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Tools for fighting cyber-criminal activities using new technologies are promoted and deployed every day. However, too often, they are unnecessarily complex and hard to use, requiring deep domain and technical knowledge. These characteristics often limit the engagement of law enforcement and end-users in these technologies, which despite their potential, remain misunderstood. For this reason, in this study, we describe our experience in combining learning and training methods and the potential benefits of gamification to enhance technology transfer and increase adult learning. In this case, participants are experienced practitioners in professions/industries that are exposed to terrorism financing (such as law enforcement officers, financial investigation officers, private investigators). We define training activities on different levels for increasing the exchange of information about new trends and criminal modus operandi among and within law enforcement agencies, intensifying cross-border cooperation and supporting efforts to combat and prevent terrorism-funding activities. A game (hackathon) is designed to address realistic challenges related to the darknet, crypto-assets, new payment systems and dark web marketplaces that could be used for terrorist activities. The entire methodology was evaluated using quizzes, contest results and engagement metrics. In particular, training events show that ∼60% of participants complete the 11-week training course, whereas the hackathon results, gathered in two pilot studies (Madrid and The Hague), show increasing expertise among participants (progression in the points achieved on average). At the same time, more than 70% of participants positively evaluate use of the gamification approach, and more than 85% consider the implemented use cases suitable for their investigations. These outcomes are further discussed to detect the introduced approach's benefits and limitations and improve future events.

Die Gründung von Bildungsverbünden geht mit einer Verschiebung institutionalisierter Machtverhältnisse einher. Die Zusammenarbeit im Verbund und sein Erfolg basieren auf vertrauensvollen Beziehungen, die Organisationsgrenzen überwinden und Mitwirkende gewinnen. Beide Phänomene sind entscheidende, relationale Faktoren für die Zusammenarbeit und dennoch wurde ihr Wechselverhältnis bisher kaum untersucht. Um diesem Forschungsdesiderat zu begegnen wurden halbstandardisierte Interviews mit 21 Akteur:innen eines exemplarischen Bildungsverbunds geführt, und unter Anwendung der Grounded Theory sowie mithilfe der Analysesoftware MAXQDA analysiert. Dabei wurden die Erzählungen zu Vertrauensbeziehungen untersucht und innerhalb dieser die Machtmittel der Akteur:innen identifiziert, um sie schließlich in Bezug zum Vertrauensverhältnis zu setzen. Jede Form der Abhängigkeit wurde dabei als Macht definiert. Die Analyse ergab eine Übersicht von wechselseitigen Abhängigkeiten (materieller und immaterieller Art). Vertrauen wirkt dabei teilweise mediierend, teilweise ist Vertrauen selbst Gegenstand der Abhängigkeit. Umgekehrt wirken informelle Machtformen förderlich und formale eher hinderlich auf die Vertrauensentwicklung. Die Ergebnisse resultieren in theoretischen Schemata zum Wechselverhältnis von Macht und Vertrauen und zum Modus der Zusammenarbeit im Verbund.

The article focuses on the vital role of libraries in reinforcing democratic values as elections approach for over four billion people globally. Topics include the decline of democratic institutions, the importance of civil rights and social equity, and libraries' efforts to combat misinformation and promote public participation.

My paper wishes to delve into concepts such as assemblage and sympoiesis and examine them within the framework of my ethnographic fieldwork on beekeeping in the Western chain of the Italian Alps. I believe that the implications of notions such as sympoiesis and assemblage can be seen to surface in the context of beekeeping and bee culture, as they emerge as multispecies activities where everything and everyone involved can be regarded as a social actor. In this respect, the most relevant issues I would like to tackle are referred to knowledge production and know-how among beekeepers who keep their apiaries in the plains for most part of the year and move them to mountain areas for the summer.

