Statistics of the seasonal cycle of the 1951-2000 surface temperature records in Italy

We present an analysis of seasonal cycle of the last 50 years of records of surface temperature in Italy. We consider two data sets which synthesize the surface temperature fields of Northern and Southern Italy. Such data sets consist of records of daily maximum and minimum temperature. We compute the best estimate of the seasonal cycle of the variables considered by adopting the cyclograms' technique. We observe that in general the minimum temperature cycle lags behind the maximum temperature cycle, and that the cycles of the Southern Italy temperatures records lag behind the corresponding cycles referring to Northern Italy. All seasonal cycles lag considerably behind the solar cycle. The amplitude and phase of the seasonal cycles do not show any statistically significant trend in the time interval considered.Comment: 30 pages, 6 figures, submitted to IJ

Automatic Identification of Misogyny in English and Italian Tweets at EVALITA 2018 with a Multilingual Hate Lexicon

In this paper we describe our submission to the shared task of Automatic Misogyny Identification in English and Italian Tweets (AMI) organized at EVALITA 2018. Our approach is based on SVM classifiers and enhanced by stylistic and lexical features. Additionally, we analyze the use of the novel HurtLex multilingual linguistic resource, developed by enriching in a computational and multilingual perspective of the hate words Italian lexicon by the linguist Tullio De Mauro, in order to investigate its impact in this task.Nel presente lavoro descriviamo il sistema inviato allo shared task di Automatic Misogyny Identification (AMI) ad EVALITA 2018. Il nostro approccio si basa su classificatori SVM, ottimizzati da feature stilistiche e lessicali. Inoltre, analizziamo il ruolo della nuova risorsa linguistica HurtLex, un’estensione in prospettiva computazionale e multilingue del lessico di parole per ferire in italiano proposto dal linguista Tullio De Mauro, per meglio comprendere il suo impatto in questo tipo di task

Resolvin D1 Halts Remote Neuroinflammation and Improves Functional Recovery after Focal Brain Damage Via ALX/FPR2 Receptor-Regulated MicroRNAs

Remote damage is a secondary phenomenon that usually occurs after a primary brain damage in regions that are distant, yet functionally connected, and that is critical for determining the outcomes of several CNS pathologies, including traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries. The understanding of remote damage-associated mechanisms has been mostly achieved in several models of focal brain injury such as the hemicerebellectomy (HCb) experimental paradigm, which helped to identify the involvement of many key players, such as inflammation, oxidative stress, apoptosis and autophagy. Currently, few interventions have been shown to successfully limit the progression of secondary damage events and there is still an unmet need for new therapeutic options. Given the emergence of the novel concept of resolution of inflammation, mediated by the newly identified ω3-derived specialized pro-resolving lipid mediators, such as resolvins, we reported a reduced ability of HCb-injured animals to produce resolvin D1 (RvD1) and an increased expression of its target receptor ALX/FPR2 in remote brain regions. The in vivo administration of RvD1 promoted functional recovery and neuroprotection by reducing the activation of Iba-1+ microglia and GFAP+ astrocytes as well as by impairing inflammatory-induced neuronal cell death in remote regions. These effects were counteracted by intracerebroventricular neutralization of ALX/FPR2, whose activation by RvD1 also down-regulated miR-146b and miR-219a-1-dependent inflammatory markers. In conclusion, we propose that innovative therapies based on RvD1-ALX/ FPR2 axis could be exploited to curtail remote damage and enable neuroprotective effects after acute focal brain damage

Arrhythmic risk in elderly patients candidates to transcatheter aortic valve replacement. predicative role of repolarization temporal dispersion

