Probabilistic tsunami forecasting for early warning

Tsunami warning centres face the challenging task of rapidly forecasting tsunami threat immediately after an earthquake, when there is high uncertainty due to data deficiency. Here we introduce Probabilistic Tsunami Forecasting (PTF) for tsunami early warning. PTF explicitly treats data- and forecast-uncertainties, enabling alert level definitions according to any predefined level of conservatism, which is connected to the average balance of missed-vs-false-alarms. Impact forecasts and resulting recommendations become progressively less uncertain as new data become available. Here we report an implementation for near-source early warning and test it systematically by hindcasting the great 2010 M8.8 Maule (Chile) and the well-studied 2003 M6.8 Zemmouri-Boumerdes (Algeria) tsunamis, as well as all the Mediterranean earthquakes that triggered alert messages at the Italian Tsunami Warning Centre since its inception in 2015, demonstrating forecasting accuracy over a wide range of magnitudes and earthquake types.

Insideout project: Using big data and machine learning for prevention in psychiatry

Introduction

Social Media might represent an amazing and valuable source of information on mental health and well-being. Several researches revealed that adolescents aged 13 to 17 years old go “online” daily or stay online “almost constantly”.

Objectives

The aim of this project is to identify distress in pre-clinical stages using Social media screening methods. The system can be modelled to centre on different several health-related topics.

Methods

We created a digital system able to analyse scripts written by adolescents on Twitter. InsideOut works using machine learning techniques and computational linguistic items to catch significant and sense of written messages and it improves its performances with iterations. The system is able to automatically identify semantic information relevant to different topics: in this case “distress in teenagers”.

Results

The task of our system is considered correct when it is able to identify triples of Life Event, Sentiment and Experience of a tweet in agreement with the Gold Standard established among the annotators. The system has around 70% of accuracy in identifying triples. The analysis has been carried out both in Italian and English collecting over 4 million Italian tweets and 30 million English tweets. Comparative analysis with self-report questionnaires show that tweet analysis is able to suggest similar statistics.

Conclusions

This study analyzed contents of messages posted on Social Media Twitter meta-dating them with psychological and health-related information. Using InsideOut, we can plan clinical intervention in district and regions where high levels of uneasiness are revealed.

Myomectomy during the first and second trimester of pregnancy

Myomectomy was performed on five symptomatic women in the first and second trimester of pregnancy who were resistant to medical therapy. All the patients ended theirs pregnancies without complications. Three patients of five (60%) underwent spontaneous delivery while the other two patients (40%) had cesarean section. Myomectomy during pregnancy, when necessary, is proving highly effective today.

Thrombosis associated with a large uterine myoma: case report

A case of a 49-year-old woman who presented with a large uterine myoma weighing 5000 g and was affected by unilateral deep vein thrombosis of the left leg and pulmonary embolism is presented. After anticoagulant therapy she successfully underwent laparotomic hyterectomy.

[A case of double ectopic pregnancy dealed with a laparoscopic management]

Uterine horn pregnancy is a very rare condition and is associate with a high rate of maternal morbidity and mortality. The standard treatment is laparotomy.

CASE

A 40-year-old woman, previosly undegone laparotomy surgery for extrauterine pregnancy, was admitted to hospital "Casa di Cura Malzoni" because ectopic pregnancy was diagnosed. The patient was treated with laparoscopic surgery.

