The information city : information sharing system for local government decision-making

LAUREA MAGISTRALELa digitalizzazione sta cambiando il modo in cui le persone si interfacciano con l’informazione, da quando essa viene creata fino a quando viene recuperata e condivisa. Questo processo è perfettamente integrato nella nostra vita quotidiana, dato che abbiamo accesso a numerosi strumenti per organizzare, condividere o conservare le informazioni per servircene successivamente. Ma cosa succede quando c’è la necessità di monitorare un sistema complesso come un’intera città? Questa tesi indagherà le modalità con cui gli amministratori della città raccolgono informazioni sull’ambiente urbano e esplorerà il modo in cui essi formano la propria conoscenza, per prendere decisioni mirate al benessere cittadino. Attualmente, una delle fonti più preziose di conoscenza è senz’altro rappresentata dai dati: siamo così immersi in questo nuovo contesto tecnologico che quasi ogni nostra azione crea una traccia digitale di qualche tipo. Gestire i dati non è un compito facile, ma diventa ancora più arduo quando si è nel contesto delle smart cities, aree in cui le infrastrutture, i servizi e persino i cittadini producono dati su base quotidiana. Le city dashboard sono tra gli strumenti più diffusi che affrontano il problema dell’organizzazione dei dati provenienti dall’ambiente urbano, trasformandoli in visualizzazioni funzionali che possono sia aiutare i decisori politici sia informare i cittadini sulla gestione della città. Tuttavia, ciò che emerge dall’analisi delle dashboard attuali è che queste piattaforme presentano dei limiti, essendo focalizzate principalmente sull’efficienza tecnica e sull’inclusione di quante più fonti di dati possibili. Inoltre, gli utenti finali non sono mai stati coinvolti nel processo di progettazione della dashboard, e questo potrebbe essere il motivo principale per cui queste piattaforme non sono utilizzate in primo luogo. Per questo motivo, sarà definito un processo di sviluppo alternativo, basato un approccio centrato sull’utente, integrando i feedback dei decisori politici e dei cittadini per costruire un’esperienza informativa più efficace. Questo background teorico sarà poi applicato ad un caso studio reale, alla progettazione di una dashboard per la città di Milano, e l’efficienza della piattaforma sarà verificata in base alla sua capacità di facilitare il recupero delle informazioni e la loro condivisione tra gli utenti coinvolti. Come nota conclusiva, verrà delineata una riflessione sul contesto del progetto, in quanto la piattaforma cerca di collocarsi in un quadro in cui l’innovazione è spesso ostacolata per vari motivi, nella speranza di aprire la strada ad un cambiamento di mentalità, piuttosto che ad un semplice cambiamento negli strumenti digitali impiegati.Digitization is changing the way people experience information, from the way it is created to how it is retrieved and then shared. This process has been perfectly integrated into our everyday life, as we have access to plenty of tools aimed at organising, sharing, or storing information for later use. But what happens when people have to monitor a context that is as complex as a whole city? This thesis will try to investigate the way city managers collect information about the urban environment, and how they shape their own knowledge to make informed decisions for the city’s wellbeing. In this day and age, one of the most precious sources of knowledge is data: we are so immersed in this new technological framework that almost every action we perform leaves a digital trace of some sort. Managing data is not an easy task, but it gets all the more difficult when it comes to smart cities, areas where infrastructures, services, and even citizens produce data on a daily basis. City dashboards are among the most widespread tools addressing the issue of organising data coming from an urban environment, turning them into functional visualisations that can aid decision-makers while informing citizens about city management. Nevertheless, what emerges from the current dashboards’ analysis is that these platforms appear to have some limits, being mainly focused on technical efficiency and on including as much data sources as possible. Furthermore, final users were never involved in the dashboard design process, and this might be the main reason these platforms are not employed in the first place. Therefore, an alternative development process will be laid out, based on design principles and user-centred approach, integrating feedback from decision-makers and citizens to build a more meaningful informative experience. This theoretical background will then been applied to a real case study, the design of a city dashboard for the city of Milan, and the efficiency of the platform will be verified based on whether it can speed up information retrieval and sharing between users. As closing note, a reflection on the project context will be laid out, as the platform tries to place itself within a framework in which innovation is held back for various reasons, hoping to pave the way for a change in mindset, rather than a simple change in the tools

