Pulmonary function testing in children's interstitial lung disease

The use of pulmonary function tests (PFTs) has been widely described in airway diseases like asthma and cystic fibrosis, but for children's interstitial lung disease (chILD), which encompasses a broad spectrum of pathologies, the usefulness of PFTs is still undetermined, despite widespread use in adult interstitial lung disease. A literature review was initiated by the COST/Enter chILD working group aiming to describe published studies, to identify gaps in knowledge and to propose future research goals in regard to spirometry, whole-body plethysmography, infant and pre-school PFTs, measurement of diffusing capacity, multiple breath washout and cardiopulmonary exercise tests in chILD. The search revealed a limited number of papers published in the past three decades, of which the majority were descriptive and did not report pulmonary function as the main outcome.PFTs may be useful in different stages of management of children with suspected or confirmed chILD, but the chILD spectrum is diverse and includes a heterogeneous patient group in all ages. Research studies in well-defined patient cohorts are needed to establish which PFT and outcomes are most relevant for diagnosis, evaluation of disease severity and course, and monitoring individual conditions both for improvement in clinical care and as end-points in future randomised controlled trials

KRAS status and risk of venous thromboembolic events in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer: a case-control study.

No abstract availabl

Impact of different exposure models and spatial resolution on the long-term effects of air pollution.

Abstract Long-term exposure to air pollution has been related to mortality in several epidemiological studies. The investigations have assessed exposure using various methods achieving different accuracy in predicting air pollutants concentrations. The comparison of the health effects estimates are therefore challenging. This paper aims to compare the effect estimates of the long-term effects of air pollutants (particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter less than 10 μm, PM10, and nitrogen dioxide, NO2) on cause-specific mortality in the Rome Longitudinal Study, using exposure estimates obtained with different models and spatial resolutions. Annual averages of NO2 and PM10 were estimated for the year 2015 in a large portion of the Rome urban area (12 × 12 km2) applying three modelling techniques available at increasing spatial resolution: 1) a chemical transport model (CTM) at 1km resolution; 2) a land-use random forest (LURF) approach at 200m resolution; 3) a micro-scale Lagrangian particle dispersion model (PMSS) taking into account the effect of buildings structure at 4 m resolution with results post processed at different buffer sizes (12, 24, 52, 100 and 200 m). All the exposures were assigned at the residential addresses of 482,259 citizens of Rome 30+ years of age who were enrolled on 2001 and followed-up till 2015. The association between annual exposures and natural-cause, cardiovascular (CVD) and respiratory (RESP) mortality were estimated using Cox proportional hazards models adjusted for individual and area-level confounders. We found different distributions of both NO2 and PM10 concentrations, across models and spatial resolutions. Natural cause and CVD mortality outcomes were all positively associated with NO2 and PM10 regardless of the model and spatial resolution when using a relative scale of the exposure such as the interquartile range (IQR): adjusted Hazard Ratios (HR), and 95% confidence intervals (CI), of natural cause mortality, per IQR increments in the two pollutants, ranged between 1.012 (1.004, 1.021) and 1.018 (1.007, 1.028) for the different NO2 estimates, and between 1.010 (1.000, 1.020) and 1.020 (1.008, 1.031) for PM10, with a tendency of larger effect for lower resolution exposures. The latter was even stronger when a fixed value of 10 μg/m3 is used to calculate HRs. Long-term effects of air pollution on mortality in Rome were consistent across different models for exposure assessment, and different spatial resolutions

Oltre il Segno/OltreMare

La realizzazione di un volume contenente le incisioni scelte all’interno della Scuola di Grafica d’Arte dell’Accademia di Belle Arti di Palermo, coordinata dai Proff. Giovanni D’Alessandro e Riccardo Mazzarino rappresenta motivo di orgoglio e di soddisfazione per la nostra Istituzione che costruisce i percorsi didattici dei propri corsi a partire dall’esperienza laboratoriale. L’incisione grafica è tra le tecniche artistiche più antiche ma nel contempo più contemporanee. La gestualità intrinseca al segno, che si manifesta nella carta, svela universi della visione inaspettati.(Mario Zito - Direttore dell’Accademia di Belle Arti di Palermo) Il segno è il risultato di un gesto a volte deciso, a volte contorto, a volte leggero, i cui risultati spesso sono inattesi e sorprendenti. Il volume contiene esemplari di incisioni fortemente caratterizzanti della scuola di Grafica d’Arte che vanta all’interno del proprio corso di studi docenti-artisti che consapevoli della ricchezza del loro bagaglio esperienziale offrono agli studenti gli strumenti necessari per far sì che l’arte del saper fare artigianale, si trasformi in mera poetica artistica

