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The Mediterranean diet (MD) has been proposed as a healthy dietary pattern for disease prevention. However, little information exists on the cost and on the environmental impact of such a dietary model. We compared the environmental impact and the costs of the current food consumption pattern of the Italian population and the Mediterranean model in order to investigate its overall sustainability. The environmental impact was calculated on the basis of three indexes, i.e. Carbon, Ecological and Water Footprint. The costs (Euro) per person of the MD and of the current Italian household food expenditure were considered on a weekly basis according to the 2013 data from the Observatory prices and tariffs of the Ministry of Economic Development and the service SMS consumers of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry. The MD resulted to produce a lower environmental impact than the current food consumption of the Italian population. The monthly expenditure of the MD is slightly higher in the overall budget compared to the current expenditure allocated to food by the Italian population, but there is a substantial difference in the distribution of budget according to the different food groups.

The development cost of safety-critical embedded systems is dominated today by the cost of software including verification and validation. This cost is typically related to the complexity of the software functions implementing the desired system behavior in nominal and off-nominal conditions. A widely used measure of complexity is the cyclomatic number, which is computed on the implementation code. However this technique is not effective when model-based development and code generation are used because the complexity of the software also depends on the communication and execution semantics of the models. This paper proposes a model-based complexity number that is defined on the decision diagram (DD) representation of the system functionality. The proposed complexity number gives an upper bound on the number of tests that are necessary to achieve Condition/Decision (C/D) coverage (which is required for safety critical systems). We show that the number of tests is related to the min-flow/max-cut computed on the DD. By comparing the proposed metric with the cyclomatic complexity, we show that the former seems to be better suited for capturing the complexity of the model than the latter. A case study on an aircraft power system shows that the complexity metric has applications in functional partitioning and architecture selection.

Malnutrition occurs frequently in the elderly with important clinical and functional consequences. Moreover, the treatment of malnutrition in the elderly may be effective if clinical and nutritional interventions are performed in the early stages. Therefore the early identification of the risk of malnutrition using validated and handy tools plays a pivotal role in terms of clinical outcome. Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) was validated for this purpose since many years but it is still ongoing the debate over whether the use of different items in certain clinical conditions can be effective without affecting the validity of the nutritional status evaluation. The aim of this study was to assess the agreement between different versions of MNA in the evaluation of nutritional risk in elderly subjects. Methods: 522 subjects, 345 women and 177 men, were recruited from nursing homes or were free living in three different regions in Italy. All subjects underwent a multidimensional geriatric evaluation, addressed especially to nutritional status. We compared three different versions of MNA: the "original" version; a "proportional" MNA (MNA-P) in which the total MNA score was replaced by the ratio between the maximum score that each subject could obtain without including the body mass index (BMI) and the total original MNA score; and a third version in which calf circumference (CC) and mid-upper arm circumference (MAC) were used instead of BMI. Results: According to the original MNA, a high prevalence of malnutrition was found out in both genders (26% of women and 16.3% of men); both the versions of MNA, in which BMI was not considered, showed a good predictive value compared to original MNA. In particular, the MNA-P. showed an overall efficiency equal to 89,1% with specificity and positive predictive value respectively equal to 97.5% and 95.2%. MNA-CC-MAC showed even better results in terms of overall efficiency (91.4%), sensitivity (81.1%), specificity (97.1%), positive and negative predictive values (94.2% and 94.4%, respectively). Conclusion: The different versions of MNA gave similar results in the classifications of subjects and in comparison with nutritional and biochemical parameters. Moreover MNA versions that did not considered BMI seem to be more effective in singling out subjects with risk factors related to malnutrition (disability, reduced strength and calf circumference, anaemia). © 2013 Serdi and Springer-Verlag France.

Molecular gates have received considerable attention as drug delivery systems. More recently, aptamer-based gates showed great potential in overcoming major challenges associated with drug delivery by means of nanocapsules. Based on a switchable aptamer nanovalves approach, we herein report the first demonstration of an engineered single molecular gate that directs nanoparticles to cancer cells and subsequently delivers the payload in a controllable fashion.