The effects of soil acidity on the age structure and age at sexual maturity of eastern red-backed salamanders (Plethodon cinereus) in hardwood forests of New Hampshire and Vermont

Acidic deposition resulting from emissions of sulfur and nitrogen has negatively impacted the hardwood forests of the northeastern United States, causing depletion of key nutrients such as calcium and chronic acidification of forest soil habitats. Strongly acidic habitats (pH \u3c 3.5) have long been considered lethal to eastern red-backed salamanders (Plethodon cinereus), but recent studies found that P. cinereus were abundant in hardwood forests with soil pH as low as 2.7 – a condition resulting from anthropogenic acid inputs. Although abundance of P. cinereus does not appear to be constrained by soil pH, I hypothesized that very acidic habitats would negatively impact the demographics of P. cinereus populations, including age distribution, growth rates, and age at sexual maturity. I analyzed demographic parameters of extant P. cinereus populations that were sampled in 2012 at four hardwood forests in NH and VT (USA) that ranged in soil/forest floor pH from 2.7 – 3.7. I determined the age of each P. cinereus using skeletochronology techniques to estimate population age structure, estimated growth curves for each population using the von Bertalanffy equation and Chapman’s method, and evaluated mean age at sexual maturity for each population. Overall, soil pH did not appear to strongly affect P. cinereus populations. However, the most acidic site (pH 2.7) had a greater proportion of juveniles to adults, suggesting that fewer juveniles survive to adulthood at soil pH \u3c 3.0. The mean age of sexually mature individuals was significantly higher at the most acidic site compared to least acidic site, but was not significantly different from the sites with intermediate pH sites. My results suggest that it is possible that P. cinereus populations have locally adapted to very acidic soils, but that demographic differences may reveal sensitivity of populations to this stressor. Further study of habitat pH and P. cinereus is warranted because these salamanders comprise a large portion of forest faunal biomass and play an key ecological role in nutrient cyclin

The CUORE Cryostat: A 1-Ton Scale Setup for Bolometric Detectors

The cryogenic underground observatory for rare events (CUORE) is a 1-ton scale bolometric experiment whose detector consists of an array of 988 TeO2 crystals arranged in a cylindrical compact structure of 19 towers. This will be the largest bolometric mass ever operated. The experiment will work at a temperature around or below 10 mK. CUORE cryostat consists of a cryogen-free system based on pulse tubes and a custom high power dilution refrigerator, designed to match these specifications. The cryostat has been commissioned in 2014 at the Gran Sasso National Laboratories and reached a record temperature of 6 mK on a cubic meter scale. In this paper, we present results of CUORE commissioning runs. Details on the thermal characteristics and cryogenic performances of the system will be also given.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, LTD16 conference proceedin

Years of life that could be saved from prevention of hepatocellular carcinoma

BACKGROUND: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) causes premature death and loss of life expectancy worldwide. Its primary and secondary prevention can result in a significant number of years of life saved. AIM: To assess how many years of life are lost after HCC diagnosis. METHODS: Data from 5346 patients with first HCC diagnosis were used to estimate lifespan and number of years of life lost after tumour onset, using a semi-parametric extrapolation having as reference an age-, sex- and year-of-onset-matched population derived from national life tables. RESULTS: Between 1986 and 2014, HCC lead to an average of 11.5 years-of-life lost for each patient. The youngest age-quartile group (18-61 years) had the highest number of years-of-life lost, representing approximately 41% of the overall benefit obtainable from prevention. Advancements in HCC management have progressively reduced the number of years-of-life lost from 12.6 years in 1986-1999, to 10.7 in 2000-2006 and 7.4 years in 2007-2014. Currently, an HCC diagnosis when a single tumour <2 cm results in 3.7 years-of-life lost while the diagnosis when a single tumour 65 2 cm or 2/3 nodules still within the Milan criteria, results in 5.0 years-of-life lost, representing the loss of only approximately 5.5% and 7.2%, respectively, of the entire lifespan from birth. CONCLUSIONS: Hepatocellular carcinoma occurrence results in the loss of a considerable number of years-of-life, especially for younger patients. In recent years, the increased possibility of effectively treating this tumour has improved life expectancy, thus reducing years-of-life lost

