ApreciseKUre is a multi-purpose digital platform facilitating data collection, integration and analysis for patients affected by Alkaptonuria (AKU), an ultra-rare autosomal recessive genetic disease. It includes genetic, biochemical, histopathological, clinical, therapeutic resources and quality of life scores that can be shared among registered researchers and clinicians in order to create a Precision Medicine Ecosystem (PME). The combination of machine learning application to analyse and re-interpret data available in the ApreciseKUre shows the potential direct benefits to achieve patient stratification and the consequent tailoring of care and treatments to a specific subgroup of patients. In this study, we have developed a tool able to investigate the most suitable treatment for AKU patients in accordance with their Quality of Life scores, which indicates changes in health status before/after the assumption of a specific class of drugs. This fact highlights the necessity of development of patient databases for rare diseases, like ApreciseKUre. We believe this is not limited to the study of AKU, but it represents a proof of principle study that could be applied to other rare diseases, allowing data management, analysis, and interpretation.
Abstract. The 1783 Scilla landslide–tsunami (Calabria, southern Italy) is a well-studied
event that caused more than 1500 fatalities on the beaches close to the
town. This paper complements a previous work that was based on numerical
simulations and was focused on the very local effects of the tsunami in
Scilla. In this study we extend the computational domain to cover a wider
portion of western Calabria and northeastern Sicily, including the western
side of the Straits of Messina. This investigation focuses on Capo Peloro
area (the easternmost cape of Sicily), where the highest tsunami effects
outside Scilla were reported. Important tsunami observations, such as the
wave height reaching 6 m at Torre degli Inglesi and flooding that reached
over 600 m inland, have been successfully modeled but only by means of a
high-resolution (10 m) topo-bathymetric grid, since coarser grids were
inadequate for the purpose. Interestingly, the inundation of the small lake
of Pantano Piccolo could not be reproduced by using today's coastal
morphology, since a coastal dune now acts as a barrier against tsunamis.
Historical analysis suggests that this dune was not in place at the time of
the tsunami occurred and that a ground depression extending from the lake
to the northern coast is a remnant of an ancient channel that was used as
a pathway in Roman times. The removal of such an obstacle and the remodeling of
the coeval morphology allows the simulations to reproduce the tsunami
penetration up to the lake, thus supporting the hypothesis that the
1783 tsunami entered the lake following the Roman channel track. A further
result of this study is that the computed regional tsunami propagation
pattern provides a useful hint for assessing tsunami hazards in the Straits of Messina area, which is one of the most exposed areas to tsunami threats in Italy
and in the Mediterranean Sea overall.
Abstract. The 1783 Scilla tsunami, induced by a coastal landslide occurring during an intense seismic sequence in Calabria (South Italy), was one of the most lethal ever observed in Italy. It caused more than 1500 fatalities, most of which on the 10 beach close to the town where people gathered to escape earthquake shaking. In this paper, complementing a previous work (Zaniboni et al., 2016) focusing on the very local tsunami effects in the town of Scilla, we study the tsunami impact on the Calabria and Sicily coasts out of Scilla. To this purpose we take into account the same landslide geometry considered in the previous study and perform three tsunami simulations, one embracing a larger region with a 50-m computational grid, and two covering the specific area of Capo Peloro, in Sicily, facing Scilla on the western side of the Messina Straits, with even 15 higher resolution (10 m mesh). Numerical results show a very good agreement with the historical observations in Capo Peloro. Moreover, the resulting global tsunami inundation pattern provides a useful hint for tsunami hazard assessment in the Messina Straits area, which is known to be one of the most exposed to tsunami threat in Italy and in the Mediterranean Sea.
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