The coordinative pattern is an important feature of locomotion that has been studied in a number of pathologies. It has been observed that adaptive changes in coordination patterns are due to both external and internal constraints. Obesity is characterized by the presence of excess mass at pelvis and lower-limb areas, causing mechanical constraints that central nervous system could manage modifying the physiological interjoint coupling relationships. Since an altered coordination pattern may induce joint diseases and falls risk, the aim of this study was to analyze whether and how coordination during walking is affected by obesity. We evaluated interjoint coordination during walking in 25 obese subjects as well as in a control group. The time-distance parameters and joint kinematics were also measured. When compared with the control group, obese people displayed a substantial similarity in joint kinematic parameters and some differences in the time-distance and in the coupling parameters. Obese subjects revealed higher values in stride-to-stride intrasubjects variability in interjoint coupling parameters, whereas the coordinative mean pattern was unaltered. The increased variability in the coupling parameters is associated with an increased risk of falls and thus should be taken into account when designing treatments aimed at restoring a normal locomotion pattern.

Objectives To evaluate the change in eating habits occurring in community- dwelling and institutionalized elderly subjects with senile anorexia. Design Cross- sectional, observational. Setting Community, nursing homes and rehabilitation or acute care facilities in four Italian regions. Participants A random sample of 526 subjects, aged 65 years and older (217 free living individuals, 213 residents in nursing homes, and 93 patients in rehabilitation and acute wards). Measurements All subjects underwent a multidimensional geriatric evaluation of: nutritional status, anthropometric parameters, health and cognitive status, depression, taste, chewing and swallowing function, and some hormones related to appetite. Diet variety was assessed, considering the frequency of consumption of different food groups (milk and dairy products; meat, fish, and eggs; cereals and derivatives; fruit and vegetables). Results In anorexic elderly subjects the global food intake was reduced, and the eating pattern was characterized by the reduced consumption of certain food groups (“meat, eggs and fish” and “fruit and vegetables”) whereas the frequency of consumption of milk and cereals remained almost unchanged. Nutritional parameters were significantly better in normal eating subjects and correlated with diet variety. Conclusion Because of the high prevalence of senile anorexia in the geriatric population and its impact on the nutritional status, further research should be prompted to establish an intervention. protocol allowing the early diagnosis of anorexia of aging, aimed at identifying its causes and at optimizing treatment of anorexic patients.

The aim of this intervention trial was to evaluate the impact of consumption of two different types of strawberry jam on glycaemic status in 16 non-complicated and 7 type 2 diabetic volunteers, having a body mass index higher than 30 kg/m2 (obesity status) and selected according to the specific criteria. Volunteers consumed a test meal consisting of 30 g of white bread, 50 g of an experimental jam (sweetened with organic apple juice) and 150 ml of whole cow milk; a control jam (sweetened with white beet sugar) was provided within the same test meal with a week gap. For the determination of glucose and insulin levels, venous blood samples were collected after overnight fasting and every 30 min for 3 h after the ingestion of the test meal. Both groups of volunteers had a significantly lower (P

We propose a methodology, and its embodiment into a design flow, to realize execution platforms for high-performance building applications. This is an example of a class of cyber-physical systems where a network of sensors, controllers, and actuators must be designed under physical spatial constraints to implement various types of signal processing and control tasks. In our approach, the applications are specified using the dataflow model of computation while the building dictates the physical constraints, including the position of sensors and actuators. We present a rigorous formulation of the design-space exploration problem and we propose to solve it by progressing through a sequence of refinement steps from specification to detailed implementation. Two key steps are the synthesis of the computation platform and the synthesis of the communication network. Combined, they allow us to automatically derive an optimal implementation through the selection and composition of processing and networking elements from given technology libraries. We demonstrate the applicability of our approach by comparing it to the manual design of a given case study: the real-time estimation of building occupancy using a network of video cameras.

The service done by technicians on distribution power lines has a high risk of accidents. One common dangerous situation, which the technician is exposed, is when he passes over the minimum security distance, according to international recommendations. This article is based on a development study for an electronic device capable to detecting the electric field coming from 13,8kV distribution power lines and small enough to be installed on security helmets. This way, it can be classified as individual security equipment.