A Model to Predict Future Biologic or Targeted Synthetic DMARD Switch at a Subsequent Clinic Visit in Rheumatoid Arthritis

Introduction To understand factors leading to biologic switches and to develop a readily usable model with data collected in clinical care at preceding visits, with the overall aim to predict the probability of switching biologic at a subsequent clinic visit in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Methods Participants were adults with RA participating in the CorEvitas RA registry. The study matched patients who switched biologics or targeted synthetic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (tsDMARDs) with control patients who had not switched biologics/tsDMARDs; the cohort was divided into a training and test set for prediction model development and validation. Using the training set, the best subset regression, lasso, and elastic net methods were used to determine the best potential models. Area under the ROC curve (AUC) was used for the final selection of the best model, and estimated coefficients of this model were applied to the test dataset to predict switching. Results A total of 5050 patients were included, of whom 3016 were in the training set and 2034 were in the test dataset. The average age was 59.6 years, the majority were female (3998, 79.2%), and the average duration of RA at the time of switch or control visit was 12.8 years. The final model included prior Clinical Disease Activity Index (CDAI) by category, prior patient pain measurement, change in CDAI from baseline, age group, and number of prior biologics, all of which were significantly associated with switching biologics. The AUC was 0.690 for this model with the training dataset. The model was then applied to the test data with similar performance; the AUC was 0.687. Conclusion We have developed a simple model to determine the probability of switching biologics for RA at the following clinic visit. This model could be used in practice to provide clinicians with more information about their patient’s trajectory and likelihood of switching to a new biologic

A Cloud-Native Web Application for Assisted Metadata Generation and Retrieval: THESPIAN-NER

Within the context of the Competence Centre for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage (4CH) project, the design and deployment of a platform-as-a-service cloud infrastructure for the first European competence centre of cultural heritage (CH) has begun, and some web services have been integrated into the platform. The first integrated service is the INFN-CHNet web application for FAIR storage of scientific analysis on CH: THESPIAN-Mask. It is based on CIDOC-CRM-compatible ontology and CRMhs, describing the scientific metadata. To ease the process of metadata generation and data injection, another web service has been developed: THESPIAN-NER. It is a tool based on a deep neural network for named entity recognition (NER), enabling users to upload their Italian-written report files and obtain labelled entities. Those entities are used as keywords either to serve as (semi)automatically custom queries for the database, or to fill (part of) the metadata form as a descriptor for the file to be uploaded. The services have been made freely available in the 4CH PaaS cloud platform

Protective effects of the melanocortin analog NDP-α-MSH in rats undergoing cardiac arrest

We previously reported that melanocortins afford cardioprotection in conditions of experimental myocardial ischemia/reperfusion, with involvement of the janus kinases (JAK), extracellular signal-regulated kinases (ERK) and signal transducers and activators of transcription (STAT) signalings. We investigated the influence of the melanocortin analog [Nle(4), D-Phe(7)]α-melanocyte-stimulating hormone (NDP-α-MSH) on short-term detrimental responses to cardiac arrest (CA) induced in rats by intravenous (i.v.) administration of potassium chloride, followed by cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) plus epinephrine treatment. In CA/CPR rats i.v. treated with epinephrine (0.1mg/kg) and returned to spontaneous circulation (48%) we recorded low values of mean arterial pressure (MAP) and heart rate (HR), alteration of hemogasanalysis parameters, left ventricle low expression of the cardioprotective transcription factors pJAK2 and pTyr-STAT3 (JAK-dependent), increased oxidative stress, up-regulation of the inflammatory mediators tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and interleukin-6 (IL-6), and down-regulation of the anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10, as assessed at 1h and 3h after CPR. On the other hand, i.v. treatment during CPR with epinephrine plus NDP-α-MSH (340μg/kg) almost completely restored the basal conditions of MAP and HR, reversed metabolic acidosis, induced left ventricle up-regulation of pJAK2, pTyr-STAT3 and IL-10, attenuated oxidative stress, down-regulated TNF-α and IL-6 levels, and improved survival rate by 81%. CA/CPR plus epinephrine alone or in combination with NDP-α-MSH did not affect left ventricle pSer-STAT3 (ERK1/2-dependent) and pERK1/2 levels. These results indicate that melanocortins improve return to spontaneous circulation, reverse metabolic acidosis, and inhibit heart oxidative stress and inflammatory cascade triggered by CA/CPR, likely via activation of the JAK/STAT signaling pathway

