PoliTo at MULTI-Fake-DetectiVE: Improving FND-CLIP for Multimodal Italian Fake News Detection

The MULTI-Fake-DetectiVE challenge addresses the automatic detection of Italian fake news in a multimodal setting, where both textual and visual components contribute as potential sources of fake content. This paper describes the PoliTO approach to the tasks of fake news detection and analysis of the modality contributions. Our solution turns out to be the best performer on both tasks. It leverages the established FND-CLIP multimodal architecture and proposes ad hoc extensions including sentiment-based text encoding, image transformation in the frequency domain, and data augmentation via back-translation. Thanks to its effectiveness in combining visual and textual content, our solution contributes to fighting the spread of disinformation in the Italian news flow

Comparative study of platelet aggregation by turbidimetric and impedance methods in patients under acetylsalicylic acid antiplatelet therapy

INTRODUÇÃO: A hiperagregação (agregação excessiva) das plaquetas pode causar a formação de um trombo e a posterior oclusão dos vasos sanguíneos levando à isquemia. Esse fenômeno é responsável por doenças isquêmicas cardiovasculares, como angina pectoris e aterosclerose, bem como outras formas de isquemia, como o acidente vascular cerebral. Visando diminuir a função das plaquetas para reduzir a formação de trombos, o ácido acetilsalicílico vem sendo utilizado para tratamento antitrombótico, com diversos estudos mostrando sua eficácia. Dessa forma faz-se mister o uso de uma ferramenta laboratorial para o monitoramento da efetividade do tratamento, o que é feito por meio do teste de agregação plaquetária. O objetivo desse estudo foi comparar duas metodologias para esse exame (impedância elétrica e turbidimetria) em relação a trinta pacientes adultos de ambos os sexos em uso do fármaco. CONCLUSÃO: Os resultados mostraram uma boa correlação entre os métodos, possibilitando o uso concomitante de ambas as técnicas em laboratórios clínicos de rotina.INTRODUCTION: Hyperaggregation of platelets can cause the formation of thrombi and subsequent occlusion of blood vessels leading to ischemia. This phenomenon can be responsible for ischemic cardiovascular diseases such as angina pectoris and atherosclerosis as well as other forms of ischemia such as stroke. To decrease platelet function and reduce the formation of thrombi, acetylsalicylic acid has been used for antithrombotic treatment, with several studies showing its effectiveness. Therefore it is necessary to use a laboratory tool to monitor the effectiveness of treatment, which is achieved through laboratory testing of platelet aggregation. The aim of this study was to compare two different methods (impedance and turbidimetry) to test platelet aggregation in 30 adult patients of both genders taking acetylsalicylic acid. CONCLUSION: The results show that there is a good correlation between these two methods and so both these techniques can be used in the clinical routine

On the Feasibility of Overshadow Enlargement Attack on IEEE 802.15.4a Distance Bounding

Distance-bounding protocols are able to measure a secure upper bound to the distance between two devices. They are designed to resist to reduction attacks, whose objective is reducing the measured distance. In this paper we focus on the opposite problem, the enlargement attack, which is aimed at enlarging the measured distance. We analyze the feasibility of enlargement attacks through overshadow strategies on 802.15.4a UWB distance-bounding protocols. We show that the overshadow strategies, generally considered feasible by the existing literature, are actually difficult to carry out. Depending on the delay introduced by the adversary, there are cases in which they have no effect or their effect is not controllable

