Parasuicide in Rovigo (North of Italy) during the period 2000-2005

Introduction. The greatest predictor of eventual suicide is parasuicide, which includes both suicide attempts and deliberate self-harm with no intent to die. The rate of parasuicide is reckoned to be at least ten times the suicide rate. Methods. An observational study of the population of Rovigo Public Health Unit has been carried out to investigate parasuicide cases that presented to a general hospital in the six-year period from 1st January 2000 to 31st December 2005. Results. An incidence of 36.39 parasuicides/100,000/year referred to a general hospital has been estimated, with a majority of female and young subjects. The principal method used was drug poisoning (59.1%); the more frequent diagnoses are mood and personality disorders. Method of attempt distribution is different for age and gender (p inf. 0.001), while diagnosis distribution is different only for age (p inf. 0.001). Comparison between method of attempt and diagnosis distribution indicates a significant difference (p inf. 0.01). In 36.4% of cases there was no contact with the Mental Health Service after parasuicide. Discussion. The present study confirms that parasuicide is more common in females and younger people and that the more probable diagnoses are mood and personality disorders. The finding of a high number of subjects without any previous contact with the Mental Health Service and, especially, after parasuicide, claims attention on primary and secondary prevention of suicidal behaviour. Conclusions. The results appear to be in line with those from literature on parasuicide in Western populations

Beneficial impact of levosimendan in critically ill patients with or at risk for acute renal failure: a meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials

INTRODUCTION: The incidence of Acute Kidney Injury is nowadays high in critically ill patients. Its etiology is multifactorial and a primary role is played by low cardiac output syndrome. Everything targeted to normalize cardiac output should increase the renal perfusion and abolish the secondary vasoconstriction. Levosimendan is a calcium sensitizer drug with inotropic properties that improves cardiac output and seems to increase renal blood flow. The aim of this meta-analysis was to evaluate the role of levosimendan in critically ill patients with or at risk of Acute Kidney Injury. METHODS: We performed a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials searching for trials that compared levosimendan with any comparator. The endpoints were the number of patients receiving Renal Replacement Therapy after randomization and the number of patients developing Acute Kidney Injury. RESULTS: Final analysis included 33 trials and 3,879 patients (2,024 levosimendan and 1,855 control). The overall analysis showed that the use of levosimendan was associated with a significant reduction in the risk of Renal Replacement Therapy (17 of 492 [3.5%] in the levosimendan group versus 37 of 427 [8.7%] in the control group, relative risk =0.52 [0.32 to 0.86], p for effect =0.01) and of Acute Kidney Injury (114 of 1,598 [7.1%] in the levosimendan group versus 143 of 1,529 [9.4%] in the control arm, relative risk =0.79 [0.63 to 0.99], p for effect =0.048). CONCLUSIONS: This meta-analysis suggests that the use of levosimendan is associated with a significant reduction of Renal Replacement Therapy in critically ill patients

Anaphora Resolution in Near-Native Speakers of Italian

This study presents data from an experiment on the interpretation of intrasentential anaphora in Italian by native Italian speakers and by English speakers who have learned Italian as adults and have reached a near-native level of proficiency in this language. The two groups of speakers were presented with complex sentences consist-ing of a main clause and a subordinate clause, in which the subor-dinate clause had either an overt pronoun or a null subject pronoun. In half of the sentences the main clause preceded the subordinate clause (forward anaphora) and in the other half the subordinate clause preceded the main clause (backward anaphora). Participants performed in a picture verification task in which they had to indi-cate the picture(s) that corresponded to the meaning of the subor-dinate clause, thus identifying the possible antecedents of the null or overt subject pronouns. The patterns of responses of the two groups were very similar with respect to the null subject pronouns in both the forward and backward anaphora conditions. Compared to native monolingual speakers, however, the near-natives had a significantly higher preference for the subject of the matrix clause as a possible antecedent of overt subject pronouns, particularly in the backward anaphora condition. The results indicate that near-native speakers have acquired the syntactic constraints on pronom-inal subjects in Italian, but may have residual indeterminacy in the interface processing strategies they employ in interpreting pronom-inal forms

Scaling and super-universality in the coarsening dynamics of the 3d random field Ising model

We study the coarsening dynamics of the three-dimensional random field Ising model using Monte Carlo numerical simulations. We test the dynamic scaling and super-scaling properties of global and local two-time observables. We treat in parallel the three-dimensional Edward-Anderson spin-glass and we recall results on Lennard-Jones mixtures and colloidal suspensions to highlight the common and different out of equilibrium properties of these glassy systems.Comment: 18 pages, 21 figure

The apeNEXT project

Numerical simulations in theoretical high-energy physics (Lattice QCD) require huge computing resources. Several generations of massively parallel computers optimised for these applications have been developed within the APE (array processor experiment) project. Large prototype systems of the latest generation, apeNEXT, are currently being assembled and tested. This contribution explains how the apeNEXT architecture is optimised for Lattice QCD, provides an overview of the hardware and software of apeNEXT, and describes its new features, like the SPMD programming model and the C compiler

EPP in T: More Controversial Subjects

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72351/1/j.1467-9612.2005.00075.x.pd

A review of assessment methods for river hydromorphology

The work leading to this paper has received funding for the EU’s FP7 under Grant Agreement No. 282656 (REFORM

Real spin glasses relax slowly in the shade of hierarchical trees

The Parisi solution of the mean-field spin glass has been widely accepted and celebrated. Its marginal stability in 3d and its complexity however raised the question of its relevance to real spin glasses. This paper gives a short overview of the important experimental results which could be understood within the mean-field solution. The existence of a true phase transition and the particular behaviour of the susceptibility below the freezing temperature, predicted by the theory, are clearly confirmed by the experimental results. The behaviour of the complex order parameter and of the Fluctuation Dissipation ratio are in good agreement with results of spontaneous noise measurements. The very particular ultrametric symmetry, the key feature of the theory, provided us with a simple description of the rejuvenation and memory effects observed in experiment. Finally, going a step beyond mean-field, the paper shortly discusses new analyses in terms of correlated domains characterized by their length scales, as well as new experiments on superspin glasses which compare well with recent theoretical simulations.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of "Wandering with Curiosity in Complex Landscapes", a scientific conference in honour of Giorgio Parisi for his 60th birthday, Roma, September 8-10 2008 (submitted for the special issue of the Journal of Statistical Physics, 2009