Granular semantic user similarity in the presence of sparse data

Finding similar users in social communities is often challenging, especially in the presence of sparse data or when working with heterogeneous or specialized domains. When computing semantic similarity among users it is desirable to have a measure which allows to compare users w.r.t. any concept in the domain. We propose such a technique which reduces the problems caused by data sparsity, especially in the cold start phase, and enables granular and context-based adaptive suggestions. It allows referring to a certain set of most similar users in relation to a particular concept when a user needs suggestions about a certain topic (e.g. cultural events) and to a possibly completely different set when the user is interested in another topic (e.g. sport events). Our approach first uses a variation of the spreading activation technique to propagate the users’ interests on their corresponding ontology-based user models, and then computes the concept-biased cosine similarity (CBC similarity), a variation of the cosine similarity designed for privileging a particular concept in an ontology. CBC similarity can be used in many adaptation techniques to improve suggestions to users. We include an empirical evaluation on a collaborative filtering algorithm, showing that the CBC similarity works better than the cosine similarity when dealing with sparse data

Ontologies for Quantified Self: a Semantic Approach

The spreading of devices and applications that allow people to collect personal information opens new opportunities for user modeling (UM). In this new scenario UM together with personal informatics (PI) can offer a new way for self-monitoring that can provide the users with a sophisticated mirror of their behavior, attitudes and habits and their consequences on their life, on the environment and on contexts in which they live in. These new forms of self-reflection and self-knowledge can trigger and motivate the behavior change. In this paper we describe the first step in this direction, focusing on opportunities offered by semantic web ontologies for data integration and reasoning over data for recommendation purposes

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Perinatal Loss Experienced by the Parental Couple: Protocol for a Mixed Methods Study

Background: At the beginning of 2020, mothers and fathers who experienced perinatal events (from conception to pregnancy and postpartum period) found themselves facing problems related to the emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated difficulties for health care centers in providing care. In the unexpected and negative event of perinatal loss (ie, miscarriage, stillbirth, and neonatal death) more complications occurred. Perinatal loss is a painful and traumatic life experience that causes grief and can cause affective disorders in the parental couple—the baby dies and the couple’s plans for a family are abruptly interrupted. During the COVID-19 pandemic, limited access to perinatal bereavement care, due to the lockdown measures imposed on medical health care centers and the social distancing rules to prevent contagion, was an additional risk factor for parental mental health, such as facing a prolonged and complicated grief. Objective: The main aims of this study are as follows: to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on mothers and fathers who experienced perinatal loss during the pandemic, comparing their perceptions; to evaluate their change over time between the first survey administration after bereavement and the second survey after 6 months; to examine the correlations between bereavement and anxiety, depression, couple satisfaction, spirituality, and sociodemographic variables; to investigate which psychosocial factors may negatively affect the mourning process; and to identify the potential predictors of the development of complicated grief. Methods: This longitudinal observational multicenter study is structured according to a mixed methods design, with a quantitative and qualitative section. It will include a sample of parents (mothers and fathers) who experienced perinatal loss during the COVID-19 pandemic from March 2020. There are two phases—a baseline and a follow-up after 6 months. Results: This protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of Psychological Research, University of Padova, and by the Institutional Ethics Board of the Spedali Civili of Brescia, Italy. We expect to collect data from 34 or more couples, as determined by our sample size calculation. Conclusions: This study will contribute to the understanding of the psychological processes related to perinatal loss and bereavement care during the COVID-19 pandemic. It will provide information useful to prevent the risk of complicated grief and psychopathologies among bereaved parents and to promote perinatal mental health. International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/3886

Position paper of the Italian association of medical specialists in dietetics and clinical nutrition (ANSISA) on nutritional management of patients with COVID-19 disease

COVID-19 disease is characterized by serious clinical manifestations which could require urgent hospitalization. Prolonged hospitalization, with catabolism and immobilization, induces a decrease in weight and muscle mass which can result in sarcopenia, a condition that impairs respiratory and cardiac function, worsening the prognosis. In this scenario there is an urgent need of nutritional indications aimed to prevent or contrast hospital malnutrition by improving the patient's response to therapy and to facilitate healthcare professionals in managing nutritional interventions on patients, reducing their already high workload due to the state of emergency

Anisotropic propagation of user interests in ontology-based user models

This work contributes to the development of ontology-based user models, devised as overlays over conceptual hierarchies derived from domain ontologies. We tackle the problem of propagation of user interests in such a conceptual hierarchy. In addition to accounting for the hierarchical structure of the domain and the type and amount of feedback provided by the user, the principal contributions introduced in this work are: (i) horizontal propagation which enables propagation among siblings, in addition to vertical propagation among ancestors and descendants; (ii) anisotropic vertical propagation which permits user interests to be propagated differently upward and downward; (iii) context-dependance which introduces the possibility to propagate differently according to various contexts for specific applications; (iv) support for dynamic ontology maintenance, i.e. preserving the user interest values when adding or removing a node from the conceptual hierarchy. Our approach supports finer recommendation modalities and contributes to the resolution of the cold start problem, since it allows for propagation from a small number of initial concepts to other related domain concepts by exploiting the conceptual hierarchy of the domain. A field evaluation confirmed the effectiveness of our approach w.r.t. the traditional vertical propagation

Indigenous vegetables: a sustainable approach to improve micronutrient adequacy in Tanzanian women of childbearing age

This research article was published by Springer Nature in 2021Background/objectives Increasing dietary diversity is a viable strategy for addressing micronutrient malnutrition in women of childbearing age (WCA) from low-income countries. Recently, it has been demonstrated that some indigenous vegetables (IV) with high nutrient density may help to ameliorate micronutrient’s intake. The Minimum Dietary Diversity index for Women (MDD-W) could be considered as a proxy to describe one important dimension of women’s diet quality. This cross-sectional study aimed at exploring aspects contributing to micronutrients adequacy in Tanzanian WCA, with a focus on IV consumption and other socio-demographic factors. Subjects/methods Data collection was conducted among urban and peri-urban women in Arusha city, Tanzania. Socio-demographic factors were collected using a structured interview. Information on IV consumption and MDD-W calculation were obtained using a 24-h recall. Results One-hundred and forty-one women aged 14–49 years were interviewed. Sixteen per cent of the sample consumed at least one portion of IV/day. The total median MDD-W was 4.0 (IQR. 3.0–5.0) and it was adequate in the 44% of the sample. Women who consumed IV had MDD-W 0.66 points (95% CI: 0.02–1.30, p = 0.046) higher than those who did not; consuming IV had an odds ratio of more than three times concerning women not consuming IV (OR: 3.30, 95% CI: 1.24–8.81, p = 0.017). Conclusions The IV consumption is positively associated with micronutrient adequacy and its absence from the diet can be an indicator of micronutrient deficiencies in vulnerable people such as WCA. For that reason, this study suggests that IV consumption may improve micronutrient deficiency in WCA