El Valle de Quillagua (Siglos XVI- XX)

This article proposes approaches to the history of Quillagua Valley – and its population – between the XVI and the XX centuries. This will be done based on three core questions: what happened in Quillagua Valley since the Hispanic Conquest? What happened to the lands where indigenous people lived? What happened to the indigenous population? The investigation strategies used are varied. On the one hand, there is a collection of archaeological, ethnohistorical, and historical information. On the other hand, we used oral history to account for the memories of the inhabitants. These are ways of approaching that have allowed for understanding historical transitoriness, which has been marked not only by change and transformation processes but by continuity, as well.Este artículo propone acercamientos a la historia del valle de Quillagua y de sus habitantes, entre los siglos XVI y XX, a partir de tres preguntas ejes: ¿Qué pasó en el valle de Quillagua a partir de la conquista hispana? ¿Qué ocurrió con las tierras de los indígenas que allí habitaban? ¿Qué pasó con la población nativa? Las estrategias de investigación son variadas: por una parte, recopilación de información arqueológica, etnohistórica e histórica; y por otra parte, utilización de historia oral para dar cuenta de las memorias de sus habitantes. Formas de aproximación que han permitido comprender temporalidades históricas marcadas por procesos de cambios y transformaciones, pero también continuidades

Scale Invariant Interest Points with Shearlets

Shearlets are a relatively new directional multi-scale framework for signal analysis, which have been shown effective to enhance signal discontinuities such as edges and corners at multiple scales. In this work we address the problem of detecting and describing blob-like features in the shearlets framework. We derive a measure which is very effective for blob detection and closely related to the Laplacian of Gaussian. We demonstrate the measure satisfies the perfect scale invariance property in the continuous case. In the discrete setting, we derive algorithms for blob detection and keypoint description. Finally, we provide qualitative justifications of our findings as well as a quantitative evaluation on benchmark data. We also report an experimental evidence that our method is very suitable to deal with compressed and noisy images, thanks to the sparsity property of shearlets

Aripiprazole augmentation in treating comorbid bipolar disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is one of the most difficult additional diagnoses to manage in patients with bipolar disorder (BD) since the gold standard treatment for one disease (antidepressants for OCD) can worsen the other. This case report describes the efficacy of aripiprazole augmentation as maintenance therapy in a young patient with comorbid BD-OCD. Our patient presented complete remission of affective and obsessive-compulsive symptoms with remarkable improvement in social and occupational functioning for 24 months. Adverse drug reactions were not severe enough to result in drug discontinuation. In consideration of the important nosological, clinical and therapeutic implications, future research efforts may lead to more grounded guidelines, which are greatly needed in patients with comorbid BD-OCD

Four Italian experiences on vaccination policies: Results and lessons

Introduction. In 2018 the Council of Europe adopted a Recommendation on strengthened cooperation against vaccine preventable diseases. Among EU Member States, Italy has a long-lasting tradition of immunization policies implemented in the context of the National Health Service over the last forty years. Methods. We identify, report and critically appraise four immunization strategies implemented in Italy in recent years and quantitatively assess their impact on coverage rates and other selected indicators. Results. First: the regional law that suspended mandatory vaccination in the Veneto Region in 2007 to stimulate a proactive approach to vaccine uptake was not successful. Second: a strengthened political commitment started in 2014 brought to the release of an innovative and updated National Immunization Prevention Plan and to encouraging increase in vaccine confidence and vaccination uptake. Third: the success of social media influencers is exemplified by the case of Roberto Burioni, professor of microbiology, who in 2015 started a personal social media campaign to contrast anti-vaccinists. Fourth: The new 2017 Italian law extending mandatory vaccinations has successfully impacted on vaccine coverage which increased by more than 1% and 4% for polio and MMR vaccines, respectively, in the first six months since its entering into force, and has continued to raise in 2018. Discussion. Our data and real-life case studies offer to the broader European public health community a solid basis for discussion and ground to evaluate similar polices implemented in different European settings, with the common goal to share best practices and promote the culture of immunization

Meningococcal serogroup B vaccine in Italy: state-of-art, organizational aspects and perspectives

Neisseria meningitidis causes severe invasive meningococcal diseases (IMDs) in humans including meningitis and septicemia, responsible for serious clinical conditions and leading to life-long disabilities and death. Serogroup B dominates IMDs burden in Italy, accounting for over 60% of total cases. On January 2013 the European Medicine Agency (EMA) licensed the first serogroup B meningococcal (Men B) vaccine in Europe. A number of European countries and Regions have introduced the new Men B vaccine in their immunization schedule, including Italy. In this paper we present the state of art, related critical issues and future perspectives of Men B vaccine introduction in Italy, in the context of the most recent available epidemiological data. In particular, we systematically assess the ongoing processes in the 8 Italian regions and one autonomous province that have already introduced Men B vaccine. With the new National Vaccine Prevention Plan including active Men B vaccine offer about to be adopted, it is of fundamental importance to gather further evidence on Men B vaccine clinical effectiveness, duration of protection and cost-effectiveness. Italian regions are called to organize and manage Men B immunization programs. Careful consideration will need to be devoted on timing, doses, and co-administration with other vaccines but also to economic assessments and strengthened communication to the general public. Our data will help to plan, implement and evaluate Men B immunization programmes in other Italian and international settings

Clinical management of comorbid bipolar disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder: A case series

Background: Apparent comorbidity between bipolar disorder (BD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a common condition in psychiatry and it has important nosological and therapeutic implications. Although antidepressants are the first line treatment for OCD, they can induce mood instability in BD. An optimal treatment approach remains to be defined. Methods: Longitudinal clinical observation of three severe OCD patients who developed a manic episode during treatment with different classes of antidepressants. Results: In our cases, three features support the hypothesis of an underlying bipolarity unmasked by the antidepressant used to treat OCD: positive family history for affective disorders, manic switch induced by antidepressant and improvement of affective and obsessive-compulsive symptoms with mood stabilizers and atypical antipsychotics. Conclusions: Osler\u2019s view that medicine should be treatment of diseases, not of symptoms, is consistent with the approach of mood stabilization as a first objective in BD-OCD patients, as opposed to immediate treatment with antidepressants. Only persistent OCD patients should be prescribed antidepressants in as low a dose as feasibl

Local Spatio-Temporal Representation Using the 3D Shearlet Transform (STSIP)

In this work we address the problem of analyzing video sequences and of representing meaningful space-time points of interest by using the 3D shearlet transform. We introduce a local representation based on shearlet coe cients of the video, regarded as 2D+T signal. This representation turns out to be informative to understand the local spatio-temporal characteristics, which can be easily detected by an unsupervised clustering algorithm

Space-Time Signal Analysis and the 3D Shearlet Transform

In this work, we address the problem of analyzing video sequences by representing meaningful local space\ue2\u80\u93time neighborhoods. We propose a mathematical model to describe relevant points as local singularities of a 3D signal, and we show that these local patterns can be nicely highlighted by the 3D shearlet transform, which is at the root of our work. Based on this mathematical framework, we derive an algorithm to represent space\ue2\u80\u93time points which is very effective in analyzing video sequences. In particular, we show how points of the same nature have a very similar representation, allowing us to compute different space\ue2\u80\u93time primitives for a video sequence in an unsupervised way