Don't judge a book by its cover. factitious disorder imposed on children-report on 2 cases

Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another (FDIA), also known as Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSbP) is a very serious form of child abuse. The perpetrator, usually the mother, invents symptoms or causes real ones in order to make her child appear sick. Usually this is due to a maladaptive disorder or to an excessive of attention-seeking on her part. We report here two new cases of FDIA. The first one is a 9-year-old boy with a history of convulsive episodes, reduced verbal production, mild psychomotor disorder and urological problems who underwent several invasive procedures and hospitalizations before a diagnosis of FDIA was made. The second is a 12 year-old girl with headache, abdominal pain, lipothymic episodes, seizures and a gait impairment, who was hospitalized in several hospitals before an FDIA was diagnosed

Reliability and clinical usefulness of the personality inventory for DSM-5 in clinically referred adolescents. A preliminary report in a sample of Italian inpatients

Background The DSM-5 Alternative Model of Personality Disorders (AMPD) provides the opportunity to integrate the needed developmental perspective in the assessment of personality pathology. Based on this model, Krueger and colleagues (2012) developed the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5), which operationalizes the proposed DSM-5 traits. Methods Eighty-five consecutively admitted Italian adolescent inpatients were administered the Italian translation of the PID-5, in order to obtain preliminary data on PID-5 reliability and clinical usefulness in clinically referred adolescents. Results With the possible exception of the PID-5 Suspiciousness scale, all other PID-5 scales evidenced adequate internal consistency reliability (i.e., Cronbach's α values of at least .70, most being greater than .80). Our data seemed to yield at least partial support for the construct validity of the PID-5 scales also in clinical adolescents, at least in terms of patterns of associations with dimensionally assessed DSM-5 Section II PDs that were also included in the DSM-5 AMPD (excluding Antisocial PD because of the participants' minor age). Finally, our data suggested that the clinical usefulness of the PID-5 in adolescent inpatients may extend beyond PDs to profiling adolescents at risk for life-threatening suicide attempts. In particular, PID-5 Depressivity, Anhedonia, and Submissiveness trait scales were significantly associated with adolescents' history of life-threatening suicide attempts, even after controlling for a number of other variables, including mood disorder diagnosis. Discussion As a whole, our study may provide interesting, albeit preliminary data as to the clinical usefulness of PID-5 in the assessment of adolescent inpatients

Non-susceptible landslide areas in Italy and in the Mediterranean region

Abstract. We used landslide information for 13 study areas in Italy and morphometric information obtained from the 3-arcseconds shuttle radar topography mission digital elevation model (SRTM DEM) to determine areas where landslide susceptibility is expected to be negligible in Italy and in the landmasses surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. The morphometric information consisted of the local terrain slope which was computed in a square 3 × 3-cell moving window, and in the regional relative relief computed in a circular 15 × 15-cell moving window. We tested three different models to classify the "non-susceptible" landslide areas, including a linear model (LNR), a quantile linear model (QLR), and a quantile, non-linear model (QNL). We tested the performance of the three models using independent landslide information presented by the Italian Landslide Inventory (Inventario Fenomeni Franosi in Italia – IFFI). Best results were obtained using the QNL model. The corresponding zonation of non-susceptible landslide areas was intersected in a geographic information system (GIS) with geographical census data for Italy. The result determined that 57.5% of the population of Italy (in 2001) was located in areas where landslide susceptibility is expected to be negligible. We applied the QNL model to the landmasses surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, and we tested the synoptic non-susceptibility zonation using independent landslide information for three study areas in Spain. Results showed that the QNL model was capable of determining where landslide susceptibility is expected to be negligible in the validation areas in Spain. We expect our results to be applicable in similar study areas, facilitating the identification of non-susceptible landslide areas, at the synoptic scale

Convolutional architectures for virtual screening

Background: A Virtual Screening algorithm has to adapt to the different stages of this process. Early screening needs to ensure that all bioactive compounds are ranked in the first positions despite of the number of false positives, while a second screening round is aimed at increasing the prediction accuracy. Results: A novel CNN architecture is presented to this aim, which predicts bioactivity of candidate compounds on CDK1 using a combination of molecular fingerprints as their vector representation, and has been trained suitably to achieve good results as regards both enrichment factor and accuracy in different screening modes (98.55% accuracy in active-only selection, and 98.88% in high precision discrimination). Conclusion: The proposed architecture outperforms state-of-the-art ML approaches, and some interesting insights on molecular fingerprints are devised

Hypermentalizing as a marker of borderline personality disorder in Italian adolescents: A cross-cultural replication of Sharp and colleagues' (2011) findings

