Oii-web: An interactive online programming contest training system

In this paper we report our experience, related to the online training for the Italian and International Olympiads in Informatics. We developed an interactive online system, based on CMS, the grading system used in several major programming contests including the International Olympiads in Informatics (IOI), and used it in three distinct context: training students for the Italian Olympiads in Informatics (OII), training teachers in order to be able to assist students for the OII, and training the Italian team for the IOI. The system, that is freely available, proved to be a game changer for the whole italian olympiads in informatics ecosystem: in one year, we almost doubled the participation to OII, from 13k to 21k secondary school students. The system is developed basing on the Contest Management System (CMS, http://cms- dev.github.io/), so it is highly available to extensions supporting, for instance, the pro- duction of feedback on problems solutions submitted by trainees. The system is also freely available, with the idea of allowing for support to alternative necessities and developmen

Weighted-distance sliding windows and cooccurrence graphs for supporting entity-relationship discovery in unstructured text

The problem of Entity relation discovery in structured data, a well covered topic in literature, consists in searching within unstructured sources (typically, text) in order to find connections among entities. These can be a whole dictionary, or a specific collection of named items. In many cases machine learning and/or text mining techniques are used for this goal. These approaches might be unfeasible in computationally challenging problems, such as processing massive data streams. A faster approach consists in collecting the cooccurrences of any two words (entities) in order to create a graph of relations - a cooccurrence graph. Indeed each cooccurrence highlights some grade of semantic correlation between the words because it is more common to have related words close each other than having them in the opposite sides of the text. Some authors have used sliding windows for such problem: they count all the occurrences within a sliding windows running over the whole text. In this paper we generalise such technique, coming up to a Weighted-Distance Sliding Window, where each occurrence of two named items within the window is accounted with a weight depending on the distance between items: a closer distance implies a stronger evidence of a relationship. We develop an experiment in order to support this intuition, by applying this technique to a data set consisting in the text of the Bible, split into verses

Modelli matematici applicati alle epidemie

Il mio elaborato di tesi è basato sull'analisi generale dei modelli matematici alla base delle epidemie e lo studio dei punti di equilibrio dei sistemi che descrivono tali modelli. Il primo capitolo fornisce una descrizione degli elementi di base per lo studio che verrà poi affrontato nei capitoli successivi; nel capitolo in questione ci si riduce a introdurre nomenclatura, parametri e assunzioni di base. Nei capitoli secondo e terzo vengono esposti due tipi di modelli SIR diversi (epidemico e endemico), modelli alla base dell'epidemiologia che spiegano, sotto determinate ipotesi, il comportamento degli individui all'esplodere di una epidemia e il loro cambiamento di compartimento (suscettibile, infetto o rimosso) nel tempo. Di essi viene costruito il sistema di equazioni differenziali e analizzato il comportamento asintotico, per poi studiare i punti di equilibrio e la loro stabilità. Nel capitolo quarto viene analizzato allo stesso modo il modello SEIR, interessante perché fornisce una visione leggermente più sofisticata e vicina alla realtà, poiché tra i compartimenti possibili si suppone esistere anche un compartimento degli esposti, cioè di coloro che sono stati infettati ma che ancora non sono in grado di trasmettere la malattia. L'appendice finale illustra l'apparato matematico utile allo studio di questi modelli: le Equazioni Differenziali infatti sono uno strumento necessario per la descrizione dei fenomeni naturali e per lo studio della stabilità dei punti di equilibrio

Entity relatedness for retrospective analyses of global events

Tracking global events through time would ease many diachronic analyses which are currently carried out manually by social scientists. While entity linking algorithms can be adapted to track events that go by a common name, such a name is often not established in early stages leading up to the event. This study evaluates the utility of entity relatedness for the task of identifying related entities and textual resources that describe the involvement of the entity in the event. In a small study we find that simple relatedness methods obtain MAP score of 0.74 outperforming many advanced baseline systems such as Stics and Wiki2Vec. A small adaptation of this method provides sufficient explanations of entity involvement or 68% of relevant entities

Video assisted sclerosis of endoabdominal lymphangiomas with OK432: An effective, safe and minimally invasive choice

