31 research outputs found
A Narrative Review of the Launch and the Deployment of Telemedicine in Italy during the COVID-19 Pandemic
No full textTelemedicine is making an important contribution to the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and to supporting the health domain. Its use has registered initial problems with often-patchy practise. The objective of this study was to analyze the launch and deployment of telemedicine in Italy through a narrative review. The narrative review faced two points of view: (a) the first point of view revised the institutional initiatives of the Italian government developed to promote the use of telemedicine; (b) the second point of view reviewed the evolution of scientific literature in the sector, with reference to the Italian situation. In the second point of view, we applied both a standard narrative checklist and an eligibility approach. The first point of view reported an analysis of national documents aimed at promoting, through indications and recommendations, the use of telemedicine. The second point of view analyzed 39 qualified references. The analysis highlighted: (a) that initially, there was a disorientation, followed by reflections that emerged immediately after; (b) a telemedicine application not only in the traditional sectors (e.g., diabetology, cardiology, oncology, neurology) but also in new and fields never explored before; and (c) a high level of acceptance and a desire to continue in the after-pandemic future (which emerged in some studies through dedicated questionnaires). The study offers stimuli for both stakeholders and scholars to improve the use of telemedicine during the pandemic and in the future
Preface
No full textPreface of Proceedings of ICTCS 2015, the 16th Italian Conference on Theoretical Computer Science
Controllability for the Burgers model
No full textIn this paper we study vibrations of viscoelastic materials, whose behaviour can be represented by mechanical models given as combinations of springs and dashpots, and establish reachability results.(c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons .org /licenses /by /4 .0/)
Modified fractional logistic equation
No full textIn the article (West, 2015), the author has obtained a function as the solution to fractional logistic equation (FLE). As demonstrated later in Area et al. (2016), this function (West function) is not the solution to FLE, but nevertheless as shown by West, it is in good agreement with the numerical solution to FLE. The West function indicates a compelling feature, in which the exponentials are substituted by Mittag-Leffler functions. In this paper, a modified fractional logistic equation (MFLE) is introduced, to which the West function is a solution. The proposed fractional integro-differential equation possesses a nonlinear additive term related to the solution of the logistic equation (LE). The method utilized in this article, may be applied to the analysis of solutions to nonlinear fractional differential equations of mathematical physics
Thyroid function tests and early outcomes of acute ischemic stroke in older euthyroid patients
No full textBlood thyroid function tests (TFT) are routinely used to screen for thyroid disorders in several clinical settings. TFT on hospital admission may also be useful prognostic predictors of acute IS: according to recent evidence, poststroke outcome is better in patients with lower thyroid function and worse in those with higher thyroid function. However, previous reports are few and mostly compared patients with thyroid disorders to euthyroid patients. Thyroid disorders are known risk factors for cerebrovascular disease. However, hyperthyroidism is related to cardioembolic IS whereas hypothyroidism is related to atherosclerotic risk factors. Therefore, findings from available studies of TFT might just reflect the worse prognosis of cardioembolic IS compared to other IS subtypes. Another limitation of previous studies is the lack of information for older persons, who represent three quarters of all IS patients. In this paper, we investigated whether serum thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), free thyroxine (FT4) and free triiodothyronine (FT3) measured on Stroke Unit (SU) admission are associated with early outcomes of acute IS in 775 euthyroid patients aged ≥ 65. years (mean age 80.1 ± 8.7. years). Two composite outcomes were investigated: poor functional outcome (death during SU stay or disability at SU discharge), and unfavorable discharge setting (death during SU stay, transfer from SU to other acute hospital unit or transfer from SU to long-term care-facilities as opposed to direct discharge home). Analyses were performed using logistic regression models. Curvilinear associations were tested including TFT as polynomial terms. Models were adjusted for demographics, prestroke, and IS-related confounders. We found that lower TSH had a complex curvilinear association with poor functional outcome and that the shape of the associations changed with age. At age 65, the curve was U-shaped: outcome risk decreased with increasing TSH, reached its minimum at TSH near 3.00. mUI/L and then started to rise. Between ages 70 and 75, however, the shape of the curve straightened and, starting from age 80 took an inverted U-shape: outcome risk rose with increasing TSH, reached its maximum at TSH values that progressively shifted upward with increasing age (from 1.70. mU/L at age 80 to about 2.20. mUI/L at age 90), then started to decrease. A linear inverse association was found between FT3 and unfavorable discharge setting. Our study suggests that measurement of TFT on SU admission can provide independent prognostic information for early outcomes of acute IS in older euthyroid patients
Peripheral neuropathies seen by ultrasound: A literature analysis through lexical evaluation, geographical assessment and graph theory
No full text(1) Background: Ultrasound is a well-known tool used for the diagnosis and management of many diseases, including peripheral neuropathies. The main aim of this study was the lexical analysis of the literature on this topic considering the most cited words and the relationship between the words and the papers. Furthermore, a geographical analysis was performed to evaluate the worldwide prevalence. (2) Methods: We performed a literature search on PubMed, and we calculated the occurrence of the words indicating nerves and the body parts. Furthermore, we calculated the number of papers for each country, considering the affiliation of the first author. Finally, to describe the relationships between the words and the papers, we used the 30 most cited words, and we built a matrix describing in which papers a word was cited. This matrix was used to create a network based on the graph theory using Gephi 0.9.2 software. (3) Results: The most cited nerves were median and ulnar ones, and the most cited body parts were hand, wrist and elbow. The United States of America was the most productive country, with 80 papers. The graph of the network showed the importance of ultrasound as support for therapy. (4) Conclusions: The study represents a lexical analysis of the literature and shows information about subjects, authors and relationships of the papers. This may be helpful for better understanding and evaluation of the situation of the current literature
