THE IMPACT OF INTERNET USAGE ON HEALTH-CARE EXPENDITURES AND SUSTAINABILITY

Introduction: The increasing age, the presence of different diseases that affect the health of individuals and the new opportunities of access to information are changing the process of acquisition of data on health status. Very often, the process of autonomous research of information leads to wrong self-diagnosis with consequent repercussions on health expenditures (e.g.: unnecessary hospitalization) and, generally, on sustainability of health systems. Scope: This work aims to examine the influence of Digital Divide and Internet Usage (DD/IU) on autonomous Health Information Seeking (HIC) process, in order to get useful information about its impact on Healthcare Expenditures per Individual (HEPI). Similarly, this work aims to recognize and understand, from an economical, organizational and technological perspective, the correlation between DD/IU-HIS and HEPI. Methods: To discover the link between DD/IU, HIS and HEPI, we conducted a systematic literature review in order to understand the network of behind these concepts and we applied the Panel Linear Model (PLM) approach in a case study to prove the correlation. Findings: By analysing the literature on between DD/IU and HIS ties have emerged between the re-search topics. These findings have been also revealed by a significative impact. This suggests that, since people live longer, the more individuals access the Internet to get information on health status, the more effective the health expenditure is. All of this has repercussions on the long-term sustainability of the health system, requiring a re-modulation of the services provided, the professionalism and the technologies adopted

A New Framework to Build a Touristic Strategy in Global Destination Management

Globalization age led to creation of new markets and to unveil new scenarios. This contingency highlighted the existence of a broader range of tourist offerings; a factor which, frequently, has undermined the most traditionally established destinations. The model of new destinations must not ignore the peculiarities of territories on they insist creating a unique amalgam and differentiating it from other neighboring or similar destinations. Due to this proliferation of factors that destabilize the governance of tourism management models in the public and private sector, it is necessary to start an analysis of government indicators that consider peculiar aspects of destination management in the era of globalization. For these reasons we conducted an analysis of the business-economic literature about the themes of tourism and governance in tourist destinations and we selected a set of indicators to describe, assess and control extended, slow and sustainable destinations. In this work, we want to illustrate a heuristic approach to build glocal destination based on the pillars of extended, slow and sustainable tourism. From the results of the literature analysis it will be possible to create a framework to build a tourist strategy in glocal destination management, useful to implementation of territorial tourism strategies for both institutional, public and private actors. The use of the key factors of the model could favor the insertion of new tourist routes respecting the cornerstones of the tourism ecosystem of sustainability

The impact of internet usage and knowledge-intensive activities on households’ healthcare expenditures

This paper examines the impact of the internet usage and knowledge intensive activities on households’ healthcare expenditures Similarly, the paper aims to recognize and understand, from a value-creation perspective, the correlation between: internet access of households (IA), individuals frequently using the internet (IU), individuals searching on internet for health-related information (HI), payments made by households for healthcare (PHH), expressed as euro per inhabitant and employment in knowledge-intensive activities (KIA). The approach utilized in the present study consists of two steps. First, a theoretical framework was conducted to determine the existing relationship between major variables. Next, the Vector Autoregressive (VAR) approach was applied in a case study at European level to prove the three hypothesis we consider. By analyzing the connection between the major variables, a positive and long-lasting impulse response function was revealed, followed by an ascending trend. This suggests that a self-multiplying effect is being generated; and it reasonable to assume that the more individuals use the Internet, the more electronic acquisitions occur. We can thus reasonably conclude that the improvement of the internet usage and knowledge intensive activities on households’ healthcare expenditures process is strongly dependent on people’s capability. Improving IU and KIA is the new reading key in the decision-making process in health system approach

A comprehensive theoretical framework for the optimization of neural networks classification performance with respect to weighted metrics

In many contexts, customized and weighted classification scores are designed in order to evaluate the goodness of the predictions carried out by neural networks. However, there exists a discrepancy between the maximization of such scores and the minimization of the loss function in the training phase. In this paper, we provide a complete theoretical setting that formalizes weighted classification metrics and then allows the construction of losses that drive the model to optimize these metrics of interest. After a detailed theoretical analysis, we show that our framework includes as particular instances well-established approaches such as classical cost-sensitive learning, weighted cross entropy loss functions and value-weighted skill scores

