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Drawing upon recent literature, which employs social networks in the field of project management, the aim of this research is to empirically investigate the importance of projects’ social capital for knowledge development in R&D projects. Primary data were collected via sociometric questionnaires on a population of 53 biotech R&D projects located at one of the most important science parks in Sweden. The analysis focused on the distinctive structural configuration of projects’ social capital, among which the roles of network diversity were emphasized. Our results suggest that certain structural configurations of project social capital maximize the level of effectiveness in knowledge development. More specifically, we found an inverted U-shaped relationship between projects’ network diversity and their level of knowledge development, demonstrating that intermediate levels of diversity maximize project knowledge development. Implications for innovation managers and policymakers are discussed.

Background There are no Italian data regarding the strategies for preventing neonatal group B streptococcal (GBS) infection. We conducted a national survey in order to explore obstetrical, neonatal and microbiological practices for the GBS prevention. Methods Three distinct questionnaires were sent to obstetricians, neonatologists and microbiologists. Questionnaires included data on prenatal GBS screening, maternal risk factors, intrapartum antibiotic prophylaxis, microbiological information concerning specimen processing and GBS antimicrobial susceptibility. Results All respondent obstetrical units used the culture-based screening approach to identify women who should receive intrapartum antibiotic prophylaxis, and more than half of the microbiological laboratories (58%) reported using specimen processing consistent with CDC guidelines. Most neonatal units (89 out of 107, 82%) reported using protocols for preventing GBS early-onset sepsis consistent with CDC guidelines. Conclusions The screening-based strategy is largely prevalent in Italy, and most protocols for preventing GBS early-onset sepsis are consistent with CDC guidelines. However, we found discrepancies in practices among centers that may reflect the lack of Italian guidelines issued by public health organizations.

Membership of an extensive social network is imperative for human survival. However, maintaining network cohesion is particularly challenging for hunter-gatherers because they are dispersed over large home ranges, and need to keep track of absent social partners for extended periods. The archaeological record suggests that compared to Neanderthals, contemporary modern humans main-tained social ties between greater numbers of individuals over great-er distances. I argue that such differences would have influenced neural development, driving differences in brain structure and the degree of social complexity that each taxon could sustain cognitive-ly. Following recent suggestions that modern humans’ larger parie-tals might suggest an enhanced ability to create a ‘virtual inner world’, I hypothesise that this capacity allowed them to monitor larger numbers of absent social partners and thus maintain larger dispersed social networks than their Neanderthal counterparts. Larg-er social networks would have boosted the ability of modern humans to insure against local resource failure, sustain demographic stability and conserve cultural innovations.

International audience; This article describes the data collection techniques and interprets the acquired data for validating a method for simulating fluid structure interaction. The method combines structural and aerodynamic reduced order models, interpolation techniques, and an efficient aero-structure data exchange to estimate non-linear fluid structure interaction during transient response in order to reduce the simulation time. Data are collected through wind tunnel testing and validation is done through direct comparison between simulation and test-data.

The role of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) colonization as a predictor of invasive disease in intensive care unit (ICU) patients was established many years ago. The role of mefhicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) colonization is more debated, although in a recent report patients who were carriers of MRSA or MSSA at ICU admission were found to be at increased risk. Whether carriage at ICU admission involves a higher risk of invasive infection than carriage acquired during an ICU stay has not been established. We report the results of a study aimed at estimating the frequency of S. aureus (MRSA and MSSA) colonization at admission and at discharge in patients admitted to several ICUs in Italy and at estimating the relationship between colonization status and infection by S. aureus.

The aim of our study was to verify the efficacy of transvaginal ultrasound scanning as an indicator of the endometrial status in healthy menopausal women. One hundred eighty five healthy women in natural menopause were examined by vaginal sonography; the endometrial patterns were analyzed and the influence on it of body weight, menopausal age, and hormonal therapy was considered. The presence of irregular and the endometrial histology were related to the ultrasound findings. 38% of the women assumed estrogen plus progestin replacement treatment since one-two years, for menopausal complaints. 17% of all patients reported irregular bleeding during the last month. The majority of women (90%), regardless of the hormone assumption, presented en endometrial thickness less than 10 mm. 10% of untreated and treated women had an endometrial thickness between 10 and 20 mm. Among the subjects with elevated menopausal age is more frequent the imaging of endometrial layer minor than 5 mm in comparison with women in early menopause. 4% of untreated and 10% of treated women without irregular bleeding had an endometrial thickness higher than 10 mm, while 67% of women with irregular bleeding presented an endometrial layer higher than 10 mm. In treated group all women with endometrial thickness greater than 10 mm had amenorrhoea. 86% of patients had endometrial atrophy detected by biopsy; hyperplastic endometrium or endometrial cancer was not demonstrated. In conclusion, vaginal sonography is a simple and reliable method in the study of the endometrial pattern in healthy menopausal women.

