Insight into the epidemiology of leptospirosis: A review of leptospira isolations from “unconventional” hosts

Leptospirosis is a re-emerging worldwide zoonotic disease. Even though the primary serological test for diagnosis and surveying is the microscopic agglutination test (MAT), isolation remains the gold-standard test to detect Leptospira infections. The leptospirosis transmission is linked to maintenance and accidental hosts. In the epidemiology of Leptospira some serovar are strictly related to specific maintenance hosts; however, in recent years, the bacterium was isolated from an even wider spectrum of species. The aim of this review is to report the isolation of Leptospira strains in animals which could be recognized as “unconventional” hosts, analyzing studies from 1960 to 2020 that highlighted the Leptospira isolation. This scientific literature aimed to provide evidence of infection in several animal species including of the Carnivora, Didelphimorphia, Rodentia, Cetacea, Cingulata, Afrosoricida, Chiroptera and Primate orders, as well as in Reptilia and Amphibia classes. In conclusion, the spreading of Leptospira is attention-worthy because the infection could occur in all the animal species ranging in a specific area. Further screening and isolations are needed to collect all necessary data to gain a complete understanding of leptospirosis epidemiology and its modifications

Explaining classifiers’ outputs with causal models and argumentation

We introduce a conceptualisation for generating argumentation frameworks (AFs) from causal models for the purpose of forging explanations for mod-els’ outputs. The conceptualisation is based on reinterpreting properties of semantics of AFs as explanation moulds, which are means for characterising argumentative relations. We demonstrate our methodology by reinterpreting the property of bi-variate reinforcement in bipolar AFs, showing how the ex-tracted bipolar AFs may be used as relation-based explanations for the outputs of causal models. We then evaluate our method empirically when the causal models represent (Bayesian and neural network) machine learning models for classification. The results show advantages over a popular approach from the literature, both in highlighting specific relationships between feature and classification variables and in generating counterfactual explanations with respect to a commonly used metric

Achieving descriptive accuracy in explanations via argumentation: the case of probabilistic classifiers

The pursuit of trust in and fairness of AI systems in order to enable human-centric goals has been gathering pace of late, often supported by the use of explanations for the outputs of these systems. Several properties of explanations have been highlighted as critical for achieving trustworthy and fair AI systems, but one that has thus far been overlooked is that of descriptive accuracy (DA), i.e., that the explanation contents are in correspondence with the internal working of the explained system. Indeed, the violation of this core property would lead to the paradoxical situation of systems producing explanations which are not suitably related to how the system actually works: clearly this may hinder user trust. Further, if explanations violate DA then they can be deceitful, resulting in an unfair behavior toward the users. Crucial as the DA property appears to be, it has been somehow overlooked in the XAI literature to date. To address this problem, we consider the questions of formalizing DA and of analyzing its satisfaction by explanation methods. We provide formal definitions of naive, structural and dialectical DA, using the family of probabilistic classifiers as the context for our analysis. We evaluate the satisfaction of our given notions of DA by several explanation methods, amounting to two popular feature-attribution methods from the literature, variants thereof and a novel form of explanation that we propose. We conduct experiments with a varied selection of concrete probabilistic classifiers and highlight the importance, with a user study, of our most demanding notion of dialectical DA, which our novel method satisfies by design and others may violate. We thus demonstrate how DA could be a critical component in achieving trustworthy and fair systems, in line with the principles of human-centric AI

Шляхи підвищення ефективності фінансово-господарської діяльності підприємства

Мета даної статті полягає в необхідності виробити заходи з підвищення ефективності фінансово-господарської діяльності підприємства (на прикладі Кримського республіканського підприємства «Виробниче підприємство водопровідно-каналізаційної галузі» м. Сімферополя)

Cancer prevention by targeting angiogenesis

Healthy individuals can harbour microscopic tumours and dysplastic foci in different organs in an undetectable and asymptomatic state for many years. These lesions do not progress in the absence of angiogenesis or inflammation. Targeting both processes before clinical manifestation can prevent tumour growth and progression. Angioprevention is a chemoprevention approach that interrupts the formation of new blood vessels when tumour cell foci are in an indolent state. Many efficacious chemopreventive drugs function by preventing angiogenesis in the tumour microenvironment. Blocking the vascularization of incipient tumours should maintain a dormancy state such that neoplasia or cancer exist without disease. The current limitations of antiangiogenic cancer therapy may well be related to the use of antiangiogenic agents too late in the disease course. In this Review, we suggest mechanisms and strategies for using antiangiogenesis agents in a safe, preventive clinical angioprevention setting, proposing different levels of clinical angioprevention according to risk, and indicate potential drugs to be employed at these levels. Finally, angioprevention may go well beyond cancer in the prevention of a range of chronic disorders where angiogenesis is crucial, including different forms of inflammatory or autoimmune diseases, ocular disorders, and neurodegeneration

Tio2-photocatalyzed water depollution, a strong, yet selective depollution method: New evidence from the solar light induced degradation of glucocorticoids in freshwaters

