Can Clinical and Surgical Parameters Be Combined to Predict How Long It Will Take a Tibia Fracture to Heal? A Prospective Multicentre Observational Study: The FRACTING Study

Background. Healing of tibia fractures occurs over a wide time range of months, with a number of risk factors contributing to prolonged healing. In this prospective, multicentre, observational study, we investigated the capability of FRACTING (tibia FRACTure prediction healING days) score, calculated soon after tibia fracture treatment, to predict healing time. Methods. The study included 363 patients. Information on patient health, fracture morphology, and surgical treatment adopted were combined to calculate the FRACTING score. Fractures were considered healed when the patient was able to fully weight-bear without pain. Results. 319 fractures (88%) healed within 12 months from treatment. Forty-four fractures healed after 12 months or underwent a second surgery. FRACTING score positively correlated with days to healing: r = 0.63 (p < 0.0001). Average score value was 7.3 \ub1 2.5; ROC analysis showed strong reliability of the score in separating patients healing before versus after 6 months: AUC = 0.823. Conclusions. This study shows that the FRACTING score can be employed both to predict months needed for fracture healing and to identify immediately after treatment patients at risk of prolonged healing. In patients with high score values, new pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatments to enhance osteogenesis could be tested selectively, which may finally result in reduced disability time and health cost savings

L' anima e lo Stato. Hans Kelsen e Sigmund Freud

Svoltosi negli anni Venti del Novecento, il dialogo tra Hans Kelsen e Sigmund Freud costituisce un episodio tanto rilevante quanto poco nolo della storia del pensiero. In una Europa che sta vivendo il travagliato e fragile passaggio alla democrazia, il giurista della Dottrina pura del diritto e il padre della psicoanalisi si trovano a discutere la differenza tra massa e Stato, così come il ruolo del capo quale fattore coesivo dell'organizzazione sociale. Questo libro propone una lettura della controversia che mette al centro il rapporto, sempre eccentrico e mai perfettamente conciliabile, tra la dimensione soggettiva dell individuo e quella oggettiva dello Stato, nella convinzione che, seppure diversamente, tanto per Kelsen quanto per Freud sia possibile rinvenire proprio nella democrazia l'indicazione per una composizione politica di questa eterna tensione

Specification of the base measure of nonparametric priors via random means

Functionals of random probability measures are probabilistic objects whose properties are studied in different fields. They also play an important role in Bayesian Nonparametrics: understanding the behavior of a finite dimensional feature of a flexible and infinite-dimensional prior is crucial for prior elicitation. In particular distributions of means of nonparametric priors have been the object of thorough investigation in the literature. We target the inverse path: the determination of the parameter measure of a random probability measure giving rise to a fixed mean distribution. This direction yields a better understanding of the sets of mean distributions of notable nonparametric priors, giving moreover a way to directly enforce prior information, without losing inferential power. Here we summarize and report results obtained in [6] for the Dirichlet process, the normalized stable random measure and the Pitman–Yor process, with an application to mixture models

Two‐group Poisson‐Dirichlet mixtures for multiple testing

The simultaneous testing of multiple hypotheses is common to the analysis of high-dimensional data sets. The two-group model, first proposed in Efron (2004), identifies significant comparisons by allocating observations to a mixture of an empirical null and an alternative distribution. In the Bayesian nonparametrics literature, many approaches have suggested using mixtures of Dirichlet Processes in the two group model framework. Here, we investigate employing instead mixtures of two-parameter Poisson Dirichlet Processes (2PPD), and show how they provide a more flexible and effective tool for large-scale hypothesis testing. Our model further employs non-local prior densities to allow separation between the two mixture components. We obtain a closed form expression for the exchangeable partition probability function of the two-group model, which leads to a straightforward MCMC implementation. We compare the performances of our method for large-scale inference in a simulation study and illustrate its use on both a prostate cancer dataset and a case-control microbiome study of the gastrointestinal tracts in children from underdeveloped countries who have been recently diagnosed with moderate to severe diarrhe

Two-group Poisson-Dirichlet mixtures for multiple testing

© 2020 The International Biometric Society The simultaneous testing of multiple hypotheses is common to the analysis of high-dimensional data sets. The two-group model, first proposed by Efron, identifies significant comparisons by allocating observations to a mixture of an empirical null and an alternative distribution. In the Bayesian nonparametrics literature, many approaches have suggested using mixtures of Dirichlet Processes in the two-group model framework. Here, we investigate employing mixtures of two-parameter Poisson-Dirichlet Processes instead, and show how they provide a more flexible and effective tool for large-scale hypothesis testing. Our model further employs nonlocal prior densities to allow separation between the two mixture components. We obtain a closed-form expression for the exchangeable partition probability function of the two-group model, which leads to a straightforward Markov Chain Monte Carlo implementation. We compare the performance of our method for large-scale inference in a simulation study and illustrate its use on both a prostate cancer data set and a case-control microbiome study of the gastrointestinal tracts in children from underdeveloped countries who have been recently diagnosed with moderate-to-severe diarrhea

Subcutaneous Interferon Beta-1a Has a Positive Effect on Cognitive Performance in Mildly Disabled Patients with Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis: 2-Year Results from the COGIMUS Study

The effect of interferon (IFN) beta-1a (44 and 22 μg subcutaneously [sc] three times weekly [tiw]) on cognition in mildly disabled patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (McDonald criteria; Expanded Disability Status Scale =4.0) was assessed by validated neuropsychological testing at baseline and at regular intervals for up to 2 years in this ongoing open-label, 3-year study. Year-2 data were available for 356 patients (22 μg, n = 175; 44μg, n = 181). The proportion of patients with impaired cognitive function was stable during the study: 21.4% at baseline and 21.6% at 2 years. At 2 years, the proportion of patients with =3 impaired cognitive tests was significantly lower in the 44 μg treatment group (17.0%) compared with the 22 μg group (26.5%; p = 0.034), although there was already a trend towards a higher proportion of patients with cognitive impairment in the 22 μg group at baseline. Factors associated with impairment in = three cognitive tests after 2 years were age (odds ratio [OR]: 1.05; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.00-1.09), verbal intelligence quotient (OR: 0.95; 95% CI: 0.92-0.98), and having = three impaired cognitive tests at baseline (OR: 11.60; 95% CI: 5.94-22.64). These interim results show that IFN beta-1a sc tiw may have beneficial effects on cognitive function as early as 2 years after treatment initiation, but the final 3-year data of the study are required to confirm these results

Legal Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: The Civil Law World. Tome 1: Language Areas. Tome 2: Main Orientations and Topics

"A Treatise of Legal Philosophy and General Jurisprudence" is the first-ever treatment of issues in legal philosophy and general jurisprudence in a single multivolume work offering a perspective at once theoretical and historical. Volume 12 of the Treatise, titled "Legal Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: The Civil-Law World" is a two-tome volume offering the first comprehensive account of the complex development that legal philosophy has undergone in continental Europe and Latin America since 1900. In Tome 1 of this volume, scholars from the different language areas making up the civil-law world give an account of the way legal philosophy has evolved in these areas in the 20th century, the outcome being an overall mosaic of civil-law legal philosophy in this arc of time. Tome 2, which instead takes a more thematic approach, traces out the development that legal philosophy has undergone in the 20th century, focusing on four of its main strands (namely, legal positivism, legal realism, natural law theory, and the theory of legal reasoning) and discussing the different conceptions that have been put forward under these labels. The volume is thus structured in such a way that the historical analysis can be viewed in light of the subsequent developments in the contemporary theoretical debate