PoliTo at MULTI-Fake-DetectiVE: Improving FND-CLIP for Multimodal Italian Fake News Detection

The MULTI-Fake-DetectiVE challenge addresses the automatic detection of Italian fake news in a multimodal setting, where both textual and visual components contribute as potential sources of fake content. This paper describes the PoliTO approach to the tasks of fake news detection and analysis of the modality contributions. Our solution turns out to be the best performer on both tasks. It leverages the established FND-CLIP multimodal architecture and proposes ad hoc extensions including sentiment-based text encoding, image transformation in the frequency domain, and data augmentation via back-translation. Thanks to its effectiveness in combining visual and textual content, our solution contributes to fighting the spread of disinformation in the Italian news flow

Pathologic Myopia: Complications and Visual Rehabilitation

High myopia, defined as refractive error of at least −6.00D or an axial length of 26.5 mm or more, can induce many modifications in eye’s anatomy that can lead to complications. When high myopia is able to decrease best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) due to its complications, it is called pathologic myopia. Pathologic myopia is one of the major causes of blindness, and it represents a serious issue, since incidence of myopia and high myopia is constantly rising. For educational purposes, in this chapter, complications of pathologic myopia will be divided into anterior (when structures external to the globe or anterior to the ora serrata are involved, such as motility disturbances and cataract) and posterior (when structures posterior to the ora serrata are involved, such as lacquer cracks, chorioretinal atrophy, Fuchs maculopathy, myopic choroidal neovascularization, and retinal detachment). Many treatments are available for pathologic myopia complications depending on their type, such as vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) injections and surgery. We will focus on visual rehabilitation interventions, such as visual biofeedback and visual aids that in many cases are the only chance that the ophthalmologist has in order to help patients suffering from pathologic myopia to use at their maximum their residual vision

Geography of science: competitiveness and inequality

We characterize the temporal dynamics of Scientific Fitness, as defined by the Economic Fitness and Complexity (EFC) framework, and R&D expenditures at the geographic scale of nations. Our analysis highlights common patterns across similar research systems, and shows how develop-ing nations (China in particular) are quickly catching up with the developed world. This paints the picture of a general growth of scientific and technical capabilities of nations induced by the spreading of information typical of the scientific environment. Shifting the focus of the analysis to the regional level, we find that even developed nations display a considerable level of inequal-ity in the Scientific Fitness of their internal regions. Further, we assess comparatively how the competitiveness of each geographic region is distributed over the spectrum of research sectors. Overall, the Scientific Fitness represents the first high quality estimation of the scientific strength of nations and regions, opening new policy-making applications for better allocating resources, filling inequality gaps and ultimately promoting innovation

Economic complexity and the sustainability transition: A review of data, methods, and literature

Economic Complexity (EC) methods have gained increasing popularity across fields and disciplines. In particular, the EC toolbox has proved particularly promising in the study of complex and interrelated phenomena, such as the transition towards a greener economy. Using the EC approach, scholars have been investigating the relationship between EC and sustainability, proposing to identify the distinguishing characteristics of green products and to assess the readiness of productive and technological structures for the sustainability transition. This article proposes to review and summarize the data, methods, and empirical literature that are relevant to the study of the sustainability transition from an EC perspective. We review three distinct but connected blocks of literature on EC and environmental sustainability. First, we survey the evidence linking measures of EC to indicators related to environmental sustainability. Second, we review articles that strive to assess the green competitiveness of productive systems. Third, we examine evidence on green technological development and its connection to non-green knowledge bases. Finally, we summarize the findings for each block and identify avenues for further research in this recent and growing body of empirical literature.Comment: 57 pages, 1 figur

Identification of Equine Lactadherin-derived Peptides That Inhibit Rotavirus Infection via Integrin Receptor Competition

Human rotavirus is the leading cause of severe gastroenteritis in infants and children under the age of 5 years in both developed and developing countries. Human lactadherin, a milk fat globule membrane glycoprotein, inhibits human rotavirus infection in vitro, whereas bovine lactadherin is not active. Moreover, it protects breastfed infants against symptomatic rotavirus infections. To explore the potential antiviral activity of lactadherin sourced by equines, we undertook a proteomic analysis of milk fat globule membrane proteins from donkey milk and elucidated its amino acid sequence. Alignment of the human, bovine, and donkey lactadherin sequences revealed the presence of an Asp-Gly-Glu (DGE) α(2)β(1) integrin-binding motif in the N-terminal domain of donkey sequence only. Because integrin α(2)β(1) plays a critical role during early steps of rotavirus host cell adhesion, we tested a minilibrary of donkey lactadherin-derived peptides containing DGE sequence for anti-rotavirus activity. A 20-amino acid peptide containing both DGE and RGD motifs (named pDGE-RGD) showed the greatest activity, and its mechanism of antiviral action was characterized; pDGE-RGD binds to integrin α(2)β(1) by means of the DGE motif and inhibits rotavirus attachment to the cell surface. These findings suggest the potential anti-rotavirus activity of equine lactadherin and support the feasibility of developing an anti-rotavirus peptide that acts by hindering virus-receptor binding

Green innovation and income inequality: A complex system analysis.

The objective of this paper is to analyse the relationship between income inequality and environmental innovation. To this end, we use the Economic Fitness and Complexity algorithm to compute an index of green inventive capacity in a panel of 57 countries over the period 1970-2010. The empirical analysis reveals that, on average, inequality is detrimental to countries' capacity to develop complex green technologies. Using non-parametric methods we further articulate this general finding and uncover interesting non-linearities in the relationship between innovation and inequality. [Abstract copyright: © 2022 The Author(s).

Green innovation and income inequality: A complex system analysis.

The objective of this paper is to analyse the relationship between income inequality and environmental innovation. To this end, we use the Economic Fitness and Complexity algorithm to compute an index of green inventive capacity in a panel of 57 countries over the period 1970-2010. The empirical analysis reveals that, on average, inequality is detrimental to countries' capacity to develop complex green technologies. Using non-parametric methods we further articulate this general finding and uncover interesting non-linearities in the relationship between innovation and inequality. [Abstract copyright: © 2022 The Author(s).