An Urban Intelligence Architecture for Heterogeneous Data and Application Integration, Deployment and Orchestration.

This paper describes a novel architecture that aims to create a template for the implementation of an IT platform, supporting the deployment and integration of the different digital twin subsystems that compose a complex urban intelligence system. In more detail, the proposed Smart City IT architecture has the following main purposes: (i) facilitating the deployment of the subsystems in a cloud environment; (ii) effectively storing, integrating, managing, and sharing the huge amount of heterogeneous data acquired and produced by each subsystem, using a data lake; (iii) supporting data exchange and sharing; (iv) managing and executing workflows, to automatically coordinate and run processes; and (v) to provide and visualize the required information. A prototype of the proposed IT solution was implemented leveraging open-source frameworks and technologies, to test its functionalities and performance.

A dichotomic approach to adaptive interaction for socially assistive robots.

Socially assistive robotics (SAR) aims at designing robots capable of guaranteeing social interaction to human users in a variety of assistance scenarios that range, e.g., from giving reminders for medications to monitoring of Activity of Daily Living, from giving advices to promote an healthy lifestyle to psychological monitoring.

A Mind-inspired Architecture for Adaptive HRI.

One of the main challenges of social robots concerns the ability to guarantee robust, contextualized and intelligent behavior capable of supporting continuous and personalized interaction with different users over time. This implies that robot behaviors should consider the specificity of a person (e.g.

LEMON: A Lightweight Facial Emotion Recognition System for Assistive Robotics Based on Dilated Residual Convolutional Neural Networks.

The development of a Social Intelligence System based on artificial intelligence is one of the cutting edge technologies in Assistive Robotics. Such systems need to create an empathic interaction with the users; therefore, it os required to include an Emotion Recognition (ER) framework which has to run, in near real-time, together with several other intelligent services. Most of the low-cost commercial robots, however, although more accessible by users and healthcare facilities, have to balance costs and effectiveness, resulting in under-performing hardware in terms of memory and processing unit.

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown on exclusive breastfeeding in non-infected mothers.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has posed several challenges to the provision of newborn nutrition and care interventions including maternal support, breastfeeding and family participatory care. Italy was the first country to be exposed to SARS-CoV-2 in Europe. One of the measures adopted by the Italian government during COVID-19 pandemic was the total lockdown of the cities with complete confinement at home.

ROBIN, a Telepresence Robot to Support Older Users Monitoring and Social Inclusion: Development and Evaluation.

Introduction: This article describes an enhanced telepresence robot named ROBIN, part of a telecare system derived from the GIRAFFPLUS project for supporting and monitoring older adults at home. ROBIN is integrated in a sensor-rich environment that aims to continuously monitor physical and psychological wellbeing of older persons living alone. The caregivers (formal/informal) can communicate through it with their assisted persons.

[The management of the child with head injury: our experience].

Objectives: To analyze the group of children admitted to our Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) for neurotrauma and describe the management algorithms adopted by us for pediatric head injury.

Methods: All the children affected by head injury and admitted to PICU since november 1992 to november 2000 have been examined. Injury severity has been classified using the Glasgow Coma Score (GCS), while the long term neurological outcome with the Glasgow Outcome Score (GOS).

[The management of the child with head injury: initial assessment].

In western countries, head injury is very important in public health; infact it is the main cause of mortality after infancy and a significant cause of long term disability. The patients with severe head injury needs an intensive care unit management, but the initial approach is a critical phase, too. In fact, it is demonstrated that trauma mortality and morbility are significantly reduced by a quick and well conducted approach.

The impact of initial management on the outcome of children with severe head injury.

Background: Neurotrauma is one of the most important causes of death in the pediatric age group. Head injury is responsible for both primary and secondary brain damage. The outcome of children with brain injury depends on the nature of the primary damage and on how well secondary brain damage can be limited.

Early post-traumatic seizures in children with head injury.

Post-traumatic seizures (PTS) can be a serious complication of head injury, because they can cause secondary brain damage through increased metabolic requirements, raised intracranial pressure, cerebral hypoxia, and/or excessive release of neurotransmitters. In children, early PTS are more frequent than late ones. In this retrospective study we conducted an epidemiological analysis and tried to identify potential risk factors for the onset of early PTS in children hospitalized for head injury in our Paediatric Intensive Care Unit.

Malignant transformation of biliary cystadenoma: a difficult diagnosis.

The case is described of a 63-year-old female with a multilocular liver cyst diagnosed as cystadenoma after imaging and fine needle aspiration. The lesion, however, proved to be an invasive cystadenocarcinoma at surgery. Cystadenoma cannot be differentiated, preoperatively, from cystadenocarcinoma and should always be considered for surgical resection.

[Diffuse axonal lesions in childhood].

Objective: About 48% of all primary traumatic intracranial lesions are represented by so-called Diffuse Axonal Injury (DAI): a pathologic condition characterized by multiple microscopic lesions and hemorrhage at the level of midline cerebral structures, in the subcortical grey matter, and/or within the brainstem. The natural history of DAI is depressing: 100% of the patients deteriorate rapidly to coma and approximately 50% die, while 50% remain in a vegetative state or with severe neurological deficits. In the present report, we describe the results of a study aimed to evaluating the cerebral hemodynamics and the neuroradiological findings observed in four children (6, 8, 10 and 12 years old) affected by DAI.

Prognostic implications of hyperglycaemia in paediatric head injury.

Fifty children with head injury were evaluated in an attempt to establish a correlation between post-traumatic hyperglycaemia and long-term outcome. In all the patients, the blood glucose level was measured on admission and on the days following the trauma (threshold of normal value set at 150 mg/dl). Hyperglycaemia was seen more frequently in children with severe head injury than in those with mild and moderate head injury.

Evidence for a missed signal to the CD8+ cells in CSF of multiple sclerosis patients.

Peripheral blood (PB) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) lymphocyte subpopulations, defined by various T-cell specific monoclonal antibodies and flow cytometry, were analysed in 44 relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) patients (including 21 subjects in the acute phase and 23 in the stable phase), 40 chronic-progressive multiple sclerosis (CPMS) patients, and 24 patients with other neurological diseases (OND), in order to verify the presence of any abnormality in the lymphocyte subset pattern. A significant increase in the total number of T-lymphocytes and the CD4+ subpopulation was found in the PB of the MS patients in comparison with the OND group. Moreover, a not statistically significant increase in CD4+ cells was observed in the CSF of MS patients.

[Current status of the use of vitamins (A, E, C, D), folates and selenium in the chemoprevention and treatment of malignant tumors].

The role of vitamins A, E, C, D, folates and selenium in the chemical prevention of tumours and/or precancerous conditions is examined in the light of epidemiological studies and experimental observations. Particular mention is made of significant clinical studies that provide valuable indications about the use of vitamin A and its derivates in particular for the treatment of precancerous and cancerous conditions. Vitamin A and its derivates apparently play a fundamental role not only in the treatment of proliferating malignancies of the skin (carcinomas, severe aclinic keratosis) or involving the skin (fungoid mycosis, skin metastases of solid tumours) but also in the prevention of recurring bladder tumours and the treatment of several bronchial dysplasias.