Trust-Based Techniques for Collective Intelligence in Social Search Systems.

A key-issue for the effectiveness of collaborative decision support systems is the problem of the trustworthiness of the entities involved in the process. Trust has been always used by humans as a form of collective intelligence to support effective decision making process. Computational trust models are becoming now a popular technique across many applications such as cloud computing, p2p networks, wikis, e-commerce sites, social network. The chapter provides an overview of the current landscape of computational models of trust and reputation, and it presents an experimental study case in the domain of social search, where we show how trust techniques can be applied to enhance the quality of social search engine predictions

La trasformazione delle Cure Primarie nel Servizio Sanitario Italiano. Un’analisi di progetti ed esperienze di “Case della Salute” in Emilia Romagna

In order to meet the challenges that the major changes - demographic, epidemiological and social - of the last decades have presented to the welfare systems of mature capitalist countries it’s recognized the need to reorganize public health services focusing on the development of Primary Care. In this context, the proposal of the Italian welfare model called “Casa della Salute”, which is the object of study of our empirical investigation, was born. The survey, conducted in the “Azienda sanitaria” of Parma, consists of two case studies (Colorno-Torrile and San Secondo Parmense), observed with a qualitative and quantitative methodological approach. The qualitative part of the study aimed to shed light on the objectives characterizing the model of Casa della Salute as the continuity of care, the unity of care pathways, the professional partnership and social health, and the connection between the community and the hospital. The quantitative part, instead, focused on the perception of the quality delivered by the new health care facilities from the user's perspective. The study has several items of interest and can be deepened for future research in this area

Cecal Endometriosis as a Cause of Ileocolic Intussusception

Discussed in this report is the use of imaging modalities to aid in the preoperative diagnosis and localization of pathology in this rare condition treated with laparoscopic hemicolectomy

Average degree of the essential variety

The essential variety is an algebraic subvariety of dimension $5$ in real projective space $\mathbb R\mathrm P^{8}$ which encodes the relative pose of two calibrated pinhole cameras. The $5$-point algorithm in computer vision computes the real points in the intersection of the essential variety with a linear space of codimension $5$. The degree of the essential variety is $10$, so this intersection consists of 10 complex points in general. We compute the expected number of real intersection points when the linear space is random. We focus on two probability distributions for linear spaces. The first distribution is invariant under the action of the orthogonal group $\mathrm{O}(9)$ acting on linear spaces in $\mathbb R\mathrm P^{8}$. In this case, the expected number of real intersection points is equal to $4$. The second distribution is motivated from computer vision and is defined by choosing 5 point correspondences in the image planes $\mathbb R\mathrm P^2\times \mathbb R\mathrm P^2$ uniformly at random. A Monte Carlo computation suggests that with high probability the expected value lies in the interval $(3.95 - 0.05,\ 3.95 + 0.05)$.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figures, code included in source file

Increased MTHFR promoter methylation in mothers of Down syndrome individuals

Despite that advanced maternal age at conception represents the major risk factor for the birth of a child with Down syndrome (DS), most of DS babies are born from women aging less than 35 years. Studies performed in peripheral lymphocytes of those women revealed several markers of global genome instability, including an increased frequency of micronuclei, shorter telomeres and impaired global DNA methylation. Furthermore, young mothers of DS individuals (MDS) are at increased risk to develop dementia later in life, suggesting that they might be "biologically older" than mothers of euploid babies of similar age.Mutations in folate pathway genes, and particularly in the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) one, have been often associated with maternal risk for a DS birth as well as with risk of dementia in the elderly. Recent studies pointed out that also changes in MTHFR methylation levels can contribute to human disease, but nothing is known about MTHFR methylation in MDS tissues.We investigated MTHFR promoter methylation in DNA extracted from perypheral lymphocytes of 40 MDS and 44 matched control women that coinceived their children before 35 years of age, observing a significantly increased MTHFR promoter methylation in the first group (33.3 ± 8.1% vs. 28.3 ± 5.8%; p = 0.001). In addition, the frequency of micronucleated lymphocytes was available from the women included in the study, was higher in MDS than control mothers (16.1 ± 8.6‰ vs. 10.5 ± 4.3‰ p = 0.0004), and correlated with MTHFR promoter methylation levels (r = 0.33; p = 0.006).Present data suggest that MTHFR epimutations are likely to contribute to the increased genomic instability observed in cells from MDS, and could play a role in the risk of birth of a child with DS as well as in the onset of age related diseases in those women

