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Nell’ambito delle attività sviluppate dalla regione siciliana nella redazione del Piano Forestale Regionale 2009- 2013, negli anni 2006/2007 sono stati realizzati 8 campi sperimentali in diversi contesti pedoclimatici siciliani (Bioclima: mesomediterraneo e supramediterraneo. Substrato: alluvionale, argilloso, calcareo, flyshioide, sabbioso/ siliceo) in 5 province siciliane (Agrigento, Enna, Messina, Palermo e Trapani). La scelta delle specie da piantare è stata compiuta sulla base di una suddivisione del territorio siciliano per aree ecologicamente omogenee compiuta dal gruppo di Selvicoltura di UNIPA, e utilizzata per fornire uno strumento operativo e vincolante per i progetti forestali realizzati nell’ambito del PSR. Le piantine utilizzate erano state prodotte utilizzando semi raccolti localmente in ossequio alla legislazione della regione siciliana, che obbliga, per i rimboschimenti, l’utilizzo di materiale di moltiplicazione raccolto nell’ambito del territorio dell’isola. L’obiettivo dello studio era quindi quello di valutare la performance di attecchimento e crescita di diverse specie forestali autoctone da impiegare in impianti di rimboschimento e arboricoltura da legno in Sicilia nell’ambito dei vari contesti pedo-climatici siciliani. In par - ticolare sono state impiegate le seguenti specie: Acer campestre, Acer monspessulanum, Acer obtusatum, Acer pseudoplatanus, Castanea sativa, Celtis australis, Ceratonia siliqua, Fagus sylvatica, Fraxinus angustifolia, Fraxinus excelsior, Fraxinus ornus, Ilex aquifolium, Malus sylvestris, Olea europaea var. sylvestris, Phillyrea latifolia, Pistacia lentiscus, Pyrus amygdaliformis, Pyrus pyraster, Prunus avium, Prunus dulcis, Quercus cerris, Quercus ilex, Quercus petraea, Quercus pubescens, Quercus suber, Sorbus domestica e Sorbus torminalis. Complessivamente sono state utilizzate circa 6300 piantine, comprensive del ripristino delle fallanze, provenienti dai vivai del Dipartimento Regionale dello Sviluppo Rurale e Territoriale di Castellammare del Golfo, Filici, Piano Noce, Piazza Armerina e Ziriò. I primi rilievi, eseguiti negli anni successivi all’impianto, hanno dato indicazioni utili sulla sopravvivenza e l’accrescimento delle diverse specie forestali. Purtroppo, negli anni seguenti i campi hanno subito una fase di abbandono che si è tradotto nell’assenza di cure colturali e soprattutto nel pascolo. Tuttavia, questi fattori di disturbo possono essere considerati “normali” nelle nostre condizioni e pertanto, anziché essere un fattore eccezionale, possono essere considerati un “fattore” ambientale. Durante il 2021 sono stati ripetuti i rilievi, nei siti in cui sono sopravvissute piante affermate, che hanno confermato la diversa capacità di crescita e resistenza di alcune specie rispetto ad altre. Queste informazioni saranno preziose per gli interventi di rimboschimento da compiere nei prossimi anni in un contesto ambientale sempre più difficile ed incerto a causa dei cambiamenti climatici e delle crescenti minacce verso gli ecosistemi forestali mediterranei.

