Assessment of an expert system for the automated validation of electrophoretic profiles.

BACKGROUND: The Core-lab of the Greater Romagna Area Hub Laboratory carries out about 250,000 capillary electrophoresis assays/year. The huge workload demands the assessing of an Experimental Expert System (EES) capable to sort out the negative samples. METHODS: Capillarys 2 analyzer has been employed coupled with an EES (based on five simple rules) integrated with the electrophoretic test management software PhoresisCore for assessing the entire workload of a week (5,683 samples). The classification was compared with that of two expert laboratorians. RESULTS: The expert system automatically classified 2974 profiles as negative and no positive samples were erroneously classified as negative (negative predictive value: 100%). CONCLUSIONS: The EES sensitivity was 100% and the FTE required for the validation was reduced from 1.26 to 0.63. The EES could be easily implemented in routine activity embedded in a middleware or directly running in the analyzer improving the workflow.

Spatial patterns of soil pathogens in declining Mediterranean forests: implications for tree species regeneration.

Soil-borne pathogens are a key component of the belowground community because of the significance of their ecological and socio-economic impacts. However, very little is known about the complexity of their distribution patterns in natural systems. Here, we explored the patterns, causes and ecological consequences of spatial variability in pathogen abundance in Mediterranean forests affected by oak decline. We used spatially explicit neighborhood models to predict the abundance of soil-borne pathogen species (Phytophthora cinnamomi, Pythium spiculum and Pythium spp.) as a function of local abiotic conditions (soil texture) and the characteristics of the tree and shrub neighborhoods (species composition, size and health status). The implications of pathogen abundance for tree seedling performance were explored by conducting a sowing experiment in the same locations in which pathogen abundance was quantified. Pathogen abundance in the forest soil was not randomly distributed, but exhibited spatially predictable patterns influenced by both abiotic and, particularly, biotic factors (tree and shrub species). Pathogen abundance reduced seedling emergence and survival, but not in all sites or tree species. Our findings suggest that heterogeneous spatial patterns of pathogen abundance at fine spatial scale can be important for the dynamics and restoration of declining Mediterranean forests.

Theatre Is a Valid Add-On Therapeutic Intervention for Emotional Rehabilitation of Parkinson's Disease Patients.

Conventional medical treatments of Parkinson's disease (PD) are effective on motor disturbances but may have little impact on nonmotor symptoms, especially psychiatric ones. Thus, even when motor symptomatology improves, patients might experience deterioration in their quality of life. We have shown that 3 years of active theatre is a valid complementary intervention for PD as it significantly improves the well-being of patients in comparison to patients undergoing conventional physiotherapy. Our aim was to replicate these findings while improving the efficacy of the treatment. We ran a single-blinded pilot study lasting 15 months on 24 subjects with moderate idiopathic PD. 12 were assigned to a theatre program in which patients underwent "emotional" training. The other 12 underwent group physiotherapy. Patients were evaluated at the beginning and at the end of their treatments, using a battery of eight clinical and five neuropsychological scales. We found that the emotional theatre training improved the emotional well-being of patients, whereas physiotherapy did not. Interestingly, neither of the groups showed improvements in either motor symptoms or cognitive abilities tested by the neuropsychological battery. We confirmed that theatre therapy might be helpful in improving emotional well-being in PD.