1,721,014 research outputs found
Fatal asthma after omalizumab and controller therapy discontinuation
No full textIn this clinical case we report a fatal asthma episode in a 28-year old female, who was sensitized to pollens and mould, and with episodes of near-fatal asthma. She was successfully treated with omalizumab, that was discontinued after 5 years. After that, the patient also discontinued controller medications. In 2015, 3 years after omalizumab discontinuation, she had a fatal asthma attack, with respiratory failure and needing mechanical ventilation. This case report suggests that omalizumab treatment should not be discontinued in near-fatal asthma cases
Improving prospective memory in school-aged children: Effects of future thinking and performance predictions
No full textRecently, event-based prospective memory (PM) performance of children has been shown to benefit from different encoding strategies such as imagining the execution of a future PM task (i.e., future thinking) and making performance predictions (i.e., metacognitive monitoring). This study aimed to investigate whether and how these two encoding strategies affect PM performance alone and in combination. For this purpose, 127 children aged 8–11 years were assigned to four encoding conditions: (a) standard, (b) performance predictions, (c) future thinking, and (d) future thinking + performance predictions. The ongoing task performance costs (i.e., attentional monitoring), working memory (WM) span, and metacognitive monitoring judgments, such as task difficulty expectations, performance postdictions, confidence judgments, and strategy use, were also evaluated among participants. The results show that combining future thinking instructions with performance predictions considerably improved children's PM performance without incurring additional attentional monitoring costs. Moreover, whereas children generally tended to overestimate their PM performance, more realistic lower-performance predictions were related to higher PM scores for children in the combined condition. Finally, age, WM, and strategy use significantly predicted PM performance independent of the encoding condition. This study is the first to demonstrate that combining future thinking instructions with performance predictions enhances children's PM performance compared with each encoding strategy alone. Moreover, this work is the first to show that by simply imagining the execution of a PM task, children's prediction accuracy can be improved, which is significantly related to the PM performance advantage
Travelling salesperson in an immersive virtual environment: Experimental evaluation of tracking system device
No full textNowadays Virtual Reality (VR) is an extremely versatile technology capable to cope with many areas of human life, and its fast development requires constant evaluation and validation. Cognitive models of human behavior play a central role in this evaluation, aiming at obtaining high quality, safe and usable products. A problem currently faced by VR users inside immersive Virtual Environments (iVEs) consists in the Simulator-induced Sickness (SS), a particular kind of motion sickness evoked by the simulated visual motion. SS can reduce subjects’ performances, and bias data collected with VR. Although Tracking Systems (TS) were thought to reduce SS symptoms, their effective contribution is not clear. A task based on the Traveling Salaperson was implemented in an iVE to investigate whether TS (a) evoked less SS symptoms and (b) facilitated performance in participants with respect to a control condition without TS. Results showed that TS allowed reduction of many SS symptoms, but this did not produced clear benefits on the cognitive performance, mainly true for female subjects. While TSs may facilitate enjoyment of iVE reducing SS, the higher susceptibility of females suggested that VR designers and producers should consider valuable a certain training before using the iVEs
Clinical course and outcomes of patients with asthma hospitalized for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 pneumonia: A single-center, retrospective study
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Smoking and COVID-19, The paradox to discover: an Italian retrospective, observational study in hospitalized and non- hostitalized patients
No full textGoing Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Performance predictions and postdictions in prospective memory of school-aged children
No full textProspective memory (PM) undergoes important developmental changes during the primary school years, particularly around 7 and 8 years of age. Recent studies have suggested that, as well as executive functions (EFs), PM development also benefits from age-related increments in metamemory (MM) abilities. The primary aim of the current study was to explore the role of MM monitoring and control processes (i.e., procedural MM) of 7- and 8-year-old children in a PM task including specific cues. Monitoring processes were assessed by asking children to judge their own PM performance before (predictions) and after (postdictions) in performing a PM task. In addition, children were asked to report the strategy they used to remember the PM task. Reactive effects of making predictions and using strategies were assessed via both an ongoing task (OT) and PM performance. EF and declarative MM performance was also examined. Results showed that children who were asked to predict PM performance had faster PM response times (RTs), but not higher accuracy rates, than children in a control group. However, strategy use affected both PM and OT performance, with those children reporting active strategy use obtaining higher PM accuracy rates and slower OT RTs. Finally, switching abilities were also predictive of OT performance. This investigation highlights the importance of studying MM monitoring and control processes in relation to children's PM
The role of heart team approach in penetrating cardiac trauma: case report and review of the literature
No full textVariations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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