ABSTRACT
Over the years, transportable instrumentation for cultural heritage (CH) in situ measurements has noticeably widespread, due to logistic, economical and safety reasons. Ion beam analysis, a powerful set of analytical techniques, of great importance for CH, is instead carried out by using fixed instrumentation. To overcome this limit, the Italian national Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN), CERN (European Centre for Nuclear Research) and the Opificio delle Pietre Dure (OPD), started MACHINA, the "Movable Accelerator for CH In-situ Non-destructive Analysis: the new generation of accelerators for art” to build a transportable accelerator, compact, with strongly reduced weight, absorbed power and cost. MACHINA will be installed at the OPD and dedicated to CH. It will be moved to major conservation centres and museums, when needed. The INFN-CERN proposal, approved in December 2017, became operative in February 2018. 2018 was dedicated to the acquisition of material/instrumentations, to set up both a dummy accelerator (to test the vacuum system) and a vacuum chamber (to test the source). Due to COVID, in 2020 and 2021 the experimental work was slowed down, but we kept developing the control electronics/software and built the second-generation supporting structure. The HF-RFQ power supplies were integrated in October 2021. At the rise of 2022, after conditioning the cavities, we tested the system and in March 2022 we got the first extracted 2-MeV proton beam. In this paper, we present the structure of the MACHINA system, the approach followed and the main solutions adopted, with a special focus on the control system, and finally the first experimental results. © 2023, The Author(s).
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: The advent of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has resulted in an increase in sedentary behavior, with consequences on cardiopulmonary capacity, especially in the elderly population. Prehabilitation is a strategy usually used before a surgical procedure to improve functional capacity; however, it can be used for non-surgical patients and not in the acute phase of disease. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a prehabilitation program, using telerehabilitation, in frail elderly patients with chronic heart failure. PATIENTS AND METHODS: This is a randomized, controlled, single-blind study. Fifteen patients with chronic heart failure were randomized into three groups: two active groups (telerehabilitation and in-person) and the control group. Patients in the active groups underwent a rehabilitation program divided into two 4-week periods, for 45-60 minutes per day, 2 days per week. RESULTS: In the Study Group, the quality of life significantly improved (EQoL-5D), and between the two groups a statistically significant difference in the motor dimension of SF-36 was identified. CONCLUSIONS: The telerehabilitation prehabilitation program for patients with chronic heart failure was confirmed to be effective and not inferior to a prehabilitation program performed in-person, avoiding the worsening of some domains of quality of life and motor performance, and leading to the improvement of others.