卡美日诺大学

Two-dimensional shear wave elastography (2D-SWE) provides quantitative information on tissue stiffness over a broad field of view, but physiological values for feline testes remain poorly defined. This study aimed to characterize testicular stiffness in clinically healthy cats and to compare different regions of interest (ROIs), and explore agreement between focal and extended sampling strategies. Nineteen client-owned intact male cats presented for elective bilateral orchiectomy were included after clinical, ultrasonographic, and histopathological screening. Before surgery, both testes underwent B-mode, Doppler, and 2D-SWE examination using a Mindray DC-80A ultrasound system with a linear transducer. In longitudinal scans, two circular ROIs were placed above and two below the testicular mediastinum, and an additional ROI encompassed the whole testis. Mean shear wave speed (SWS) values were calculated for each sampling strategy. Histopathology confirmed normal testicular tissue in all cases. Mean SWS was 2.45 f 0.62 m/s in the right testis and 2.73 f 0.51 m/s in the left, with no significant difference between sides (p = 0.097). Mean values were 2.51 f 0.55 m/s in submediastinal regions and 2.66 f 0.42 m/s in supramediastinal regions, without significant differences (p = 0.129). Whole-testis, submediastinal, and supramediastinal ROIs yielded mean SWS values of 2.62, 2.51, and 2.66 m/s, respectively, with no significant differences among approaches (p = 0.080). Exploratory agreement analyses showed small mean biases between the extended and focal ROI approaches, but did not establish interchangeability. These findings support the feasibility of 2D-SWE for assessing feline testicular stiffness and suggest a relatively homogeneous stiffness distribution in healthy feline testes. Further studies are needed to assess repeatability, establish reference intervals, and investigate diagnostic performance for feline testicular disease in clinical practice.

This review is the second instalment of a two-part chronological framework on the climatic drivers of viticultural change, continuing directly from a companion review that traced the spread of Vitis vinifera from its Neolithic origins to the end of the Western Roman Empire (Gentilucci and Pambianchi, 2024). The analysis is extended to the subsequent thirteen and a half centuries (c. 450–1800 CE), encompassing four climatically distinct phases: the Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA, c. 536–660 CE), the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA, c. 900–1300 CE), the volatile early fourteenth-century transition associated with the Great Famine of 1315–1317 and the Black Death, and the long Little Ice Age (LIA, c. 1300–1850 CE), whose coldest decades coincided with the Spörer and Maunder solar minima. Multi-proxy palaeoclimatic evidence, tree-ring summer-temperature reconstructions, historical grape harvest dates (GHD), and documentary climate indices are cross-referenced against land-survey records, monastic archives, and biomolecular grapevine pedigree data to reconstruct the latitudinal, longitudinal, and altitudinal shifts of wine-production areas. The review traces the contraction of Roman-era viticultural frontiers during the LALIA and their re-expansion to the highest latitudes, documented for England in the Domesday Book, during the MCA, when climatic stability also underpinned the Cistercian elaboration of terroir at Clos de Vougeot. The termination of the MCA and the Black Death produced a lasting consolidation of viticulture onto its most resilient sites. Within the LIA, cold-driven varietal selection is reflected in the genetic proliferation of Gouais blanc (Heunisch) progeny, ancestor to Chardonnay, Riesling, and Gamay, while Atlantic producers developed fortified wine styles (Port, Sherry, Madeira). The same centuries saw colonial dissemination of the grapevine to the Americas, the Cape of Good Hope, and Oceania, establishing the diversified foundation of the modern wine industry. Climate oscillation emerges as a persistent driver of the spatial, institutional, and genetic evolution of viticulture.