Background: Some patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) respond insufficiently to anti-VEGF treatment despite maximal monthly intravitreal injections. Their short-term response between injections was investigated for extent and visual prognosis. Subjects/Methods: Monocentric retrospective observational study. 45 eyes from 41 patients with refractory nAMD (who previously received at least 12 months of anti-VEGF treatment), evaluated by optical coherence tomography (OCT) in between monthly anti-VEGF injections. The fluid profile on OCT was evaluated before, 1 week after, and 1 month after an intravitreal injection, using central retinal thickness (CRT), manual measurements, and fluid specific volumetric measurements performed by an automated algorithm based on artificial intelligence. Results: A significant improvement was found at week 1 in terms of CRT (p< 0.0001), intraretinal (IRF) (p= 0.007), subretinal fluid (SRF) (p< 0.0001), and pigment epithelium detachment (PED) volume (p< 0.0001). Volumetric fluid measures revealed a >50% reduction at week 1 for both IRF and SRF for approximately two-thirds of eyes. Poorer short-term response was associated with larger exudative fluid amounts (IRF + SRF) (p= 0.003), larger PED (p= 0.007), lower visual acuity (p= 0.004) and less anatomic changes at treatment initiation (p< 0.0001). Univariate and multivariate analysis revealed that visual outcomes 4 and 5 years later was significantly worse with weaker short-term responsiveness (p= 0.005), with the presence of atrophy (p= 0.01) and larger PED volumes (p= 0.002). Conclusions: Incomplete responders to anti-VEGF showed a significant short-term response, identifiable at 1 week after injection, with rapid recurrence at 1 month. Weaker short-term responsiveness at 1 week was associated with poorer long term visual prognosis. These patients may need adjuvant treatment to improve their prognosis.

Bayesian networks are important Machine Learning models with many practical applications in, e.g., biomedicine and bioinformatics. The problem of Bayesian networks learning is $\mathcal {NP}$NP-hard and computationally challenging. In this article, we propose practical parallel exact algorithms to learn Bayesian networks from data. Our approach uses shared-memory task parallelism to realize exploration of dynamic programming lattices emerging in Bayesian networks structure learning, and introduces several optimization techniques to constraint and partition the underlying search space. Through extensive experimental testing we show that the resulting method is highly scalable, and it can be used to efficiently learn large globally optimal networks.

ABSTRACTIntroductionRetinal artery occlusion (RAO), often caused by a microembolus and resulting in inner retinal ischemia, could be considered as the retinal analog to cerebral stroke. Although several therapeutic targets have been suggested in animal models of retinal ischemia and several potential treatments have been evaluated on small series of patients, central retinal artery occlusion (CRAO) is still rarely treatable in clinical practice.Areas coveredHere, we review several animal models of RAO, including increased intraocular pressure, laser, vasoconstriction, embolization and clamp. We also review the pathogenic mechanisms that contribute to cell death cascades during ischemia, and the therapeutic strategies targeting these events. These strategies aim to restore blood flow by fibrinolysis, increase the oxygen or glucose supply, decrease the energy demands, restrict ionic leak fluxes or reduce the detrimental effects of glutamate, calcium and free radicals. The current literature suggests that tPA treatment could be effective for CRAO.Expert opinionEye care professionals must make a rapid and accurate diagnosis and immediately refer patients with acute retinal stroke to specialized centers. CRAO management should also be facilitated by developing local networks to encourage collaboration among ophthalmologists, retina specialists and stroke neurologists.

The authors studied the appearance of Type 1 macular neovascularization on late indocyanine green imaging in patients with age-related macular degeneration and central serous chorioretinopathy and observed it is less frequently associated with a late hyperfluorescent plaque in central serous chorioretinopathy. Late-phase hyperfluorescent plaques might provide us with information concerning the environment surrounding the neovascular membrane.

