Archivio istituzionale della ricerca - Università dell'Insubria
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Longitudinal evaluation of the oral conditions of individuals with intellectual disabilities attending special Olympics events in Italy
No full textThe present study aimed to evaluate longitudinally the oral conditions of athletes with intellectual disabilities who participated in at least 2 Italian editions of Special Olympics with a minimum follow-up of 5 (to 10) years. Data concerning home oral hygiene, oral signs and symptoms were recorded, and oral hygiene instructions were provided. The data of the first timepoint (t0) were compared with those from the second one (t1). Out of 2081 visits, 114 athletes met the inclusion criteria (mean age 26.8 years at t0 and 33.4 at t1). Toothbrushing once or more a day was reported by 83.3% of the sample at t0 and 95.6% at t1 (p < 0.05), while gingival signs in 47.5% at t0 and 52.5% at t1, respectively. The % of subjects with decayed, missing, filled and sealed teeth increased between t0 and t1. Oral lesions were observed more frequently at t1 (p < 0.05). A significant difference emerged for the mean missing (1.7 at t0 vs. 2.9 at t1) and filled teeth (2.9 at t0 vs. 3.7 at t1) values and DMFT index (5.7 at t0 vs. 7.6 at t1). A substantial stability/improvement concerning some indicators of general, oral, and dental health was observed in the studied population
Perceptual-vision training as a strategy for healthy aging in adults with intellectual disability: a study protocol
Get PDFAging leads to changes in motor-cognitive performance. Despite the importance of physical activity for healthy aging and the need for health promotion interventions in individuals with intellectual disability (ID), there is a lack of empirically strategies for promoting health in adults with ID. Therefore, we are conducting a clinical trial (NCT06628999 on clinicaltrials.gov) to investigate a strategy for promoting healthy aging by targeting physical and cognitive domains in ID individuals. The present work aims to provide a detailed account of the study protocol of the proposed trial to promote transparency and dissemination of the ongoing research. Specifically, this project will study the effect of a vision training program on cognitive performance and physical fitness in adults with ID. A secondary aim is to examine the association between mental and physical performance outcomes. Participants will be randomly allocated into a vision training group (VT, n = 28), a vision training-detraining group (VTD, n = 28), and a control group (C, n = 28). During the first 8 weeks, the VT and VTD groups will follow the same training protocol (based on vision oculomotor exercises combined with postural control exercises). From weeks 9 to 16, the VT group will continue the training protocol, whereas the VTD group will abstain from training (detraining). Cognitive performance and physical fitness will be assessed at baseline, mid- and post-training intervention. Overall, a vision training program can positively impact various aspects of life for individuals with ID promoting autonomy, and social integration to counteract the aging process
Mechanistic insights into water-stabilized dye-neurotransmitter intermolecular complexes in zeolite channels
No full textDye-zeolite nanomaterials are promising candidates for neurotransmitter detection, however, their sensing mechanism has remained speculative. Using ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulations, we demonstrate that water molecules play a critical role in stabilizing complexes formed between the dicationic dye and cationic neurotransmitters within the zeolite framework. This interaction exhibits binding motifs akin to those in protein-ligand complexes rather than conventional host-guest systems. Furthermore, the presence of water significantly modulates the spectroscopic properties of the nanosensor
Le piattaforme di crowdfunding: dalla partecipazione al mercato
No full textIl saggio analizza l’evoluzione dell’investment crowdfunding dal punto di vista normativo con particolare riferimento ai profili partecipativi che caratterizzavano fortemente il fenomeno nelle sue origini e che possono tornare ad essere rilevanti grazie al ricorso alle nuove tecnologie, quali la DLT
HERO: From High-dimensional network traffic to zERO-Day attack detection
