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Aim there is evidence of significant clinical sequelae of COVID-19 that may impair both life length and its quality. Aim of this study was to assess the long-term consequences of moderate to severe SARS-CoV-2-related pneumonia in patients requiring high-flow oxygen treatment. Methods This prospective follow-up study included 45 patients with confirmed COVID-19 admitted to a medical ward at the Montichiari Hospital, Brescia, Italy from November 2020 to April 2021 Patients had COVID-19 related pneumonia with respiratory failure and needed at least treatment with an inspired fraction of oxygen of 40% (of them, 59% were treated with Venturi mask and 41% needed non-invasive ventilation). Patients underwent a clinical assessment with standard laboratory testing, chest CT scan, lung function tests with DLCO, and evaluation of vital parameters after a mean of 382 days after hospital discharge. A quality-of-life questionnaire was administered to each willing patient. Results See table for details. While standard laboratory testing showed a substantial normalization, we found persistence of radiological alterations (i.e. ground-glass opacities, irregular linear/reticular opacities) in 61% of patients; mean Tiffenau index (FEV1/FVC) was reduced, although not clearly pathologic (79%) and 38% of patients showed a mild to moderate reduction in CO lung diffusion (DLCO). Interestingly, 54% of subjects showed concomitant presence of radiologic alterations AND persistence of dyspnea OR reduction in CO lung diffusion, while 21% had all three concomitant conditions, compatible with the diagnosis of lung fibrosis. Overall, a total of 75% patients had some degree of functional or structural alteration of respiratory apparatus. We also evaluated quality of life thorough a structured questionnaire: after more than one year 62% of the patients still lamented fatigue, 62% effort dyspnea, 12% anorexia, 29% dysgeusia or anosmia, 31% insomnia and 43% anxiety. Conclusions these data seem to demonstrate that SARS-CoV-2-related pneumonia requiring high flow oxygen has a heavy long-term burden, both in terms of persistence of functional and structural pulmonary damage (which may be progressive and evolve to a more severe degree) and of burden on overall quality daily life.

Introduction The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), doesn't affect only respiratory system, but it also involves other organs including cardiovascular system, possibly causing acute or chronic cardiovascular events. Preexisting cardiovascular diseases enhance COVID-19 morbidity, as well. Aim In this retrospective analysis we investigated the onset of cardiovascular events during a time-span of more than one year since hospitalization (384 days). Methods The analysis included 43 patients, who were hospitalized in Internal Medicine Department of Montichiari Hospital (ASST Spedali Civili of Brescia) for moderate to severe SARS-CoV2 related pneumonia treated with high-flow oxygen support (ranging from 40% fraction of inspired oxygen to non-invasive ventilation) Mean age was 63 years, 28% (12/43) were female and 72% (31/43) were male. Thirty-five percent of the patients suffered from heart diseases, 56% of them were hypertensives and 23% had type 2 diabetes; 12% had chronic kidney disease (CKD) and 5% an active neoplasm. 49% of the sample was obese. Nineteen percent took ACE inhibitors and 19% was on ARBs. Statins were taken by 37% of the patients; an antiaggregant by 21%, and an anticoagulant by 2% (see table) Results The follow-up visit included the evaluation of post-covid infection quality-of-life, standard laboratory tests, chest computed tomography, spirometry with evaluation of DLCO. The onset of cardiovascular events during the average period of 384 days was evaluated. None of the 43 patients had major cardiovascular events: coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, peripheral arterial disease, deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism. Conclusions Even if this study failed to demonstrate new-onset CV events, longer follow-up studies performed to evaluate cardiovascular risk following SARS-CoV1 infection showed persistent hyperlipidemia, cardiovascular system abnormalities, and glucose metabolism disorders in a very high number of patients. Further analyses are needed to further investigate longer term cardiovascular consequences of SARS-CoV2 infection.

