Thinking digital libraries for preservation as digital cultural heritage: by R to R4 facet of FAIR principles

The Art. 2 of the UE Council conclusions of 21 May 2014 on cultural heritage as a strategic resource for a sustainable Europe (2014/C 183/08) states: “Cultural heritage consists of the resources inherited from the past in all forms and aspects—tangible, intangible and digital (born digital and digitized), including monuments, sites, landscapes, skills, practices, knowledge and expressions of human creativity, as well as collections conserved and managed by public and private bodies such as museums, libraries and archives”. Starting from this assumption, we have to rethink digital and digitization as social and cultural expressions of the contemporary age. We need to rethink digital libraries produced by digitization as cultural entities and no longer as mere dataset for enhancing fruition of cultural heritage, by defining clear and homogeneous criteria to validate and certify them as memory and sources of knowledge for future generations. By expanding R: Re-usable of the FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship into R4: Re-usable, Relevant, Reliable and Resilient, this paper aims to propose a more reflective approach to creation of descriptive metadata for managing digital resource of cultural heritage, which can guarantee their long term preservation

Ontology of backgrounds in distance learning. Correlations between virtual backgrounds and educational relationship

The paper presents research focused on virtual backgrounds in distance learning (in Italian: DaD) during the first lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic by March up to June 2020, and their impact on educational relationships. The research is based on the analysis of the answers that 1283 teachers and 1018 students gave participating in two online surveys. According to data inferred from the analysis, during the online lessons, in most cases, the teachers and students chose a specific setting background, and their choice had a significant impact on attention, motivation, and empathic involvement. So much so, the teachers changed their virtual settings to obtain better results. But the motivations for changing the backgrounds have been very different between teacher and student: 50.6% of teachers changed their background to improve the relationship with students, 44.5% to make their role more authoritative, while 70.9% of students changed the background to fully feel comfortable in watching themselves on screen. Furthermore, the survey asked teachers to choose and explain virtual backgrounds that they think could be used for improving face-to-face learning; students, to choose virtual image backgrounds that they would like behind the teachers in the classroom. More than 1,000 background images with descriptive referred captions were uploaded, which we have classified into five ontological categories. Both in the quantitative and qualitative information inferred by the analysis of such data, real different subcultures between teachers and students bring out. Research in this sense has gathered valuable information on the importance of the visual context even in face-to-face teaching. The research was also an opportunity to investigate the level of the teachers’ and students’ visual culture. The conclusions lead us to question the actual value of virtual backgrounds also in the perspective of Integrated Teaching (in Italian: DID): can they be considered only part of the setting or something more to improve the educational relationship

La Digital Libray open data della Biblioteca del Comune di Mottola - Progetto "Terra delle Gravine"

Terra delle Gravine tra sharing economy e turismo esperienziale[1] è un progetto finanziato dalla Regione Puglia a un consorzio di dodici comuni della provincia di Taranto, finalizzato alla formazione di studenti di scuola secondaria superiore nella descrizione di risorse digitali relative al patrimonio culturale in formato open data e alla creazione di una piattaforma, sempre in formato Open Data, di contenuti relativi ai beni culturali dei comuni coinvolti. Le attività sono state progettate e realizzate tra il 2017 e il 2018 dal Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici – DISUM dell’Università degli Studi di Bari e dalla spin off DABIMUS S.r.l. in collaborazione con l’Open Data Manager Pierfrancesco Paolicelli. I percorsi formativi e i tracciati in Open Data da utilizzare per indicizzare i beni considerati sono stati progettati in relazione alle diverse classi di beni culturali oggetto di interesse, che hanno incluso beni monumentali, beni storico artistici e demo-etnoantropologici e beni librari. Il DISUM, nella persona del prof. Nicola Barbuti, ha curato sia la progettazione e realizzazione del tracciato in open data utilizzato per indicizzare e pubblicare on line una selezione di volumi a stampa delle biblioteche comunali di Massafra, Mottola e Grottaglie, sia la formazione degli studenti delle scuole secondarie superiori dei tre comuni alla descrizione catalografica di risorse digitali librarie. I dataset sono stati strutturati conformemente alle regole definite dalla Regione Puglia nel suo catalogo http://www.dataset.puglia.it/, conformi all’ontologia dei luoghi della cultura e degli eventi culturali Cultural ON realizzata dal MiBACT nell’ambito del progetto nazionale http://dati.beniculturali.it, la piattaforma in cui il Ministero si propone di pubblicare il patrimonio culturale informativo secondo la logica dei Linked Open Data

