Migrants' Characteristics, Working and Living Conditions in the Household Services

The aging of the Italian population, the limited resources assigned to the welfare system, and the increasing entry of women into the labour market have produced growing demand for surveillance and care activities, for supporting elderly and vulnerable populations. Given native-born workers do not satisfy this growing demand, foreign population started to play a central role in the household services in Italy in the last two decades. Among them, single aged breadwinner women became the perfect candidates for occupying these positions. However, migrant women tend to suffer the penalization of being women, migrant background, and segregated. Enlarging the limited research on this topic and using the 2021 ad-hoc module of Istat Labour Force Survey on “Working conditions of immigrants and their immediate descendants” in Italy, we aim to analyse migrants’ working and living conditions to identify barriers preventing full integration and to define suitable actions to promote inclusion. Descriptive results highlight that, according to the literature, migrant women workers employed in the household services have different socio-demographic profile respect to the other average working foreign-born and native-born groups. Moreover, multivariate analyses show that they often find themselves in more unfavourable working and living conditions which make them more vulnerable

Territorial fragilities in italy. Defining a common lexicon // Fragilità territoriali in Italia. Verso un lessico comune

This lexicon aims at interpreting the concept of 'Territorial Fragilities' toward different approaches. Abandonment, Accessibility, Adaptation, Connection, Housing, Landscape, Narrative, Peripheries, Policies, Prototyping, Regeneration, Segregation, Shrinkage and Welfare, are different points of view that open to design directions and strategies to work on territorial fragilities. Material and immaterial fragilities are linked to: lack, poorness or obsolescence of existing building and infrastructure, changes in social structure, emerging individual needs. After a theoretical introduction, the headwords will present different tactics that may lead to the construction of 'thick description' as well as furnish guidelines for more effective design and policies to manage territorial fragilities

Radiological features and management of retained needles

The identification of retained needles is essential because of their sharp structure with possible life-threatening complications. However, radiological evaluation could be challenging, especially in case of needles' relatively poor conspicuity and small dimension. This pictorial essay focuses on clinical issues (needle features, retention mechanisms and associated complications) and technical aspects (choice of the best diagnostic modality and technique) that can lead the radiologist to an earlier and proper diagnosis of needle retention in order to provide the best treatment for the patient

Radiomics and liver: Where we are and where we are headed?

Hepatic diffuse conditions and focal liver lesions represent two of the most common scenarios to face in everyday radiological clinical practice. Thanks to the advances in technology, radiology has gained a central role in the management of patients with liver disease, especially due to its high sensitivity and specificity. Since the introduction of computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), radiology has been considered the non-invasive reference modality to assess and characterize liver pathologies. In recent years, clinical practice has moved forward to a quantitative approach to better evaluate and manage each patient with a more fitted approach. In this setting, radiomics has gained an important role in helping radiologists and clinicians characterize hepatic pathological entities, in managing patients, and in determining prognosis. Radiomics can extract a large amount of data from radiological images, which can be associated with different liver scenarios. Thanks to its wide applications in ultrasonography (US), CT, and MRI, different studies were focused on specific aspects related to liver diseases. Even if broadly applied, radiomics has some advantages and different pitfalls. This review aims to summarize the most important and robust studies published in the field of liver radiomics, underlying their main limitations and issues, and what they can add to the current and future clinical practice and literature

Magnetic Resonance, Vendor-independent, Intensity Histogram Analysis Predicting Pathologic Complete Response After Radiochemotherapy of Rectal Cancer

Purpose: The objective of this study is finding an intensity based histogram (IBH) signature to predict pathologic complete response (pCR) probability using only pre-treatment magnetic resonance (MR) and validate it externally in order to create a workflow for the external validation of an MR IBH signature and to apply the model out of the environment where it has been tuned. The impact of pCR and the final predictors on the survival outcome were also evaluated. Methods and Materials: Three centers using different MR scanners were involved in this retrospective study. The first center recruited 162 patients for model training, and the second and third centers provided 34 plus 25 patients for external validation. Patients provided written consent. Accrual period was from May 2008 to December 2014. After surgery pathologic response was defined. T2-weighted MR scans acquired before chemoradiation therapy (CRT) were used for analysis addressed on primary lesions. Images were pre-processed using Laplacian of Gaussian (LoG) filter with multiple \u3c3, and first order intensity histogram-based features (kurtosis, skewness, and entropy) were extracted. Features selection was performed using Mann-Whitney test. Tumor staging (cT, cN) was added to build a logistic regression model and predict pCR. Model performance was evaluated with internal and external validation using area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operator characteristic (ROC) and calibration with Hosmer-Lemeshow test. The linear cross-correlation matrix (Pearson's coefficient) and the variance inflation factor (VIF) were used to check the correlation and the co-linearity among the final predictors. The amount of the information added through the radiomics features was estimated by using the DeLong's test, and the impact of pCR and the final predictors on survival outcomes were evaluated through the Kaplan-Meier curves by using the log-rank test and the multivariate Cox model. Results: Candidate-to-analysis features were skewness (\u3c3 = 0.485, P value =.01) and entropy (\u3c3 = 0.344, P value <.05). Logistic regression analysis showed as significant covariates cT (P value <.01), skewness-\u3c3 = 0.485 (P value =.01), and entropy-\u3c3 = 0.344 (P value <.05). Model AUCs were 0.73 (internal) and 0.75 (external). Conclusions: This MR-based, vendor-independent model can be helpful for predicting pCR probability in locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) patients only using pre-treatment imaging