Latest news with #UniversityofNaples
Medscape
05-05-2025
- Health
- Medscape
HPV Vaccine Post-Surgery Cuts Viral Persistence
The administration of the human papillomavirus nonavalent (9vHPV) vaccine after a surgical treatment for low- and high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia resulted in a significant reduction in the proportion of women positive for HPV over the 15-month study period. METHODOLOGY: Researchers conducted a retrospective study to examine the effectiveness of the 9vHPV vaccine after surgical treatment in women with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia. They included 326 women (mean age, 40.7 years) who underwent carbon dioxide laser ablation for low-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN1) or the loop electrosurgical excision procedure for high-grade lesions (CIN2-3) between 2020 and 2024 at a centre in Italy. Participants were divided into two groups: Vaccinated (n = 222) and unvaccinated (n = 104) groups; the vaccinated group received the 9vHPV vaccine either before surgery or within 30 days post-surgery. Patients were followed up at 6 and 15 months post-treatment; HPV test results and colposcopy findings were analysed to determine the effect of vaccination on viral clearance. TAKEAWAY: During the 6-month follow-up period, HPV positivity rates were significantly lower for patients with CIN1 in the vaccinated group than for those in the unvaccinated group (18% vs 38%; P = .0169). The findings were consistent at the 15-month follow-up. = .0169). The findings were consistent at the 15-month follow-up. During the 15-month follow-up period, HPV positivity rates were significantly lower for patients with CIN2-3 in the vaccinated group than for those in the unvaccinated group (8% vs 18%; P = .0353). = .0353). Vaccination showed a significant effect in reducing HPV positivity among women aged 40 years or older with CIN1 ( P = .0100). = .0100). At the end of the follow-up, post-treatment colposcopy findings were comparable between the groups, regardless of vaccination status. IN PRACTICE: "A comprehensive approach to cervical cancer prevention — including primary prevention (prophylactic vaccination), secondary prevention (cervical screening), and tertiary prevention (therapeutic interventions and post-treatment vaccination) — could play a crucial role in accelerating the elimination of cervical cancer worldwide," the authors wrote. SOURCE: This study was led by Mario Palumbo, School of Medicine, University of Naples "Federico II," Naples, Italy. It was published online on April 19, 2025, in the European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology . LIMITATIONS: This study was limited by its retrospective observational study design. DISCLOSURES: This study did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. The authors reported having no conflicts of interest or personal relationships that could have influenced the study.
Roya News
19-04-2025
- Roya News
Palestinian woman, two Britons killed in Italy cable car crash
A tragic cable car accident on Monte Faito, south of Naples, claimed four lives on Thursday, including two British tourists and Janan Suleiman, a 25-year-old Palestinian woman from Galilee, according to Italian authorities. The crash also killed the Italian driver operating the car. A fifth passenger, Suleiman's brother, Thabet, remains hospitalized in critical condition. The cable car was just seconds away from its destination on a scenic plateau when it plunged down the mountainside, Castellammare di Stabia Mayor Luigi Vicinanza confirmed. The elevated lookout point offers sweeping views of the Gulf of Naples and Mount Vesuvius, and is a popular draw for both locals and tourists. Officials identified the British victims as Elaine Margaret Winn and Graeme Derek Winn. Mayor Vicinanza described the crash as 'tragic' and confirmed that the victims' relatives, including the Suleimans' family, were expected to arrive in Italy later in the day. He explained that the accident occurred after the cable car's traction cable snapped, halting both the descending car and a second cabin still near the departure station. Firefighters rescued nine people trapped in the lower car using harnesses. Emergency teams also removed portions of the broken cable, which had fallen onto a nearby railway line and the roof of a house. Italian prosecutors have launched an investigation into the cause of the crash. 'It's far too soon to tell what happened,' said Antonello De Luca, an engineering professor at the University of Naples who previously served as an expert witness in the 2021 cable car crash in Piedmont, where 14 people were killed. That incident was caused by a snapped cable and a disabled emergency brake system. Professor De Luca noted that Monte Faito's cableway operates under a similar system. 'The emergency brake system failed to stop the cabin for unknown reasons,' he said. The cable car operator, identified as 51-year-old Carmine Parlato, was remembered by Umberto de Gregorio, chairman of EAV—the transportation company responsible for the cableway. 'I knew him well,' de Gregorio said, calling Parlato 'an extraordinary person' who was passionate about his work. Parlato was also the brother of de Gregorio's personal driver. The cableway system, while less known internationally than nearby tourist hubs like Pompeii or the Amalfi Coast, was beloved by residents and visitors alike for its accessibility to the mountain's views and local archaeological sites. 'The cableway system was very popular among citizens and tourists,' Mayor Vicinanza noted in a phone interview.
