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The majority of rainfall measurements in the world is at the daily scale, i.e. related to a specific calendar day and measured over fixed 24 h. On these data, daily annual maximum rainfall depths (F-maxima) series are easily obtained. On the other hand, 24 h annual maximum rainfall depths (S-maxima), which refer to a period starting at any instant, are more useful indicators. S-maxima values cannot be less than the F-maxima, and are generally higher. The ratio between these extremes, called Hershfield factor (H), has been studied to move from F-maxima to S-maxima, allowing to take advantage of the relevant amount of information included in historical records of daily extremes. For instance, before 1980, in the Italian Hydrological Yearbooks only a subset (< 50 %) of the rain gauges was equipped with a recording device, from which annual maxima over 1, 3, 6, 12 and 24 consecutive hours can be derived. In this study we investigate the possibility of using F-maxima to complement the S-maxima records related to the Po river basin and the Liguria region (North of Italy). As a first step we retrieved from official databases all the daily rainfall measurements, available over this area, from early 1900 until today and we quality-controlled the measurements. We then computed the annual H for all the stations and all the years where both the F- and S-maxima were available, to obtain data that can be analyzed in their temporal and spatial variability. The spatial distribution of the Hershfield factor shows values similar to the ones suggested in the literature and is related to the geographic position of the stations, allowing the possibility to identify some distinct areas with positive or negative anomalies. The obtained map of the H factor, with interpolated local anomalies, allows to reconstruct the missing S-maxima in stations with only F-maxima, and improve the knowledge of the spatial variability of sub-daily rainfall extremes.

The dependence of rainfall on elevation has frequently been documented in the scientific literature and may be relevant in Italy, due to the high degree of geographical and morphological heterogeneity of the country. However, a detailed analysis of the spatial variability of short-duration annual maximum rainfall depths and their connection to the landforms does not exist. Using a new, comprehensive and position-corrected rainfall extreme dataset (I2-RED, the Improved Italian-Rainfall Extreme Dataset), we present a systematic study of the relationship between geomorphological forms and the average annual maxima (index rainfall) across the whole of Italy. We first investigated the dependence of sub-daily rainfall depths on elevation and other landscape indices through univariate and multivariate linear regressions. The results of the national-scale regression analysis did not confirm the assumption of elevation being the sole driver of the variability of the index rainfall. The inclusion of longitude, latitude, distance from the coastline, morphological obstructions and mean annual rainfall contributes to the explanation of a larger percentage of the variance, even though this was in different ways for different durations (1 to 24 h). After analyzing the spatial variability of the regression residuals, we repeated the analysis on geomorphological subdivisions of Italy. Comparing the results of the best multivariate regression models with univariate regressions applied to small areas, deriving from morphological subdivisions, we found that “local” rainfall–topography relationships outperformed the country-wide multiple regressions, offered a uniform error spatial distribution and allowed the effect of morphology on rainfall extremes to be better reproduced.

Background: With SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests on the market, healthcare providers must be confident that they can use the results to provide actionable information to understand the characteristics and dynamics of the humoral response and antibodies (abs) in SARS-CoV-2-vaccinated patients. In this way, the study of the antibody responses of healthcare workers (HCWs), a population that is immunocompetent, adherent to vaccination, and continuously exposed to different virus variants, can help us understand immune protection and determine vaccine design goals., Methods: We retrospectively evaluated antibody responses via multiplex assays in a sample of 538 asymptomatic HCWs with a documented complete vaccination cycle of 3 doses of mRNA vaccination and no previous history of infection. Our sample was composed of 49.44% males and 50.56% females, with an age ranging from 21 to 71 years, and a mean age of 46.73 years. All of the HCWs' sera were collected from April to July 2022 at the Sant'Elia Hospital of Caltanissetta to investigate the immunologic responses against anti-RBD, anti-S1, anti-S2, and anti-N IgG abs., Results: A significant difference in age between HCWs who were positive and negative for anti-N IgG was observed. For anti-S2 IgG, a significant difference between HCWs who were negative and positive compared to anti-N IgG was observed only for positive HCWs, with values including 10 (U/mL)-100 (U/mL); meanwhile, for anti-RBD IgG and anti-S1 IgG levels, there was only a significant difference observed for positive HCWs with diluted titers. For the negative values of anti-N IgG, among the titer dilution levels of anti-RBD, anti-S1, and anti-S2 IgG, the anti-S2 IgG levels were significantly lower than the anti-RBD and anti-S1 levels; in addition, the anti-S1 IgG levels were significantly lower than the anti-RBD IgG levels. For the anti-N IgG positive levels, only the anti-S2 IgG levels were significantly lower than the anti-RBD IgG and anti-S1 IgG levels. Finally, a logistic regression analysis showed that age and anti-S2 IgG were negative and positive predictors of anti-N IgG levels, respectively. The analysis between the vaccine type and mixed mRNA combination showed higher levels of antibodies in mixed vaccinated HCWs. This finding disappeared in the anti-N positive group., Conclusions: Most anti-N positive HCWs showed antibodies against the S2 domain and were young subjects. Therefore, the authors suggest that including the anti-SARS-CoV-2-S2 in antibody profiles can serve as a complementary testing approach to qRT-PCR for the early identification of asymptomatic infections in order to reduce the impact of potential new SARS-CoV-2 variants. Our serological investigation on the type of mRNA vaccine and mixed mRNA vaccines shows that future investigations on the serological responses in vaccinated asymptomatic patients exposed to previous infection or reinfection are warranted for updated vaccine boosters.

