The Relevance of Academic Libraries in the Twenty-First Century

The biggest challenge facing the library profession in the twenty-first century is staying relevant to its users. It is often stated that the Internet and Google have changed librarianship. This challenge, while significant, does not mean that libraries will go away. It is causing us to re-evaluate what we do, how we do it, and what role libraries have in the academy and in our culture at large. This column addresses some of the ways in which academic libraries can stay relevant throughout the twenty-first century

Venous Congestion in Acute Mechanical Intestinal Obstruction: A Computed Tomography Guided Study

Intestinal mechanical obstruction is often joined with a diffuse venous congestion.Computed Tomography (CT) is helpful in demonstrating this condition,important from a general-clinical,diagnostic and therapeutic point of view

Neuro-Symbolic techniques for Predictive Maintenance

Predictive maintenance plays a key role in the core business of the industry due to its potential in reducing unexpected machine downtime and related cost. To avoid such issues, it is crucial to devise artificial intelligence models that can effectively predict failures. Predictive maintenance current approaches have several limitations that can be overcome by exploiting hybrid approaches such as Neuro-Symbolic techniques. Neuro-symbolic models combine neural methods with symbolic ones leading to improvements in efficiency, robustness, and explainability. In this work, we propose to exploit hybrid approaches by investigating their advantage over classic predictive maintenance approaches

Small Bowel Mechanical Occlusion and Computed Tomography Severity Indicators: What to Look for

Computed Tomography (CT) allows detecting different aspects of small bowel pathology in course of mechanical obstruction, principally correlated to circulatory disturbances, giving useful indications for a surgical treatment

Siamese Network for Fake Item Detection

Currently, most multimedia users choose to purchase items through e-commerce. Nevertheless, one of the main concerns of online shopping is the possibility of obtaining counterfeit products. Therefore, it is crucial to monitor the authenticity of the product, thus adopting an automatic mechanism to validate the similarity between the purchased item and the delivered one. To overcome this issue, we propose a Siamese Network model for detecting forged items. Preliminary experimentation on a publicly available dataset proves the effectiveness of our solution

Post-operative complications after abdominal surgery in patients treated with oral anticoagulant therapy

Introduction: The management of oral anticoagulant therapy preceding abdominal surgery is a clinical problem that will be more and more frequent in the coming years. Objectives: To investigate the correlation between comorbidities (at the time of surgical treatment) and abdominal surgery post-operative complications in patients treated with OAT, in order to identify risk stratification, correct timing of surgical treatment and postoperative support requirement. Materials and Methods: In this Prospective Observational Study all patients undergoing abdominal programmed surgery between September 1st 2009 and May 31th 2011 were enrolled. Surgical outcomes and complications were recorded (transfusion requirements, anastomotic leaks, abdominal wall collections, abdominal collections, re-interventions, infections, anemia, hospital re-admission, death). Results: A total of 834 patients were therefore considered,35 inOAT (Group A) and 780 not in OAT (Group B). Seven patients in Group A and 153 patients in Group B required transfusion (20,0% vs 19,6%, p= ns), with a mean of 2.71 RBC units required in Group A and2.75 inGroup B. As for fresh frozen plasma, the mean requirement was 0.57 units in Group A as compared to 0.24 units in Group B (p= ns). Conclusions: Although bleeding in the peri-operative period was feared, hemorrhagic events were not more frequent in the OAT group as compared to the non-OAT one. On the contrary, the most serious complications, including death, were related to thrombotic episodes. A multidisciplinary evaluation is therefore fundamental for these patients, requiring the implementation of new "ad hoc" guidelines

Splenic Flexure Volvulus Presenting with Peritonitis: Case Report and Review of the Literature

Splenic flexure is the rarest site for colonic volvulus. We report a case of an 18 years old woman, admitted to our department for tender and sore abdomen, nausea and vomiting. A barium enema reported a splenic flexure volvulus. Explorative laparotomy revealed peritonitis originating from an extensive gangrene of splenic flexure of the colon, caused by 360° volvulus. The colon was encircled by omentum at its base. A resection with primary anastomosis was performed. Anatomic abnormalities and partial intestinal malrotation are the main pathogenetic cause