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Lecce stone is a natural material extracted from quarries in the Salento area (Lecce, Apulia, Italy), and used for building and ornamental elements. Its nature as a non-renewable resource justifies its considerable exploitation; but extraction and processing activities produce waste that creates a strong environmental impact. The Puglia region is also rich in olive trees. Usually, the pruning waste is used as firewood or for furniture. Moreover, the amount of olive wood waste available has increased with the spread of Xylella Fastidiosa. Starting from the problem of waste management and the depletion of non-renewable resources, the goal of the research was to find sustainable alternatives to give a new life to waste produced from local raw materials and creating exclusive handicraft products. Composite filaments with a polymer matrix (based on polylactic acid-PLA) were produced using different waste materials as additives and then used to create “made in Apulia” products, through the use of Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) technology. Finally, an eco-friendly coating was tested to improve the durability of PLA 3D products. This work represents a window into the possibility of creating new systems for reusing local waste materials while promoting sustainable economic growth and a circular economy.

In the last years, the excessive use of plastic and other synthetic materials, that are generally difficult to dispose of, has caused growing ecological worries. These are contributing to redirecting the world’s attention to sustainable materials and a circular economy (CE) approach using recycling routes. In this work, bio-filaments for the Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) 3D printing technique were produced from recycled polylactic acid (PLA) and artisanal ceramic waste by an extrusion process and fully characterized from a physical, thermal, and mechanical point of view. The data showed different morphological, thermal, rheological, and mechanical properties of the two produced filaments. Furthermore, the 3D objects produced from the 100% recycled PLA filament showed lower mechanical performance. However, the results have demonstrated that all the produced filaments can be used in a low-cost FFF commercial printer that has been modified with simple hand-made operations in order to produce 3D-printed models. The main objective of this work is to propose an example of easy and low-cost application of 3D printing that involves operations such as the reprocessing and the recyclability of materials, that are also not perfectly mechanically performing but can still provide environmental and economic benefits.

BACKGROUND We aim to retrospectively evaluate the impact of hormone therapy (HT) on FDG avidity of metastatic lesions in patients with breast cancer (BC) undergoing PET/CT. PATIENTS AND METHODS Three hundred eight patients with BC were scanned with PET/CT at 2 Italian institutions (mean time from diagnosis 4 yrs, range: 1-24 yrs). Main indications for PET/CT were elevation of tumor markers (34.4%) and clinical or radiological suspicion of relapse (65.6%). The diagnostic accuracy of FDG PET/CT was computed according to the standard method. Student t test was used to assess the mean differences between the study groups, whereas categorical data were compared with chi-square test. Significance was set at P