The COVID-19 pandemic contributed to both existential distress and the rapid adoption of telehealth-based services. Little is known about the feasibility of delivering group occupational therapy intervention to address purpose-related existential distress via face-to-face synchronous videoconferencing. The objective of the study was to evaluate the feasibility of providing a purpose in life renewal intervention to breast cancer survivors via Zoom. Descriptive data were collected on acceptability and implementability of the intervention. Limited-efficacy testing involved a prospective pretest–posttest study where participants with breast cancer (n= 15) received an eight-session purpose renewal group intervention plus a Zoom tutorial. Participants completed standardized measures of meaning and purpose at pretest and posttest, and a forced-choice Purpose Status Question. The purpose renewal intervention was acceptable and implementable via Zoom. Pre–post changes in purpose in life were not statistically significant. Group-based purpose in life renewal intervention is acceptable and implementable when delivered via Zoom.

Fournier's gangrene is a rare but life-threatening infection disease with high mortality rate. The quick Sepsis-related Organ Failure Assessment (qSOFA) is a new and simpler scoring system that may identify patients with suspected infection who are at greater risk for a poor outcome. The purpose of this study was to find out role of qSOFA in determining prognosis of Fournier's gangrene patients.

Rabbit sera raised by hyperimmunisation with mouse thymocyte subcellular fractions were strongly immunosuppressive when tested for their ability to prolong the life of mouse skin grafts. Antisera raised against spleen cell fractions were only mildly immunosuppressive, as were antisera prepared by less vigorous immunisation with thymocyte fractions. Different techniques for lysing the cells and fractionating the lysates were examined. A soluble fraction from mouse thymocytes gave rise to a moderately immunosuppressive antiserum. A subcellular fraction from human blood peripheral lymphocytes was used to immunise horses, and the antisera showed in vitro lymphocytotoxicity.

With the emergence of portable DNA sequencers, such as Oxford Nanopore Technology MinION, metagenomic DNA sequencing can be performed in real-time and directly in the field. However, because metagenomic DNA analysis tasks, e.g., classification, taxonomic units assignment, etc., are compute and memory intensive, and the available methods are designed for batch processing, the current metagenomic tools are not well suited for mobile devices. In this work, we propose a new memory-efficient approach to identify Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) in metagenomic DNA streams on mobile devices. Our method is based on finding connected components in overlap graphs constructed over a real-time stream of long DNA reads as produced by the MinION platform. We propose an efficient algorithm to maintain connected components when an overlap graph is streamed and show how redundant information can be removed from the stream by transitive closures. We also propose how our algorithms can be integrated into a larger DNA analysis pipeline tailored for mobile computing. Through experiments on simulated and real-world metagenomic data, executed on the actual mobile device, we demonstrate that our resulting solution is able to recover OTUs with high precision. Our experiments also demonstrate the compounding benefits of introducing feedback loops in the DNA analysis pipeline.

The approaches developed for studying the polarization of molecules and the dynamics of ions in dielectric materials are usually considered separately. The two effects are often believed to take place in different frequency ranges. The low frequency response is usually dominated by ionic migration, whereas the high frequency response is played by molecular polarization. The goal here is to clarify the interplay between free and bound charge densities and their influences on permittivity and impedance profiles by proposing a version of the Poisson–Nernst–Planck (PNP) model that allows to include the effect of a frequency-dependent (and thus not instantaneous) polarizability.

The foveal avascular zone is enlarged, and vascular density is decreased in affected eyes with Coats disease compared with fellow eyes, but no differences are seen between fellow and control eyes, confirming the unilateral nature of the disease.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a corresponding infodemic, emphasised by the use of social media as the primary communication channel during lockdowns. This study was aimed at finding the accounts that spread information in Italian on COVID-19, and how such information was propagated in the first Western country to face a lockdown. The presented analysis shows that, besides authoritative news media and institutional accounts, a relevant role was played by actors from the 'civil society', which included a popular virologist as well as a far-right activist and an unfamiliar account supporting anti-government and anti-immigration ideas. Quite surprisingly, this latter account achieved the highest number of retweets despite a relatively low number of followers. Also, it showed information propagation paths similar to health experts and institutions.

Damaged cells develop distinct patterns of Rho GTPases in their cortex around the wound. We find that dramatic changes in GTPase patterns ensue following very modest manipulations of GTPase activity. Computational modeling explains some, but not all of the observed patterning changes.