Un proyecto es un esfuerzo que se lleva a cabo para crear un producto, servicio o resultado único. Dentro de las actividades a ser consideradas en la gestión de un proyecto se encuentran el gerenciamiento, el planeamiento y cronograma del proyecto; la gestión de riesgos y la estimación de costos con las particularidades que involucran a la gestión de proyectos de desarrollo de productos software. Es así como surge este proyecto dentro de las líneas de investigación del “Programa de Investigación en Computación” de la FCEQyN en la UNaM donde se prevé no solo diseñar instrumentos y ejecutarlos orientándolos al relevamiento de datos vinculados a la gestión de proyectos de software desarrollados en nuestra facultad en el ámbito de la formación académica. Además ponerlos en marcha de acuerdo con las tecnologías de explotación de información aplicables a la identificación de características presentes en proyectos de ingeniería de software que definan el éxito de los mismos.

Obiettivo di questo articolo divulgativo, è presentare in modo semplice, necessariamente sintetico e ovviamente non esaustivo, la disciplina dell’Intelligenza Artificiale (IA), le sue origini, le sfide affrontate, i principali risultati ottenuti e le domande, alcune ancora senza risposta, su cosa aspettarsi da questa disciplina nel futuro più immediato. In particolare, verranno presentate, ad alto livello ed in modo intuitivo, alcune tecnologie e tecniche sviluppate nell’ambito dell’IA e ritenute significative per la sua comprensione, ed esempi significativi delle sue molteplici applicazioni. Saranno menzionati anche aspetti etici, economici e sociali di questa affascinante disciplina, che sarà sempre maggiormente presente nel futuro di tutti. Questo lavoro può quindi essere anche concepito come base e materiale di riferimento per gli studenti in una lezione introduttiva alla disciplina dell’IA nei Corsi di Intelligenza Artificiale.

Objective: A relevant biological role of circulating endothelial progenitor cells (EPC) was recently demonstrated. EPC are generated in the bone marrow, and interact with damaged endothelium, restoring the integrity of the monolayer. Therefore, aim of the present study was to evaluate EPC in the blood of patients with untreated Graves’ hyperthyroidism (GD), in whom an increased oxidative stress was observed. Design and methods: Twenty-three patients with untreated active GD and 18 matched normal controls (NC) were included in the study. Circulating EPC were isolated from peripheral blood. Mononuclear cells were cultured with endothelial basal medium supplemented with EGM SingleQuots, and were identified by positive double staining after 7 days in culture. Circulating levels of C reactive protein, total antioxidant power, interleukin (IL)-6, IL-18, monocyte chemoattractant protein-1, tumor necrosis facotr-α, soluble vascular cell adhesion molecule (VCAM) and intracellular adhesion molecule were evaluated by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kit. EPC number was also evaluated in a subgroup of GD patients after restoration of euthyroidism. Results: Systolic blood pressure resulted increased in GD patients compared with control subjects whereas diastolic blood pressure was not significantly different. Patients with GD showed an increase in circulating levels of IL-18 and VCAM-1 and a reduction of total antioxidant power (p

A methodological approach to software development for real-time systems and its application to a stored-program controlled telephone exchange is described. In particular, the problems which arise from the use of a process structure to represent the switching exchange activities are discussed; the method adopted for defining the number and type of processes, the solution given to the synchronization problems and deadlock prevention are described. Moreover, the techniques adopted for decomposing the software into modules hierarchically organized are presented and their influence on system reliability and flexibility are pointed out. Lastly, the features of the adopted programming language are presented with a special reference to the choice of high-level constructs to reduce the complexity of the control paths within the programs and to facilitate the achievement of a correct cooperation among processes.

In the evolving ubiquitous Internet landscape, users are willing to play a more central role by modeling and reshaping the Web experience upon their needs. They begin perceiving and exploiting the Web as a platform to collaboratively create and share contents and to communicate with each other. Moreover, they want to decide how to access services and contents, freeing themselves from traditional fixed PCs and adopting heterogeneous wireless devices such as palmtops, smartphones, wireless-enabled portable audio players and so on. The Internet of Services scenario stresses several research fields, from multimodality to mobility, from context awareness to service orientation and coordination. Research achievements, anyway, often tend to evolve separately, leading to ad-hoc solutions for specific sets of problems. We strongly believe that such evolving scenarios require a comprehensive support platform: this paper promotes a novel service-oriented middleware to assist users in the pervasive ubiquitous Internet access. The use cases we describe focus on complex scenarios that, in our opinion, will likely be more and more required in the next years.