Get PDFRecent trends in zero-day attack (ZdA) detection use collective anomaly detection to give insights on out-of-distribution anomalies in a zero-shot fashion. Among these, existing frameworks propose the use of specialised labelling strategies to mimic a step-wise abstract anomaly detection algorithm that generalise ZdA-detection over low-dimensional traffic-flow statistics. To enlarge such applicative scenarios, this paper proposes HERO, which is compatible with High-dimensional raw-network traffic captures when performing zERO-day attack detection. To reach convergence over such a high-dimensional and noisy input space, HERO decouples the representation task and the correspondent gradient updates from the discriminative task, following the neural algorithmic reasoning blueprint. Specifically, a neural processor is first trained on the discriminative task using synthetic data, and the weights are then frozen. A second training phase successfully optimises the encoding and decoding networks using raw-traffic captures and the algorithmically-aligned processor. Experiments with well-known intrusion detection datasets demonstrate the crucial advantage of using a two-stage training framework to achieve convergence. To the best of the authors' knowledge, HERO is the first deep learning-based instrument that performs collective anomaly detection and categorisation over raw network traffic on a zero-shot basis, i.e., without using labels
Short-term forecasting with optimal transport
No full textIn this article, we leverage Optimal Transport theory to propose a novel nowcasting and short-term forecasting framework. Our methodology is designed to generate nowcasts for low-frequency variables by filling missing entries with values that optimally preserve the data distribution. To tackle this challenge, we introduce a loss function which is rooted in the Sinkhorn divergence. This loss function is formulated to embody the intuitive concept that two batches from the same dataset should exhibit identical distributions. We first showcase the performance of our approach as a stand-alone non-parametric framework. We further propose a parametric model where the Sinkhorn loss is adopted as an additional step that complements the Expectation-Maximization algorithm of a Dynamic Factor Model. Results of Monte Carlo simulations and of the empirical application to nowcast the US GDP show the superior performance of our proposal against suitable benchmark models
Predicting pathological tumor volume in prostate cancer lesions: A head-to-head comparison of micro-ultrasound vs. MRI
No full textAssessment of Sexual Function in Relation to Microbiological Findings in Patients with Chronic Bacterial Prostatitis
No full text: Background/Objectives: Patients with chronic bacterial prostatitis (CBP) often present symptoms of sexual dysfunction. We aimed to evaluate the impact of the infection location and etiology on sexual dysfunction in patients with CBP. Methods: Male patients with CBP diagnosed by microbiological tests underwent a complete clinical assessment and were administered questionnaires for prostatitis (NIH-CPSI), voiding (IPSS), and sexual function (IIEF-15, PEDT). Results: Out of 614 patients, erectile dysfunction (ED) was present in 49.8%, and premature ejaculation (PE) in 40.7%. At least one sexual disorder was present in 86.3% when other disorders of ejaculation, orgasm, and sexual desire were considered. Patients with Gram-negative infections in expressed prostatic secretion (EPS) or voided urine after prostatic massage (VB3) had higher odds of moderate to severe erectile dysfunction compared to patients with infection by atypical pathogens (OR 3.31, CI 1.43-7.63, p = 0.0039). Rates of orgasmic dysfunction were also higher in Gram-negative and Gram-positive with respect to atypicals (OR 3.2, CI 1.36-7.90, p = 0.006 and OR 3.78, CI 1.64-8.71, p = 0.001). Hemospermia was more frequent in patients with semen infection by Gram-positive than in patients with infection by atypical pathogens (OR 2.2984, CI 1.3239-3.9901, p = 0.002). Prostatic calcifications at transrectal ultrasound were less frequent in patients with semen infection by Gram-negative compared to Gram-positive (OR 0.471, CI 0.3029-0.7322, p = 0.000). The addition of an "S" (sexual) domain to the UPOINT classification achieves a more significant correlation between the number of positive domains in each patient and the NIH-CPSI score. Conclusions: Infections by Gram-negative are associated with more sexual morbidity in patients with CBP. The use of a questionnaire investigating all the main domains of sexual dysfunction could be very useful for the phenotyping of patients with chronic prostatitis