Evaluation of latent links between irritable bowel syndrome and sleep quality

AIM:To examine the links between quality of sleep and the severity of intestinal symptoms in irritable bow-el syndrome(IBS).METHODS:One hundred and forty-two outpatients(110female,32 male)who met the Rome Ⅲ criteria for IBS with no psychiatric comorbidity were consecutively en-rolled in this study.Data on age,body mass index(BMI),and a set of life-habit variables were recorded,and IBS symptoms and sleep quality were evaluated using the questionnaires IBS Symptom Severity Score(IBS-SSS)and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index(PSQI).The associa-tion between severity of IBS and sleep disturbances was evaluated by comparing the global IBS-SSS and PSQI score(Pearson's correlation and Fisher's exact test)and then analyzing the individual items of the IBS-SSS and PSQI questionnaires by a unitary bowel-sleep model based on item response theory(IRT).RESULTS:IBS-SSS ranged from mild to severe(120-470).The global PSQI score ranged from 1 to 17(median 5),and 60 patients were found to be poor sleepers(PSQI>5).The correlation between the global IBS-SSS and PSQI score indicated a weak association(r=0.2 and 95% CI:-0.03 to 0.35,P<0.05),which becomes stronger using our unitary model.Indeed,the IBS and sleep disturbances severities,estimated as latent variables,resulted significantly high intra-subject cor-relation(posterior mean of r=0.45 and 95% CI:0.17 to 0.70,P<0.05).Moreover,the correlations between patient features(age,sex,BMI,daily coffee and alcohol intake)and IBS and sleep disturbances were also ana-lyzed through our unitary model.Age was a signif icant regressor,with patients≤50 years old showing more severe bowel disturbances(posterior mean=-0.38,P<0.05)and less severe sleep disturbances(posterior mean=0.49,P<0.05)than older patients.Higher daily coffee intake was correlated with a lower sever-ity of bowel disturbances(posterior mean=-0.31,P<0.05).Sex(female)and daily alcohol intake(modest)were correlated with less severe sleep disturbances.CONCLUSION:The unitary bowel-sleep model based on IRT revealed a strong positive correlation between the severity of IBS symptoms and sleep disturbances.

Exploring the Potentialities of Automatic Extraction of University Webometric Information

Purpose:The main objective of this work is to show the potentialities of recently developed approaches for automatic knowledge extraction directly from the universities’websites.The information automatically extracted can be potentially updated with a frequency higher than once per year,and be safe from manipulations or misinterpretations.Moreover,this approach allows us flexibility in collecting indicators about the efficiency of universities’websites and their effectiveness in disseminating key contents.These new indicators can complement traditional indicators of scientific research(e.g.number of articles and number of citations)and teaching(e.g.number of students and graduates)by introducing further dimensions to allow new insights for“profiling”the analyzed universities.Design/methodology/approach:Webometrics relies on web mining methods and techniques to perform quantitative analyses of the web.This study implements an advanced application of the webometric approach,exploiting all the three categories of web mining:web content mining;web structure mining;web usage mining.The information to compute our indicators has been extracted from the universities’websites by using web scraping and text mining techniques.The scraped information has been stored in a NoSQL DB according to a semistructured form to allow for retrieving information efficiently by text mining techniques.This provides increased flexibility in the design of new indicators,opening the door to new types of analyses.Some data have also been collected by means of batch interrogations of search engines(Bing,www.bing.com)or from a leading provider of Web analytics(SimilarWeb,http://www.similarweb.com).The information extracted from the Web has been combined with the University structural information taken from the European Tertiary Education Register(https://eter.joanneum.at/#/home),a database collecting information on Higher Education Institutions(HEIs)at European level.All the above was used to perform a clusterization of 79 Italian universities based on structural and digital indicators.Findings:The main findings of this study concern the evaluation of the potential in digitalization of universities,in particular by presenting techniques for the automatic extraction of information from the web to build indicators of quality and impact of universities’websites.These indicators can complement traditional indicators and can be used to identify groups of universities with common features using clustering techniques working with the above indicators.Research limitations:The results reported in this study refers to Italian universities only,but the approach could be extended to other university systems abroad.Practical implications:The approach proposed in this study and its illustration on Italian universities show the usefulness of recently introduced automatic data extraction and web scraping approaches and its practical relevance for characterizing and profiling the activities of universities on the basis of their websites.The approach could be applied to other university systems.Originality/value:This work applies for the first time to university websites some recently introduced techniques for automatic knowledge extraction based on web scraping,optical character recognition and nontrivial text mining operations(Bruni&Bianchi,2020).