Il vasto complesso forestale indicato come Bosco della Ficuzza ebbe origine quando Ferdinando IV di Borbone, costretto dagli avvenimenti tumultuosi del 1798 a fuggire da Napoli si trasferì in Sicilia. Essendo un grande appassionato di caccia, il sovrano fece costituire diverse tenute di caccia; così sorsero le tenute reali della Favorita a Palermo e quella di Ficuzza. Il Re migliorò la viabilità per giungere a Ficuzza, e poi quella interna al bosco. Nel 1802 diede l’incarico prima all’architetto palermitano Venazio Marvuglia e poi all’architetto Carlo Chenchi di edificare la Real Casina di Caccia, dove dimorò per lunghi anni, praticando, tra tutti i suoi preferiti svaghi, la caccia e la pesca. A Ficuzza, Ferdinando IV si adoperò a costituire una delle sue più grandi riserve di caccia. Così vennero riuniti i feudi di Lupo, Ficuzza e Cappelliere, costituiti i confini con “muracche” (muraglie in pietra) e pilieri recanti la scritta “R.R.“, Reali Riserve, impose norme restrittive alla libera caccia. Altresì, il re dotò il bosco di una ben distribuita rete viaria e si adoperò alla cura dei boschi, al ripopolamento della selvaggina, facendo arrivare da fuori cinghiali, daini e cervi. Inoltre, fece costruire in vari posti del bosco rifugi per i guardiacaccia, masserie e ricoveri per gli armenti, avendo costituito grossi allevamenti di bovini e ovini, abbeveratoi e altre “infrastrutture” al servizio della caccia come il “pulpito del re”, ricavato in un grosso masso di arenaria dove il re si appostava per sparare a lepri, cinghiali e daini che i battitori stanavano. Altra struttura degna di menzione è la “pescheria del Gorgo del Drago”, uno stagno alimentato da una sorgente perenne dove il re, durante il riposo venatorio per il ripopolamento della selvaggina, si dilettava a pescare, ospite nella adiacente casa, oggi ridotta ad un rudere. Le muracche erano state costruite con massi di varia dimensione accatastati in modo da formare dei parallelepipedi di larghezza di circa 1 m, e alte fino a 2 m, a formare estese muraglie lungo i confini delle tenute di caccia reali. Una sorta di recinzioni che servivano a proteggere le aree destinate al ripopolamento della selvaggina ma anche i boschi, tanto cari al re, soggetti agli interventi selvicolturali. Infatti, il re al suo primo sopralluogo a Ficuzza, scrisse nel suo diario di bordo “... i boschi sono ampi e ricchi di selvaggina, ma mal tenuti e troppo sfruttati”. Ecco perché, appena stabilitosi a Ficuzza, il Re iniziò ad adoperarsi per ricostituire i boschi degradati e troppo sfruttati, proteggendoli dal pascolo e da ogni pericolo con le muracche. Lungo le muracche erano presenti dei passaggi delimitati da cancelli, usati per il transito dei boscaioli e della selvaggina. Nei vertici delle muracche erano presenti i pilieri in pietra che, oltre alla scritta “R.R.”, riportavano sopra quest’ultima il simbolo della corona reale. L’opera meritoria di Ferdinando IV di Borbone è stata decisiva nella destinazione della “Foresta nazionale inalienabile di Ficuzza” come “Stazione climatica” ai sensi della Legge n. 535 del 1901 del Regno d’Italia. Delle muracche originarie oggi sono rimaste solo le vestigia coperte da muschi e intrigate nella vegetazione. L’Ente gestore della Riserva ha ripristinato solo una piccola parte degli antichi manufatti a scopo dimostrativo della originaria forma strutturale. L’obiettivo di questo lavoro è stato quello di realizzare un inventario dell’attuale consistenza e stato di manutenzione delle muracche e di tutte le altre infrastrutture ancora esistenti al fine di ricostruire il loro originale sviluppo all’interno della foresta. Tale inventario, oltre ad essere importante dal punto di vista storico, culturale e paesaggistico, può contribuire alla ricostruzione storica della gestione forestale dei boschi di Ficuzza e, al tempo stesso, può avere un ruolo chiave nella definizione del particellare ai fini della redazione del piano di gestione forestale della riserva. Può inoltre essere la base per avviare un serio progetto di recupero di questo patrimonio indissolubilmente legato alla storia umana e