Visceral myopathy (VSCM) is a rare genetic disease, orphan of pharmacological therapy. VSCM diagnosis is not always straightforward due to symptomatology similarities with mitochondrial or neuronal forms of intestinal pseudo-obstruction. The most prevalent form of VSCM is associates with variants in the gene ACTG2, encoding the protein gamma-2 actin. Overall, VSCM is a mechano-biological disorder, in which different genetic variants lead to similar alterations to the contractile phenotype of enteric smooth muscles, resulting in the emergence of life-threatening symptoms. In this work we analyzed the morpho-mechanical phenotype of human dermal fibroblasts from patients affected with VSCM, demonstrating that they retain a clear signature of the disease when compared with different controls. We evaluated several biophysical traits of fibroblasts, and we show that a measure of cellular traction forces can be used as a non-specific biomarker of the disease. We propose that a simple assay based on traction forces could be designed to provide a valuable support for clinical decision or preclinical research.

Although the use of audiovisual telemedicine has grown in recent years especially during recent COVID-19-related lockdowns, evidence shows there is still a lack of tools that can be used for the assessment of telemedicine encounters. The few validated questionnaires that are available for assessing telemedicine encounters are not often used. Non-validated questionnaires dominate research, leading to results that cannot be compared or extrapolated to other research or medical sites. Development of standard measures for the assessment of telemedicine encounters has been advocated by stakeholders. The objective of this study is to provide a comprehensive set of measures by developing a conceptual approach and a preliminary Telemedicine Assessment Toolkit (TAT) for the assessment of audiovisual telemedicine encounters. A two-step conceptual approach was used to identify potential domains and sub-domains by qualitative analysis of a pool of questions from studies published from 2016 to 2021. Questions were adopted from validated questionnaires or generated to represent the underlying concept of each sub-domain, resulting in a core block of comprehensive questions. A toolkit is proposed with question-measures that cover the sub-domains relevant to the assessment of telemedicine encounters. This study recommended 11 domains to be used for the assessment of telemedicine encounters: "usability," "patient satisfaction," "patient-provider interaction," "patient perspectives," "telemedicine readiness," "qualitative feedback," "comparison to standard (in-person) care," "privacy," "technology," "patient feeling," and "patient costs." Of the 11 domains, 26 underlying sub-domains were created. From the subdomains, a 30-question core block was proposed. The core-block together with a precursor block aimed to retrieve demographic/patient characteristics and, together with a customizable clinical outcomes block, complete the comprehensive toolkit. The toolkit, upon testing and validation, would enable researchers and system owners to assess patient-oriented aspects of audiovisual telemedicine encounters more accurately and accelerate the adoption of common audiovisual telemedicine assessment measures.

In an international and constantly evolving market, the agri-food is an important economic sector for countries, like Italy, that are in the Mediterranean region. In recent years, smart digital technologies, machine learning, and big data have been playing an important role in improving the physical production of goods and the quality of operations of the agriculture sector. For example, sensors that a few decades ago were available only in small research greenhouses, now can be deployed in agricultural fields. The information they can transmit over the internet can be used to make real time adjustments to the various steps needed to harvest an agriculture product. Ultimately, the digital solutions applied to agriculture aim to limit waste while minimizing human labour. The "From farm to fork" strategy of the European Green Deal identifies digital technologies as the tools to achieve greater agricultural sustainability. In order to guarantee greater profitability, once a quality agriculture product has been harvested, it is necessary to enhance it by certifying its origin and by disclosing the methods used to produce it and by reporting on the safeguard systems adopted. For these reasons, it is vital to follow agricultural standards that can give the product a certification of quality. For example, data analysis, smart labels, blockchain and smart contracts, that follow standardized protocols, are tools that, in addition to certifying the origin of a product, can reduce brokerage costs, improve deliver time, maintain persistent quality while minimizing human errors. In this study we conducted a literature review on the articles published in last two International Symposia on Mechanization, Precision Horticulture, and Robotics with a focus on innovative technologies and their fields of application developed for the agri-food sector. An overview of the impact of implementing and following standardization practices is presented as well.