The photodegradation of the most prescribed glucocorticoids (GCs) was studied under relevant environmental conditions in the presence of suspended TiO2. The considered drugs in-cluded cortisone (CORT), hydrocortisone (HCORT), betamethasone (BETA), dexamethasone (DEXA), prednisone (PRED), prednisolone (PREDLO), and triamcinolone (TRIAM). The experiments were carried out at concentrations (50 µg L−1) close to the real ones in freshwater samples (tap and river) under simulated and natural sunlight, and their decomposition took place very efficiently under natural sunlight. The reactions were monitored by high-pressure liquid chromatography coupled to electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-ESI-MS/MS). According to a pseudo-first-order decay, all drugs underwent degradation within 15 min, following different paths with respect to the direct photolysis. The observed kinetic constants, slightly lower in river than in tap water, varied from 0.29 to 0.61 min−1 with modest differences among GCs in the same matrix. Among main matrix macro-constituents, humic acids (HAs) were the most interfering species involved in GCs degradation. The photogenerated primary products were identified by HPLC-ESI-MS/MS, allowing to elucidate the general photochemical path of GCs. Finally, a comparison with literature data obtained using different advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) highlights the treatment efficiency with TiO2 /solar light for removing such persistent aquatic contaminants

La difesa dai terremoti in Lombardia: stato dell’arte e prospettive

L’INGV (http://www.mi.ingv.it/) svolge in Lombardia ricerche nel campo della mitigazione del rischio sismico, mediante studi mirati al miglioramento delle conoscenze sulla storia sismica, sul modello strutturale legato al regime tettonico in atto e alla definizione del moto del suolo atteso. Accanto alle indagini necessarie alla caratterizzazione sismogenetica e dei possibili effetti dello scuotimento sismico, si pone l’attività di monitoraggio sismico, che la Sezione di Milano-Pavia espleta mediante la rete accelerometrica (RAIS, http://rais.mi.ingv.it/) che consta di 20 postazioni distribuite in prevalenza sul territorio regionale. In un recente lavoro di sintesi - di studi pluriennali su fonti storiche e di revisioni critiche di materiali pubblicati - si è tentato di colmare l’evidente carenza conoscitiva sulle caratteristiche della sismicità storica dell’area lombarda. Tale carenza è particolarmente evidente se si rapportano le informazioni oggi disponibili sui terremoti del passato in quest’area con quelle relative al settore veneto-friulano. La regione analizzata, compresa tra il bacino del fiume Adda e il Lago di Garda, è stata caratterizzata da alcuni terremoti con Mw>5.5 (es., 1117, Veronese; 1222, Brescia; 1901, Salò) e vari eventi con Mw compresa fra 4.8 e 5.5 (es., 1065, Brescia; 1396, Monza; 1642, Bergamo). Per molti degli eventi sismici fino al 1700 le informazioni sono desumibili soltanto da scarse fonti storiche. La determinazione epicentrale e l’attribuzione della magnitudo per tali eventi sono da considerarsi, pertanto, con una certa cautela al fine di definire le caratteristiche sismiche del territorio. I terremoti del 1117 e del 1222, in tale contesto, rappresentano un’eccezione rispetto ai dati generalmente disponibili. E tuttavia vari problemi tuttora aperti rendono assai difficile l’utilizzo della distribuzione del danno attribuibile a questi eventi nella prospettiva di un’affidabile parametrizzazione. Le indagini geologico-strutturali e di geologia del Quaternario, finalizzate a definire un quadro strutturale compatibile con il regime tettonico in atto, sono necessarie per giustificare la storia sismica e, in sostanza, per definire il comportamento sismogenetico della regione. Le geometrie dei sistemi di faglia attivi alpini sono ora sufficientemente noti. Le conoscenze permettono di formulare ipotesi sismotettoniche relative all’origine dei terremoti dell’area gardesana e del Bresciano. In via di definizione sono invece le geometrie dei fronti appenninici, cui sono attribuibili i terremoti al di sopra della soglia nel settore padano. Le ricerche attuali sono altresì indirizzate ad una migliore caratterizzazione del complesso settore compreso tra la parte meridionale del Lago di Garda (area di Sirmione), Verona e Mantova, all’interno del quale potrebbe collocarsi l’area epicentrale del terremoto del 1117 (o una delle aree epicentrali, qualora si considerasse questo evento come rappresentato da una sequenza sismica). Uno dei settori regionali con maggiore frequenza di eventi sismici è l’area gardesana occidentale, per questo motivo la rete di monitoraggio presenta una notevole densità di postazioni nel Bresciano e se ne è pianificato l’addensamento nel Veronese. Nel corso del 2007, la rete ha consentito la registrazione di 516 forme d’onda relative a 28 eventi locali e regionali (di cui una decina localizzati nell’area citata) con magnitudo da 1.3 a 4.2, di cui sono stati calcolati i parametri di interesse ingegneristico. L’analisi delle registrazioni ha permesso di ricavare informazioni utili per il calcolo di scenari di scuotimento. Un esempio di taali applicazioni è rappresentato dallo scenario realizzato utilizzando come terremoto di riferimento l'evento del 24 Novembre 2004 (M 5.2)

Vibrational spectrum of solid picene (C_22H_14)

Recently, Mitsuhashi et al., have observed superconductivity with transition temperature up to 18 K in potassium doped picene (C22H14), a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon compound [Nature 464 (2010) 76]. Theoretical analysis indicate the importance of electron-phonon coupling in the superconducting mechanisms of these systems, with different emphasis on inter- and intra-molecular vibrations, depending on the approximations used. Here we present a combined experimental and ab-initio study of the Raman and infrared spectrum of undoped solid picene, which allows us to unanbiguously assign the vibrational modes. This combined study enables the identification of the modes which couple strongly to electrons and hence can play an important role in the superconducting properties of the doped samples