Mesoscopic structure and social aspects of human mobility

The individual movements of large numbers of people are important in many contexts, from urban planning to disease spreading. Datasets that capture human mobility are now available and many interesting features have been discovered, including the ultra-slow spatial growth of individual mobility. However, the detailed substructures and spatiotemporal flows of mobility - the sets and sequences of visited locations - have not been well studied. We show that individual mobility is dominated by small groups of frequently visited, dynamically close locations, forming primary "habitats" capturing typical daily activity, along with subsidiary habitats representing additional travel. These habitats do not correspond to typical contexts such as home or work. The temporal evolution of mobility within habitats, which constitutes most motion, is universal across habitats and exhibits scaling patterns both distinct from all previous observations and unpredicted by current models. The delay to enter subsidiary habitats is a primary factor in the spatiotemporal growth of human travel. Interestingly, habitats correlate with non-mobility dynamics such as communication activity, implying that habitats may influence processes such as information spreading and revealing new connections between human mobility and social networks.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures (main text); 11 pages, 9 figures, 1 table (supporting information

Spreading Patterns of the Influenza A (H1N1) Pandemic

We investigate the dynamics of the 2009 influenza A (H1N1/S-OIV) pandemic by analyzing data obtained from World Health Organization containing the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases of infections - by country - in a period of 69 days, from 26 April to 3 July, 2009. Specifically, we find evidence of exponential growth in the total number of confirmed cases and linear growth in the number of countries with confirmed cases. We also find that, i) at early stages, the cumulative distribution of cases among countries exhibits linear behavior on log-log scale, being well approximated by a power law decay; ii) for larger times, the cumulative distribution presents a systematic curvature on log-log scale, indicating a gradual change to lognormal behavior. Finally, we compare these empirical findings with the predictions of a simple stochastic model. Our results could help to select more realistic models of the dynamics of influenza-type pandemics

Complicated intra-abdominal infections in Europe: preliminary data from the first three months of the CIAO Study

Peer reviewe

Complicated intra-abdominal infections in Europe: a comprehensive review of the CIAO study

Peer reviewe

Postpartum complications in a patient with a previous proctocolectomy and ileo-pouch-anal anastomosis (IPAA) for ulcerative colitis

This case report regards pregnancy and delivery of a patient who had undergone proctocolectomy and ileo-pouch-anal-anastomosis (IPAA) for ulcerative colitis. The patient delivered through cesarean section and experienced serious complications postpartum. Such complications have been described in association with Chron’s disease and have never been described after proctocolectomy and IPAA for ulcerative colitis. This case report suggests that the limit between these two diseases is not sharp

Evaluating scientific research in Italy: The 2004-10 research evaluation exercise

The Italian Research Evaluation assessment for the period 2004-10 (VQR 2004-10) has analyzed almost 185,000 articles, books, patents, and other scientific outcomes submitted for evaluation by Italian universities and other public research bodies. This article describes the main features of this exercise, introducing its legal framework and the criteria used for evaluation. The innovative methodology that has been used for evaluation, based on a combination of peer review and bibliometric methods, is discussed and indicators for assessing the quality of participating research bodies are derived accordingly. The article also presents the main results obtained at the University level, trying to understand the existing relationship among research quality and University characteristics such as location, dimension, age, scientific specialization, and funding