De-Fragmenting Knowledge: Using Metadata for Interconnecting Courses

E-learning systems are often based on the notion of "course": an interconnected set of resources aiming at presenting material related to a particular topic. Course authors do provide external links to related material. Such external links are however "frozen" at the time of publication of the course. Metadata are useful for classifying and finding e-learning artifacts. In many cases, metadata are used by Learning Management Systems to import, export, sequence and present learning objects. The use of metadata by humans is in general limited to a search functionality, e.g. by authors who search for material that can be reused. We argue that metadata can be used to enrich the interconnection among courses, and to present to the student a richer variety of interconnected resources. We implemented a system that presents an instance of this idea

Education in anesthesia: three years of online logbook implementation in an Italian school

BACKGROUND: The progress of physicians through residency training in anesthesiology can be monitored using an online logbook. The aim of this investigation was to establish how residents record clinical activities in their computerized web-based logbooks during their first years of anesthesiology training. METHODS: For this retrospective observational trial, the ESSE 3(©) digital registry of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy was used to record all anesthesia-related activities performed by three consecutive year-groups of residents (Groups A, B and C) between 2009 and 2012. The ratio of activities to sessions was chosen as a surrogate measure of compliance. RESULTS: A total of 41,348 actions were analyzed. The ratio of activities to sessions showed a statistically significant decline for all activities concerning the perioperative management of anesthesia, with a steady reduction from the first to the last year-group (Group A 23.7, Group B 14.1 and Group C 2.2; p = 0.003). CONCLUSIONS: An online activities logbook is a useful tool for recording and assessing the clinical activities undertaken by each resident during residency training in anesthesiology

Propofol: a safe anaesthetic drug in experimental cardiac surgery in rabbits

Experimental surgery needs a pharmacological approach that can interfere with cardiac function

Deal2lkit: a Toolkit Library for High Performance Programming in deal.II

We propose a software design for the efficient and flexible handling of the building blocks used in high performance finite element simulations, through the pervasive use of parameters (parsed through parameter files). In the proposed design, all the building blocks of a high performance finite element program are built according to the command and composite design patterns.We present version 1.1.0 of the deal2lkit (deal.II ToolKit) library, which is a collection of modules and classes aimed at providing high level interfaces to several deal.II classes and functions, obeying the command and composite design patterns, and controlled via parameter files. Keywords: Object-orientation, Software design, Finite element methods, C+

Advancing drought monitoring via feature extraction and multi-task learning algorithms

A drought is a slowly developing natural phenomenon that can occur in all climatic zones and can be defined as a temporary but significant decrease in water availability. Over the past three decades, the cost of droughts in Europe amounted to over 100 billion euros, with the recent summer droughts being unprecedented in the last 2,000 years. Although drought monitoring and management are extensively studied in the literature, capturing the evolution of drought dynamics, and associated impacts across different temporal and spatial scales remains a critical, unsolved challenge. In this work, we contribute with a Machine Learning procedure named FRIDA (FRamework for Index-based Drought Analysis) for the identification of impact-based drought indexes. FRIDA is a fully automated data-driven approach that relies on advanced feature extraction algorithms to identify relevant drought drivers from a pool of candidate hydro-meteorological predictors. The selected predictors are then combined into an index representing a surrogate of the drought conditions in the considered area, including either observed or simulated water deficits or remotely sensed information on crop status. Notably, FRIDA leverages multi-task learning algorithms to upscale the analysis over a large region where drought impacts might depend on diverse but potentially correlated drivers. FRIDA captures the heterogeneous features of the different sub-regions while efficiently using all available data and exploiting the commonalities across sub-regions. In this way, the accuracy of the resulting prediction benefits from a reduced uncertainty compared to training separate models for each sub-region. Several real-world examples will be used to provide a synthesis of recent applications of FRIDA in case studies featuring diverse hydroclimatic conditions and variable levels of data availability

Efficacy and Tolerability of a New Formulation in Rectal Ointment Based on Zn-L-Carnosine (Proctilor®) in the Treatment of Haemorrhoidal Disease

Haemorrhoidal disease (HD) shows high prevalence in western countries, reaching 4.4% per year in the US. Topical preparations are the first-line treatments, which are readily available as "over-the-counter" (OTC) products, often containing a nonstandardised mixture of "natural" remedies, or anaesthetics or cortisol;those latter are not free from undesirable effects. The Zinc-L-Carnosine is a cytoprotective compound, promoting mucosal repair in the gastrointestinal tract and also in mucosal repair, following radiation injuries to the rectum as well as in ulcerative colitis. Our aim was to study the efficacy of Zinc-L-Carnosine in relieving acute symptoms of HD, testing a preparation in the rectal ointment, Proctilor (R), in patients complaining of bleeding or thrombosed piles. In a multicentre open trial, 21 patients older than 18 years of age were enrolled. The symptoms of HD were graded according to the Haemorrhoidal Disease Symptoms Score (HDSS) in association with the Short Health Scale (SHS) to assess the influence of HD on quality of life. The pain was assessed with the VAS score, bowel habit by means of the Bristol scale. The patients were evaluated at enrolment (T0) and 2 (T1) and 4 (T2) weeks of treatment with Proctilor (R) rectal ointment. There were 10 men and 11 women; mean age, 49 years. Pain, bleeding, and thrombosis were all significantly reduced after treatment; the mean VAS score decreased from 4.71 +/- 3.05 at T0 to.52 +/- 0.87 and.05 +/- 0.22 at T1 and T2, respectively; (mean +/- SD; p < 0.001 in both cases). Similarly, the HDSS score showed to be significantly reduced between T0, T1 (8.05 +/- 4.55 vs. 1.14 +/- 1.01), and T2 (8.05 +/- 4.55 vs. 24 +/- 0.44) (mean +/- SD; p < 0.001 in both cases). Quality of life showed to be improved as the SHS score decreased significantly with treatment (7.90 +/- 4.17 at T0 vs. 4.24 +/- 0.44 at T1 vs. 4.05 +/- 0.22 at T2; mean +/- SD; p < 0.001 in both cases). The Bristol score of defecation remained substantially unchanged. No side effects or discontinuation of treatment were reported. Results of our investigation suggest a role of Proctilor (R) rectal ointment in treating symptomatic HD with good results and an excellent safety profile. However, our preliminary results encourage further studies on a larger number of patients to confirm the role of Zinc-L-Carnosine in the rectal ointment for the topical treatment of HD