A caveolin-binding domain in the HCN4 channels mediates functional interaction with caveolin proteins

Pacemaker (HCN) channels have a key role in the generation and modulation of spontaneous activity of sinoatrial node myocytes. Previous work has shown that compartmentation of HCN4 pacemaker channels within caveolae regulates important functions, but the molecular mechanism responsible is still unknown. HCN channels have a conserved caveolin-binding domain (CBD) composed of three aromatic amino acids at the N-terminus; we sought to evaluate the role of this CBD in channel-protein interaction by mutational analysis. We generated two HCN4 mutants with a disrupted CBD (Y259S, F262V) and two with conservative mutations (Y259F, F262Y). In CHO cells expressing endogenous caveolin-1 (cav-1), alteration of the CBD shifted channels activation to more positive potentials, slowed deactivation and made Y259S and F262V mutants insensitive to cholesterol depletion-induced caveolar disorganization. CBD alteration also caused a significant decrease of current density, due to a weaker HCN4-cav-1 interaction and accumulation of cytoplasmic channels. These effects were absent in mutants with a preserved CBD. In caveolin-1-free fibroblasts, HCN4 trafficking was impaired and current density reduced with all constructs; the activation curve of F262V was not altered relative to wt, and that of Y259S displayed only half the shift than in CHO cells. The conserved CBD present in all HCN isoforms mediates their functional interaction with caveolins. The elucidation of the molecular details of HCN4-cav-1 interaction can provide novel information to understand the basis of cardiac phenotypes associated with some forms of caveolinopathies

Comorbidities are Frequent in Patients with Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease in a Tertiary Health Care Hospital

INTRODUCTION: Several aspects of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) have been studied, but the frequency of comorbidities is not yet fully understood. OBJECTIVES: To study the prevalence of GERD comorbidities in a tertiary care hospital. METHODS: We prospectively studied 670 consecutive adult patients from the outpatient department of our facility. A diagnosis was established using clinical, endoscopic and/or pHmetry-related findings. Each patient's medical file was reviewed with respect to the presence of other medical conditions and diagnoses. RESULTS: Of the 670 patients, 459 (68.6%) were female, and the mean age was 55.94 (17-80 years). We registered 316 patients (47.1%) with the erosive form of GERD and 354 patients (52.9%) with the non-erosive form. A total of 1,664 instances of comorbidities were recorded in 586 patients (87.5%), with the most common being arterial hypertension (21%), hypercholesterolemia (9%), obesity (9%), type II diabetes mellitus (5%) and depression (4%). Two or more comorbidities were present in 437 individuals (64.8%). The occurrence of comorbidities increased with age and was higher in patients with the non-erosive form of GERD. CONCLUSIONS: In a tertiary referral population, comorbidities were very common, and these may have worsened the already impaired health-related quality of life of these patients. Clinicians caring for GERD patients in this setting must be aware of the likelihood and nature of comorbid disorders and their impact on disease presentation and patient management

