The return of anthrax. From bioterrorism to the zoonotic cluster of Sciacca district [Il ritorno del carbonchio. Dal bioterrorismo al focolaio zoonotico del distretto di Sciacca]

Anthrax is a disease caused by Bacillus anthracis which affects herbivorous animals. Humans acquire the disease incidentally by exposure to infected animals, animal products or spores on soil. The infection is still endemic in many regions in developing countries. In Italy animal clusters are very rare and human cases are exceptional. Bacillus anthrax is also a potential source for acts of bioterrorism. In the natural human infection, cutaneous anthrax is the most widespread, while the other two, pulmonary and gastrointestinal anthrax, are very rare forms. We describe the first case of human anthrax occurring in western Sicily in the last twenty years. The cutaneous lesion healed without si…

Irreversible acute renal failure and cholestatic hepatitis following therapy with indomethacin in an HIV-naive patient with pericarditis: a case report.

Reasoning about Goals in BDI Agents: the PRACTIONIST Framework

[Mediterranean spotted fever in paediatric and adult patients: two clinical aspects of the same disease].

Mediterranean Spotted Fever is an acute febrile disease caused by Rickettsia conorii and transmitted to humans by the brown dog tick Rhipicephalus sanguineus. Nearly 400 cases are reported every year in Sicily, mainly from June to September. The aim of this study is to compare the clinical and laboratory features of two different groups of patients , one of adults and one of children. The analysis included all adult patients with MSF diagnosed at the Institute of Infectious Diseases, Paolo Giaccone University Polyclinic in Palermo, during the period January 2007- August 2010 and all the children diagnosed with MSF at the G. Di Cristina Children Hospital in Palermo during the period January …

A BDI agent system for credit risk assessment based on fuzzy logic

Credit risk has always been an important issue for banks and other financial intermediaries. A reliable and consistent computing system is necessary to simplify the decision making process in uncertain domains such as the assessment of credit risk. In recent years fuzzy logic techniques have been in their wide-ranging use in modeling of uncertainties, vagueness, impreciseness and the human thought process. Therefore in this paper we present a fuzzy logic based intelligent system for the assessment of credit risk. It aims at efficiently and intelligently managing the process, handling its complexity, and monitoring large amounts of dynamic information in a distributed way, by using a society…