Historical vignette: The first brain surgery performed by the first woman neurosurgeon in Romania, Dr. Sofia Ionescu-Ogrezeanu

Introduction. Sofia Ionescu-Ogrezeanu (b. April 25, 1920, F?lticeni - d. March 21, 2008, Bucharest), also known as the Lady of Romanian Neurosurgery, became the first woman neurosurgeon in the world after performing a brain surgery during World War II, a fact recognized as a world premiere during the 13th World Congress of the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies (WFNS) in Morocco, in 2005. [1] Materials and methods. Sofia Ionescu is the first woman neurosurgeon. She was born on the fields of Bucovina, in F?lticeni, and became part of the "golden team" of the Romanian neurosurgery of the pioneering period. The decisive moment of her career took place in 1944, during the war when she was forced to perform an emergency operation on a child, a victim of the bombing. The article coagulates the reports regarding the description of the first brain surgery performed by the first woman neurosurgeon with the continuous activity integrated with the field of neurosurgery. Both specialized articles, biographical books, and television interviews were used as references. Results. The operation performed in the fifth year of faculty was the first step of a journey of 47 years of neurosurgical career, practised with high morality and devotion. The sacrifice of the pioneer of the first woman neurosurgeon was recognized in the press in the country and abroad, as well as by the recognition of different titles and distinctions

UPB @ DANKMEMES: Italian Memes Analysis - Employing Visual Models and Graph Convolutional Networks for Meme Identification and Hate Speech Detection

Certain events or political situations determine users from the online environment to express themselves by using different modalities. One of them is represented by Internet memes, which combine text with a representative image to entail a wide range of emotions, from humor to sarcasm and even hate. In this paper, we describe our approach for the DANKMEMES competition from EVALITA 2020 consisting of a multimodal multi-task learning architecture based on two main components. The first one is a Graph Convolutional Network combined with an Italian BERT for text encoding, while the second is varied between different image-based architectures (i.e., ResNet50, ResNet152, and VGG-16) for image representation. Our solution achieves good performance on the first two tasks of the current competition, ranking 3rd for both Task 1 (.8437 macro-F1 score) and Task 2 (.8169 macro-F1 score), while exceeding by high margins the official baselines

Energy efficiency regulation for industrial products and manufacturing

The paper deals with the energy efficiency of industrial products or manufacturing as compared to the framework legislative measures implemented by EU through the Eco-design and Energy Labeling Directives. The Eco-design implementing measures such as taking into account all phases of the life cycle (manufacturing, transport, use, disposal), as well as the essential environmental aspects (consumption, materials, emissions, waste, etc.) for each phase, are considered. The implementing measures should have no significant negative impact on the functionality, health and safety, affordability and industry's competitiveness, as well as they should not impose proprietary technology on manufacturers and not be an excessive administrative burden for them. In this paper a method for implementing Legislative measures concerning the Eco-design and Energy labeling of industrial product is proposed. It grounds on the analysis of particular interest versus general interest relation, for each product case. Method application consists in products classifying relative to the two types of interest, followed by a voluntary agreement between manufacturers operating on market and EU. Finally, the paper presents the limits and possibilities for Eco-design of industrial products and manufacturing industry

Diabetic patients and postoperative complications in colorectal surgery

Diabetes mellitus is one of the most common comorbidities of patients undergoing surgery. Colorectal surgery is frequently associated with postoperative complications, and diabetic patients represent a population that presents a high risk of developing such complications. Understanding the interrelationships between neoplastic disease and diabetes, as well as the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying postoperative complications, are essential for effective therapeutic management. Genetic predispositions, alterations in the gut microbiota, inflammatory response, ischemic, thrombotic and infectious processes contribute significantly to the development of severe surgical complications, such as anastomotic fistulas. Postoperative ileus, characterized by gastrointestinal dysmotility, is common in diabetic patients due to neuropathic dysfunction and altered intestinal metabolism. In addition, diabetic patients are at increased risk of intestinal ischemia, requiring specific perioperative care. The strategies to avoid these complications assume an adequate surgical technique, a personalized anesthesia management, and last but not least, the best possible glycemic control. This article highlights the importance of a better understanding of the interaction between diabetes and postoperative complications, in order to obtain good results with an important impact on the patient\u27s health and well-being. This article highlights the importance of a better understanding of the interplay between diabetes and postoperative complications informs targeted interventions aimed at reducing morbidity and improving patient well-being

The Changing Landscape for Stroke\ua0Prevention in AF: Findings From the GLORIA-AF Registry Phase 2