Introduction: At present there is no predictive value univocally associated with the success of chemotherapy. Biomarkers produced by ovarian cancer (HE4 and Ca125) could have a good prognostic significance. The aim of this study is to prove the ability of biomarkers to identify patients with the highest risk of non-optimal response during the chemotherapy, and to predict which patients will most likely develop recurrence of disease.Methods: We analyzed 78 patients with epithelial ovarian cancers who underwent surgery in the biennium 2016–2017. All the patients underwent chemotherapy after surgery or interval debulking surgery following neoadjuvant therapy. Serum levels of HE4 and Ca125 were measured at diagnosis and at each cycle of chemotherapy. We established the degree of response to the treatment by computed tomography scan, and the patients were followed up (median: 10 months). The parameters of progression-free survival and disease-free survival were related to serum levels of biomarkers.Results: Both CA125 and HE4 values became negative at the fourth cycle in the patients with good response to chemotherapy. HE4 increased earlier than Ca125. The parameters that best correlated with a long progression-free survival were: negativization of the marker after the third cycle of chemotherapy (HE4: odds ratio (OR) 5.5; Ca125: OR 9.1) and biomarker serum levels lower than the mean value in the affected population at the time of diagnosis (HE4: OR 3.4; Ca125: OR 3.7).Conclusions: We can conclude that the monitoring of HE4 and Ca125 during chemotherapy, especially at the third cycle, is recommended, because their variation is a good prognostic factor.

The purpose of this study was to help clients with ophidiophobia, which is excessive anxiety when confronted with snakes. Without proper attention, ophidiophobia endangers the lives of individuals. However, the disorder can be minimized using Ifdil Perceptual Light Technique. This study furthermore used 4 clients as respondents while scaling and observation were used to analyze data using a single subject research design A-B-A-B. The results of the study show that Ifdil Perceptual Light Technique reduces ophidiophobia.

This research was motivated by the phenomenon of students’ anxiety in the school, with the intervention purpose of innovating the quality of the counseling process, through a multidimensional model. Student anxiety affects their study performance in class, especially with the absence of proper attention; therefore, the multidimensional counseling tool is proposed to resolve this challenge. This study involved 7 students who have anxiety problems, and the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale was the instrument used for analyzing the data accessed on www.osf.io/7rd5w/, using a single-subject research design A-B-A and JASP. Therefore, the results identified multidimensional counseling as a tool capable of reducing student anxiety.

Purpose: Because of the expansion of the internet and Web 2.0 phenomenon, new challenges are emerging in the disclosure practises adopted by organisations in the public-sector. This study aims to examine local governments’ (LGOs) use of social media (SM) in disclosing environmental actions/plans/information as a new way to improve accountability to citizens to obtain organisational legitimacy and the related sentiment of citizens’ judgements. Design/methodology/approach: This paper analyses the content of 39 Italian LGOs’ public pages on Facebook. After the distinction between five classes of environmental issues (air, water, energy, waste and territory), an initial study is performed to detect possible sub-topics applying latent Dirichlet allocation. Having a list of posts related to specific environmental themes, the researchers computed the sentiment of citizens’ comments. To measure sentiment, two different approaches were implemented: one based on a lexicon dictionary and the other based on convolutional neural networks. Findings: Facebook is used by LGOs to disclose environmental issues, focussing on their main interest in obtaining organisational legitimacy, and the analysis shows an increasing impact of Web 2.0 in the direct interaction of LGOs with citizens. On the other hand, there is a clear divergence of interest on environmental topics between LGOs and citizens in a dialogic accountability framework. Practical implications: Sentiment analysis (SA) could be used by politicians, but also by managers/entrepreneurs in the business sector, to analyse stakeholders’ judgements of their communications/actions and plans on corporate social responsibility. This tool gives a result on time (i.e. not months or years after, as for the reporting system). It is cheaper than a survey and allows a first “photograph” of stakeholders’ sentiment. It can also be a useful tool for supporting, developing and improving environmental reporting. Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first to apply SA to environmental disclosure via SM in the public sphere. The study links modern techniques in natural language processing and machine learning with the important aspects of environmental communication between LGOs and citizens.

