Hepatitis C Epidemiology: Insights from a Comprehensive Cohort Study in ASST Melegnano and Martesana, Lombardia Region, Northern Italy.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a significant public health problem affecting 58 million people worldwide, including 3.9 million in Europe. Many of these infections go undiagnosed because chronic infection is often asymptomatic.

Systematic Review of the Literature on Dental Caries and Periodontal Disease in Socio-Economically Disadvantaged Individuals.

Dental caries and periodontal disease represent a health problem and a social cost for the entire population, and in particular for socio-economically disadvantaged individuals who are less resistant to disease. The aim of this review is to estimate the prevalence and severity of the two dental pathologies, caries and periodontal disease, in the different classes of socio-economically disadvantaged subjects and to understand which of them are most affected. A systematic search of the literature was performed in MEDLINE (via PubMed), EMBASE and Web of Science after establishing a suitable search strategy for each database, using keywords related to socio-economically vulnerable classes and health outcomes.

Sustainable Liquid-Phase Exfoliation of Layered Materials with Nontoxic Polarclean Solvent.

Liquid-phase exfoliation is the most suitable platform for large-scale production of two-dimensional materials. One of the main open challenges is related to the quest of green and bioderived solvents to replace state-of-the-art dispersion media, which suffer several toxicity issues. Here, we demonstrate the suitability of methyl-5-(dimethylamino)-2-methyl-5-oxopentanoate (Rhodiasolv Polarclean) for sonication-assisted liquid-phase exfoliation of layered materials for the case-study examples of WS, MoS, and graphene.

Choline Hydrogen Dicarboxylate Ionic Liquids by X-ray Scattering, Vibrational Spectroscopy and Molecular Dynamics: H-Fumarate and H-Maleate and Their Conformations.

We explore the structure of two ionic liquids based on the choline cation and the monoanion of the maleic acid. We consider two isomers of the anion (H-maleate, the -isomer and H-fumarate, the -isomer) having different physical chemical properties. H-maleate assumes a closed structure and forms a strong intramolecular hydrogen bond whereas H-fumarate has an open structure.

Exciton-phonon coupling and power dependent room temperature photoluminescence of sulphur vacancy doped MoSvia controlled thermal annealing.

Via experiments performed by varying the doping level of single-layer mechanically exfoliated MoSvia post exfoliation thermal annealing in the 200-300 °C temperature range, we study the power dependent room temperature (RT) photoluminescence (PL), which is dominated by A type excitons. The PL spectral yields of the as-exfoliated and annealed samples show sub-linear behaviour as a function of the excitation laser power. The PL signal of the 200 °C annealed sample is dominated by the charged exciton (trion) related peak, while the PL signal of the 300 °C annealed sample is dominated by the neutral exciton related peak, and the PL spectral weight of excitons is tunable in this temperature range.

Occupational COVID-19 risk to dental staff working in a public dental unit in the outbreak epicenter.

Objective: The management of the COVID-19 outbreak occurred in Lombardy (Italy) implied that non-COVID-19 health care was remodeled, limiting adequate resources in non-hospital public dental healthcare settings. This situation offered the opportunity to investigate the occupational COVID-19 risk to dental staff in public non-hospital dental units.

Methods: An infection control protocol was designed for dental health care in the Territorial Health and Social Services Authority (ASST) "Melegnano and Martesana" (Milan).

Model for Taking Care of Patients with Early Childhood Caries during the SARS-Cov-2 Pandemic.

Pending the availability of vaccines to contain the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the current solution is "social distancing" with a reduction of dental treatments to those assessed as urgent and emergency cases. These treatments also involve Early Childhood Caries (ECC) due to the fact that this disease affects preschool children (a vulnerable population) and, in addition, shows a propensity to evolve into more serious complications (dental pain, infections). A narrative review was carried out to support a protocol for treating ECC with efficacious and safe (in terms of SARS-CoV-2 transmission) procedures.

Italian guidelines for the prevention and management of dental trauma in children.

Dental trauma is a frequent occurrence in children and adolescent and a correct diagnosis and treatment are essential for a favourable long-term prognosis. The present Guidelines aim to formulate evidence-based recommendations to assist dentists, paediatricians, surgeons, teachers, school and sport staff, parents in the prevention and first aid of dental trauma in children and to provide a careful assessment of the medico-legal implications, reviewing the first draft of the guidelines published in 2012. A multidisciplinary panel on the behalf of the Italian Ministry of Health and in collaboration with the WHO Collaborating Centre for Epidemiology and Community Dentistry of Milan, developed this document.

Bias Tunable Photocurrent in Metal-Insulator-Semiconductor Heterostructures with Photoresponse Enhanced by Carbon Nanotubes.

Metal-insulator-semiconductor-insulator-metal (MISIM) heterostructures, with rectifying current-voltage characteristics and photosensitivity in the visible and near-infrared spectra, are fabricated and studied. It is shown that the photocurrent can be enhanced by adding a multi-walled carbon nanotube film in the contact region to achieve a responsivity higher than 100   mA   W - 1 under incandescent light of 0.1   mW   cm - 2 .

Two-Step Exfoliation of WS for NO, H and Humidity Sensing Applications.

WS exfoliated by a combined ball milling and sonication technique to produce few-layer WS is characterized and assembled as chemo-resistive NO, H and humidity sensors. Microstructural analyses reveal flakes with average dimensions of 110 nm, "aspect ratio" of lateral dimension to the thickness of 27. Due to spontaneous oxidation of exfoliated WS to amorphous WO, films have been pre-annealed at 180 °C to stabilize WO content at ≈58%, as determined by X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), Raman and grazing incidence X-ray Diffraction (XRD) techniques.

Damping of vibrational excitations in glasses at terahertz frequency: The case of 3-methylpentane.

We report a compared analysis of inelastic X ray scattering (IXS) and of low frequency Raman data of glassy 3-methylpentane. The IXS spectra have been analysed allowing for the existence of two distinct excitations at each scattering wavevector obtaining a consistent interpretation of the spectra. In particular, this procedure allows us to interpret the linewidth of the modes in terms of a simple model which relates them to the width of the first sharp diffraction peak in the static structure factor.

Vibrations of bioionic liquids by ab initio molecular dynamics and vibrational spectroscopy.

Density functional theory and vibrational spectroscopy are used to investigate a class of bioionic liquids consisting of a choline cation and carboxylate anions. Through quantum mechanical studies of motionless ion pairs and molecular dynamics of small portions of the liquid, we have characterized important structural features of the ionic liquid. Hydrogen bonding produces stable ion pairs in the liquid and induces vibrational features of the carboxylate groups comparable with experimental results.