Psychopathological Impact in Patients with History of Rheumatic Fever with or without Sydenham's Chorea: A Multicenter Prospective Study

Sydenham's chorea (SC) is a post-streptococcal autoimmune disorder of the central nervous system, and it is a major criterium for the diagnosis of acute rheumatic fever (ARF). SC typically improves in 12-15 weeks, but patients can be affected for years by persistence and recurrencies of both neurological and neuropsychiatric symptoms. We enrolled 48 patients with a previous diagnosis of ARF, with or without SC, in a national multicenter prospective study, to evaluate the presence of neuropsychiatric symptoms several years after SC's onset. Our population was divided in a SC group (n = 21), consisting of patients who had SC, and a nSC group (n = 27), consisting of patients who had ARF without SC. Both groups were evaluated by the administration of 8 different neuropsychiatric tests. The Work and Social Adjustment Scale (WSAS) showed significantly (p = 0.021) higher alterations in the SC group than in the nSC group. Furthermore, 60.4% (n = 29) of the overall population experienced neuropsychiatric symptoms other than choreic movements at diagnosis and this finding was significantly more common (p = 0.00) in SC patients (95.2%) than in nSC patients (33.3%). The other neuropsychiatric tests also produced significant results, indicating that SC can exert a strong psychopathological impact on patients even years after its onset.

The importance of personal attitude toward Health issues: the Covid 19 Vaccination attitude

 

The project realize an idea from students of Scientific High school involved in a multidisciplinary path focused on “ONE HEALTH” approach and “ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION” After skill buildings webinars the students decided to build a survey in order to

Raise awareness about how any individual behavior Underline the importance of information, even scientific, in order to take appropriate choices. Build confidence in the effectiveness of the vaccination interventions against COVID 19

 

The project has been done by the students on the basis of multimedia digital tools, exploiting some IT tools like Google forms, PPTs, Spreadsheet, Excel. Students carried out an online survey addressed to a sample of the adult population among students' friends. Observational questionnaire asked the participants their sharing about some issues or the ticking of one or more options from a list of default answers. The survey involved a sample of people between 500 and 1000 units from April 15th to May 30th 2021.After the collection, all the data have been processed through tables and graphs according to the following macro-themes:

Boundaries against vaccines Use of personal protective equipment The most feared pandemic risks and their environmental implications

The outcome of the survey mainly highlights the population ‘attitude to get vaccine together with the awareness of the necessity of herd immunity achievement, to overcome this pandemic. Students stand point is that personal attitude toward prevention and personal behavior may have impact either on health or into environmental goals.

Band-like electron transport in 2D quantum dot periodic lattices: the effect of realistic size distributions

Electron mobility in nanocrystal films has been a controversial topic in the last few years. Theoretical and experimental studies evidencing carrier transport by hopping or showing band-like features have been reported in the past. A relevant factor to analyze transport results is the progressive improvement in quantum dot superlattice fabrication, leading to better regimented structures for which band-like transport would be more relevant. This work presents an efficient model to compute temperature-dependent band-like electronic mobilities in 2D quantum dot arrays when a realistic quantum dot size distribution is considered. Comparisons with experimental results are used to estimate these size distributions, in good agreement with data of the samples.