Immigrant youths: Between early leaving and continue their studies

School enrollment and early school leaving are crucial issues in many EU countries, with Italy playing a central role in the European context. According to Eurostat data, in 2011 Italy is ranked 28th for early leaving from education and training (ELET) among 33 countries. Large school dropout rates, less success in studies, loss of school years, and lack of concentration, which are directly involved in the labor market, are the main issues that children of immigrants in the Italian school face. This paper contributes to the growing literature on these issues and highlights its main characteristics and determinants. The main source of this work is the first (and only) survey on the Condition and Social Integration of Foreign Citizens in 2011-2012 of ISTAT (National Institute of Statistics in Italy) released in 2017. The survey collects data on families with at least one foreign citizen and provides unprecedented information on foreigners living in Italy. The data allowed us to associate each young immigrant student with parents’ characteristics (e.g. age, citizenship, degree of study, family type) and provided information about the type of schooling (e.g. loss of school years, perceived discrimination in class, amount of homework). Using logistic regression models, we analyzed three different dichotomous dependent variables: non-enrollment at school, intention to enroll in university and early school leaving, and training of young people of foreign citizenship. This paper evaluates their association with some individual demographic characteristics, family socio-economic context, school inclusion, and (or) the average level of family integration. The results show that the risk of not being enrolled in school is significantly lower for girls, increases with age, is higher in Southern Italy (i.e. double compared to the Northern area), is higher for those encountering problems with the language, and increases with age on arrival in Italy. Family characteristics play a decisive role, in that young foreigners living without parents exhibit a greater risk of not being enrolled in school, the same is true for those with low-educated parents. When analyzing the intention to enroll in university, it was also possible to use variables related to the study path of young foreigners. The intention of not going to university is clearly associated with school failure and with parents’ low interest in following their children’s school career. The analysis on early leaving from studies and training confirmed the afore-mentioned results. In particular, the risk of early leaving from studies and training affects young people who arrived in Italy between 13 and 17 years, especially Albanian or Chinese citizens. Even in this case the role of parents is decisive

Seasonality in epidemic models: a literature review

We provide a review of some key literature results on the influence of seasonality and other time heterogeneities of contact rates, and other parameters, such as vaccination rates, on the spread of infectious diseases. This is a classical topic where highly theoretical methodologies have provided new insight on the seemingly random behavior observed in epidemic time-series. We follow the line of providing a highly personal non-systematic review of this topic, mainly based on the history of mathematical epidemiology and on the impact of reviewed articles. Our aim is to stress some issues of increasing interest, such as the public health implications of the biomathematical literature and the impact of seasonality on epidemic extinction or elimination

Time heterogeneous programs of vaccination awareness: modeling and analysis

We investigate the role of time heterogeneity of public health systems efforts in favoring the propensity of parents to vaccinate their newborns against a target childhood disease. The starting point of our investigation is the behavioral-epidemiology model proposed by d’Onofrio et al. (PLoS ONE 7:e45653, 2012), where the PHS effort was assumed to be constant. We also consider the co-presence of another layer of temporal heterogeneity: seasonality in the contact rate of the disease. We mainly assume that the effort is periodic with a 1-year period because of alternating working and holiday periods. We show that if the average effort is larger than a threshold, then the disease can be eliminated leading to an ideal equilibrium point with 100% of vaccinated newborns. A more realistic disease-free equilibrium can also be reached, under a condition that depends on the whole form of the time profile describing the PHS effort. We also generalize our disease elimination-related results to a wide class of time-heterogenous PHS efforts. Finally, we analytically show that if the disease elimination is not reached, then the disease remains uniformly persistent

Preface to the special issue on “Demographic and temporal heterogeneities in infectious disease epidemiology

No Abstrac

Does maternal ethnic identity affect the educational trajectories of immigrant descendants?

According to Eurostat (European Commission 2014, 2016), Italy has one of highest quota in Europe of immigrant youths (aged 18-24) with at most a compulsory level of education, who left school before they have finished their course and have not attended any other course in the last four weeks. After a short presentation of the international literature on ethnic identity (section 2), we will introduce the survey and the method of analysis adopted (section 3). The maternal ethnic identity of children (aged 14-24) will be presented in section 4 and in the following one (section 5) the determinant of educational trajectories will be discussed with special attention to the role of maternal ethnic identity. In the final section, the main results will be synthetized and the possible political implications will be highlighted

Optimal Public Health intervention in a behavioural vaccination model: the interplay between seasonality, behaviour and latency period

Hesitancy and refusal of vaccines preventing childhood diseases are spreading due to ‘pseudo-rational’ behaviours: parents overweigh real and imaginary side effects of vaccines. Nonetheless, the ‘Public Health System’ (PHS) may enact public campaigns to favour vaccine uptake. To determine the optimal time profiles for such campaigns, we apply the optimal control theory to an extension of the susceptible-infectious-removed (SIR)-based behavioural vaccination model by d’Onofrio et al. (2012, PLoS ONE, 7, e45653). The new model is of susceptible-exposed-infectious-removed (SEIR) type under seasonal fluctuations of the transmission rate. Our objective is to minimize the total costs of the disease: the disease burden, the vaccination costs and a less usual cost: the economic burden to enact the PHS campaigns. We apply the Pontryagin minimum principle and numerically explore the impact of seasonality, human behaviour and latency rate on the control and spread of the target disease. We focus on two noteworthy case studies: the low (resp. intermediate) relative perceived risk of vaccine side effects and relatively low (resp. very low) speed of imitation. One general result is that seasonality may produce a remarkable impact on PHS campaigns aimed at controlling, via an increase of the vaccination uptake, the spread of a target infectious disease. In particular, a higher amplitude of the seasonal variation produces a higher effort and this, in turn, beneficially impacts the induced vaccine uptake since the larger is the strength of seasonality, the longer the vaccine propensity remains large. However, such increased effort is not able to fully compensate the action of seasonality on the prevalence

