The role of bot squads in the political propaganda on Twitter

Nowadays, Social Media are a privileged channel for news spreading, information exchange, and fact checking. Unexpectedly for many users, automated accounts, known as social bots, contribute more and more to this process of information diffusion. Using Twitter as a benchmark, we consider the traffic exchanged, over one month of observation, on the migration flux from Northern Africa to Italy. We measure the significant traffic of tweets only, by implementing an entropy-based null model that discounts the activity of users and the virality of tweets. Results show that social bots play a central role in the exchange of significant content. Indeed, not only the strongest hubs have a number of bots among their followers higher than expected, but furthermore a group of them, that can be assigned to the same political tendency, share a common set of bots as followers. The retweeting activity of such automated accounts amplifies the hubs’ messages

CrisMap: A Big Data Crisis Mapping System Based on Damage Detection and Geoparsing

Natural disasters, as well as human-made disasters, can have a deep impact on wide geographic areas, and emergency responders can benefit from the early estimation of emergency consequences. This work presents CrisMap, a Big Data crisis mapping system capable of quickly collecting and analyzing social media data. CrisMap extracts potential crisis- related actionable information from tweets by adopting a classification technique based on word embeddings and by exploiting a combination of readily-available semantic annotators to geoparse tweets. The enriched tweets are then visualized in customizable, Web-based dashboards, also leveraging ad-hoc quantitative visualizations like choropleth maps. The maps produced by our system help to estimate the impact of the emergency in its early phases, to identify areas that have been severely struck, and to acquire a greater situational awareness. We extensively benchmark the performance of our system on two Italian natural disasters by validating our maps against authoritative data. Finally, we perform a qualitative case-study on a recent devastating earthquake occurred in Central Italy

Groundwater of Rome

This paper describes the contents of the new Hydrogeological Map of the City of Rome (1:50,000 scale). The map extends to the entire municipality (1285 km2) and is based on both the most recent scientific studies on the groundwater field and new survey activities carried out in order to fill the data gaps in several areas of the examined territory. The map is the result of a combination of different urban groundwater expertise and Geographic Information System (GIS)-based mapping performed using the most recent available data and has been produced with the intention of furnishing the City of Rome with the most recent and updated information regarding groundwater

Predictive value of the CLL-IPI in CLL patients receiving chemo-immunotherapy as first-line treatment

An international collaboration has led to the development of a comprehensive tool [CLL-IPI international prognostic index for CLL] for the predicting of overall survival (OS) in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).1 CLL-IPI was based on data collected from 3500 CLL patients and was based on the following parameters: TP53 deletion and/or mutation, IGHV mutational status, \u3b22-microglobulin plasma levels, clinical stage, and age. CLL-IPI provides the means to stratify CLL patients in the daily clinical practice (Supplementary Table 1).1 Although validated for OS2-4 and time to first treatment (TTFT),5 the predictive value of CLL-IPI on progression-free survival (PFS) has until now only been demonstrated in a single study on patients treated with chlorambucil (CLB), as monotherapy, or in combination with obinutuzumab or rituximab, as a first-line approach (CLL11 study),6 and presented as a poster at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) in 2016

Evaluation of the performance of Dutch Lipid Clinic Network score in an Italian FH population: The LIPIGEN study