The imaging for the the successful bio-communication: ORBS Brand

Producing accessible communication based on scientific research usually involves a great deal of effort in translating complex concepts into a non professional oriented information, but it is only through widely accessible data that knowledge dissemination have stronger repercussions in society. In concordance to this statement, the CNR IAMC and the “Accademia di Belle Arti di Palermo” collaborated in the work frame of the "Information, dissemination and communication system of the Biodiversity Observatory of Sicily” project, a synergistic interaction between science and art. The researchers held biodiversity seminars to the Academy students, involving 19 professorships, aiming to increase the knowledge degree and awareness on the biodiversity, thus stimulating their creativity. One of the main activities carried out during this collaboration was the conceptualization and designing of the Biodiversity Observatory brand, with the representation of biodiversity as the main briefing. The winning proposal was chosen between 13 projects by popular vote, with the participation of more than 800 students and CNR researchers. The branding is a representation of the environment with the use of different animal silhouettes as a symbol of biodiversity. The elements are arranged on a spiral grid suggesting movement, a current that raises deep, nutrient-rich waters to the ocean surface. Extremely evocative and appealing, the logotype has become an integral part of the Observatory's identity, and it's been profusely applied over the years on communication and divulgative materials, website, exhibitions, and memorabilia. Involving such a large number of students and their social groups (family, friends, and etcetera) meant giving the citizens a leading role in an important activity. Participation of the public in the creation of the graphic identity of a key structure in their territory resulted in a dramatic increase of sensitization on the biodiversity and environmental cause and participation in divulgation activities in the following years

Short-Term Effects of Air Pollution on Cardiovascular Hospitalizations in the Pisan Longitudinal Study

Air pollution effects on cardiovascular hospitalizations in small urban/suburban areas have been scantly investigated. Such effects were assessed among the participants in the analytical epidemiological survey carried out in Pisa and Cascina, Tuscany, Italy (2009–2011). Cardiovascular hospitalizations from 1585 subjects were followed up (2011–2015). Daily mean pollutant concentrations were estimated through random forests at 1 km (particulate matter: PM10, 2011–2015; PM2.5, 2013–2015) and 200 m (PM10, PM2.5, NO2, O3, 2013–2015) resolutions. Exposure effects were estimated using the case-crossover design and conditional logistic regression (odds ratio—OR—and 95% confidence interval—CI—for 10 μg/m3 increase; lag 0–6). During the period 2011–2015 (137 hospitalizations), a significant effect at lag 0 was observed for PM10 (OR = 1.137, CI: 1.023–1.264) at 1 km resolution. During the period 2013–2015 (69 hospitalizations), significant effects at lag 0 were observed for PM10 (OR = 1.268, CI: 1.085–1.483) and PM2.5 (OR = 1.273, CI: 1.053–1.540) at 1 km resolution, as well as for PM10 (OR = 1.365, CI: 1.103–1.690), PM2.5 (OR = 1.264, CI: 1.006–1.589) and NO2 (OR = 1.477, CI: 1.058–2.061) at 200 m resolution; significant effects were observed up to lag 2. Larger ORs were observed in males and in subjects reporting pre-existent cardiovascular/respiratory diseases. Combining analytical and routine epidemiological data with high-resolution pollutant estimates provides new insights on acute cardiovascular effects in the general population and in potentially susceptible subgroups living in small urban/suburban areas

Inferential tools in penalized logistic regression for small and sparse data: A comparative study

Abstract This paper focuses on inferential tools in the logistic regression model fitted by the Firth penalized likelihood. In this context, the Likelihood Ratio statistic is often reported to be the preferred choice as compared to the ‘traditional’ Wald statistic. In this work, we consider and discuss a wider range of test statistics, including the robust Wald, the Score, and the recently proposed Gradient statistic. We compare all these asymptotically equivalent statistics in terms of interval estimation and hypothesis testing via simulation experiments and analyses of two real datasets. We find out that the Likelihood ratio statistic does not appear the best inferential device in the Firth penalized logistic regressio

New Flexible Probability distributions for ranking data

Recently, several models have been proposed in literature for analyzing ranks assigned by people to some object. These models summarize the liking feeling for this object, possibly also with respect to a set of explanatory variables. Some recent works have suggested the use of the Shifted Binomial and of the Inverse Hypergeometric distribution for modelling the approval rate, while mixture models have been developed for taking into account the uncertainty of the ranking process. We propose two new probabilistic models, based on the Discrete Beta and the Shifted-Beta Binomial distributions, that ensure much flexibility and allow the joint modelling of the scale (approval rate) and the shape (uncertainty) of the distribution of the ranks assigned to the object

New Flexible Probability Distributions for Ranking Data

Recently, several models have been proposed for analysing the ranks assigned by people to some object. These models summarize the liking feeling towards the object, possibly with respect to a set of explanatory variables. Some recent works have suggested the use of the Shifted Binomial and of the Inverse Hypergeometric distribution for modelling the approval rate, while mixture models have been considered for taking into account the uncertainty in the ranking process. We propose two new probability distributions, the Discrete Beta and the Shifted-Beta Binomial, which ensure much flexibility and allow the joint modelling of the scale (approval rate) and the shape (uncertainty) parameters of the rank distribution