Cost analysis comparison of rurioctocog alfa pegol compared to turoctocog alfa pegol in the prophylaxis of Haemophilia A in Italy

Background: Hemophilia-A is an X-linked genetic disorder arising from a mutation to the X chromosome and causing either a quantitative or qualitative deficiency in blood clotting factor-VIII (FVIII). Several recombinant extended half-life FVIII products (rFVIII-EHL) are in use in Italy for the treatment of hemophilia-A. Objective: To estimate the annual average cost of the prophylactic treatment of a patient with hemophilia-A in Italy with rurioctocog alfa pegol or turoctocog alfa pegol, with particular regard to potential dose adjustments as provided in the SPCs. Methods: The comparison between the two rFVIII-EHL, expressed in terms of average annual cost per patient treated, was conducted from the NHS perspective. The average annual consumption (IU/kg) of the two rFVIII-EHL was derived from the clinical trial of reference for in label prophylactic treatment. Adjustments of doses and administration intervals allowed in the SPCs were considered on the basis of the literature. The published ex-factory price considered for both rFVIII-EHL was € 0.72. A scenario analysis focused on possible dosing adjustments was conducted. Results: With regard to the average consumption associated with the posology in label, the average annual treatment cost is almost the same between the two rFVIII-EHL. Whereas taking into account the possible dose adjustments based on once-weekly administration, rurioctocog alfa pegol shows a considerably lower average annual treatment cost compared to turoctocog alfa pegol (– € 42,719). Conclusions: Rurioctocog alfa pegol would be the more sustainable option, based on the annual average cost, for the NHS in the prophylactic treatment of hemophilia-A

Artificial Neural Networks Link One-Carbon Metabolism to Gene-Promoter Methylation in Alzheimer's Disease

Background: There is increasing interest in DNA methylation studies in Alzheimer's disease (AD), but little is still known concerning the relationship between gene-promoter methylation and circulating biomarkers of one-carbon metabolism in patients. Objective: To detect the connections among circulating folate, homocysteine (hcy) and vitamin B12 levels and promoter methylation levels of PSEN1, BACE1, DNMT1, DNMT3A, DNMT3B, and MTHFR genes in blood DNA. Methods: We applied a data mining system called Auto Contractive Map to an existing database of 100 AD and 100 control individuals. Results: Low vitamin B12 was linked to the AD condition, to low folates, and to high hcy. Low PSEN1 methylation was linked to low folate levels as well as to low promoter methylation of BACE1 and DNMTs genes. Low hcy was linked to controls, to high folates and vitamin B12, as well as to high methylation levels of most of the studied genes. Conclusions: The present pilot study suggests that promoter methylation levels of the studied genes are linked to circulating levels of folates, hcy, and vitamin B12

Decomposing Tensor Spaces via Path Signatures

The signature of a path is a sequence of tensors whose entries are iterated integrals, playing a key role in stochastic analysis and applications. The set of all signature tensors at a particular level gives rise to the universal signature variety. We show that the parametrization of this variety induces a natural decomposition of the tensor space via representation theory, and connect this to the study of path invariants. We also examine the question of determining what is the tensor rank of a signature tensor.Comment: 22 page

Telomere Dysfunction Is Associated with Altered {DNA} Organization in Trichoplein/Tchp/Mitostatin ({TpMs}) Depleted Cells

Abstract: Recently, we highlighted a novel role for the protein Trichoplein/TCHP/Mitostatin (TpMs), both as mitotic checkpoint regulator and guardian of chromosomal stability. TpMs-depleted cells show numerical and structural chromosome alterations that lead to genomic instability. This condition is a major driving force in malignant transformation as it allows for the cells acquiring new functional capabilities to proliferate and disseminate. Here, the effect of TpMs depletion was investigated in different TpMs-depleted cell lines by means of 3D imaging and 3D Structured illumination Microscopy. We show that TpMs depletion causes alterations in the 3D architecture of telomeres in colon cancer HCT116 cells. These findings are consistent with chromosome alterations that lead to genomic instability. Furthermore, TpMs depletion changes the spatial arrangement of chromosomes and other nuclear components. Modified nuclear architecture and organization potentially induce variations that precede the onset of genomic instability and are considered as markers of malignant transformation. Our present observations connect the tumor suppression ability of TpMs with its novel functions in maintaining the proper chromosomal segregation as well as the proper telomere and nuclear architecture. Further investigations will investigate the connection between alterations in telomeres and nuclear architecture with the progression of human tumors with the aim of developing personalized therapeutic interventions