Pleural Effusion in COVID-19 Pneumonia: Clinical and Prognostic Implications-An Observational, Retrospective Study

Background: COVID-19 presents with a wide spectrum of clinical and radiological manifestations, including pleural effusion. The prevalence and prognostic impact of pleural effusion are still not entirely clear. Patients and methods: This is a retrospective, single-center study including a population of consecutive patients admitted to the University Hospital of Cisanello (Pisa) from March 2020 to January 2021 with a positive SARS-CoV-2 nasopharyngeal swab and SARS-CoV-2-related pneumonia. The patients were divided into two populations based on the presence (n = 150) or absence (n = 515) of pleural effusion on chest CT scan, excluding patients with pre-existing pleural effusion. We collected laboratory data (hemoglobin, leukocytes, platelets, C-reactive protein, procalcitonin), worst PaO2/FiO(2) ratio as an index of respiratory gas exchange impairment, the extent of interstitial involvement related to SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia and data on intensity of care, length of stay and outcome (discharge or death). Results: The prevalence of pleural effusion was 23%. Patients with pleural effusion showed worse gas exchange (p &lt; 0.001), longer average hospital stay (p &lt; 0.001), need for more health care resources (p &lt; 0.001) and higher mortality (p &lt; 0.001) compared to patients without pleural effusion. By multivariate analysis, pleural effusion was found to be an independent negative prognostic factor compared with other variables such as increased C-reactive protein, greater extent of pneumonia and older age. Pleural effusion was present at the first CT scan in most patients (68%). Conclusions: Pleural effusion associated with SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia is a relatively frequent finding that is confirmed to be a negative prognostic factor. Identifying early prognostic factors in an endemic-prone disease such as COVID-19 is necessary to optimize its clinical management. Further clinical studies aimed at better characterizing pleural effusion in these patients will be appropriate in order to clarify its pathogenetic role

Transcriptome Analysis of Canine Cutaneous Melanoma and Melanocytoma Reveals a Modulation of Genes Regulating Extracellular Matrix Metabolism and Cell Cycle

Interactions between tumor cells and tumor microenvironment are considered critical in carcinogenesis, tumor invasion and metastasis. To examine transcriptome changes and to explore the relationship with tumor microenvironment in canine cutaneous melanocytoma and melanoma, we extracted RNA from formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) specimens and analyzed them by means of RNA-seq for transcriptional analysis. Melanocytoma and melanoma samples were compared to detect differential gene expressions and significant enriched pathways were explored to reveal functional relations between differentially expressed genes. The study demonstrated a differential expression of 60 genes in melanomas compared to melanocytomas. The differentially expressed genes cluster in the extracellular matrix-receptor interaction, protein digestion and absorption, focal adhesion and PI3K-Akt (phosphoinositide 3-kinase/protein kinase B) signaling pathways. Genes encoding for several collagen proteins were more commonly differentially expressed. Results of the RNA-seq were validated by qRT-PCR and protein expression of some target molecules was investigated by means of immunohistochemistry. We hypothesize that the developing melanoma actively promotes collagen metabolism and extracellular matrix remodeling as well as enhancing cell proliferation and survival contributing to disease progression and metastasis. In this study, we also detected unidentified genes in human melanoma expression studies and uncover new candidate drug targets for further testing in canine melanoma