Background and aims: Familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) is an inherited disorder characterized by high levels of blood cholesterol from birth and premature coronary heart disease. Thus, the identification of FH patients is crucial to prevent or delay the onset of cardiovascular events, and the availability of a tool helping with the diagnosis in the setting of general medicine is essential to improve FH patient identification.Methods: This study evaluated the performance of the Dutch Lipid Clinic Network (DLCN) score in FH patients enrolled in the LIPIGEN study, an Italian integrated network aimed at improving the identification of patients with genetic dyslipidaemias, including FH.Results: The DLCN score was applied on a sample of 1377 adults (mean age 42.9 +/- 14.2 years) with genetic diagnosis of FH, resulting in 28.5% of the sample classified as probable FH and 37.9% as classified definite FH. Among these subjects, 43.4% had at least one missing data out of 8, and about 10.0% had 4 missing data or more. When analyzed based on the type of missing data, a higher percentage of subjects with at least 1 missing data in the clinical history or physical examination was classified as possible FH (DLCN score 3-5). We also found that using real or estimated pre-treatment LDL-C levels may significantly modify the DLCN score.Conclusions: Although the DLCN score is a useful tool for physicians in the diagnosis of FH, it may be limited by the complexity to retrieve all the essential information, suggesting a crucial role of the clinical judgement in the identification of FH subjects

Appendectomy during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy: a multicenter ambispective cohort study by the Italian Society of Endoscopic Surgery and new technologies (the CRAC study)

Major surgical societies advised using non-operative management of appendicitis and suggested against laparoscopy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The hypothesis is that a significant reduction in the number of emergent appendectomies was observed during the pandemic, restricted to complex cases. The study aimed to analyse emergent surgical appendectomies during pandemic on a national basis and compare it to the same period of the previous year. This is a multicentre, retrospective, observational study investigating the outcomes of patients undergoing emergent appendectomy in March-April 2019 vs March-April 2020. The primary outcome was the number of appendectomies performed, classified according to the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma (AAST) score. Secondary outcomes were the type of surgical technique employed (laparoscopic vs open) and the complication rates. One thousand five hundred forty one patients with acute appendicitis underwent surgery during the two study periods. 1337 (86.8%) patients met the inclusion criteria: 546 (40.8%) patients underwent surgery for acute appendicitis in 2020 and 791 (59.2%) in 2019. According to AAST, patients with complicated appendicitis operated in 2019 were 30.3% vs 39.9% in 2020 (p = 0.001). We observed an increase in the number of post-operative complications in 2020 (15.9%) compared to 2019 (9.6%) (p < 0.001). The following determinants increased the likelihood of complication occurrence: undergoing surgery during 2020 (+ 67%), the increase of a unit in the AAST score (+ 26%), surgery performed > 24 h after admission (+ 58%), open surgery (+ 112%) and conversion to open surgery (+ 166%). In Italian hospitals, in March and April 2020, the number of appendectomies has drastically dropped. During the first pandemic wave, patients undergoing surgery were more frequently affected by more severe appendicitis than the previous year's timeframe and experienced a higher number of complications. Trial registration number and date: Research Registry ID 5789, May 7th, 202

How do cardiologists select patients for dual antiplatelet therapy continuation beyond 1 year after a myocardial infarction? Insights from the EYESHOT Post-MI Study

Background: Current guidelines suggest to consider dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT) continuation for longer than 12 months in selected patients with myocardial infarction (MI). Hypothesis: We sought to assess the criteria used by cardiologists in daily practice to select patients with a history of MI eligible for DAPT continuation beyond 1 year. Methods: We analyzed data from the EYESHOT Post-MI, a prospective, observational, nationwide study aimed to evaluate the management of patients presenting to cardiologists 1 to 3 years from the last MI event. Results: Out of the 1633 post-MI patients enrolled in the study between March and December 2017, 557 (34.1%) were on DAPT at the time of enrolment, and 450 (27.6%) were prescribed DAPT after cardiologist assessment. At multivariate analyses, a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) with multiple stents and the presence of peripheral artery disease (PAD) resulted as independent predictors of DAPT continuation, while atrial fibrillation was the only independent predictor of DAPT interruption for patients both at the second and the third year from MI at enrolment and the time of discharge/end of the visit. Conclusions: Risk scores recommended by current guidelines for guiding decisions on DAPT duration are underused and misused in clinical practice. A PCI with multiple stents and a history of PAD resulted as the clinical variables more frequently associated with DAPT continuation beyond 1 year from the index MI