Archivio istituzionale della ricerca - Università dell'Insubria
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QUALCHE OSSERVAZIONE SU UN GRUPPO DI SCULTURE DEL PRIMO DUECENTO NELLA BASILICA DI SANT’ANDREA A VERCELLI
No full textTailoring Adaptive-Zero-Shot Retrieval and Probabilistic Modelling for Psychometric Data
No full textLikert scales are widely used tools in psychology, employed to quantify individuals' feelings, attitudes, and perceptions through structured questionnaires. However, administering these questionnaires can be time-consuming and resource-intensive, limiting their practicality in fast-paced mental health screening scenarios. This study presents a novel approach to predict Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) scores using social media posts. Our method introduces two key innovations: an adaptive strategy for identifying relevant social media content according to each survey question (aka item) and a probabilistic extension of BERT to predict item-specific scores. The results show that our implemented approach is particularly accurate in correctly predicting responses to BDI-II questionnaire items compared to the considered benchmarks
Ecomuseums: projects for community-based and sustainable territorial development
No full textThe chapter explores ecomuseums as instruments for sustainable and community-based territorial development, focusing on their origins, conceptual evolution, and the legal framework for the protection of tangible and intangible cultural heritage at national and international levels. It examines management models and funding mechanisms, with particular emphasis on regional legislation in Italy, and presents the Ecomuseum of Val Sanagra (Como) as a case study. By promoting the preservation and transmission of cultural, natural, and social heritage, ecomuseums act as catalysts for sustainable development and civic participation, while facing ongoing challenges related to funding stability and generational renewal
Abstracts 1061: “Biophysical characterization of pathological GAT1 (SLC6A1) A288V and S295L mutants associated with SLC6A1-neurodevelopmental disorders”.
No full textModified Mediterranean diet effects on Parkinson’s disease (MED-PARK): a single-centre randomised controlled trial protocol
No full textIntroduction Only symptomatic treatments are available for patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD), the second most common chronic neurodegenerative disease worldwide, and it is therefore imperative to identify disease-modifying interventions that can alter the course of the disease. Epidemiological studies in PD patients suggest that a Mediterranean diet is associated with better motor and non-motor symptoms, slower progression and reduced mortality. Few interventional studies, however, investigated the relationship between diet and PD severity and progression. This study aims to determine whether a Mediterranean nutritional intervention can benefit motor and non-motor symptoms experienced by PD patients. As a secondary aim, the effects of a modified Mediterranean diet on the immune system, metabolomics and microbiome will also be assessed. Methods and analysis This is an interventional, non-pharmacological, superiority, randomised, controlled, single-centre, masked study with two parallel groups to evaluate the efficacy and safety of a modified Mediterranean diet on motor and non-motor patient-reported symptoms. PD patients meeting inclusion criteria will be enrolled (44 participants, aged between 40 years and 85 years), block-randomised and split into two parallel arms to either maintain their usual diet (control) or follow a modified Mediterranean diet for 6months (intervention). Patient-reported symptomatology is the primary outcome, measured through the Movement Disorders Society Unified PD Rating Scale (MDS-UPDRS) I+II score. Secondary outcomes include the immunophenotype of circulating cells of the adaptive immune system, the nasal and faecal microbiome composition, faecal and urinary metabolites and the measurement of inflammatory and metabolic markers. Disease severity (MDS-UPDRS III), non-motor symptomatology (Non-Motor Symptoms Scale), participant’s well-being (36-Item Short Form Health Survey), gastrointestinal symptomatology (Gastrointestinal Symptom Rating Scale and the Patient Assessment of Constipation Quality of Life) and intensity of dopaminergic replacement therapy (levodopa equivalents) will also be assessed. Evaluations will be conducted before the start and at the end of the intervention. Ethics and dissemination The Ethical Committee ‘Comitato Etico Territoriale Lombardia 5’ first approved this study on 17 September 2024 Prot. Nr. 420/24. Findings will be disseminated via peer-reviewed research papers and conference presentations
Mycobacterium chimaera: a case report from Italy
No full textMycobacterium chimaera is an environmental non-tuberculous mycobacterium belonging to Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC). It has been widely known to be associated with disseminated infection after cardiac surgery, related to heater-cooler units used during these procedures. Although M. chimaera seems to be a less virulent species compared to M. avium and M. intracellulare among MAC, several cases of M. chimaera lung infections have been reported in settings of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cystic fibrosis, bronchiectasis, malignancy, or immunosuppression. Here, we present an Italian case report in association with newly diagnosed COPD
Rethinking psychometrics through LLMs: how item semantics shape measurement and prediction in psychological questionnaires
No full textPsychological questionnaires are typically designed to measure latent constructs by asking respondents a series of semantically related questions. But what if these semantic relationships, rather than reflecting only the underlying construct, also impose their own structure on the data we collect? In other words, to what extent is what we “measure” in questionnaires shaped a priori by item semantics rather than revealed solely a posteriori through empirical correlations? To examine this epistemological question, we propose LLMs Psychometrics, a novel paradigm that harness LLMs to investigate how the semantic structure of questionnaire items influences psychometric outcomes. We hypothesize that the correlations among items partly mirror their linguistic similarity, such that LLMs can predict these correlations-even in the absence of empirical data. To test this, we compared actual correlation matrices from established instruments—the Big 5 Personality (Big 5) and Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-42)—with the semantic similarity structures computed by LLMs. Among the top 3 semantically similar items, the empirically most correlated item was found in 95% of DASS cases and 82% of Big 5 cases. Building on this, we developed PsychoLLM, a neural proof-of-concept architecture, which uses item semantics to predict responses to new items–demonstrated with the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) and Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). PsychoLLM achieved 70% accuracy when predicting one scale’s responses from the other, enabling new analyses based on semantic relationships. This work underscores an important epistemological implication for psychometrics: item semantics may influence measurement outcomes to varying degrees, more extensively than previously assumed. By leveraging LLMs to expose this a priori semantic structure, researchers can refine questionnaire design, assess data quality, and expand interpretive possibilities, ultimately inviting a reexamination of “what” and “how” we truly measure in psychology
Clinical needs and pathology's answers in neuroendocrine neoplasms of the lung
No full textLung neuroendocrine neoplasms (NENs) make up a variegated ensemble of malignancies encompassing typical carcinoid (TC) and atypical carcinoid (AC). These are low to intermediate grade neuroendocrine tumors (NETs), and large cell neuroendocrine carcinoma (LCNEC) and small cell lung carcinoma (SCLC), which are full-fledged high-grade neuroendocrine carcinomas (NECs) showing similar clinical outcomes. Through a peer interaction between oncologist and pathologist, we herein constructed a practical approach based on questioning and answering regarding 8 practical issues aimed to provide shared solutions for clinical decision-making. These issues were itemized as sequential steps guided by clinical reasoning and concerned differential diagnosis, combined subtypes, primary and metastatic tumors, small diagnostic material, predictive biomarkers, tumor staging and, lastly, standardizing terminology. This study takes advantage of the close interaction between oncologists and pathologists as a tool to better delineate the decision-making on lung NENs