The main potential benefits of rainwater harvesting, namely water saving and storm water management, are easily evaluable at a building scale when well-known behavioral models are used. However, the evaluation is often more complex at an urban scale, due to a lack of building characteristics and demographic data. In the present paper, we propose a method, which is based on the representative building concept that can be used to quantify the potential benefits of rainwater harvesting at different scales, that is, from the building scale to the district and city scales. Particular attention has been paid to the sizing of the system so that it can be used for different rainwater collection purposes. The method has been applied to the city of Turin (Italy) considering different scenarios: 1) domestic use (e.g., toilet flushing and the washing machine), where buildings are independent of each other, and 2) two public uses (the irrigation of public green areas and street washing), for which we have hypothesized that the rainwater collection takes place at a district scale. The non-potable water saving for domestic use varies across the city from 29% to 62%, according to the characteristics of the buildings, while the reduction of the flow peak conveyed to the sewerage system, during extreme storms, is quite constant (in the 57-67% range). Irrigation and street washing require a lower amount of water, thus about 80% of water can be saved, but the retention efficiency is low, and a slight reduction in the flow peaks can be expected. The aim of the methodology presented in this work is to provide a suitable decision-making tool for policy makers and urban planners to evaluate the capability and efficiency of rainwater harvesting systems for buildings, districts, and cities., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2022 Carollo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) display differences in multisensory function as quantified by several different measures. This study estimated the stability of variables derived from commonly used measures of multisensory function in school-aged children with ASD. Participants completed: a simultaneity judgment task for audiovisual speech, tasks designed to elicit the McGurk effect, listening-in-noise tasks, electroencephalographic recordings, and eye-tracking tasks. Results indicate the stability of indices derived from tasks tapping multisensory processing is variable. These findings have important implications for measurement in future research. Averaging scores across repeated observations will often be required to obtain acceptably stable estimates and, thus, to increase the likelihood of detecting effects of interest, as it relates to multisensory processing in children with ASD., (©AAIDD.)

In practical situations concerning aquifers, time and/or economic restraints often make it impossible to construct numerical models, and in these cases simple methodologies could be useful, at least for feasibility studies. In this context, the present manuscript deals with the use of a straightforward cokriging method to use data acquired from a monitoring network (transmissivity, piezometric head and trajectory data) in order to obtain useful information about the characteristics of the aquifer. Two issues have been addressed: estimation of the solute path and estimation of the transmissivity. This manuscript, compared with previous works that have applied cokriging, considers that the solute transit data originate from a source of unknown intensity and from an unknown location. The proposed cokriging systems are implemented through already developed covariance and cross-covariance functions, considering a first-order approximation in the log-transmissivity variance. For this reason, numerical Monte Carlo experiments have been performed to test the accuracy of the results of the proposed cokriging procedures in both weakly (σY2=0.16) and mildly (σY2=2) heterogeneous transmissivity aquifers. Since a prerequisite of cokriging is a linear relationship among the involved quantities, more accurate results can be expected in weakly heterogeneous transmissivity fields, where the trajectory, transmissivity and hydraulic head data relations are almost linear. Comparing the numerical results with the analytical solutions, it in fact emerges that cokriging can be very useful for the estimation of a solute path and transmissivity when a limited set of data is available for weakly heterogeneous aquifers., (© 2016, National Ground Water Association.)