Abstract Lymphatic malformations (LM) or lymphangiomas are congenital errors in vascular embryogenesis. Percutaneous sclerosis is considered the best treatment for LM with external localization and yields excellent results. Surgical resection for deep LM is currently the mainstay of therapy, but high recurrence and morbidity rates are reported. Uniform therapeutic protocols are still unavailable. We describe two cases of abdominal LM treated by video-assisted sclerosis with OK432. The first case was a 5-month-old girl with pre-natal diagnosis of a left retroperitoneal LM with vascular encasement. A laparoscopic approach was used to expose the mass and a video-assisted injection of OK-432 in major cysts was performed. A remarkable reduction of the lesion size was observed after 18 months. The second case was a 15-year-old boy who presented at the ER acute abdominal pain. A mesenteric LM was diagnosed and a video-assisted sclerosis of the lesion with OK432 was performed. The LM completely disappeared. Follow-up was of 12 months. In our experience, video-assisted sclerosis of abdominal LM with OK-432 is a valid alternative to surgical resection. The procedure is feasible, safe, effective and minimally invasive; complete resolution may be observed in some cases. Long-term follow-up is required to rule out recurrences

Comparison of nonlinear growth models and factors affecting body weight at different ages in Toy Poodles

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Transport certifications of cattle moved from France to Southern Italy and Greece: do they comply with Reg. EC 1/2005?

Movements of livestock across the Member States is monitored using the Trade Control and Expert System (TRACES), a web-based veterinarian certification tool. This study aimed to evaluate the criticalities of this tracing system and the most frequent non-conformities in their compilation. TRACES of cattle (n = 320) departed from France and arriving or transiting across Puglia (Italy) in 2019 (n = 199) and 2020 (n = 121) were analysed. The distribution arriving in Italy and Greece did not vary between the 2 years. The majority of the bovine (53.4%) were medium-sized cattle transported for fattening with a median body weight of 410 kg. However, almost half of the TRACES did not report correctly the total expected loaded weight or the available space, so for them, it was impossible to calculate and double-check whether the minimal space allowance was respected. Long journeys must include a resting stop after the first 14 h, however, 20.9% of the examined and declared stops did not comply with it. Finally, comparing the expected declared journey duration with a calculated one (dividing travel distance by an average speed of 70 km/h, adding 1 h for loading and unloading, and 1 h or 24 h for resting stops), we found that only 30.6% of the journey durations were congruent. The irregularities resulted associated with consignors and transporters (p < .05). Overall, the proportion of mistakes and non-compliance suggest that there is a need to improve the current practice to enhance animal welfare during transportation

An innovative tool for assessing welfare of camels

Whilst there are many tools for the assessment of welfare in livestock, there is none for camels. This study aimed therefore to pilot a method for assessing the welfare status of camels using animal-, resource- and management-based indicators at a camel market in Qatar. Adapting the AWIN protocol, data related to housing, feeding, health, and behaviour were collected at three levels: caretaker, herd, and animal. The Caretaker level was an interview exploring the caretaker’s background, experience, and routine management practices. The Herd level was a check of the herd and of the place (i.e. box/pen) where camels were kept. At the Animal level, BCS, health, and behavioral parameters were recorded from 2 animals/pens, randomly selected. The number of animals/pens varied (average: 7, range: 1–37 animals) with a total population of 528 animals. The size of the pen was variable (26–256 m2), and consequently the space allowance varied from 2.5 to 34 m2/animal. The environmental temperature was high (average: 42 °C, range: 37–50 °C) and when in the paddock there was a shelter (86%) the camels moved into the shade (313/528 animals). In all paddock, there was a water point, but the water was often not available (22%), dirty (41%), or warm (max:42.9 °C); the majority of the camels therefore drunk when clean and fresh water was offered (bucket test latency time: median =8 sec, IQR =3–40 sec). BCS varied and was rarely optimal (median =2, IQR =2–3). Most of the animals (89%, p < .001) were free of movements (1% tied, 10% hobbled). However, many animals were not free from disease (38%), injuries (5%), scars (7%), and cauterization (38%). Skin diseases were the most common health problems (28%; p < .001), followed by respiratory diseases (4%). The majority of the animals showed a good human-animal relationship (friendly, 48%, or neutral, 30%, approach; p < .001), and no stereotypes were noted. However, some animals were aggressive (6%), when they were old, in pain (2%), or distressed (8%). The caretaker came mainly from Sudan (91%; p < .001), with experience in camel handling often learned by father-son tradition (82%; p < .001) and for many of them, animal welfare was ‘treat the animals gently, feeding and watering them’. This was a preliminary study to pilot a tool to assess welfare in camels; further studies are needed to validate this tool in other camel farms worldwide