Using stop words in text mining: Immigration and the election campaigns.

In order to understand immigration sentiment and its relationship to other concepts in the Italian general election campaign of 2018 and the European election campaign of 2019, we collected in two corpora all the tweets in the Italian language containing the word “immigration” in the period preceding the vote. Both corpora underwent a sentiment analysis and a stop word analysis using two textual software packages: Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) (Pennebaker et al., 2015) and WORDij. LIWC was originally designed by James Pennebaker to understand how some patients recover from traumatic experiences by writing about those experiences and the emotions associated with it then and afterwards. LIWC consists of a dictionary of words which assesses the percent that they occur in a given text. LIWC analysis provides a measure of positive and negative emotion in the immigration text over time. WORDij is a text analysis program that can compute a Z-Score or the relative proportional test of difference between words and words pairs in two sets of texts. Using an include list of stop words we can determine how these relational words change over time with an emotional valence and Z-score to assess the immigration political debate over time. The paper represents a focus on stop-words, which have been an aspect of textual analysis that is often dismissed yet can be very important to our understanding of relational powe

Nanostructure-Based Electrochemical Immunosensors as Diagnostic Tools

Electrochemical immunosensors are affinity-based biosensors characterized by several useful features such as specificity, miniaturizability, low cost and simplicity, making them very interesting for many applications in several scientific fields. One of the significant issues in the design of electrochemical immunosensors is to increase the system’s sensitivity. Different strategies have been developed, one of the most common is the use of nanostructured materials as electrode materials, nanocarriers, electroactive or electrocatalytic nanotracers because of their abilities in signal amplification and biocompatibility. In this review, we will consider some of the most used nanostruc- tures employed in the development of electrochemical immunosensors (e.g., metallic nanoparticles, graphene, carbon nanotubes) and many other still uncommon nanomaterials. Furthermore, their diagnostic applications in the last decade will be discussed, referring to two relevant issues of present-day: the detection of tumor markers and viruses

Text mining e social media: Anatomia di una crisi di governo

In August 2019, when Matteo Salvini asked to return to the ballot box, the Italian government entered into crisis. This generated a large debate that also took place on social media – particularly on Twitter, which has now become increasingly important as a place for political debate. This study presents the analysis of the Twitter discourse related to government crisis, in the period following the resignation of the Prime Minister. Text mining and social network analysis techniques have been integrated to study the positioning of political leaders and the topics of major interest. In particular, we used the Emotional Text Mining (ETM) and Semantic Brand Score (SBS) techniques. The SBS served as an indicator of the most relevant topics in the discourse. It was used to determine the importance of the themes emerging from the EMT. This importance was measured along the three dimensions of prevalence, diversity, and connectivity – considering textual association patterns and cooccurrence networks. The integration of the two procedures allowed to describe the public perception of the crisis and to identify the symbolic-cultural matrix and the sentiment related to each discourse topic

EMI and Beyond

This collection presents the state of the art on English-medium instruction (EMI) / Integrating content and language (ICL) in Italian higher education, drawing attention to different critical aspects of the teaching/learning experience and highlighting the perspectives of various educational stakeholders regarding the effectiveness of tertiary study in a foreign language. The chapters draw on a range of methodologies, from multimodal participant observation, to action research, to video-stimulated recall (VSR), to questionnaires and interviews, in examining language policies and practices across various educational settings. Overall, the volume suggests that internationalisation succeeds best when the form of lessons (language) and the content of lessons (disciplinary concepts) are constructively aligned in curriculum planning and delivery. This integration process requires the strategic support of educators to guarantee the quality of learning in multilingual education.

EMI and Beyond

This collection presents the state of the art on English-medium instruction (EMI) / Integrating content and language (ICL) in Italian higher education, drawing attention to different critical aspects of the teaching/learning experience and highlighting the perspectives of various educational stakeholders regarding the effectiveness of tertiary study in a foreign language. The chapters draw on a range of methodologies, from multimodal participant observation, to action research, to video-stimulated recall (VSR), to questionnaires and interviews, in examining language policies and practices across various educational settings. Overall, the volume suggests that internationalisation succeeds best when the form of lessons (language) and the content of lessons (disciplinary concepts) are constructively aligned in curriculum planning and delivery. This integration process requires the strategic support of educators to guarantee the quality of learning in multilingual education.