New York Times
18-04-2025
- General
- New York Times
Cable Car Victims in Italian Crash Were British And Israeli Tourists
Italian officials said on Friday that two British tourists and an Arab woman with Israeli citizenship were among the four people killed in a cable car crash south of Naples on Thursday. The Italian driver of the cable car also died. The cable car fell when it was about 20 seconds from reaching a station located on a scenic plateau on Monte Faito, according to Luigi Vicinanza, the mayor of Castellammare di Stabia, the seaside town he car departed from. The plateau offers breathtaking views of the Gulf of Naples and Mount Vesuvius. The only survivor, the Israeli woman's brother, was in critical condition on Friday in a Naples hospital. An official with the prefecture in Naples identified the British tourists as Elaine Margaret Winn and Graeme Derek Winn, and identified the Israeli woman as Janan Suleiman. Her brother, identified as Thabet Suleiman, was injured. Mayor Vicinanza called the accident 'tragic.' He added that family members of the Israeli siblings were expected to arrive in Italy later on Friday. Mr. Vicinanza said the cable car fell after a traction cable snapped, blocking both the cabin near the peak, and another cable car near the Castellammare station. The nine people trapped in the lower car were rescued by firefighters using harnesses. Italian prosecutors have opened an investigation into the cause of the crash. 'It's far too soon to tell what happened,' said Antonello De Luca, a professor of engineering at the University of Naples, who testified as an expert witness in a trial involving a 2021 cable car crash in Italy. 'Technical investigations on disasters of this kind can take years.' In the 2021 disaster, 14 people were killed when a cable car crashed near the top of a mountain in the northwestern region of Piedmont, Italy. The cause was determined to be a snapped cable and an emergency brake failure. Five members of an Israeli family died in that accident. Mr. De Luca said that, based on the kind of aerial cableway system operating at Monte Faito, it was possible that after a traction cable broke, 'the emergency brake system failed to stop the cabin for unknown reasons.' The cabin plummeted and tumbled down the mountainside. After the accident, firefighters removed pieces of the traction cable that had fallen on a local railway and onto the roof of a house, according to a statement by the firefighters. Mr. De Luca said such cable car systems were typically subject to rigorous maintenance. The driver of the cable car was identified as Carmine Parlato. Umberto de Gregorio chairman of EAV, the public transportation company that manages the cable car, described Mr. Parlato as an 'extraordinary person' who loved working for the company. Mr. Parlato was the brother of Mr. de Gregorio's driver. 'I knew him well,' he said. Far less famous than its neighbor Pompeii, Castellammare draws tourists for its archaeological park and archaeological museum, as well as its convenient location near Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast. 'The cableway system was very popular among citizens and tourists,' Mr. Vicinanza said in a telephone interview. Mr. Vicinanza declared Friday a day of mourning in the municipality and canceled nonreligious Easter weekend events, including a concert on Sunday.
The Guardian
17-02-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
A perfect boiled egg in 32 minutes? Don't let science ruin the joyful imperfection of home cooking
To make pearls of balsamic vinegar, first chill a good amount of olive oil in a tall glass. While it waits in the fridge, in a small saucepan over a medium heat, bring the vinegar and agar-agar to the beginning of a boil – just until the agar-agar has dissolved. Let this mixture cool, remove the oil from the fridge, and use a pipette to drop balls of the agar-stiffened vinegar into the oil to form the pearls. Drain into another container using a small sieve to catch the pearls. Reserve the oil for another use. I remember making these, my first and only foray into what is known as 'molecular gastronomy', in 2013. It was already a bit passe at that time, but the science experiment aspect of creating a simple acidic garnish for a chocolate and strawberry cupcake that Valentine's Day was undoubtedly fun. The lesson influenced how I'd go on to use agar-agar, a seaweed-derived vegan gelatin, in dishes like panna cotta or flan, but I never made the pearls again. They were a novelty, and now I have a fond memory of cosplaying as Ferran Adrià, a Spanish chef who popularised these sorts of processes through the restaurant El Bulli. The pearls came to mind while reading about an experiment conducted by Ernesto Di Maio at the University of Naples in Italy. His team found that if you swap an egg between boiling water and 30C water every two minutes for eight cycles, totalling 32 minutes, the egg will be perfectly evenly cooked between white and yolk. New Scientist reported on this finding rather credulously, as though home cooks are truly perplexed about how to boil an egg to their liking. Rather than cooking science that's about making something pretty and fun, like the vinegar pearls, this experiment was about making an instance of everyday cooking labour intensive, water-wasteful and time-consuming. I could see someone doing this experiment once, the way I made the vinegar pearls, and then going back to their tried-and-true method. (For what it's worth, dropping eggs into already boiling water and letting them cook for seven minutes is how I get my preferred texture of jammy orange yolk.) In the long history of the relationship between cooking and chemistry, there's often been this kind of push-pull between what is actually going to enliven and enlighten a home cook, and a pursuit of perfection – whether in technique and taste or in nutrition. Indeed, cuisine in the US throughout the early part of the 20th century was defined by a divide between gourmands, who were interested in food and wine for the pleasure it gave them, and the 'scientific cooks', who were obsessed with eating as a means of ingesting the proper amount of vitamins, minerals and calories without any interest in the joys of the table. 