WATER CONSUMPTION BALANCE AT DWELLING AND DISTRICT SCALE: AN INNOVATIVE PROSPECTIVE FOR CARTEGENA DE INDIAS – EL POZÓN

The consequences of climate change are affecting informal neighbourhoods, exacerbating, even more, the instability and insecurity of these settlements. For instance, the settlement of El Pozón, located in the Colombian city of Cartagena de Indias, in addition to its social and economic problems, is characterized by a contradictory environmental situation: on the one hand, it suffers the problem of floods due to its proximity to the La Virgen swamp and to seasonal heavy rainfall. On the other hand, the supply of drinking and domestic water is problematic - especially in the dry season- and reaches unsustainable costs for a population who lives in marginal conditions (Guarín Cobos, 2003). The project of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana of Bogotá and the Politecnico di Torino, presented at the Solar Decathlon Latin America & Caribbean 2019 was aimed at improving the quality of life of the El Pozón inhabitants, offering a new model of an economic and sustainable house, self-sufficient from an energy point of view and achievable largely in self-construction with local materials and dry technologies. The prototype, that was built and tested for the duration of the contest, proposed an integrated water use strategy at the building scale, which combines different low-tech systems. This article presents a possible methodology to realize a low-tech water technology: a blue-green roof module to incorporate into the design of the Solar Decathlon prototype. The main purpose is to stimulate the inhabitants to address problems such as lack of sanitation, water quality and environmental improvement, through a scalable, sustainable and cost-effective solution, using mainly waste materials

Impact of standardization in tissue processing: the performance of different fixatives

Most tissues in clinical practice are formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded for histological as well as molecular analyses. The reproducibility and uniformity of molecular analyses is strictly dependent on the quality of the biomolecules, which is highly influenced by pre-analytical processes. In this study, the effect of different fixatives was compared, including formalin, Bouin's solution, RCL2® and TAG-1™ fixatives, by stringent application of ISO standards in mouse liver tissue processing, including formalin-free transport of tissues and tissue grossing in a refrigerated environment. The effect of fixatives was studied in terms of nucleic acid quality at the time of tissue processing and after one year of tissue storage at room temperature in the dark. Furthermore, a microcomputed tomography (CT) scan analysis was applied to investigate the paraffin embedding. The results show that the application of ISO standards in tissue processing allows analysis of 400 bases amplicons from RNA and 1000 bases from DNA, even in extracts from formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded tissues. However, after one year storage at room temperature in the dark, a degradation of the nucleic acids was observed. Nevertheless, extracts can still be analyzed, but for metachronous tests it is highly recommended to repeat the quantitation of housekeeping genes in order to standardize the extent of nucleic acid degradation

Development of a Simple and Cost-Effective Bead-Milling Method for DNA Extraction from Fish Muscles

In the fish food sector, due to a growing globalization of the market, where intentional and unintentional frauds reach alarming levels, the molecular analysis is increasingly used by both official agencies, to enforce the law on traceability, and private companies, to verify the quality of goods. DNA extraction represents a necessary and critical step for all types of DNA analysis. Among the drawbacks associated with this procedure, there are handling of toxic materials, low DNA yield, and low throughput, due to time-consuming manual procedures. In this work, to overcome some of these problems, we developed an alternative method based on a bead-milling procedure without proteinase K digestion. The new method was then compared with both a salting-out protocol, developed in a previous work, and a commercial kit. Yield, spectrophotometric purity, electrophoretic degradation pattern, and amplificability of the extracted DNA were assessed. In particular, DNA amplificability was evaluated by comparing the band intensity on the gel, after amplification of the 16S rRNA and cytochrome oxidase I genes with a conventional PCR, and the take-off cycles, after amplification of the 16S rRNA gene with a real-time PCR. The results showed that the bead-based method allowed to obtain acceptable amounts of DNA, with good purity and good characteristics of amplificability. Although the salting-out method remains the most effective protocol in terms of pure performances, the bead-milling procedure can be considered a valid alternative, in the light of its lower demand in terms of labor and costs

Lotta Continua, the Carnation Revolution and the uses of the past in documentary cinema

UIDB/04209/2020 UIDP/04209/2020Based on the film Rua do Prior 41, by Lorenzo d’Amico de Carvalho, the two authors discuss the possibilities of repre-senting the Carnation Revolution of April 1974 and the uses of memory. Crossing their gazes on historiographical interests, the use of image, creation and dissemination through theatre and cinema, Strippoli and d’Amico de Carvalho talk about the relationship between archival sources, literature, and mise en scène, for addressing the history of the largest Italian extra-par-liamentary left-wing group of the seventies, Lotta Continua, and its connection to the April Revolution and the “Sixty-ei-ght”. The text introduces the film and offers an interpretation about the relationship between the history of the revolution, the memory of the protagonists and the visuality of the past.publishersversionpublishe