We propose a system-level design flow for building automation and control (BAC) systems. The input to the design flow is a high level description of the control algorithms given in a model-based environment such as Simulink. The input specification is translated into an intermediate format, and then automatically refined into a distributed implementation. Refinement includes optimal mapping of the functional specification on a set of computation and communication resources, and software synthesis, which generates code for each component in the mapped design while guaranteeing semantic equivalence with the original specification. Experiments with a temperature control system are presented to illustrate the flow.

A new generation of aerospace systems has introduced more-electric technologies and highly coupled architectures, leading to a substantial increase in design complexity. The inability of current design systems to manage this complexity has lead to substantial cost and schedule overruns during the development of new military and commercial platforms. This paper presents the framework for a new design process to manage system complexity and highlights four key elements: 1) Abstraction-based design tools to allow complex interactions to be assessed at a high level of abstraction early in the design cycle; 2) Quantitative complexity metrics that can guide early design decisions and identify sources of complexity within candidate designs; 3) Advanced architecture synthesis methods that enable the formal and automated architecture synthesis, enumeration, and evaluation of feasible architecture options; and 4) Robust uncertainty management for identifying strong coupling between systems with high uncertainty, thereby allowing the identification and management of key risks.

by an implementation. The implementation choices are implicitly captured by a set of components, their properties, and their composition rules. A class of candidate implementations of the specication is derived by formulating and solving an optimization problem. The implementation becomes the specication for the next step in the design ow. We show how the optimization oriented formalization enables design space exploration, and we present the trade-os involved in the selection of the renement steps. We show how the methodology can be applied to the design of electric power systems by decomposing the design ow into the following steps: generator selection, generation of the connection conguration under faults, and topology design of the power distribution system.

In this paper, we extend our previous work [3] by including the decisions for connection-scheduling as part of the automated synthesis of embedded networks for networked control systems. We propose an automated approach for the synthesis of a cost-effective and correctby- construction communication network for embedded applications subject to a set of end-to-end communication constraints of latency, bandwidth, and error-rate, the geometry constraints arising due to a desired geographical placement of the network, and a set of scheduling constraints. We also apply the proposed approach for network synthesis with scheduling to the synthesis of wireless networks for centralized and distributed state estimation in building automation and control. The proposed approach is general enough to be applicable to wired and wireless network synthesis.

A real-time apta-PCR for the ultrasensitive detection of thrombin is reported, where the thrombin aptamer acts not only as a biomolecular recognition element, but also as a label for amplification via real-time PCR. Aptamers can be easily converted to a reporter agent for detection by real-time PCR, simply via flanking of the aptamer's recognition moiety with primer sequences. The reported technique has the advantage of the ultrasensitivity achievable with immuno-PCR, but without the complications of addition of a DNA label, and is a technique generically applicable to all aptamers. Here, we use a sandwich format, where two existing thrombin binding aptamers with distinct binding epitopes have been utilised to capture and detect thrombin in a streptavidin-coated microtiter plate. The amount of thrombin is calculated from real-time PCR analysis of eluted captured reporter aptamer. However, the technique can also be used for aptamer-antibody sandwiches, or simply with single aptamers. A greater than 20 000-fold increase in sensitivity is achieved, highlighting the potential of this approach for the detection of very low levels of target analytes. The use of the aptamer itself as the reporter molecule eliminates the necessity of laborious enzyme/DNA labelling, facilitating a significantly more straightforward assay with a vastly enhanced sensitivity.

L’allungamento della durata media della vita impone la necessita di identificare i fattori determinanti di un successful ageing, al fine di salvaguardare la qualita di vita dell’anziano e contenere i costi sociali e sanitari imputabili a soggetti “fragili” e non autosufficienti.

We present a methodology and a software framework for the automatic design exploration of the communication network among sensors, actuators and controllers in building automation systems. Given 1) a set of end-to-end latency, throughput and packet error rate constraints between nodes, 2) the building geometry, and 3) a library of communication components together with their performance and cost characterization, a synthesis algorithm produces a network implementation that satisfies all end-to-end constraints and that is optimal with respect to installation and maintenance cost. The methodology is applied to the synthesis of wireless networks for an essential step in any control algorithm in a distributed environment: the estimation of control variables such as temperature and air-flow in buildings.