Introduction Telemedicine is the exchange of medical information from one site to another via electronic communications with the goal of improving a patient's clinical health status. Prior studies have identified the absence of a standardized assessment tool for evaluating telemedicine encounters. This study aims to collect and to analyze questionnaires used for the assessment of audiovisual telemedicine encounters from a patient perspective and aims to identify reasons driving the use of self-developed questionnaires. Methods We conducted a systematic search in PubMed for studies that used survey questionnaires to assess synchronous audiovisual telemedicine encounters from 2016 to 2021. We categorized questionnaires used into validated and non-validated types, and for each of them, collected questions, response format, author, year, specialty, and country of publication. Results and Discussion We analyzed a total of 71 articles. We found that only 16 studies used three validated questionnaires. The remaining 55 studies used non-validated questionnaires. Non-validated questionnaires had a high variability in length and used Likert scales, binary responses, multiple choice, and open-ended answers. We found only eight studies in which the authors gave a reason for resorting to designing their own questionnaires. This review reveals insufficient standardized survey questionnaires to be used for the assessment of audiovisual telemedicine encounters. Future research initiatives should focus on developing a standardized and validated instrument well accepted by researchers.

Abstract Introduction The use of telemedicine has broadened as technology that both restores continuity of care during disruptions in healthcare delivery and routinely provides primary care alone or in combination with in-person care. During the Covid-19 outbreak, the use of telemedicine as a routine care modality further accelerated. Methods A review of scientific studies that used telemedicine to provide care from December 2019 to December 2020 is presented. From an initial set of 2,191 articles, 36 studies are analyzed. Evidence is organized and evaluated according to the country of study, the clinical specialty, the technology platform used, and satisfaction and utilization outcomes. Results Thirty-one studies reported high patient satisfaction scores. Eight studies reported satisfaction from both providers and patients with no uniformly accepted assessment instrument. Eight studies conducted a descriptive analysis of telemedicine use and patient adoption patterns. Less than one-third of studies were controlled before/after studies. Most studies were conducted in the USA followed by Europe. Conclusions Reported satisfaction rates are high, consistent with previously documented research, whereas utilization rates increased significantly compared with the prepandemic period. Future work in developing standardized uniform assessment instruments, embedded with each telemedicine system, would increase versatility and agility in the assessment, boosting statistical power and the interpretation of results.

Allied health professionals spend a considerable amount of time listening to and communicating with patients while providing care. The inclusion of appropriate communication skills as a part of the core curriculum for allied health professions is crucial. Metaphorical representations are used by both patients and healthcare providers when communicating. Patients express their symptoms using metaphors and health professionals may use metaphors to facilitate the provider-patient interaction. It is reasonable to expect that allied health faculty would intentionally train their students in the use of metaphor. However, research on knowledge, use, and perception of metaphors among allied health faculty is absent. To address the gap, our study, by using a 13-question online anonymous survey, aimed to: 1) assess how well faculty of nutrition, respiratory therapy, athletic training, and occupational therapy programs recognize metaphors, and 2) determine if faculty use metaphors when they have to explain a clinical concept. A total of 366 participants completed the survey. Participants agreed on the value of metaphorical communication and showed a willingness to use metaphors in educational settings to teach a clinical concept. Participants were often not able to correctly identify metaphors when used in sentences.

