combination arm C, but only in FcγRIIIa V allele carriers (C vs A, 67 vs 27%, P=0.043; C vs B, 67 vs 22%, P=0.012). An independent interaction between arm C and FcγRIIIa V allele was found for pCR (odds ratio=9.4; 95% confidence interval, 2.3-39.6; P=0.003). No significant associations were observed between pCR and FcγRIIa polymorphism, and between pre-treatment tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and FcγR polymorphisms. Our study provides evidence for a FcγRIIIa V allele-restricted pCR benefit from neoadjuvant trastuzumab plus lapatinib in HER2+ BC.