Uncertainty in Pandemic Times

The Covid-19 pandemic has burst upon us as a general test for humanity, for which we were woefully unprepared. We all faced the pandemic with little knowledge and no experience. It is the first pandemic of our lives. Over this period, we have seen a range of conflicting statements, positions and behaviours. On occasion, the scientific community and health professionals have failed to speak with a single voice to convey the urgency of the situation, as their views got lost and scattered in rivulets of opposing theories ranging from denying to ringing the alarm. So many elements were in place for the ‘perfect storm’ to get unleashed … and it did. And as the pandemic wreaked its havoc, many health workers have paid a high price for their selfless dedication and professionalism. We have worked in the absence of clear-cut guidelines, in situations where even the cornerstones of medical ethics have faltered. On the other hand, the fruitful aspects of uncertainty also emerged

Nationwide consensus on the clinical management of treatment-resistant depression in Italy: a Delphi panel

Background: Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) is defined by the European Medicines Agency as a lack of clinically meaningful improvement after treatment, with at least two different antidepressants. Individual, familiar, and socio-economic burden of TRD is huge. Given the lack of clear guidelines, the large variability of TRD approaches across different countries and the availability of new medications to meet the need of effective and rapid acting therapeutic strategies, it is important to understand the consensus regarding the clinical characteristics and treatment pathways of patients with TRD in Italian routine clinical practice, particularly in view of the recent availability of esketamine nasal spray. Methods: A Delphi questionnaire with 17 statements (with a 7 points Likert scale for agreement) was administered via a customized web-based platform to Italian psychiatrists with at least 5 years of experience and specific expertise in the field of depression. In the second-round physicians were asked to answer the same statements considering the interquartile range of each question as an index of their colleagues' responses. Stata 16.1 software was used for the analyses. Results: Sixty panellists, representative of the Italian territory, answered the questionnaire at the first round. For 8/17 statements more than 75% of panellists reached agreement and a high consensus as they assigned similar scores; for 4 statements the panellists assigned similar scores but in the middle of the Likert scale showing a moderate agreement with the statement, while for 5 statements there was indecision in the agreement and low consensus with the statement. Conclusions: This Delphi Panel showed that there is a wide heterogeneity in Italy in the management of TRD patients, and a compelling need of standardised strategies and treatments specifically approved for TRD. A high level of consensus and agreement was obtained about the importance of adding lithium and/or antipsychotics as augmentation therapies and in the meantime about the need for long-term maintenance therapy. A high level of consensus and agreement was equally reached for the identification of esketamine nasal spray as the best option for TRD patients and for the possibility to administrate without difficulties esketamine in a community outpatient setting, highlighting the benefit of an appropriate educational support for patients

Brain Waves Predict Success of New Fashion Products: A Practical Application for the Footwear Retailing Industry

Every year, retailers launch a myriad of new products. The success rate of such new products directly influences a retailer's success in terms of gross profit, customer loyalty and brand image. In the past decades, many self-report and focus group based methods were implemented to gain insights in future market performance of new products. However, social psychology and market research studies have established that self-reports are unreliable to accurately predict customer preference. In this article, we propose a novel approach based on brain data to forecast product performance and discuss the importance of pre-market forecasting in the footwear retailing industry. We implemented and validated the tool in collaboration with a European shoe store chain. This case study showed that self-report based methods cannot accurately foretell success, while using brain data the prediction accuracy reached 80 per cent. We also compared how these two different methods might influence company gross profit. Simulations based on sales data showed that self-report based prediction would lead to a 12.1 per cent profit growth, while brain scan based prediction would increase profit by 36.4 per cent. Thus, this innovative neuroscientific approach greatly improves brand image and brings considerable value for organizations, shareholders as well as consumers. </jats:p

MP-shield: A framework for phishing detection in mobile devices

Today, there is an exponential growth of e-services requiring the exchange of personal and sensible data over the Internet. Phishing techniques are emerging as the easiest solution to break the weakest link of the security chain: the end user. Social engineering attacks are deployed by financial/cyber criminals at a very low cost to induce naïve Internet users to reveal user credentials such as bank account and credit card numbers. This problem needs to be addressed in the mobile field as well, due to the large diffusion of mobile devices such as smartphones, tablet, etc. In this paper we propose a novel framework for phishing detection in Android mobile devices which, on the one hand exploits well-known techniques already implemented by popular web browsers plug-in, such as public blacklist search, and, on the other hand, implements a machine learning detection engine which ensure zero-hour protection from new phishing campaigns

Attitudes and Perceptions of health protection measures during the first wave of COVID-19 in Italy and Poland

7nonenoneLorettu, L; Mastrangelo, G; Grabowski, J; Bellizzi, S; Piu, D; Nivoli AMA., Meloni R; Cegolon, L.Lorettu, L; Mastrangelo, G; Grabowski, J; Bellizzi, S; Piu, D; Nivoli AMA., Meloni R; Cegolon, L