naturale di Ficuzza. The vast wooded area known as “Bosco Ficuzza” originated when Ferdinando IV Borbone, forced by the tumultuous events in 1798 to escape from Naples, moved to Sicily. The King, being a great hunting enthusiast, established several hunting estates; thus the royal estates of the Favorita in Palermo and that of Ficuzza rose. The King improved the viability to reach Ficuzza, and then those inside the forest. In 1802 he was commissioned to the venetian architect Venazio Marvuglia and then to the architect Carlo Chenchi to build the “Real Casina di Caccia”, where he lived for many years, practicing, among all his favorite leisure activities, hunting and fishing. In Ficuzza, Ferdinando IV worked to constitute one of his largest hunting reserves. Thus the fiefs of Lupo, Ficuzza and Cappelliere were reunited, the boundaries constituted with “muracche”" (stone walls) and “pilieri” (stone stacks) bearing the inscription "R.R.", Reali Riserve (i.e. Royal Reserves), and he imposed restrictive rules to free hunting. Also, the King endowed the forest with a well-distributed road network and he worked to the care of the woods, to repopulate the game species, by bringing out wild boar, fallow deer and deer. Moreover, in various places of the forest, he had it built shelters for the keepers, farms and shelters for livestock, having formed large cattle and sheep farms, drinking troughs and other infrastructures at the service of hunting such as the "The King's pulpit", obtained from a large sandstone boulder where the King used to shoot hares, wild boars and fallow deer that the beaters used to drive out. Another structure worthy of mention is the “fishmonger of the Gorgo del Drago”, a pond fed by a perennial spring where the King, during the hunting rest for the repopulation of the game species, was delighted to fish, guest in the adjacent house, today reduced to a ruin. The muracche had been built with boulders of various dimensions stacked so as to form parallelepipeds with a width of about 1 m, and up to 2 m tall, to form extensive walls along the boundaries of royal hunting estates. They were a kind of fences that served to protect the areas destined to the repopulation of the game species but also the woods, so dear to the King, subjected to silvicultural interventions. In fact, the King at his first visit to Ficuzza, wrote in his logbook “... the woods are wide and rich in game species, but poorly managed and too much exploited”. This is why, as soon as he settled in Ficuzza, the King began to work to recover the degraded and over-exploited forests, protecting them from grazing and from any other danger with the muracche. Along the muracche there were passages delimited by gates, used for the transit of woodcutters and game species. At the top of the muracche there were stone stacks which, in addition to the inscription “R.R.”, had the symbol of the royal crown above it. The meritorious work of Ferdinand IV of Bourbon was decisive in the destination of the "Inalienable National Forest of Ficuzza" as "Climate Station" in accordance with the Law n. 535 of 1901 of the Kingdom of Italy. Of the original muracche today there are only the remains covered by mosses and intrigued in the vegetation. The managing body of the Reserve has restored only a small part of the ancient artifacts for demonstration purposes of the original structural form. The objective of this work is to create an inventory of the current consistency and state of maintenance of the muracche and of all the other infrastructures still existing in order to reconstruct their original development within the forest. This inventory, in addition to being important from an historical, cultural and landscape point of view, can contribute to the historical reconstruction of the forest management of the Ficuzza woods and, at the same time, can play a key role in defining particles for the purposes of drawing up the forest management plan of the reserve. It can also be the basis for starting a serious project to recover this heritage inextricably linked to the human and natural history of Ficuzza.