Background and aim The human peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPAR-γ) is involved in lipid storage, glucose homeostasis and adipocyte differentiation. The Ala allele of the Pro12Ala polymorphism has been associated with a protective effect against T2DM. Ala allele frequencies are known for many populations, but data are absent for other interesting human groups. Methods and results We examined samples from Ethiopia, Benin, Ecuador and Italy. In addition, we performed an analysis of the Pro12Ala polymorphism distribution in world populations, also in relation to T2DM prevalence and the diet lipid content. In the European populations, the Ala allele frequencies are distributed according to a latitudinal trend, with the highest in the northern and central European populations and the lowest in the Mediterranean populations. Considering the world populations, a significant inverse relationship between Ala frequency and T2DM prevalence was observed mainly in populations where energy from lipids exceeded 30% of the total energy intake. Conclusion Northern Europe's cold climate has been hypothesised to have played a role in contributing to the present pattern. Moreover our analysis appears to confirm, at a population level, the protective effect of Ala allele against T2DM, already observed in case-control studies, but only in populations with a diet rich in lipids.

The explosive growth of embedded electronics is bringing information and control systems of increasing complexity to every aspects of our lives. The most challenging designs are safety-critical systems, such as transportation systems (e.g., airplanes, cars, and trains), industrial plants and health care monitoring. The difficulties reside in accommodating constraints both on functionality and implementation. The correct behavior must be guaranteed under diverse states of the environment and potential failures; implementation has to meet cost, size, and power consumption requirements. The design is therefore subject to extensive mathematical analysis and simulation. However, traditional models of information systems do not interface well to the continuous evolving nature of the environment in which these devices operate. Thus, in practice, different mathematical representations have to be mixed to analyze the overall behavior of the system. Hybrid systems are a particular class of mixed models that focus on the combination of discrete and continuous subsystems. There is a wealth of tools and languages that have been proposed over the years to handle hybrid systems. However, each tool makes different assumptions on the environment, resulting in somewhat different notions of hybrid system. This makes it difficult to share information among tools. Thus, the community cannot maximally leverage the substantial amount of work that has been directed to this important topic. In this paper, we review and compare hybrid system tools by highlighting their differences in terms of their underlying semantics, expressive power and mathematical mechanisms. We conclude our review with a comparative summary, which suggests the need for a unifying approach to hybrid systems design. As a step in this direction, we make the case for a semantic-aware interchange format, which would enable the use of joint techniques, make a formal comparison between different approaches possible, and facilitate exporting and importing design representations.

Recent observations support the hypothesis that inflammatory processes at the brain level may contribute to the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPAR-gamma) is involved in such processes, so we thought it interesting to study the Pro12Ala polymorphism in exon 2 of the gene in a sample of late-onset AD patients. We found that Ala genotypes were significantly overrepresented among octogenarian patients compared to controls (p=0.034). Using logistic regression we observed that carrying the Ala allele significantly increased by nearly two-fold the risk of developing AD in subjects 80 years or older (OR=1.98; 95% CI 1.03-3.80, p=0.04). Though this difference was borderline significant after correction for multiple comparisons, our results suggest a possible involvement of the PPAR-gamma gene in susceptibility to late-onset AD in octogenarians.

The debate about efficient methods for hardware-software co-design has taken interesting turns over the years. In this paper, we argue that the essential problems to solve are prior to the decision on how to partition the system in hardware-software. We present a formal platform-based design method we have proposed over the years and a design environment, Metropolis, supporting the methodology, which starts by capturing the design specifications at the highest level of abstraction and then proceed toward an efficient implementation by subsequent refinement steps. We present the modeling strategy used in Metropolis based on formal semantics that is general enough to support the models of computation proposed so far and that facilitates the creation of new ones. Nonfunctional and declarative constraints can also be captured using a logic language.

Publisher Summary This chapter presents the Metropolis design environment for the design of complex electronic systems. It is based on a metamodel with formal semantics, which can be used to capture designs directly or import them from other specification languages. It also supports simulation, formal analysis, and synthesis tools. The framework is conceived to encompass different application domains. Each application domain needs different models, tools, and flows. Metropolis captures heterogeneous system designs in a unified semantic model. Heterogeneity is supported at the utmost level in Metropolis to allow this kind of customization. The formal semantics of the metamodel permits embedding of models of computation in a rigorous framework, thus favoring design reuse and design chain support. The features of the system facilitate the designers with different knowledge domains. The chapter also uses a multimedia design as an example of the use of Metropolis.

