A scalable system for microcalcification cluster automated detection in a distributed mammographic database

A computer-aided detection (CADe) system for microcalcification cluster identification in mammograms has been developed in the framework of the EU-founded MammoGrid project. The CADe software is mainly based on wavelet transforms and artificial neural networks. It is able to identify microcalcifications in different datasets of mammograms (i.e. acquired with different machines and settings, digitized with different pitch and bit depth or direct digital ones). The CADe can be remotely run from GRID-connected acquisition and annotation stations, supporting clinicians from geographically distant locations in the interpretation of mammographic data. We report and discuss the system performances on different datasets of mammograms and the status of the GRID-enabled CADe analysis.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures; Proceedings of the IEEE NNS and MIC Conference, October 23-29, 2005, Puerto Ric

From Alma-Ata to the Global Fund: the history of international health policy

'Verticalization' of health care delivery, in one form or another, is the common theme pervading the history of international health policy over the last sixty years. It is often accompanied by radical policies of privatization of health services, everywhere resulting in people being forced to pay for all services. The failure of the vertical approach, of which the global public-private partnership initiatives are a modernized version, has been well recognized and its reasons are clear: actions on the distal determinants of disease (income, education, housing, the environment and infrastructure, etc) are overlooked; distribution of services dedicated to specific diseases and interventions (such as AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, etc.) are artificially and temporarily reinforced, creating absurd and harmful forms of competition between services and making even more precarious and inefficient the work of already fragile basic health systems. This article describes the role played in this disturbing historical development by the prevailing economic ideology and its operational arm, the World Bank, with the view to reclaim international policy making processes and actors that really respond to people's health needs

Bayesian models of thermal and pluviometric time series in the Fucino plateau

This work was developed within the Project Metodologie e sistemi integrati per la qualificazione di produzioni orticole del Fucino (Methodologies and integrated systems for the classification of horticultural products in the Fucino plateau), sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research, Strategic Projects, Law 448/97. Agro-system managing, especially if necessary to achieve high quality in speciality crops, requires knowledge of main features and intrinsic variability of climate. Statistical models may properly summarize the structure existing behind the observed variability, furthermore they may support the agronomic manager by providing the probability that meteorological events happen in a time window of interest. More than 30 years of daily values collected in four sites located on the Fucino plateau, Abruzzo region, Italy, were studied by fitting Bayesian generalized linear models to air temperature maximum /minimum and rainfall time series. Bayesian predictive distributions of climate variables supporting decision-making processes were calculated at different timescales, 5-days for temperatures and 10-days for rainfall, both to reduce computational efforts and to simplify statistical model assumptions. Technicians and field operators, even with limited statistical training, may exploit the model output by inspecting graphs and climatic profiles of the cultivated areas during decision-making processes. Realizations taken from predictive distributions may also be used as input for agro-ecological models (e.g. models of crop growth, water balance). Fitted models may be exploited to monitor climatic changes and to revise climatic profiles of interest areas, periodically updating the probability distributions of target climatic variables. For the sake of brevity, the description of results is limited to just one of the four sites, and results for all other sites are available as supplementary information

RISK ASSESSMENT OF MALICIOUS ATTACKS AGAINST POWER SYSTEMS

The new scenarios of malicious attack prompt for their deeper consideration and mainly when critical systems are at stake. In this framework, infrastructural systems, including power systems, represent a possible target due to the huge impact they can have on society. Malicious attacks are different in their nature from other more traditional cause of threats to power system, since they embed a strategic interaction between the attacker and the defender (characteristics that cannot be found in natural events or systemic failures). This difference has not been systematically analyzed by the existent literature. In this respect, new approaches and tools are needed. This paper presents a mixed-strategy game-theory model able to capture the strategic interactions between malicious agents that may be willing to attack power systems and the system operators, with its related bodies, that are in charge of defending them. At the game equilibrium, the different strategies of the two players, in terms of attacking/protecting the critical elements of the systems, can be obtained. The information about the attack probability to various elements can be used to assess the risk associated with each of them, and the efficiency of defense resource allocation is evidenced in terms of the corresponding risk. Reference defense plans related to the online defense action and the defense action with a time delay can be obtained according to their respective various time constraints. Moreover, risk sensitivity to the defense/attack-resource variation is also analyzed. The model is applied to a standard IEEE RTS-96 test system for illustrative purpose and, on the basis of that system, some peculiar aspects of the malicious attacks are pointed ou