The Middle Pastoral human remains from Wadi Takarkori in the Libyan Acacus mountains (Fezzan) are exceptionally preserved partial mummies ranging between 6100 and 5000 uncal years BP; this small sample represents the most ancient of its kind ever found. In this report, we present a survey of the skeletal anatomy of these mummifed corpses, based on high resolution CT-scan data, including a preliminary phenetic interpretation of their cranial morphology.

A number of different approaches are currently available to digitally restore the symmetry of a specimen deformed by taphonomic processes. These tools include mirroring and retrodefor-mation to approximate the original shape of an object by symmetrisation. Retrodeformation has the potential to return a rather faithful representation of the original shape, but its power is limited by the availability of bilateral landmarks. A recent protocol proposed by Schlager and colleagues (2018) overcomes this issue by using bilateral landmarks and curves as well as semilandmarks. Here we applied this protocol to the Middle Pleistocene human cranium from Steinheim (Germany), the holotype of an abandoned species named Homo steinheimensis. The peculiar morphology of this fossil, associated with the taphonomic deformation of the entire cranium and the lack of a large portion of the right side of the face, has given rise to different hypotheses over its phylogenetic position. The reconstruction presented here sheds new light on the taphonomic origin of some features observed on this crucial specimen and results in a morphology consistent with its attribution to the Neanderthal lineage. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

In modern shape analysis, deformation is quantified in different ways depending on the algorithms used and on the scale at which it is evaluated. While global affine and non-affine deformation components can be decoupled and computed using a variety of methods, the very local deformation can be considered, infinitesimally, as an affine deformation. The deformation gradient tensor F can be computed locally using a direct calculation by exploiting triangulation or tetrahedralization structures or by locally evaluating the first derivative of an appropriate interpolation function mapping the global deformation from the undeformed to the deformed state. A suitable function is represented by the thin plate spline (TPS) that separates affine from non-affine deformation components. F, also known as Jacobian matrix, encodes both the locally affine deformation and local rotation. This implies that it should be used for visualizing primary strain directions (PSDs) and deformation ellipses and ellipsoids on the target configuration. Using C = FTF allows, instead, one to compute PSD and to visualize them on the source configuration. Moreover, C allows the computation of the strain energy that can be evaluated and mapped locally at any point of a body using an interpolation function. In addition, it is possible, by exploiting the second-order Jacobian, to calculate the amount of the non-affine deformation in the neighborhood of the evaluation point by computing the body bending energy density encoded in the deformation. In this contribution, we present (i) the main computational methods for evaluating local deformation metrics, (ii) a number of different strategies to visualize them on both undeformed and deformed configurations, and (iii) the potential pitfalls in ignoring the actual three-dimensional nature of F when it is evaluated along a surface identified by a triangulation in three dimensions. © Copyright © 2020 Piras, Profico, Pandolfi, Raia, Di Vincenzo, Mondanaro, Castiglione and Varano.

Modern humans have larger and more globular brains when compared to other primates. Such anatomical features are further reflected in the possession of a moderately asymmetrical brain with the two hemispheres apparently rotated counterclockwise and slid anteroposteriorly on one another, in what is traditionally described as the Yakovlevian torque. Developmental disturbance in human brain asymmetry, or lack thereof, has been linked to several cognitive disorders including schizophrenia and depression. More importantly, the presence of the Yakovlevian torque is often advocated as the exterior manifestation of our unparalleled cognitive abilities. Consequently, studies of brain size and asymmetry in our own lineage indirectly address the question of what, and when, made us humans, trying to trace the emergence of brain asymmetry and expansion of cortical areas back in our Homo antecedents. Here, we tackle this same issue by studying the evolution of human brain size, shape, and asymmetry on a phylogenetic tree including 19 apes and Homo species, inclusive of our fellow ancestors. We found that a significant positive shift in the rate of brain shape evolution pertains to the clade including modern humans, Neanderthals, and Homo heidelbergensis. Although the Yakovlevian torque is well evident in these species and levels of brain asymmetry are correlated to changes in brain shape, further early Homo species possess the torque. Even though a strong allometric component is present in hominoid brain shape variability, this component seems unrelated to asymmetry and to the rate shift we recorded. These results suggest that changes in brain size and asymmetry were not the sole factors behind the fast evolution of brain shape in the most recent Homo species. The emergence of handedness and early manifestations of cultural modernity in the archeological record nicely coincide with the same three species sharing the largest and most rapidly evolving brains among all hominoids. © Copyright © 2020 Melchionna, Profico, Castiglione, Sansalone, Serio, Mondanaro, Di Febbraro, Rook, Pandolfi, Di Vincenzo, Manzi and Raia.

