ABSTRACT
Wild aromatic plants present high intra- and inter-population chemical polymorphisms which are of great ecological and economic interest; however, the factors influencing the phytochemical diversity of aromatic plants remain still unexplored for many species. Here, Teucrium marum L. (Lamiaceae) has been studied, a plant endemic to the western Mediterranean islands, very well-known from the phytochemical point of view but scarcely investigated regarding the ecological factors that influence its phytochemical diversity within and among populations. The specific aims were to: 1) define the chemical composition variability of its essential oils; 2) determine its inter- and intra-population chemical variability; and 3) evaluate whether the elevation, climatic factors and/or the soil substrate determined the phytochemical variability of T. marum along a gradient from coastal to mountain wild populations on the island of Sardinia (Italy). Fresh T. marum aerial parts were randomly collected from ten individuals in six different localities in Sardinia: three coastal and three mountainous. Dried leaf samples were hydrodistillated using a classical Clevenger apparatus to obtain the corresponding essential oils. The composition of each essential oil was chemically characterised and analyzed by gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry. Ninety compounds were identified: among the others, the two compounds that mainly characterised the essential oils of the studied populations, dolichodial and (E)-ß-caryophyllene, are of great economic interest. Statistical analyses showed significant differences in phytochemical essential oil composition among and within the studied populations, which clustered following a geographical pattern rather than a simple climatic or edaphic grouping. Taken together the results here shown shed light on the environmental and geographical conditions that determine the chemical variability of essential oils in T. marum, highlighting a clear coastal vs mountain clustering, which has an ecological and economic relevance, especially for the potential utilization of dolichodial as an environmental-friendly insecticide.
ABSTRACT
Telemonitoring is a branch of telehealth that aims at remotely monitoring vital signs, which is important for chronically ill patients and the elderly living alone. The available standalone devices and applications for the self-monitoring of health parameters largely suffer from interoperability problems; meanwhile, telemonitoring medical devices are expensive, self-contained, and are not integrated into user-friendly technological platforms for the end user. This paper presents the technical aspects and usability assessment of the telemonitoring features of the HEREiAM platform, which supports heterogeneous information technology systems. By exploiting a service-oriented architecture, the measured parameters collected by off-the-shelf Bluetooth medical devices are sent as XML documents to a private cloud that implements an interoperable health service infrastructure, which is compliant with the most recent healthcare standards and security protocols. This Android-based system is designed to be accessible both via TV and portable devices, and includes other utilities designed to support the elderly living alone. Four usability assessment sessions with quality-validated questionnaires were performed to accurately understand the ease of use, usefulness, acceptance, and quality of the proposed system. The results reveal that our system achieved very high usability scores even at its first use, and the scores did not significantly change over time during a field trial that lasted for four months, reinforcing the idea of an intuitive design. At the end of such a trial, the user-experience questionnaire achieved excellent scores in all aspects with respect to the benchmark. Good results were also reported by general practitioners who assessed the quality of their remote interfaces for telemonitoring.