Degenerative aortic valve stenosis (AS) is associated to ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death, as well as mental stress in specific patients. In such a context, substrate, autonomic imbalance as well as repolarization dispersion abnormalities play an undoubted role. Aim of the study was to evaluate the increase of premature ventricular contractions (PVC) and complex ventricular arrhythmias during mental stress in elderly patients candidate to the transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR). In eighty-one elderly patients with AS we calculated several short-period RRand QT-derived variables at rest, during controlled breathing and during mild mental stress, the latter being represented by a mini-mental state evaluation (MMSE). All the myocardial repolarization dispersion markers worsened during mental stress (p < 0.05). Furthermore, during MMSE, low frequency component of the RR variability increased significantly both as absolute power (LFRR) and normalized units (LFRRNU) (p < 0.05) as well as the low-high frequency ratio (LFRR/HFRR) (p < 0.05). Eventually, twenty-four (30%) and twelve (15%) patients increased significantly PVC and, respectively, complex ventricular arrhythmias during the MMSE administration. At multivariate logistic regression analysis, the standard deviation of QTend (QTesd), obtained at rest, was predictive of increased PVC (odd ratio: 1.54, 95% CI 1.14–2.08; p = 0.005) and complex ventricular arrhythmias (odd ratio: 2.31, 95% CI 1.40–3.83; p = 0.001) during MMSE. The QTesd showed the widest sensitive-specificity area under the curve for the increase of PVC (AUC: 0.699, 95% CI: 0.576–0.822, p < 0.05) and complex ventricular arrhythmias (AUC: 0.801, 95% CI: 0.648–0.954, p < 0.05). In elderly with AS ventricular arrhythmias worsened during a simple cognitive assessment, this events being a possible further burden on the outcome of TAVR. QTesd might be useful to identify those patients with the highest risk of ventricular arrhythmias. Whether the TAVR could led to a QTesd reduction and, hence, to a reductionof thearrhythmicburdenin thissettingofpatients isworthytobe investigated

QUEEREOTYPES: A Multi-Source Italian Corpus of Stereotypes towards LGBTQIA+ Community Members

The paper describes a dataset composed of two sub-corpora from two different sources in Italian. The QUEEREOTYPES corpus includes social media texts regarding LGBTQIA+ individuals, behaviors, ideology and events. The texts were collected from Facebook and Twitter in 2018 and were annotated for the presence of stereotypes, and orthogonal dimensions (such as hate speech, aggressiveness, offensiveness, and irony in one sub-corpus, and stance in the other). The resource was developed by Natural Language Processing researchers together with activists from an Italian LGBTQIA+ not-for-profit organization. The creation of the dataset allows the NLP community to study stereotypes against marginalized groups, individuals and, ultimately, to develop proper tools and measures to reduce the online spread of such stereotypes. A test for the robustness of the language resource has been performed by means of 5-fold cross-validation experiments. Finally, text classification experiments have been carried out with a fine-tuned version of AlBERTo (a BERT-based model pre-trained on Italian tweets) and mBERT, obtaining good results on the task of stereotype detection, suggesting that stereotypes towards different targets might share common traits

Overview of the EVALITA 2018 Task on Irony Detection in Italian Tweets (IronITA)

IronITA is a new shared task in the EVALITA 2018 evaluation campaign, focused on the automatic classification of irony in Italian texts from Twitter. It includes two tasks: 1) irony detection and 2) detection of different types of irony, with a special focus on sarcasm identification. We received 17 submissions for the first task and 7 submissions for the second task from 7 teams.IronITA è un nuovo esercizio di valutazione della campagna di valutazione EVALITA 2018, specificamente dedicato alla classificazione automatica dell’ironia presente in testi estratti da Twitter. Comprende due task: 1) riconoscimento dell’ironia e 2) riconoscimento di diversi tipi di ironia, con particolare attenzione all’identificazione del sarcasmo. Abbiamo ricevuto 17 sottomissioni per il primo task e 7 per il secondo, da parte di 7 gruppi partecipanti

Antecedentes escolares para el estudio de dificultades de conceptos matemáticos en la escuela de bachilleres de la UAQ

Se describen los avances de un proyecto iniciado este año y que está orientado a estudiar la problemática del aprendizaje de las matemáticas en el contexto particular de la Escuela de Bachilleres de la Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro. La propuesta incluye identificar los objetos matemáticos centrales en cada curso del segundo semestre del año 2014 y estudiar las dificultades inherentes de su aprendizaje, tratando de identificar algunas de las causas principales. Se trabajará con un muestreo que permita tener una “radiografía” del alumnado de la institución y así proponer a futuro estrategias que permitan atacar los obstáculos en el aprendizaje tanto de los objetos y de los procesos centrales en cada curso para el aprendizaje, en el contexto del enfoque por competencias de la movilización de saberes, del álgebra, la geometría y el cálculo

Comprehensive RNA dataset of AGO2 associated RNAs in Jurkat cells following miR-21 over-expression

AbstractWe set out to identify miR-21 targets in Jurkat cells using a high-throughput biochemical approach (10.1016/j.biochi.2014.09.021 [1]). Using a specific monoclonal antibody raised against AGO2, RISC complexes were immunopurified in Jurkat cells over-expressing miR-21 following lentiviral trasduction as well as in Jurkat control cells lines. A parallel immunoprecipitation using isotype-matched rat IgG was performed as a control. AGO2 associated mRNAs were profiled by microarray (GEO: GSE37212). AGO2 bound miRNAs were profiled by RNA-seq