Motion of an impurity in a two-leg ladder

We study the motion of an impurity in a two-leg ladder interacting with two fermionic baths along each leg, a simple model bridging cold atom quantum simulators with an idealized description of the basic transport processes in a layered heterostructure. Using the linked-cluster expansion, we obtain exact analytical results for the single-particle Green's function and find that the long-time behavior is dominated by an intrinsic orthogonality catastrophe associated to the motion of the impurity in each one-dimensional chain. We explore both the case of two identical legs as well as the case where the legs are characterized by different interaction strengths: In the latter case, we observe a subleading correction which can be relevant for intermediate-time transport at an interface between different materials. In all the cases, we do not find significant differences between the intra- and interleg Green's functions in the long-time limit

Global health governance, healthy systems and development cooperation

La salute globale è un’area emergente di studi, ricerca e pratiche interdisciplinari che considera gli effetti della globalizzazione sulla salute con particolare attenzione alle questioni inerenti ai suoi determinanti sociali e alle iniziative di carattere transnazionale, e alla loro interazione con i sistemi nazionali e locali. Il tema della cooperazione internazionale allo sviluppo fa parte integrante dell’agenda della governance globale “della” e “per” la salute, soprattutto a seguito dell'emergere nell'ultimo decennio di nuovi attori non governativi sovra-nazionali che vengono a modificare sostanzialmente gli equilibri di potere e i processi decisionali globali riguardo alla salute. In tale contesto, nel 2009 il Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Direzione Generale per la Cooperazione allo Sviluppo, ha prodotto il documento Salute Globale: Principi Guida della Cooperazione Italiana inteso a “guidare i programmi sanitari della Cooperazione Italiana, a rafforzare la complementarità e la coerenza del sistema italiano di cooperazione, e a promuovere l’allineamento delle politiche di aiuto pubblico allo sviluppo alle politiche dei paesi partner, così come l’armonizzazione con quelle degli altri donatori, e in particolare dell’Unione Europea.” Declinando il tema sia secondo la questione “partenariati e sistemi per la cooperazione”, sia sul piano dell’interazione tra saperi e poteri globali e processi di sviluppo locali, questo Panel intende esplorare il ruolo delle università nell’approfondire e applicare nella pratica tali principi guida (lotta alla povertà e alle diseguaglianze, accesso universale ed equo ai servizi sanitari, rafforzamento dei sistemi sanitari nazionali, partecipazione delle comunità, partenariato internazionale nella ricerca scientifica e nella formazione, efficacia dell’aiuto). In questo contesto assume particolare rilevanza il rilancio dei principi contenuti nella Dichiarazione di Alma-Ata (1978). Tra quelli anche quello di garantire l’accesso ai farmaci essenziali a tutta la popolazione (cui oggi si aggiunge la necessità di far fronte al problema globale dei farmaci contraffatti). Le università italiane possono perseguire questo scopo attraverso attività di ricerca, con appropriati percorsi di formazione interdisciplinare e interculturale, e fornendo adeguato know-how e tecnologia appropriata, nonché sostenendo – interagendo con le istituzioni competenti e con la società civile - interventi mirati di informazione, prevenzione e controllo

A scalable Computer-Aided Detection system for microcalcification cluster identification in a pan-European distributed database of mammograms

A computer-aided detection (CADe) system for microcalcification cluster identification in mammograms has been developed in the framework of the EU-founded MammoGrid project. The CADe software is mainly based on wavelet transforms and artificial neural networks. It is able to identify microcalcifications in different kinds of mammograms (i.e. acquired with different machines and settings, digitized with different pitch and bit depth or direct digital ones). The CADe can be remotely run from GRID-connected acquisition and annotation stations, supporting clinicians from geographically distant locations in the interpretation of mammographic data. We report the FROC analyses of the CADe system performances on three different dataset of mammograms, i.e. images of the CALMA INFN-founded database collected in the Italian National screening program, the MIAS database and the so-far collected MammoGrid images. The sensitivity values of 88% at a rate of 2.15 false positive findings per image (FP/im), 88% with 2.18 FP/im and 87% with 5.7 FP/im have been obtained on the CALMA, MIAS and MammoGrid database respectively.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures; Proceedings of the ITBS 2005, 3rd International Conference on Imaging Technologies in Biomedical Sciences, 25-28 September 2005, Milos Island, Greec