Business incubators are organisations that support the growth of small companies, including start-ups, by providing various resources and services. The aims of this article were to assess the characteristics of business incubators in non-hub cities located in Georgia and South Carolina and to describe the major differences between incubators located in non-hub and hub cities. We surveyed 5 non-hub incubators and visited and analysed qualitatively 10 incubators, 5 in hub cities and 5 in non-hub cities. Results showed that incubators in non-hub cities have less focus and less access to funding capital compared with incubators in hub cities. The implementation of a mesh network among incubators in non-hub cities may help sharing resources, know-how, talents and investments with the goal of being able to compete with incubators in hub cities. While currently incubators in non-hub cities cannot offer the same services to their members, they can still play an important role in giving the people in their communities an opportunity to start a new business, find jobs and increase their income. Business incubators in non-hub cities can ultimately positively impact the overall quality of life of the population they serve. Finally, we proposed that a focus on public health innovation may help incubators in non-hub cities to be successful.

Purpose of this study was the development of a 3D material to be used as substrate for breast cancer cell culture. We developed composite gels constituted by different concentrations of Alginate (A) and Matrigel (M) to obtain a structurally stable-in-time and biologically active substrate. Human aggressive breast cancer cells (i.e. MDA-MB-231) were cultured within the gels. Known the link between cell morphology and malignancy, cells were morphologically characterized and their invasiveness correlated through an innovative bioreactor-based invasion assay. A particular type of gel (i.e. 50% Alginate, 50% Matrigel) emerged thanks to a series of significant results: 1. cells exhibited peculiar cytoskeleton shapes and nuclear fragmentation characteristic of their malignancy; 2. cells expressed the formation of the so-called invadopodia, actin-based protrusion of the plasma membrane through which cells anchor to the extracellular matrix; 3. cells were able to migrate through the gels and attach to an engineered membrane mimicking the vascular walls hosted within bioreactor, providing a completely new 3D in vitro model of the very precursor steps of metastasis.

Three-dimensional (3D) cell cultures represent fundamental tools for the comprehension of cellular phenomena both in normal and in pathological conditions. In particular, mechanical and chemical stimuli play a relevant role on cell fate, cancer onset and malignant evolution. Here, we use mechanically-tuned alginate hydrogels to study the role of substrate elasticity on breast adenocarcinoma cell activity. The hydrogel elastic modulus (E) was measured via atomic force microscopy (AFM) and a remarkable range (150–4000 kPa) was obtained. A breast cancer cell line, MCF-7, was seeded within the 3D gels, on standard Petri and alginate-coated dishes (2D controls). Cells showed dramatic morphological differences when cultured in 3D versus 2D, exhibiting a flat shape in both 2D conditions, while maintaining a circular, spheroid-organized (cluster) conformation within the gels, similar to those in vivo . Moreover, we observed a strict correlation between cell viability and substrate elasticity; in particular, the number of MCF-7 cells decreased constantly with increasing hydrogel elasticity. Remarkably, the highest cellular proliferation rate, associated with the formation of cell clusters, occurred at two weeks only in the softest hydrogels (E = 150–200 kPa), highlighting the need to adopt more realistic and a priori defined models for in vitro cancer studies.

Background: Tissue MicroArray technology aims to perform immunohistochemical staining on hundreds of different tissue samples simultaneously. It allows faster analysis, considerably reducing costs incurred in staining. A time consuming phase of the methodology is the selection of tissue areas within paraffin blocks: no utilities have been developed for the identification of areas to be punched from the donor block and assembled in the recipient block.Results: The presented work supports, in the specific case of a primary subtype of breast cancer (tubular breast cancer), the semi-automatic discrimination and localization between normal and pathological regions within the tissues. The diagnosis is performed by analysing specific morphological features of the sample such as the absence of a double layer of cells around the lumen and the decay of a regular glands-and-lobules structure. These features are analysed using an algorithm which performs the extraction of morphological parameters from images and compares them to experimentally validated threshold values. Results are satisfactory since in most of the cases the automatic diagnosis matches the response of the pathologists. In particular, on a total of 1296 sub-images showing normal and pathological areas of breast specimens, algorithm accuracy, sensitivity and specificity are respectively 89%, 84% and 94%.Conclusions: The proposed work is a first attempt to demonstrate that automation in the Tissue MicroArray field is feasible and it can represent an important tool for scientists to cope with this high-throughput technique.