Reusing Data and Metadata to Create New Metadata Through Machine-Learning & Other Programmatic Methods

Recent improvements in natural language processing (NLP) enable metadata to be created programmatically from reused original metadata or even the dataset itself. Transfer-learning applied to NLP has greatly improved performance and reduced training data requirements. In this talk, well compare machine-generated metadata to human-generated metadata and discuss characteristics of metadata and data archives that affect suitability for machine-learning reuse of metadata. Where as human-generated metadata is often populated once, populated from the perspective of data supplier, populated by many individuals with different words for the same thing, and limited in length, machine-generated metadata can be updated any number of times, generated from the perspective of any user, constrained to a standardized set of terms that can be evolved over time, and be any length required. Machine-learning generated metadata offers benefits but also additional needs in terms of version control, process transparency, human-computer interaction, and IT requirements. As a successful example, well discuss how a dataset of abstracts and associated human-tagged keywords from a standardized list of several thousand keywords were used to create a machine-learning model that predicted keyword metadata for open-source code projects on code.nasa.gov. Well also discuss a less successful example from data.nasa.gov to show how data archive architecture and characteristics of initial metadata can be strong controls on how easy it is to leverage programmatic methods to reuse metadata to create additional metadata

Heat transfer of chemically reacting mixed convection fluid using convective surface condition: Non-Darcy model

This work reports the study of mixed convection of permeable fluid with Robin conditions in the vertical channel including the effects of chemical reactions. The fluid transport is designed by the Darcy-Forchheimer-Brinkman model. The series method is adopted for approximate solutions for governing equations considering the Brinkman number as the perturbation characteristic whose outcomes correspond to magnitudes of Brinkman number less than one. Adopting a numerical scheme followed by fourth order Runge–Kutta algorithm with shooting method, the solutions for bigger magnitudes of the Brinkman number are obtained. The present results for limiting cases are compared with the literature and good agreement is seen. For various values of thermal and mass Grashof numbers, porous parameter, inertial parameter, Darcy number and first order chemical reaction the problem is resolved for the same and distant Biot numbers reflecting the border temperatures symmetric and asymmetric. Finally, the outcomes are tabulated for wall friction parameters, Nusselt and Sherwood numbers for innovated parameters. It is noticed that enhancing buoyancy and dissipations, thermal Grashof number helps to improve the flow rate for all values of Biot number. The Schmidt and Soret parameters can improve concentration patterns. Nusselt number can be improved with thermal Grashof number and Brinkman number and it is dropped with inertia and porous parameters. The solutions have a very good agreement with Zanchini data without mass Grashof number

Double diffusion in a rectangular duct using metals or oxides suspended in a viscous fluid

In this study, double diffusive free convection of nanofluid within a confined rectangular duct is investigated numerically. The momentum and energy equations are placed in the form of difference equations and solved numerically. The left wall conditions for the concentration and temperature are lesser than those of the right wall and the upper and lower walls are insulated. Different nanofluids are considered such as mixtures with copper, diamond, silicon oxide and titanium oxide, suspended in water. Brinkman and Maxwell models are used to characterize the nanofluid. Tiwari and Das model is opted to define the nanofluid behavior. The simulations are conducted using different nanoparticles, thermal Grashof number 1 ≤ GrT ≤ 20, solute Grashof number 1 ≤ GrC ≤ 15, solid volume fraction 0 ≤ Φ ≤ 0.05, Dufour number 0 ≤ Df ≤ 1, Brinkman number 0 ≤ Br ≤ 2, and Soret number 0 ≤ Sr ≤ 5. Additionally, behavior of volumetric flow strength, skin friction, heat transport intensity and Sherwood number is also examined. The thermal Grashof number, Brinkman number, Dufour, Soret and Schmidt parameters accelerate the velocity and temperature and dwindle the concentration whereas the reversal effect was obtained for the solid volume fraction. The concentration Grashof number diminishes the velocity and temperature and intensifies the concentration. The silver nanoparticles produce the highest velocity whereas diamond nanoparticles cause the lowest velocity and temperature. The maximum temperature is attained with silicon oxide

Investigational Paradigms in Downscoring and Upscoring DCIS: Surgical Management Review

Counseling patients with DCIS in a rational manner can be extremely difficult when the range of treatment criteria results in diverse and confusing clinical recommendations. Surgeons need tools that quantify measurable prognostic factors to be used in conjunction with clinical experience for the complex decision-making process. Combination of statistically significant tumor recurrence predictors and lesion parameters obtained after initial excision suggests that patients with DCIS can be stratified into specific subsets allowing a scientifically based discussion. The goal is to choose the treatment regimen that will significantly benefit each patient group without subjecting the patients to unnecessary risks. Exploring the effectiveness of complete excision may offer a starting place in a new way of reasoning and conceiving surgical modalities in terms of “downscoring” or “upscoring” patient risk, perhaps changing clinical approach. Reexcison may lower the specific subsets' score and improve local recurrence-free survival also by revealing a larger tumor size, a higher nuclear grade, or an involved margin and so suggesting the best management. It seems, that the key could be identifying significant relapse predictive factors, according to validated risk investigation models, whose value is modifiable by the surgical approach which avails of different diagnostic and therapeutic potentials to be optimal. Certainly DCIS clinical question cannot have a single curative mode due to heterogeneity of pathological lesions and histologic classification