Background: Extant literature indicates that Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) may be reliably assessed in adolescence. Sharp and colleagues' (2011) suggested that mentalization could be an important early target for intervention in BPD adolescents and showed that hypermentalizing may represent an important marker to distinguish emerging BPD from adolescent turmoil. We aimed at testing if both dimensionally-assessed and categorically-diagnosed BPD was selectively associated with hypermentalizing errors on the Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC) task in Italian adolescent inpatients and community adolescents. Findings: The sample was composed of 58 Italian adolescents who were consecutively admitted to an adolescent psychiatry unit in Rome, Italy. BPD was assessed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 Personality Disorders (SCID-5-PD); the MASC task was used to assess mentalizing. Findings supported the hypothesis of a specific link between BPD features and hypermentalizing in adolescent inpatients. Both dimensionally-assessed and categorically-assessed BPD showed significant and non-negligible associations with hypermentalizing. The overall performance on the MASC task significantly discriminated BPD adolescents from Italian community-dwelling adolescents. Conclusions: Our findings supported the hypothesis that specific deficits in mentalization-namely, hypermentalizing-may play a crucial role in the developmental pathway leading to emerging BPD in adolescence

A Narrative Review about Prosocial and Antisocial Behavior in Childhood: The Relationship with Shame and Moral Development

We conducted a literature review aimed at identifying the origins of shame as well as its effects on moral development, especially in terms of behavioral outcomes, and we reflected on the practical implications of our findings. We explored the role of shame in moral development through cultural differences and parental influences, collecting evidence of psychopathological consequences of primary moral emotion dysregulation. These studies showed a dichotomous feature of shame, as a prosocial behavior enhancer in morally relevant situations and, simultaneously, a risk factor for aggressive and antisocial behaviors on other occasions. Dysregulated shame leads to maladaptive interpersonal behaviors, which could evolve towards psychopathological paths. Therefore, an integrated intervention is recommended in children with emotional/behavioral problems

Mesoporous Titania Nanocrystals by Hydrothermal Template Growth

Mesoporous TiO(2) nanocrystals have been synthetized by a classical sol-gel route integrated by an hydrothermal growth step using monomeric (dodecylpyridinium chloride, DPC) or dimeric gemini-like (GS3) surfactants as template directing agents. Adsorption isotherms at the solid/liquid interface of the two surfactants have been obtained on aqueous dispersion of titania; the nature of the oxide/adsorbate interactions and the molecules orientation/coarea are discussed. The effects produced by the presence of the two surfactants on the different morphological (surface area, porosity, and shape) and structural (phase composition and aggregate size) features of the final TiO(2) samples, calcined at 600 degrees C, are discussed

Brief Communication: Rapid mapping of landslide events: the 3 December 2013 Montescaglioso landslide, Italy

We present an approach to measure 3-D surface deformations caused by large, rapid-moving landslides using the amplitude information of high-resolution, X-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. We exploit SAR data captured by the COSMO-SkyMed satellites to measure the deformation produced by the 3 December 2013 Montescaglioso landslide, southern Italy. The deformation produced by the deep-seated landslide exceeded 10 m and caused the disruption of a main road, a few homes and commercial buildings. The results open up the possibility of obtaining 3-D surface deformation maps shortly after the occurrence of large, rapid-moving landslides using high-resolution SAR data

Role of the growth step on the structural, optical and surface features of TiO2/SnO2 composites

TiO2/SnO2 composites have attracted considerable attention for their application in photocatalysis, fuel cells and sensors. Structural, morphological, optical and surface features play a pivotal role in photoelectrochemical applications and are critically related to the synthetic route. Most of the reported synthetic procedures require high-temperature treatments in order to tailor the sample crystallinity, usually at the expense of surface hydroxylation and morphology. In this work, we investigate the role of a treatment in an autoclave at a low temperature (1008C) on the sample properties and photocatalytic performance. With respect to samples calcined at 4008C, the milder crystallization treatment promotes anatase phase, mesoporosity and water chemi/physisorption, while reducing the incorporation of heteroatoms within the TiO2 lattice. The role of Sn content was also investigated, showing a marked influence, especially on the structural properties. Notably, at a high content, Sn favours the formation of rutile TiO2 at very low reaction temperatures (1008C), thanks to the structural compatibility with cassiterite SnO2. Selected samples were tested towards the photocatalytic degradation of tetracycline in water under UV light. Overall, the low-temperature treatment enables to tune the TiO2 phase composition while maintaining its surface hydrophilicity and gives rise to well-dispersed SnO2 at the TiO2 surfac