BACKGROUND:The SYMBIOmatics Specific Support Action (SSA) is "an information gathering and dissemination activity" that seeks "to identify synergies between the bioinformatics and the medical informatics" domain to improve collaborative progress between both domains (ref. to http://www.symbiomatics.org). As part of the project experts in both research fields will be identified and approached through a survey. To provide input to the survey, the scientific literature was analysed to extract topics relevant to both medical informatics and bioinformatics.RESULTS:This paper presents results of a systematic analysis of the scientific literature from medical informatics research and bioinformatics research. In the analysis pairs of words (bigrams) from the leading bioinformatics and medical informatics journals have been used as indication of existing and emerging technologies and topics over the period 2000-2005 ("recent") and 1990-1990 ("past"). We identified emerging topics that were equally important to bioinformatics and medical informatics in recent years such as microarray experiments, ontologies, open source, text mining and support vector machines. Emerging topics that evolved only in bioinformatics were system biology, protein interaction networks and statistical methods for microarray analyses, whereas emerging topics in medical informatics were grid technology and tissue microarrays.CONCLUSION:We conclude that although both fields have their own specific domains of interest, they share common technological developments that tend to be initiated by new developments in biotechnology and computer science.

The aim of this study has been the biochemical demonstration of the presence of γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in the Mediterranean sea fan Eunicella cavolini by means of high-performance liquid chromatography, and the description of the distribution pattern of GABA and its related molecules, glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD), vesicular GABA transporter (VGAT) and one of the GABA receptors (GABA B R) by immunohistochemical methods. The interrelationships of GABA, GAD and GABA receptor immunoreactivity have been established by using double-immunohistochemical methods and confocal microscopy. The immunodetection of monoclonal and/or polyclonal antibodies has revealed GABA immunoreactivity throughout the polyp tissue, both in neuronal and non-neuronal elements. GAD immunoreactivity has been mostly localized in the neuronal compartment, contacting epithelial and muscular elements. GABA B R immunoreactivity appears particularly intense in the nematocytes and in the oocyte envelope; its presence in GAD-immunoreactive neurons in the tentacles suggests an autocrine type of regulation. Western blot analysis has confirmed that a GABA B R, with a molecular weight of 142 kDa, similar to that of rat brain, is present in E. cavolini polyp tissue. The identification of the sites of the synthesis, vesicular transport, storage and reception of GABA strongly suggests the presence of an almost complete set of GABA-related molecules for the functioning of the GABAergic system in this simple nervous system. The distribution of these different immunoreactivities has allowed us to hypothesize GABA involvement in nematocyst discharge, in body wall and enteric muscular contraction, in neuronal integration and in male gametocyte differentiation.

The effect of euplotin C – a lipophilic bioactive metabolite produced by the ciliate Euplotes crassus – on the kinetics of both phagocytosis of latex particles and fluid-phase uptake of dextran, was studied in the single-cell ciliate Paramecium primaurelia. The inhibition of food vacuole formation was concentration- and time-dependent (p<0.001), even if euplotin C did not completely block the phagocytosis. Following a 15min treatment with a euplotin C (0.5μg/ml), the latex particle uptake was inhibited up to 25%. Furthermore, the pretreatment of cells with taxol strongly counteracted euplotin C effect. The amount of extracellularly provided dextran, which is internalized exclusively by fluid-phase uptake, was quantified in cells whose phagocytic activity was blocked by trifluoperazine. The amount of the internalized dextran was about 50% of that in controls after 15min incubation in the presence of euplotin C. Fluorescence confocal images showed that no endosomes were formed on the surface of these cells. The effect of euplotin C on the food vacuole formation and fluid-phase endocytosis is apparently mediated by a modification of microtubule network.