One of the main priorities of every individual is a comfortable life; however, there are situations that sometimes make this hard to achieve, and an example of this is a condition known as thanatophobia. This is usually experienced among humans and has to do with an excessive fear of death. People experiencing thanatophobia need the required intervention to live a normal life, and a major method of achieving this is by using neurolinguistic programming, which is an appropriate means of controlling the condition. This is a single-subject study involving 4 respondents with high and very high levels of thanatophobia, with the use of Depression Anxiety Stress Scale and observation sheets as the recording instruments. The data analysis was conducted through Wilcoxon signed-rank test and visual representation. The results showed that neurolinguistic programming has the ability to reduce the level of thanatophobia in humans.

Mike took Chester from the cage, gave him a hug,and introduced him to the kind man. "Chester, meetyour new owner, Mr. Borden". The training wasn't an easy task for Chester or Mr.Borden, but Chester was bright and eager to please,and Mr. Borden was patient and kind. He handed Katie acard with Chester's picture, explaining, "This cardidentifies Chester as a Certified Hearing Dog'. [Extracted from the article]

PurposeThe aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) therapy on choroidal neovascularisation (CNV) complicating central serous chorioretinopathy (CSC) using multimodal imaging, and to identify possible predictive factors of the treatment response.DesignRetrospective study.MethodsData of 27 eyes with CNV complicating CSC treated with anti-VEGF therapy (either ranibizumab or aflibercept) were reviewed. Response to anti-VEGF treatment was evaluated by change in visual acuity, intra/subretinal fluid modifications and CNV changes on optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA). Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to identify predictive factors for central retinal thickness (CRT) change and for the relative degree of treatment response (complete, incomplete or absent fluid reduction).ResultsCRT was significantly reduced at 32±15 days after 2.8±1.3 injections (p=0.0004) as was the subretinal fluid (p=0002). Complete fluid resorption was observed in 45% of cases. Best corrected visual acuity did not significantly improve (p=0.18). CNV area (p=0.09) and CNV flow area (p=0.07) did not significantly decrease. No changes in CNV pattern were noted. Univariate analysis identified greater CRT at baseline (p<0.0001), greater amount of subretinal fluid (p<0.0001), a shorter period of retinal fluid (p=0.04) and female gender (p=0.04) as predictors for CRT reduction. After multivariate analysis the factor of greater CRT at baseline (p<0.0001) proved independent. The degree of treatment response was dependent on the size of CNV surface (p=0.05) and flow area (p=0.05) on OCTA in the univariate analysis, and the latter independent after multivariate analysis. In addition, a shorter time period of retinal fluid appeared to play a role (p=0.01 multivariate, p=0.19 univariate).ConclusionThe anti-VEGF response was highly variable and often incomplete, suggesting that CNV was not solely responsible for the fluid accumulation. Predictive factors may guide indication for anti-VEGF in CNV associated with CSC.

Computational tools that translate modelling languages to a restricted natural language can improve end-user involvement in modelling. Templates are a popular approach for such a translation and are often paired with computational grammar rules to support grammatical complexity to obtain better quality sentences. There is no explicit specification of the relations used for the pairing of templates with grammar rules, so it is challenging to compare the latter templates' suitability for less-resourced languages, where grammar reuse is vital in reducing development effort. In order to enable such comparisons, we devise a model of pairing templates and rules, and assess its applicability by considering 54 existing systems for classification, and 16 of them in detail. Our classification shows that most grammar-infused template systems support detachable grammar rules and half of them introduce syntax trees for multilingualism or error checking. Furthermore, out of the 16 considered grammar-infused template systems, most do not currently support any of form of aggregation (63%) or the embedding of verb conjugation rules (81%); hence, if such features would be required, then they would need to be implemented from the ground up.