Constraints on modified gravity from the BOSS galaxy survey

We develop a pipeline to set new constraints on scale-independent modified gravity, from the galaxy power spectrum in redshift space of BOSS DR12. The latter is modelled using the effective field theory of large-scale structure up to 1-loop order in perturbation theory. We test our pipeline on synthetic and simulated data, to assess systematic biases on the inferred cosmological parameters due to marginalization and theoretical errors, and we apply it to the normal branch of the DGP model with a $\Lambda$CDM background. We observe biased posteriors due to the strong degeneracy between the nDGP parameter $\Omega_{\rm rc}$ and the primordial amplitude of fluctuations $A_s$. Fixing the latter to the Planck central value, we obtain $\Omega_{\rm rc}\lesssim 0.2$ at 95$\%$ C.L. We also discuss a procedure to alleviate the prior dependence of this bound.Comment: 27 pages, 9 figure

The uncertainty of seafood labeling in China: A case study on Cod, Salmon and Tuna

Exotic marine fish products are increasingly appreciated in China. In this study, 100 samples of Cod, Salmon and Tuna products were collected from supermarkets in Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou. First the information reported on the label were assessed in the light of the Chinese legislation, paying particular attention to the fish names and the geographical origin. Then, a comparative analysis of the official trade denominations adopted by five European countries (Italy, France, Germany, Spain and United Kingdom) for Cod, Salmon and Tuna was performed. Finally, the Chinese names of the species considered in the EU list were verified consulting the available international lists. Overall, 95% of the samples employed just generic names. In particular, 98% of Salmon and 100% of Tuna products were generically labeled while the labeling of Cod products was more diversified, even though 80% reported misleading or fake denominations. The results of this work highlighted the lack of a mandatory legislation on seafood traceability and of an official naming system. In particular, this study propose the introduction of a detailed Chinese naming system based on the Chinese Latin Dictionary for Seafood Names, following the EU approach. In fact, inaccurate labeling can have both economic and health implications for consumers as well as it may distort the true abundance of fish stocks. These drawbacks can be particularly serious considering the pivotal role of China in the global fishery industry

DNA and Mini-DNA barcoding for the identification of Porgies species (family Sparidae) of commercial interest on the international market

The morphological similarity among Sparidae species, which are characterized by a different market price, represents a serious problem for their trade and for stock management, since it encourages frauds for substitution. The most accredited morphological method for their identification is based on the dental-plate, but this approach is not simple and cannot be used for prepared products. When molecular methods are used the DNA degradation induced by cooking is the main drawback. In this work, we collected 314 reference tissues belonging to 75 Sparidae species and we produced a dataset of full (FDB) and mini-barcode (MDB) reference sequences starting from DNA extracted from fresh and ethanol-preserved tissues using universal primes. Moreover, some fresh samples were cooked. The FDB was successfully amplified in 91% (fresh), 50% (cooked) and 81% (ethanol-preserved) samples, while the amplification rates of the MDB were considerably higher in case of cooked (100%) and ethanol-preserved (94%) samples. The same primers were used for the amplification of the DNA obtained from 58 market samples (MS). All the DNA barcodes were compared with BOLD and GenBank using IDs and BLAST analysis. FDB was able to provide unambiguous species-level identifications for 53 (78%) and 44 (64.7%) reference samples analyzed on BOLD and GenBank, respectively. The Mini-DNA barcode (MDB) showed a lower discriminating power with 32 (45.7%) and 29 (41.4%) sequences unambiguously matched to a species on BOLD and GenBank. However, the MDB allowed to identify all the reference sequences as belonging to the Sparidae family. FDB and MDB showed a similar performance in analyzing the MS, allowing to highlight 21 (38%) mislabeled MS. Our study, while confirming the FDB as a reliable tool for fish authentication, proposes the MDB as a promising tool to recover molecular information in case of cooked products