[A review of 445 cases of laparoscopic hysterectomy: benefits and outcome]

Hysterectomy is a major procedure indicated for women with gynaecologic pathologies. After reporting the first laparoscopic hysterectomy (Reich 1989), this technique has recently been considered as a safe and efficient alternative to traditional abdominal hysterectomy in the management of benign uterine pathologies when vaginal route is contraindicated. The laparoscopic approach should not be held to compete with vaginal hysterectomy. From 1995 to 2001 in our institute, the proportion of laparoscopic hysterectomy has increased and laparotomic hysterectomy has decreased. Between January 1999 and January 2001 we carried out 445 total laparoscopic hysterectomies. There were 5 laparotomy conversions for large uterus. The average haemoglobin drop was 1,36 g/dl. Median operative time was 95 +/- 27 min. The mean in postoperative stay was 2.7 +/- 0.8 gg. The postoperative complications were minimal. Laparoscopic approach is less painful, is associated to less blood loss, shorter hospital stay, more rapid recovery and a better assumption by affected women. Some disadvantages are reported too, such as larger operating time, high rate of complication and experience required for performing laparoscopy including a learning curve. A training period is necessary to standardize the operating procedure, to put in place methods of avoiding complication and to reach a plateau of surgical skill. The purpose of this study was to show the role of total laparoscopic hysterectomy and how it can be performed safely with a minimal morbidity after a period of training in which we worked out shrewdness to get a standardized technique with the most effective outcome.

[Hyperemesis gravidarum--etiology and treatment]

Hyperemesis gravidarum is a common pathology encountered by the obstetrician in 0.1-2% of all pregnancies. The purpose of our review, along with other literature, is to report general outline of the syndrome, with etiology, complications and some guidelines about conventional and newer therapy.

[Laparoscopically assisted vaginal hysterectomy Gasless. Retrospective study in patients with uterine fibroids]

PURPOSE

To evaluate the feasibility to perform laparoscopically assisted vaginal hysterectomy in patients who were not suitable for vaginal hysterectomy.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

LAVH Gasless was carried out on 31 patients with uterine fibroids. Uterine weight ranged of 420-800 gr.

RESULTS

There were 2 laparotomy conversion (6%) for uterus 800 gr; median operating time was 79 +/- 18 minutes (range 75-89); the average haemoglobin drop was 1.7 +/- 0.9 g/dl; the mean in postoperative stay was 3.7 +/- 0.7 days (range 3-5). Febrile morbidity > 38 degrees C were found in 3 cases.

CONCLUSIONS

Laparoscopic assistance has advantages in performing transection of round and infundibolo-pelvic ligaments in vaginal steps and in controlling post-operative blood loss.

[Recovery of cervical portio epithelial integrity using radiofrequency: preliminary results]

PURPOSE

The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of the radiosurgical procedure (high frequency, filtered wave-form energy) in the management of benign lesions of uterine cervix.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

In a prospective study a radiothermal cautery treatment by micro-needle was performed to 168 women, attending a gynecology office, with an abnormal cervical cytology, istology and with a colposcopic diagnosis of benign cervical lesions with a total visibility of squamous columnar junction and no extended lesion of cervical canal. Cytology and colposcopy were used to follow up after treatment 3-4 months and 10-12 months after the procedure.

RESULTS

130 women (77.6%) obtained a complete recovery at the first follow-up. Partial treatment failure, defined as the persistence or recurrence of a small cervical lesion after three months, was observed in 19 women (18.2%) but after a second treatment in the 100% we obtained a complete recovery with a well visible squamous columnar junction. Radiothermal cautery procedure was advantageous with a shorter duration of surgery, lower cost, reduced operation bleeding, no need for pain-relieving medication and shorter duration of postoperative disability.

CONCLUSIONS

This surgical procedure resulted an excellent technique to obtain a complete epithelial recovery of uterine cervix, easy and cheap to be executed in a outpatient office.

Lipid anomaly in a child with partial duplication 3p

The authors report a case regarding a 7-year-old girl affected by short height, bone growth delay, lipidic alterations (hypercholesterolemia, hypertriglyceridemia and high apolipoprotein B values) and by a partial duplication of the short arm of the third chromosome: 46,XX, dup(3)(p26-pter). This chromosomal alteration appears "de novo", as the parent's karyotypes are normal and none of the patient's next of kin showed evidence of lipidic anomalies. The patient's short height and slight frontal bossing were the only features that could be described as typical of the dup3p syndrome.