Rydberg stabilization of atoms in strong fields: the "magic mountain" in the chaotic sea

We discuss the classical problem of an hydrogen atom interacting with a monochromatic field. We illustrate in particular, analytically and numerically, the stabilization mechanism and give theoretical expressions for the stabilization borders

Dynamical Localization: Hydrogen Atoms in Magnetic and Microwave fields

We show that dynamical localization for excited hydrogen atoms in magnetic and microwave fields takes place at quite low microwave frequency much lower than the Kepler frequency. The estimates of localization length are given for different parameter regimes, showing that the quantum delocalization border drops significantly as compared to the case of zero magnetic field. This opens up broad possibilities for laboratory investigations.Comment: revtex, 11 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. A, Feb (1997

Hate Speech Recognition: The Role of Empathy and Awareness of Social Media Influence

RICONOSCIMENTO DELL’HATE SPEECH: IL RUOLO DELL’EMPATIA E DELLA CONSAPEVOLEZZA DELL’INFLUENZA DEI SOCIAL MEDIA Abstract Hate speech occurs within democratic societies that embrace freedom of expression and is made tangible in the social network context. It is characterized by a specific form of discrimination based on the use of verbal expressions or other media content and, usually, directed at minority groups. Although there is a lack of consensus about a unique and shared definition of hate speech, its social and personal consequences are particularly relevant for the whole society. For these reasons, it seems of crucial importance to identify hate speech recognition antecedents. The present study aimed at analyzing the relationship between hate speech recognition and specific psychological constructs, namely, empathy and awareness of social media influence. More in details, we hypothesized the association between empathy and hate speech recognition was mediated by awareness of social media influence. Data obtained from 146 participants revealed that empathy positively predicted hate speech recognition, and such relationship was mediated by awareness. Implication of such findings are discussed

AI-FLARES: Artificial Intelligence for the Analysis of Solar Flares Data

AI-FLARES (Artificial Intelligence for the Analysis of Solar Flares Data) is a research project funded by the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana and by the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica within the framework of the ``Attivit\`a di Studio per la Comunit\`a Scientifica Nazionale Sole, Sistema Solare ed Esopianeti'' program. The topic addressed by this project was the development and use of computational methods for the analysis of remote sensing space data associated to solar flare emission. This paper overviews the main results obtained by the project, with specific focus on solar flare forecasting, reconstruction of morphologies of the flaring sources, and interpretation of acceleration mechanisms triggered by solar flares

Forward fitting STIX visibilities

Aims. We seek to determine to what extent the problem of forward fitting visibilities measured by the Spectrometer/Telescope Imaging X-rays (STIX) on board Solar Orbiter becomes more challenging with respect to the same problem in the case of previous hard X-ray solar imaging missions. In addition, we aim to identify an effective optimization scheme for parametric imaging for STIX. Methods. This paper introduces a global search optimization for forward-fitting STIX visibilities and compares its effectiveness with respect to the standard simplex-based optimization used so far for the analysis of visibilities measured by the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI). We made this comparison by considering experimental visibilities measured by both RHESSI and STIX, as weel as synthetic visibilities generated by accounting for the STIX signal formation model. Results. We found that among the three global search algorithms for parametric imaging, particle swarm optimization (PSO) exhibits the best performances in terms of both stability and computational effectiveness. This method is as reliable as the simplex method in the case of RHESSI visibilities. However, PSO is significantly more robust when applied to STIX simulated and experimental visibilities. Conclusions. A standard optimization based on local search of minima is not effective enough for forward-fitting the few visibilities sampled by STIX in the spatial frequency plane. Therefore, more sophisticated optimization schemes based on global search must be introduced for parametric imaging in the case of the Solar Orbiter X-ray telescope. The forward-fitting routine based on PSO proved to be significantly robust and reliable, and it could be considered as an effective candidate tool for parametric imaging in the STIX context