Purpose Methods and Materials Results Conclusion References Personal Information, Purpose: Potential advantages to neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) in breast cancer patients include presurgical reduction of tumor volume and earlier treatment of possible occult micrometastatic disease with the breast mass acting as a “marker” for...

Purpose Methods and Materials Results Conclusion References Personal Information, Purpose: Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease that includes multiple molecular subtypes with different natural history, clinical course, prognosis and treatment. Many effort have been made to characterize the different type of breast tumors to predict...

Background: Uncertainty exists about the optimal schedule of adjuvant treatment of breast cancer with aromatase inhibitors and, to our knowledge, no trial has directly compared the three aromatase inhibitors anastrozole, exemestane, and letrozole. We investigated the schedule and type of aromatase inhibitors to be used as adjuvant treatment for hormone receptor-positive early breast cancer. Methods: FATA-GIM3 is a multicentre, open-label, randomised, phase 3 trial of six different treatments in postmenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive early breast cancer. Eligible patients had histologically confirmed invasive hormone receptor-positive breast cancer that had been completely removed by surgery, any pathological tumour size, and axillary nodal status. Key exclusion criteria were hormone replacement therapy, recurrent or metastatic disease, previous treatment with tamoxifen, and another malignancy in the previous 10 years. Patients were randomly assigned in an equal ratio to one of six treatment groups: oral anastrozole (1 mg per day), exemestane (25 mg per day), or letrozole (2·5 mg per day) tablets upfront for 5 years (upfront strategy) or oral tamoxifen (20 mg per day) for 2 years followed by oral administration of one of the three aromatase inhibitors for 3 years (switch strategy). Randomisation was done by a computerised minimisation procedure stratified for oestrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and HER2 status; previous chemotherapy; and pathological nodal status. Neither the patients nor the physicians were masked to treatment allocation. The primary endpoint was disease-free survival. The minimum cutoff to declare superiority of the upfront strategy over the switch strategy was assumed to be a 2% difference in disease-free survival at 5 years. Primary efficacy analyses were done by intention to treat; safety analyses included all patients for whom at least one safety case report form had been completed. Follow-up is ongoing. This trial is registered with the European Clinical Trials Database, number 2006-004018-42, and ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT00541086. Findings: Between March 9, 2007, and July 31, 2012, 3697 patients were enrolled into the study. After a median follow-up of 60 months (IQR 46–72), 401 disease-free survival events were reported, including 211 (11%) of 1850 patients allocated to the switch strategy and 190 (10%) of 1847 patients allocated to upfront treatment. 5-year disease-free survival was 88·5% (95% CI 86·7–90·0) with the switch strategy and 89·8% (88·2–91·2) with upfront treatment (hazard ratio 0·89, 95% CI 0·73–1·08; p=0·23). 5-year disease-free survival was 90·0% (95% CI 87·9–91·7) with anastrozole (124 events), 88·0% (85·8–89·9) with exemestane (148 events), and 89·4% (87·3 to 91·1) with letrozole (129 events; p=0·24). No unexpected serious adverse reactions or treatment-related deaths occurred. Musculoskeletal side-effects were the most frequent grade 3–4 events, reported in 130 (7%) of 1761 patients who received the switch strategy and 128 (7%) of 1766 patients who received upfront treatment. Grade 1 musculoskeletal events were more frequent with the upfront schedule than with the switch schedule (924 [52%] of 1766 patients vs 745 [42%] of 1761 patients). All other grade 3–4 adverse events occurred in less than 2% of patients in either group. Interpretation: 5 years of treatment with aromatase inhibitors was not superior to 2 years of tamoxifen followed by 3 years of aromatase inhibitors. None of the three aromatase inhibitors was superior to the others in terms of efficacy. Therefore, patient preference, tolerability, and financial constraints should be considered when deciding the optimal treatment approach in this setting. Funding: Italian Drug Agency.

traduzione e commento di tre delle Variae di Cassiodoro

Purpose This is a noncomparative, randomized, phase II trial of preoperative taxane-anthracycline in combination with trastuzumab, lapatinib, or combined trastuzumab plus lapatinib in patients with human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) –positive, stage II to IIIA operable breast cancer. The primary aim was to estimate the percentage of pathologic complete response (pCR; no invasive tumor in breast and axillary nodes). Patients and Methods In the three arms, chemotherapy consisted of weekly paclitaxel (80 mg/m2) for 12 weeks followed by fluorouracil, epirubicin, and cyclophosphamide for four courses every 3 weeks. The patients randomly assigned to arm A received a 4-mg loading dose of trastuzumab followed by 2 mg weekly; in arm B patients received lapatinib 1,500 mg orally (PO) daily; and in arm C, patients received trastuzumab and lapatinib 1,000 mg PO daily. Results A total of 121 patients were randomly assigned. Diarrhea and dermatologic and hepatic toxicities were observed more frequently in patients receiving lapatinib. No episodes of congestive heart failure were observed. The rates of breast-conserving surgery were 66.7%, 57.9%, and 68.9% in arms A, B and C, respectively. The pCR rates were 25% (90% CI, 13.1% to 36.9%) in arm A, 26.3% (90% CI, 14.5% to 38.1%) in arm B, and 46.7% (90% CI, 34.4% to 58.9%) in arm C (exploratory P = .019). Conclusion The primary end point of the study was met, with a relative increase of 80% in the pCR rate achieved with chemotherapy plus trastuzumab and lapatinib compared with chemotherapy plus either trastuzumab or lapatinib. These data add further evidence supporting the superiority of a dual-HER2 inhibition for the treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer.

Studio sulla tradizione manoscritta e a stampa delle "Variae" di Cassiodoro