New technologies are changing the sector of infrastructures design and construction. One of the most important is the I-BIM (Infrastructure Building Information Modelling), that is a management information system of digital processes for infrastructures. In this study the I-BIM approach has been used for the upgrade of a section of the SS 245 road, in the north of Italy, in order to show its benefits applied on existing road infrastructure. The project involved the design of a new road segment and its connection with the existing road network and with a railway line. These last were respectively solved by a roundabout and by a jacked tunnel under the railroad with wing walls at each exit side of the structure. The steps carried out in this study were modelling the 3D digital terrain model from point cloud; creating the horizontal alignment, vertical profiles and editing cross-sections; modelling the jacked tunnel; creating the roundabout; generating the 3D parametric model of the complete road and visualizing the infrastructure in the real-world context. The real innovation consists in the creation of a plugin that allows extrapolating directly from the design program to the compute one, all the features need to be calculated. The BIM tools used were “Autodesk AutoCAD Civil 3D” and “Revit Structure”, used respectively for road geometrical design and for tunnel structural project. The obtained results have been showed that the I-BIM approach represents not only a powerful tool to optimize and validate the road project according to norms before its construction, but also to see how the infrastructure works with the 3D real environmental context.

Membership of an extensive social network is imperative for human survival. However, maintaining network cohesion is particularly challenging for hunter-gatherers because they are dispersed over large home ranges, and need to keep track of absent social partners for extended periods. The archaeological record suggests that compared to Neanderthals, contemporary modern humans main-tained social ties between greater numbers of individuals over great-er distances. I argue that such differences would have influenced neural development, driving differences in brain structure and the degree of social complexity that each taxon could sustain cognitive-ly. Following recent suggestions that modern humans’ larger parie-tals might suggest an enhanced ability to create a ‘virtual inner world’, I hypothesise that this capacity allowed them to monitor larger numbers of absent social partners and thus maintain larger dispersed social networks than their Neanderthal counterparts. Larg-er social networks would have boosted the ability of modern humans to insure against local resource failure, sustain demographic stability and conserve cultural innovations.

The evolutionary relationship between the base and face of the cranium is a major topic of interest in primatology. Such areas of the skull possibly respond to different selective pressures. Yet, they are often said to be tightly integrated. In this paper, we analyzed shape variability in the cranial base and the facial complex in Cercopithecoidea and Hominoidea. We used a landmark-based approach to single out the effects of size (evolutionary allometry), morphological integration, modularity, and phylogeny (under Brownian motion) on skull shape variability. Our results demonstrate that the cranial base and the facial complex exhibit different responses to different factors, which produces a little degree of morphological integration between them. Facial shape variation appears primarily influenced by body size and sexual dimorphism, whereas the cranial base is mostly influenced by functional factors. The different adaptations affecting the two modules suggest they are best studied as separate and independent units, and that—at least when dealing with Catarrhines—caution must be posed with the notion of strong cranial integration that is commonly invoked for the evolution of their skull shape. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

BACKGROUND: Modern healthcare is characterized by high complexity due to the proliferation of specialties, professional roles, and priorities within organizations. To perform clinical interventions, knowledge distributed across units, directorates and individuals needs to be integrated. Formal and/or informal mechanisms may be used to coordinate knowledge and tasks within organizations. Although the literature has recently considered the role of physicians' professional networks in the diffusion of knowledge, several concerns remain about the mechanisms through which these networks emerge within healthcare organizations. The aim of the present paper is to explore the impact of institutional and professional homophilies on the formation of interphysician professional networks. METHODS: We collected data on a community of around 300 physicians working at a local health authority within the Italian National Health Service. We employed multiple regression quadratic assignment procedures to explore the extent to which institutional and professional homophilies influence the formation of interphysician networks. RESULTS: We found that both institutional and professional homophilies matter in explaining interphysician networks. Physicians who had similar fields of interest or belonged to the same organizational structure were more likely to establish professional relationships. In addition, professional homophily was more relevant than institutional affiliation in explaining collaborative ties. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings have organizational implications and provide useful information for managers who are responsible for undertaking organizational restructuring. Healthcare executives and administrators may want to consider the structure of advice networks while adopting new organizational structures.