'Food science' differs from the restaurant-driven style of molecular cooking because it's usually focused on nutrition, flavour chemistry and shelf stability to the most common ends of creating industrial products. Molecular gastronomy, a term coined in 1988 by Hungarian-born British physicist Nicholas Kurti and French physical chemist Hervé This, has been focused on culinary applications of scientific principles and processes: sous-vide cooking a steak by sealing it in a vacuum bag and cooking it slowly in a water bath; using liquid nitrogen to create a carrot foam; or transforming the texture of olive juice through spherification. These techniques were popularised through El Bulli, Wylie Dufresne's New York City restaurant wd~50, and Grant Achatz's Chicago restaurant Alinea – and the latter is the only one of these still open and wowing diners with apple candy filled with helium that arrives to the table in the form of a balloon. (I've eaten there, and it inspired me to sous-vide slices of rutabaga – swede – again, just once.) Rather than these kinds of perhaps gimmicky tasting-menu ideas, 'innovation' in food these days tends to come in forms that are focused on an ideally sustainable future: plant-based faux meats; chef-driven proprietary seed companies like Dan Barber's Row 7; or strawberries grown indoors year-round by the company Oishii. These are more in line with what food science has always been about, which is precision, uniformity and replication: products that can scale and turn a profit, but retain the culinary considerations learned from molecular gastronomy. If there is to be a scientific touch to food, it's come to be understood that there should be an element of that higher-minded gastronomic purpose afoot in order to convince people of its worth. While it's always been fun to mix scientific approaches with home cooking, what worries me about a focus on 'innovation' for the sake of a 'perfect' squash or strawberry, a profit-driven soy patty, or new techniques for simple things like boiling eggs is that they could have the effect of deterring people from cooking. Learning how to pick fruit or vegetables at the market and getting into the kitchen to cook them will always be acts of trial and error, and they should be fun. Cooking is an experiment, every day, in how water, oil, salt and so many other elements can come together for the purpose of making something delicious. But unlike a laboratory or a factory, the result doesn't need to be the same every single time, or held to a precise scientific standard. Weather, moods and attention all influence how a human cooks – and there's a lot to enjoy in the imperfections. Alicia Kennedy is a food and culture writer and author of No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating, and a forthcoming memoir On Eating: The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites
Associated Press
06-02-2025
- Health
- Associated Press
How to cook the perfect boiled egg, according to science
NEW YORK (AP) — Scientists say they've cracked the code for boiling the perfect egg. It's a recipe you can test for yourself — though the timing isn't ideal with soaring egg prices in the United States from a bird flu outbreak. The perfect boiled egg has a velvety yolk paired with a soft, solid white. Achieving this balance can be a challenge because the yolk cooks at a lower temperature than the white. Hard boiling an egg can yield a chalky yolk, while cooking low and slow can produce jelly-like, undercooked whites. Researchers cooked hundreds of eggs and used math to tackle this runny conundrum. One equation dealt with how heat travels between a hot surface and an egg; another captured how the egg's contents morph from liquid to solid with a gel-like state in between. Their final recipe involves transferring eggs in a steamer basket every two minutes between two bowls of water — one boiling and the other lukewarm at 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius) — for a total of 32 minutes before cooling under running water and peeling. 'You could definitely do this at home with half a dozen eggs or so,' said Gregory Weiss, a chemist at the University of California, Irvine, who was not involved with the research. In the method proposed by the researchers, dubbed periodic cooking, the egg whites heated and cooled until fully set. The yolk, on the other hand, held firm at a constant temperature and cooked until creamy. 'You can almost spread it, like on bread,' said study author Emilia Di Lorenzo from the University of Naples Federico II. To confirm they had cooked up something new, the researchers tested the chemical makeup of the prepared eggs and served them to a panel of eight tasters alongside traditional boiled eggs. The research was published Thursday in the journal Communications Engineering. This new technique could mean more time in the kitchen compared to a standard hard-boiled egg, said food scientist Joanne Slavin from the University of Minnesota. But the blend of textures on the tongue could be worth the extra time. 'This is a slower process to get a better outcome,' said Slavin, who had no role in the study. ___