Background GLORIA-AF (Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients with Atrial Fibrillation) is a prospective, global registry program describing antithrombotic treatment patterns in patients with newly diagnosed nonvalvular atrial fibrillation at risk of stroke. Phase 2 began when dabigatran, the first non\u2013vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulant (NOAC), became available. Objectives This study sought to describe phase 2 baseline data and compare these with the pre-NOAC era collected during phase 1. Methods During phase 2, 15,641 consenting patients were enrolled (November 2011 to December 2014); 15,092 were eligible. This pre-specified cross-sectional analysis describes eligible patients\u2019 baseline characteristics. Atrial fibrillation disease characteristics, medical outcomes, and concomitant diseases and medications were collected. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results Of the total patients, 45.5% were female; median age was 71 (interquartile range: 64, 78) years. Patients were from Europe (47.1%), North America (22.5%), Asia (20.3%), Latin America (6.0%), and the Middle East/Africa (4.0%). Most had high stroke risk (CHA2DS2-VASc [Congestive heart failure, Hypertension, Age  6575 years, Diabetes mellitus, previous Stroke, Vascular disease, Age 65 to 74 years, Sex category] score  652; 86.1%); 13.9% had moderate risk (CHA2DS2-VASc = 1). Overall, 79.9% received oral anticoagulants, of whom 47.6% received NOAC and 32.3% vitamin K antagonists (VKA); 12.1% received antiplatelet agents; 7.8% received no antithrombotic treatment. For comparison, the proportion of phase 1 patients (of N = 1,063 all eligible) prescribed VKA was 32.8%, acetylsalicylic acid 41.7%, and no therapy 20.2%. In Europe in phase 2, treatment with NOAC was more common than VKA (52.3% and 37.8%, respectively); 6.0% of patients received antiplatelet treatment; and 3.8% received no antithrombotic treatment. In North America, 52.1%, 26.2%, and 14.0% of patients received NOAC, VKA, and antiplatelet drugs, respectively; 7.5% received no antithrombotic treatment. NOAC use was less common in Asia (27.7%), where 27.5% of patients received VKA, 25.0% antiplatelet drugs, and 19.8% no antithrombotic treatment. Conclusions The baseline data from GLORIA-AF phase 2 demonstrate that in newly diagnosed nonvalvular atrial fibrillation patients, NOAC have been highly adopted into practice, becoming more frequently prescribed than VKA in Europe and North America. Worldwide, however, a large proportion of patients remain undertreated, particularly in Asia and North America. (Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation [GLORIA-AF]; NCT01468701

EVALITA Evaluation of NLP and Speech Tools for Italian - December 17th, 2020

Welcome to EVALITA 2020! EVALITA is the evaluation campaign of Natural Language Processing and Speech Tools for Italian. EVALITA is an initiative of the Italian Association for Computational Linguistics (AILC, http://www.ai-lc.it) and it is endorsed by the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AIxIA, http://www.aixia.it) and the Italian Association for Speech Sciences (AISV, http://www.aisv.it)

Measurement of the J/ψ pair production cross-section in pp collisions at s=13 \sqrt{s}=13 TeV

The production cross-section of J/ψ pairs is measured using a data sample of pp collisions collected by the LHCb experiment at a centre-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 279 ±11 pb$^{−1}$. The measurement is performed for J/ψ mesons with a transverse momentum of less than 10 GeV/c in the rapidity range 2.0 < y < 4.5. The production cross-section is measured to be 15.2 ± 1.0 ± 0.9 nb. The first uncertainty is statistical, and the second is systematic. The differential cross-sections as functions of several kinematic variables of the J/ψ pair are measured and compared to theoretical predictions.The production cross-section of $J/\psi$ pairs is measured using a data sample of $pp$ collisions collected by the LHCb experiment at a centre-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s} = 13 \,{\mathrm{TeV}}$, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $279 \pm 11 \,{\mathrm{pb^{-1}}}$. The measurement is performed for $J/\psi$ mesons with a transverse momentum of less than $10 \,{\mathrm{GeV}}/c$ in the rapidity range $2.0<y<4.5$. The production cross-section is measured to be $15.2 \pm 1.0 \pm 0.9 \,{\mathrm{nb}}$. The first uncertainty is statistical, and the second is systematic. The differential cross-sections as functions of several kinematic variables of the $J/\psi$ pair are measured and compared to theoretical predictions

Measurement of the B0s→μ+μ− Branching Fraction and Effective Lifetime and Search for B0→μ+μ− Decays

A search for the rare decays Bs0→μ+μ- and B0→μ+μ- is performed at the LHCb experiment using data collected in pp collisions corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of 4.4  fb-1. An excess of Bs0→μ+μ- decays is observed with a significance of 7.8 standard deviations, representing the first observation of this decay in a single experiment. The branching fraction is measured to be B(Bs0→μ+μ-)=(3.0±0.6-0.2+0.3)×10-9, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second systematic. The first measurement of the Bs0→μ+μ- effective lifetime, τ(Bs0→μ+μ-)=2.04±0.44±0.05  ps, is reported. No significant excess of B0→μ+μ- decays is found, and a 95% confidence level upper limit, B(B0→μ+μ-)<3.4×10-10, is determined. All results are in agreement with the standard model expectations.A search for the rare decays $B^0_s\to\mu^+\mu^-$ and $B^0\to\mu^+\mu^-$ is performed at the LHCb experiment using data collected in $pp$ collisions corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of 4.4 fb$^{-1}$. An excess of $B^0_s\to\mu^+\mu^-$ decays is observed with a significance of 7.8 standard deviations, representing the first observation of this decay in a single experiment. The branching fraction is measured to be ${\cal B}(B^0_s\to\mu^+\mu^-)=\left(3.0\pm 0.6^{+0.3}_{-0.2}\right)\times 10^{-9}$, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second systematic. The first measurement of the $B^0_s\to\mu^+\mu^-$ effective lifetime, $\tau(B^0_s\to\mu^+\mu^-)=2.04\pm 0.44\pm 0.05$ ps, is reported. No significant excess of $B^0\to\mu^+\mu^-$ decays is found and a 95 % confidence level upper limit, ${\cal B}(B^0\to\mu^+\mu^-)<3.4\times 10^{-10}$, is determined. All results are in agreement with the Standard Model expectations