Rheological Characterization of Ethylcellulose-Based Melts for Pharmaceutical Applications
No full textRheological characterization of ethylcellulose (EC)-based melts intended for the production, via micro-injection moulding (μIM), of oral capsular devices for prolonged release was carried out. Neat EC, plasticized EC and plasticized EC containing solid particles of a release modifier (filler volume content in the melt around 30%) were examined by capillary and rotational rheometry tests. Two release modifiers, differing in both chemical nature and particle geometry, were investigated. When studied by capillary rheometry, neat EC appeared at process temperatures as a highly viscous melt with a shear-thinning characteristic that progressively diminished as the apparent shear rate increased. Thus, EC as such could not successfully be processed via μIM. Plasticization, which induces changes in the material microstructure, enhanced the shear-thinning characteristic of the melt and reduced considerably its elastic properties. Marked wall slip effects were noticed in the capillary flow of the plasticized EC-based melts, with or without release modifier particles. The presence of these particles brought about an increase in viscosity, clearly highlighted by the dynamic experiments at the rotational rheometer. However, it did not impair the material processability. The thermal and rheological study undertaken would turn out a valid guideline for the development of polymeric materials based on pharma-grade polymers with potential for new pharmaceutical applications of μIM
High temperature performances of CVD single crystal diamond detectors
No full textIn fusion applications (e.g.Tokamaks) detectors must withstand a very harsh environment characterized by high temperatures and intense radiation fluxes. Conventional solid state detectors (e.g. silicon) cannot be operated at high temperatures and present serious dose limit. Among the possible alternatives to silicon, diamond based detectors are very promising because of their outstanding properties such as radiation hardness, high thermal conductivity and wide band gap. Diamond detectors were proposed as neutron detectors for the Radial Neutron Camera (RNC) and for the Tritium Breeding Module (TBM) of ITER. In the latter the detector working temperature can be up to 400 °C. A few studies, so far have been performed to study the behaviour of diamond detectors at high temperatures. In the present paper the performances of single crystal diamond detectors operated at high temperatures are reported. An innovative detector layout was studied which is based on a mechanical contact avoiding the use of critical components such as glue, welding, etc. A 500 μm thick single crystal diamond plate with platinum electrical contacts was tested reaching temperatures up to 240 °C, its I-V and C-V characteristics were measured at increasing temperatures. The results demonstrated that the proposed innovative layout presents very interesting behaviour and stable response at high temperatures. Furthermore, a commercial detector was tested at temperatures up to 180 °C while operated in current mode using a beta source. The signal to noise ratio vs.Temperature resulted acceptable up to about 170 °C. © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Licence
Synchronous Robots vs Asynchronous Lights-Enhanced Robots on Graphs
No full textAbstractIn this paper, we consider the distributed setting of computational mobile entities, called robots, that have to perform tasks without global coordination. Depending on the environment as well as on the robots' capabilities, tasks might be accomplished or not.In particular, we focus on the well-known scenario where the robots reside on the nodes of a graph and operate in Look-Compute-Move cycles. In one cycle, a robot perceives the current configuration in terms of robots positions (Look), decides whether to move toward some edge of the graph (Compute), and in the positive case it performs an instantaneous move along the computed edge (Move).We then compare two basic models: in the first model robots are fully synchronous, while in the second one robots are asynchronous and lights-enhanced, that is, each robot is equipped with a constant number of lights visible to all other robots. The question whether one model is more powerful than the other in terms of computable tasks has been considered in [Das et al., Int.'l Conf. on Distributed Computing Systems, 2012] but for robots moving on the Euclidean plane rather than on a graph.We provide two different tasks, and show that on graphs one task can be solved in the fully synchronous model but not in the asynchronous lights-enhanced model, while for the other task the converse holds. Hence we can assert that the fully synchronous model and the asynchronous lights-enhanced model are incomparable on graphs. This opens challenging directions in order to understand which peculiarities make the models so different
Falls among Older Adults: Screening, Identification, Rehabilitation, and Management
No full textA fall is an event where a person unintentionally and traumatically finds themselves on the floor or a lower level. Falls are very common, especially in the older adult population. One in four people falls at least once a year after age 65. Because of falls, there can be injuries, whereby there can be an impairment of health status. Fractures, reduced mobility, disability, and the need for institutionalization are potential consequences after falls. In older adult patients, especially frail ones, these types of complications are more common. There are several risk factors for falls. Falls generally result from a combination of factors operating simultaneously. Sarcopenia, cognitive impairment, or poly-pharmacotherapy are just a few examples of risk factors that are common in the older people. Through careful clinical evaluation, it is possible to identify risk factors and conditions predisposing to falls. In some cases, it is possible to correct these factors. Several types of treatment are available to restore the health status before the fall and prevent subsequent falls. Using multi-component interventions, the risk of falls can be effectively reduced. Aware that this review will not be exhaustive of such a broad topic, the purpose of this narrative review is to summarize relevant and recent evidence in the current literature to encapsulate fall-related risk factors, risk identification, fall prevention, and management, including various rehabilitation techniques. This article conforms to the Scale for Assessment of Narrative Review Articles (SANRA) guidelines