An increased protein intake is one of the most common approaches to the dietary management of obesity. The authors analyze the issues related to protein requirement in normal-weight and obese subjects, to the use and to the usefulness of high-protein diets in the treatment of obesity. Caution with these diets is recommended in view of their only slight effect on weight and fat loss and owing to the scarce evidence of significant effects on satiety and energy intake. Furthermore, the risks of harmful outcomes may be correlated to an excessive protein intake. Moreover, these diets do not allow patients to adopt those nutritional behavior rules which are essential to maintain the weight and fat loss and, consequently, significantly reduce the cardiovascular and metabolic risks related to obesity.

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnologico Este trabalho apresenta uma aplicação de metodologia multicritérios em apoio à decisão na seleção de uma cultivar de arroz a ser semeada em uma determinada área de plantio de uma dada propriedade, com vistas a colaborar na busca pela competitividade no setor orizícola do RS. O trabalho divide-se em três partes principais, além da introdução e da conclusão. A primeira trata das problemáticas e convicções do MCDA, onde dá-se ênfase a convicção da onipresença da subjetividade e sua interpenetrabilidade com os elementos de natureza objetiva. Na segunda parte, estrutura-se o problema, utilizando-se a técnica de mapeamento cognitivo e a abordagem de estruturação por pontos de vista para a construção de uma estrutura arborescente onde encontram-se os pontos de vista fundamentais e elementares que formam a base do modelo de avaliação e são as características consideradas críticas para avaliação das ações potenciais segundo o decisor. Para modelização das preferências do decisor utilizou-se a técnica interativa MACBETH, que transforma julgamentos semânticos de valor em escala de intervalos cardinal. Na terceira parte, a fase de avaliação, procedeu-se a identificação das ações potenciais, avaliou-se parcialmente cada ação sobre cada PVFj, fez-se a agregação global das mesmas estabelecendo-se um "ranking" por ordem de atratividade para o decisor e algumas recomendações.

We propose an efficient heuristic for the constraint-driven communication synthesis (CDCS) of on-chip communication networks. The complexity of the synthesis problems comes from the number of constraints that have to be considered. We propose to cluster constraints to reduce the number that needs to be considered by the optimization algorithm. Then a quadratic programming approach is used to solve the communication synthesis problem with the clustered constraints. We provide an analytical model that justifies our choice of the clustering cost function and we discuss a set of experiments showing the effectiveness of the overall approach with respect to the exact algorithm.

Constraint-driven communication synthesis enables the automatic design of the communication architecture of a complex system from a library of pre-defined intellectual property (IP) components. The key communication parameters that govern all the point-to-point interactions among system modules are captured as a set of arc constraints in the communication constraint graph. Similarly, the communication features offered by each of the components available in the IP communication library are captured as a set of feature resources together with its cost figures. Then, every communication architecture that can be built using the available components while satisfying all constraints is implicitly considered (as an implementation graph matching the constraint graph) to derive the optimum design solution with respect to the desired cost figure. The corresponding constrained optimization problem is efficiently solved by a novel algorithm that is presented here together with its rigorous theoretical foundations.

10.1007/s00216-012-6183-4 Single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) generation is a crucial step in several molecular biology applications, such as sequencing or DNA chip and microarray technology. Molecules of ssDNA also play a key role in the selection of ssDNA aptamers through Systematic Evolution of Ligands by EXponential enrichment (SELEX). With particular interest for this application, herein we present a comparative study of the most used methods for generation of ssDNA used in SELEX, such as asymmetric PCR, enzyme digestion and magnetic separation with streptavidin beads. In addition, we evaluate a new technique that combines asymmetric PCR and enzyme digestion with the aim to achieve the maximum efficiency in ssDNA generation. The methods studied were compared in terms of quality of ssDNA using electrophoretic analysis and generated ssDNA yields were quantitatively measured using an Enzyme-Linked OligoNucleotide Assay (ELONA).