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Objective: To investigate the role of punishment in enuretic children and how the punishments can influence therapy response. Methods: We enrolled 218 enuretic children. The children and their families were asked to participate in the study at the end of the clinical evaluation. Results: The analysis of the questionnaires shows that at least one punishment because of nocturnal enuresis (NE) had been applied to 27 out of 218 (12.4%) children. Punishment methods were reprimanding in 19 out of 27 (70.4%), depriving of sleep in 11 out of 27 (40.7%), mildly beating in 3 out of 27 (11.1%), leaving the child wet in 1 out of 27 (3.7%) and other methods in 2 out of 27 (7.4%). In the group of punished children, a full or partial response in terms of a decreased number of wet nights was achieved in 40.7 vs. 59.2% in children who had not been punished. Conclusions: Parents should be sensitized on the adverse effects of punishment on child development. It is important in childcare to explain the definitions of the disorder and find the best treatment (behavioural and/or medicinal) depending on the single patient, his/her family and compliance of both. Successful management of NE has benefits to both the child and the family.

SummaryEighty premenopausal patients with advanced breast cancer underwent bilateral ovariectomy. Clinical response was evaluated at 6 months from the operation and correlated with the presence or absence both of estrogen receptors and of elevated urinary androgen excretion. The results obtained show that both parameters considered are actually significant to predict the clinical response to ovariectomy, especially when both of them are concordant.

The microbial fuel cells (MFCs) represent an emerging technology for converting directly organic waste into electricity. In recent years, the application of MFCs to the energy recovery from wastes has been widely explored. The main aspect that limits the development and implementation of this technology on a larger-scale is the possibility of realizing its scaling-up. In order to overcome this critical factor, it is useful to analyze novel MFCs configurations based on compact reactors with multiple electrodes.In this paper, single chamber MFCs provided with multiple fiber brush anodes and a single air-cathode were designed and realized by using a 3D printer. The reactors had a cubic shape, with a cylindrical chamber of 350 mL in volume. The mineral medium added with sodium acetate (0.25 M), as sole source of carbon and energy to sustain exoelectrogenic bacteria metabolism, were used. Anodes biofilms were prepared from a mix of compost and sodium acetate dissolved in phosphate buffer solution (0.2M), in a 1:3 ratio. The performances of two MFCs provided with two and three anodes were assessed in terms of voltage, current density and power density. These performances were compared to those of a smaller cubic MFC (30mL).