Multiple verification in computational modeling of bone pathologies

We introduce a model checking approach to diagnose the emerging of bone pathologies. The implementation of a new model of bone remodeling in PRISM has led to an interesting characterization of osteoporosis as a defective bone remodeling dynamics with respect to other bone pathologies. Our approach allows to derive three types of model checking-based diagnostic estimators. The first diagnostic measure focuses on the level of bone mineral density, which is currently used in medical practice. In addition, we have introduced a novel diagnostic estimator which uses the full patient clinical record, here simulated using the modeling framework. This estimator detects rapid (months) negative changes in bone mineral density. Independently of the actual bone mineral density, when the decrease occurs rapidly it is important to alarm the patient and monitor him/her more closely to detect insurgence of other bone co-morbidities. A third estimator takes into account the variance of the bone density, which could address the investigation of metabolic syndromes, diabetes and cancer. Our implementation could make use of different logical combinations of these statistical estimators and could incorporate other biomarkers for other systemic co-morbidities (for example diabetes and thalassemia). We are delighted to report that the combination of stochastic modeling with formal methods motivate new diagnostic framework for complex pathologies. In particular our approach takes into consideration important properties of biosystems such as multiscale and self-adaptiveness. The multi-diagnosis could be further expanded, inching towards the complexity of human diseases. Finally, we briefly introduce self-adaptiveness in formal methods which is a key property in the regulative mechanisms of biological systems and well known in other mathematical and engineering areas.Comment: In Proceedings CompMod 2011, arXiv:1109.104

Process algebra modelling styles for biomolecular processes

We investigate how biomolecular processes are modelled in process algebras, focussing on chemical reactions. We consider various modelling styles and how design decisions made in the definition of the process algebra have an impact on how a modelling style can be applied. Our goal is to highlight the often implicit choices that modellers make in choosing a formalism, and illustrate, through the use of examples, how this can affect expressability as well as the type and complexity of the analysis that can be performed

Embryonic stem cell-derived CD166+ precursors develop into fully functional sinoatrial-like cells

Rationale: A cell-based biological pacemaker is based on the differentiation of stem cells and the selection of a population displaying the molecular and functional properties of native sinoatrial node (SAN) cardiomyocytes. So far, such selection has been hampered by the lack of proper markers. CD166 is specifically but transiently expressed in the mouse heart tube and sinus venosus, the prospective SAN. Objective: We have explored the possibility of using CD166 expression for isolating SAN progenitors from differentiating embryonic stem cells. Methods and Results: We found that in embryonic day 10.5 mouse hearts, CD166 and HCN4, markers of the pacemaker tissue, are coexpressed. Sorting embryonic stem cells for CD166 expression at differentiation day 8 selects a population of pacemaker precursors. CD166(+) cells express high levels of genes involved in SAN development (Tbx18, Tbx3, Isl-1, Shox2) and function (Cx30.2, HCN4, HCN1, CaV1.3) and low levels of ventricular genes (Cx43, Kv4.2, HCN2, Nkx2.5). In culture, CD166(+) cells form an autorhythmic syncytium composed of cells morphologically similar to and with the electrophysiological properties of murine SAN myocytes. Isoproterenol increases (+57%) and acetylcholine decreases (-23%) the beating rate of CD166-selected cells, which express the -adrenergic and muscarinic receptors. In cocultures, CD166-selected cells are able to pace neonatal ventricular myocytes at a rate faster than their own. Furthermore, CD166(+) cells have lost pluripotency genes and do not form teratomas in vivo. Conclusions: We demonstrated for the first time the isolation of a nonteratogenic population of cardiac precursors able to mature and form a fully functional SAN-like tissue

A Possible Outbreak by Serratia Marcescens: Genetic Relatedness between Clinical and Environmental Strains

Serratia marcescens (SM) is a Gram-negative bacterium that is frequently found in the environment. Since 1913, when its pathogenicity was first demonstrated, the number of infections caused by SM has increased. There is ample evidence that SM causes nosocomial infections in immunocompromised or critically ill patients admitted to the intensive care units (ICUs), but also in newborns admitted to neonatal ICUs (NICUs). In this study, we evaluated the possible genetic correlation by PFGE between clinical and environmental SM strains from NICU and ICU and compared the genetic profile of clinical strains with strains isolated from patients admitted to other wards of the same hospital. We found distinct clonally related groups of SM strains circulating among different wards of a large university hospital. In particular, the clonal relationship between clinical and environmental strains in NICU and ICU 1 was highlighted. The identification of clonal relationships between clinical and environmental strains in the wards allowed identification of the epidemic and rapid implementation of adequate measures to stop the spread of SM