Early Circulating Tumor DNA Dynamics and Efficacy of Lorlatinib in Patients With Treatment-Naive, Advanced, ALK-Positive NSCLC

Introduction: Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) has been used as a biomarker for prognostication and response to treatment. Here, we evaluate ctDNA as a potential biomarker for response to lorlatinib, a third-generation ALK tyrosine kinase inhibitor in patients with treatment-naive, advanced, ALK-positive NSCLC in the ongoing phase 3 CROWN study (NCT03052608). Methods: Molecular responses were calculated using mean variant allele frequency (VAF), longitudinal mean change in VAF (dVAF), and ratio to baseline. Efficacy assessments (progression-free survival [PFS] and objective response rate) were paired with individual patient ctDNA and analyzed for association. Results: Compared with baseline, mean VAF at week 4 was decreased in both treatment arms. Considering all detected somatic variants, a reduction in dVAF (≤0) was associated with a longer PFS in the lorlatinib arm. The hazard ratio (HR) for a dVAF less than or equal to 0 versus more than 0 was 0.50 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.23–1.12) in the lorlatinib arm. A similar association was not observed for crizotinib (HR = 1.00, 95% CI: 0.49–2.03). Comparing molecular responders with nonresponders, patients treated with lorlatinib who had a molecular response had longer PFS (HR = 0.37, 95% CI: 0.16–0.85); patients treated with crizotinib who had a molecular response had similar PFS as those without a molecular response (HR = 1.48, 95% CI: 0.67–3.30). Conclusions: In patients with treatment-naive, advanced, ALK-positive NSCLC, early ctDNA dynamics predicted better outcome with lorlatinib but not with crizotinib. These results suggest that ctDNA may be used to monitor and potentially predict efficacy of lorlatinib treatment.</p

Early Circulating Tumor DNA Dynamics and Efficacy of Lorlatinib in Patients With Treatment-Naive, Advanced, ALK-Positive NSCLC

Introduction: Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) has been used as a biomarker for prognostication and response to treatment. Here, we evaluate ctDNA as a potential biomarker for response to lorlatinib, a third-generation ALK tyrosine kinase inhibitor in patients with treatment-naive, advanced, ALK-positive NSCLC in the ongoing phase 3 CROWN study (NCT03052608). Methods: Molecular responses were calculated using mean variant allele frequency (VAF), longitudinal mean change in VAF (dVAF), and ratio to baseline. Efficacy assessments (progression-free survival [PFS] and objective response rate) were paired with individual patient ctDNA and analyzed for association. Results: Compared with baseline, mean VAF at week 4 was decreased in both treatment arms. Considering all detected somatic variants, a reduction in dVAF (≤0) was associated with a longer PFS in the lorlatinib arm. The hazard ratio (HR) for a dVAF less than or equal to 0 versus more than 0 was 0.50 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.23–1.12) in the lorlatinib arm. A similar association was not observed for crizotinib (HR = 1.00, 95% CI: 0.49–2.03). Comparing molecular responders with nonresponders, patients treated with lorlatinib who had a molecular response had longer PFS (HR = 0.37, 95% CI: 0.16–0.85); patients treated with crizotinib who had a molecular response had similar PFS as those without a molecular response (HR = 1.48, 95% CI: 0.67–3.30). Conclusions: In patients with treatment-naive, advanced, ALK-positive NSCLC, early ctDNA dynamics predicted better outcome with lorlatinib but not with crizotinib. These results suggest that ctDNA may be used to monitor and potentially predict efficacy of lorlatinib treatment.</p

Early Circulating Tumor DNA Dynamics and Efficacy of Lorlatinib in Patients With Treatment-Naive, Advanced, ALK-Positive NSCLC

Introduction: Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) has been used as a biomarker for prognostication and response to treatment. Here, we evaluate ctDNA as a potential biomarker for response to lorlatinib, a third-generation ALK tyrosine kinase inhibitor in patients with treatment-naive, advanced, ALK-positive NSCLC in the ongoing phase 3 CROWN study (NCT03052608). Methods: Molecular responses were calculated using mean variant allele frequency (VAF), longitudinal mean change in VAF (dVAF), and ratio to baseline. Efficacy assessments (progression-free survival [PFS] and objective response rate) were paired with individual patient ctDNA and analyzed for association. Results: Compared with baseline, mean VAF at week 4 was decreased in both treatment arms. Considering all detected somatic variants, a reduction in dVAF (≤0) was associated with a longer PFS in the lorlatinib arm. The hazard ratio (HR) for a dVAF less than or equal to 0 versus more than 0 was 0.50 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.23–1.12) in the lorlatinib arm. A similar association was not observed for crizotinib (HR = 1.00, 95% CI: 0.49–2.03). Comparing molecular responders with nonresponders, patients treated with lorlatinib who had a molecular response had longer PFS (HR = 0.37, 95% CI: 0.16–0.85); patients treated with crizotinib who had a molecular response had similar PFS as those without a molecular response (HR = 1.48, 95% CI: 0.67–3.30). Conclusions: In patients with treatment-naive, advanced, ALK-positive NSCLC, early ctDNA dynamics predicted better outcome with lorlatinib but not with crizotinib. These results suggest that ctDNA may be used to monitor and potentially predict efficacy of lorlatinib treatment.</p