Nowadays, business processes are increasingly influenced by information from the surrounding physical environment and vice versa. This is especially evident in the presence of multi-instance participants able to move in and interact within a physical environment. In this regard, BPMN is a widely accepted standard for representing multi-party business processes in terms of collaboration diagrams, offering an expressive and understandable notation. However, BPMN, as well as its extensions, overlooks the support for the physical environment. In this paper, we describe the interplay between BPMN collaborations, including multiple instances of the same participant, and the physical environment. Specifically, we extend the BPMN meta-model with environmental concepts, defining environmental BPMN collaboration models. To facilitate a deeper understanding of the dynamics of these models, we provide a formal account of their semantics, addressing the handling of multiple instances of the same participant and incorporating time as a factor influencing process execution during interplay with the environment. Beyond defining a novel formalization, we propose BEAR, a tool that implements the formal semantics and supports modeling, animation, and debugging of environmental BPMN collaborations, extended to support multi-instance participants and time progression. We illustrate our findings through a fire-extinguishing multi-instance collaborative scenario.

This study presents a methodology for investigating the capacity of school desks to provide protection during earthquakes when failures of structural and non-structural components generate falling debris. The focus is on the performance of a recently presented school desk designed to protect pupils in case of seismic damage, a solution developed within interdisciplinary research projects addressing two main issues: the weakness of conventional school desks, and the impracticality and high cost of largely oversized seismic-proof desks. The featured school desk is composed of a dual steel frame, a perforated steel sheet combined with a plywood tabletop, and dissipative feet to absorb impact energy through plastic deformation. The design aims at providing resistance to vertical overloading without compromising practicality in everyday use, while limiting weight and cost increases. Following a previous testing campaign on an earlier prototype using falling brick assemblies as impact loads, a new comprehensive experimental programme featuring quasi-static and impact tests was conducted on commercial reference desks, the earlier life-saving prototypes, and newly developed life-saving desk prototypes. Quasi-static tests confirmed that, while all desks met current normative requirements, the standard testing procedures for school desks are inadequate for assessing their performance under falling debris. The developed impact testing protocol ensured consistent loading conditions and involved a 100-kg steel sphere dropped on the desks' tabletop. These impact tests demonstrated that reference desks are prone to brittle tabletop failure, whereas life-saving prototypes can withstand severe impacts through ductile deformation and thus energy dissipation, protecting the space underneath and providing a safe shelter during earthquakes. Additional tests involving corner impacts, different dropping heights, and repeated impacts further confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed design. A detailed nonlinear finite element model of the refined prototype was developed and validated against both quasi-static and impact test results, accurately reproducing the observed behaviour. The model was afterwards used to verify that the considered loading configuration represented the most demanding case. The combination of experimental and numerical evidence supports the formulation of guidelines for standardised testing of the seismic performance of school furniture and highlights the potential of non-structural elements to reduce seismic risk in earthquake-prone regions.

Question Spatial grain size and sampling design are crucial to assess plant diversity patterns, yet their effects on alpha, beta, and gamma diversity along elevational gradients remain poorly understood.Location We investigated these effects along an elevational gradient in the Central Apennines (Italy) ranging from 1100 to 2486 m a.s.l.Methods Plant presence-absence data were recorded from 83 randomly selected nested plots, each containing seven grain sizes ranging from 0.25 m & times; 0.25 m to 16 m & times; 16 m. Alpha, beta, and gamma diversity were calculated at both the nested plot and grain size levels and analyzed along the elevational gradient. Gamma was assessed within 100-m elevational bands by aggregating species occurrences across nested plots and grain sizes within each band. Beta diversity was calculated among all nested plots and grain sizes, as well as within elevational bands, using S & oslash;rensen dissimilarity.Results Our results revealed a significant effect of grain size on elevational diversity patterns. Alpha diversity exhibited a stronger pattern at larger grain size, with species richness decreasing along the elevational gradient. Gamma diversity mirrored alpha diversity trends, increasing with grain size but decreasing with elevation. Beta diversity did not change with elevation but decreased with grain size.Conclusion These results emphasize the strong influence of grain size on plant diversity patterns along elevation gradients, highlighting its importance in biodiversity assessments. The nested sampling approach used appears to be a promising tool for testing diversity patterns along elevational gradients, offering a robust framework for future ecological studies.