Mortality associated with hepatitis C and hepatitis B virus infection: A nationwide study on multiple causes of death data

To analyze mortality associated with hepatitis C virus (HCV) and hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection in Italy.METHODSDeath certificates mentioning either HBV or HCV infection were retrieved from the Italian National Cause of Death Register for the years 2011-2013. Mortality rates and proportional mortality (percentage of deaths with mention of HCV/HBV among all registered deaths) were computed by gender and age class. The geographical variability in HCV-related mortality rates was investigated by directly age-standardized rates (European standard population). Proportional mortality for HCV and HBV among subjects aged 20-59 years was assessed in the native population and in different immigrant groups.RESULTSHCV infection was mentioned in 1.6% (n = 27730) and HBV infection in 0.2% (n = 3838) of all deaths among subjects aged ≥ 20 years. Mortality rates associated with HCV infection increased exponentially with age in both genders, with a male to female ratio close to unity among the elderly; a further peak was observed in the 50-54 year age group especially among male subjects. HCV-related mortality rates were higher in Southern Italy among elderly people (45/100000 in subjects aged 60-79 and 125/100000 in subjects aged ≥ 80 years), and in North-Western Italy among middle-aged subjects (9/100000 in the 40-59 year age group). Proportional mortality was higher among Italian citizens and North African immigrants for HCV, and among Sub-Saharan African and Asian immigrants for HBV.CONCLUSIONPopulation ageing, immigration, and new therapeutic approaches are shaping the epidemiology of virus-related chronic liver disease. In spite of limits due to the incomplete reporting and misclassification of the etiology of liver disease, mortality data represent an additional source of information for surveillance.

A Tailor-made Data Quality Approach for Higher Educational Data

Purpose: This paper relates the definition of data quality procedures for knowledge organizations such as Higher Education Institutions. The main purpose is to present the flexible approach developed for monitoring the data quality of the European Tertiary Education Register(ETER) database, illustrating its functioning and highlighting the main challenges that still have to be faced in this domain.Design/methodology/approach: The proposed data quality methodology is based on two kinds of checks, one to assess the consistency of cross-sectional data and the other to evaluate the stability of multiannual data. This methodology has an operational and empirical orientation. This means that the proposed checks do not assume any theoretical distribution for the determination of the threshold parameters that identify potential outliers, inconsistencies, and errors in the data. Findings: We show that the proposed cross-sectional checks and multiannual checks are helpful to identify outliers, extreme observations and to detect ontological inconsistencies not described in the available meta-data. For this reason, they may be a useful complement to integrate the processing of the available information.Research limitations: The coverage of the study is limited to European Higher Education Institutions. The cross-sectional and multiannual checks are not yet completely integrated.Practical implications: The consideration of the quality of the available data and information is important to enhance data quality-aware empirical investigations, highlighting problems, and areas where to invest for improving the coverage and interoperability of data in future data collection initiatives.Originality/value: The data-driven quality checks proposed in this paper may be useful as a reference for building and monitoring the data quality of new databases or of existing databases available for other countries or systems characterized by high heterogeneity and complexity of the units of analysis without relying on pre-specified theoretical distributions.

意大利政府对残疾人的优惠政策及工法架构(英文)

The most important reference in Italian legislation concerning interventions in favour of people with disabilities came about with Law 104 from February 5th 1992 in which the most important rights for disabled people were established. This law led to a new vision,the person with disabilities is no longer seen only a subject needing help but as a person who has the right to live his life in the best possible way that his condition allows him to and thus,it is society's duty and that of the Government,to do everything possible to remove invalidating causes,to promote a disabled person's autonomy and to realise his best social integration possible. To implement what is foreseen by this law it was necessary to activate different important interventions,two of which are very significant:the realisation of Guidelines from the Ministry of Health on rehabilitation activities in which the aims are defined on how rehabilitation should be implemented and how it should be organised on a national level and at a community level. Law 68 from March 12th 1999 decreed the full rights of people with disability to be integrated into the workplace. In the article we will also report some significant data concerning the results of the applications of the law.