32 research outputs found
Le superfici percettive nel trattamento della lombalgia cronica: una nuova strategia riabilitativa attraverso l’utilizzazione della linea mediana
No full textTactile and proprioceptive sensory stimulation modifies estimation of walking distance but not upright gait stability: A pilot study
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Validation of SuPerSense, a Sensorized Surface for the Evaluation of Posture Perception in Supine Position
No full textThis study aimed to validate a sensorized version of a perceptive surface that may be used for the early assessment of misperception of body midline representation in subjects with right stroke, even when they are not yet able to stand in an upright posture. This device, called SuPerSense, allows testing of the load distribution of the body weight on the back in a supine position. The device was tested in 15 patients with stroke, 15 age-matched healthy subjects, and 15 young healthy adults, assessing three parameters analogous to those conventionally extracted by a baropodometric platform in a standing posture. Subjects were hence tested on SuPerSense in a supine position and on a baropodometric platform in an upright posture in two different conditions: with open eyes and with closed eyes. Significant correlations were found between the lengths of the center of pressure path with the two devices in the open-eyes condition (R = 0.44, p = 0.002). The parameters extracted by SuPerSense were significantly different among groups only when patients were divided into those with right versus left brain damage. This last result is conceivably related to the role of the right hemisphere of the brain in the analysis of spatial information
Perceptive rehabilitation and trunk posture alignment in patients with Parkinson disease: a single blind randomized controlled trial
No full textRecent studies aimed to evaluate the potential effects of perceptive rehabilitation in Parkinson Disease reporting promising preliminary results for postural balance and pain symptoms. To date, no randomized controlled trial was carried out to compare the effects of perceptive rehabilitation and conventional treatment in patients with Parkinson Disease.
AIM:
To evaluate whether a perceptive rehabilitation treatment could be more effective than a conventional physical therapy program in improving postural control and gait pattern in patients with Parkinson Disease.
DESIGN:
Single blind, randomized controlled trial.
SETTING:
Department of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine of a University Hospital.
POPULATION:
Twenty outpatients affected by idiopathic Parkinson Disease at Hoehn and Yahr stage ≤3.
METHODS:
Recruited patients were divided into two groups: the first one underwent individual treatment with Surfaces for Perceptive Rehabilitation (Su-Per), consisting of rigid wood surfaces supporting deformable latex cones of various dimensions, and the second one received conventional group physical therapy treatment. Each patient underwent a training program consisting of ten, 45-minute sessions, three days a week for 4 consecutive weeks. Each subject was evaluated before treatment, immediately after treatment and at one month of follow-up, by an optoelectronic stereophotogrammetric system for gait and posture analysis, and by a computerized platform for stabilometric assessment.
RESULTS:
Kyphosis angle decreased after ten sessions of perceptive rehabilitation, thus showing a substantial difference with respect to the control group. No significant differences were found as for gait parameters (cadence, gait speed and stride length) within Su-Per group and between groups. Parameters of static and dynamic evaluation on stabilometric platform failed to demonstrate any statistically relevant difference both within-groups and between-groups.
CONCLUSIONS:
Perceptive training may help patients affected by Parkinson Disease into restoring a correct midline perception and, in turn, to improve postural control.
CLINICAL REHABILITATION IMPACT:
Perceptive surfaces represent an alternative to conventional rehabilitation of postural disorders in Parkinson Disease. Further studies are needed to determine if the association of perceptive treatment and active motor training would be useful in improving also gait dexterity
How to Evaluate the Efficacy of Manipulations in Spine Disorders—A Comprehensive Review of New and Traditional Outcome Measures
No full textSpine pain (SP) is the most common musculoskeletal disorder that causes transitional forms of motor disability. Considering its affordability and safety, manipulative therapy (MT) stands as one of the primary therapeutic approaches for SP and the related dysfunctional consequences. However, it is still difficult to assess and quantify the results of this treatment since there is a lack of objective evaluation tools in the available scientific literature. Thus, the purpose of this comprehensive review is to summarize the main outcomes used to evaluate the effectiveness of spine manipulations, focusing on their strengths and weaknesses. An extensive review of the PubMed, Cochrane, and Embase databases was performed to identify the literature of the last ten years regarding MT and the related assessment tools. A total of 12 studies met the inclusion criteria. The analyzed literature indicates that a wide range of outcome measures have been used to assess the effectiveness of spine MT. Pain is the main aspect to be investigated but it remains difficult to elucidate since it is strongly linked to various dimensions such as self-perception and psychological aspects. Therefore, it seems necessary to include new tools for evaluating the effects of spine MT, with the aim of exploiting new technologies and taking into consideration the SP biomechanical and biopsychosocial aspects
Practices and Tools for Better Software Testing
No full textAutomated testing (hereafter referred to as just ‘testing’) has become an essential process for improving the quality of software systems. In fact, testing can help to point out defects and to ensure that production code is robust under many usage conditions. However, writing and maintaining high-quality test code is challenging and frequently considered of secondary importance. Managers, as well as developers, do not treat test code as equally important as production code, and this behaviour could lead to poor test code quality, and in the future to defect-prone production code. The goal of my research is to bring awareness to developers on the effect of poor testing, as well as helping them in writing better test code. To this aim, I am working on 2 different perspectives: (1) studying best practices on software testing, identifying problems and challenges of current approaches, and (2) building new tools that better support the writing of test code, that tackle the issues we discovered with previous studies.Pre-print: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1411241Software Engineerin
Supporting Quality In Test Code For Higher Quality Software Systems
No full textAutomated testing has become an essential process for improving the quality of software systems. Automated tests can help ensure that production code is robust under many usage conditions and that code meets performance and security needs. Nevertheless, writing effective tests is challenging and, unfortunately, often neglected. In the first part of this dissertation, we summarize and explain why test and production code are not treated with the same care, and we set our goal: we want to discover new techniques and tools to support developers when writing and reviewing test code. To this aim, we investigate the impact of test design issues on code quality and the practices when writing and reviewing test code. First, we create and make publicly available Pydriller, a Python framework to analyze software repositories that will help us gather important information for the following studies. Then, we study test design issues and their impact on the overall software code quality, demonstrating how important it is to have a good and effective test suite. Afterward, together with SIG, a company setting in which part of this dissertation was conducted, we study how developers in industry react to these test design issues. Our results show that the current detection rules for test issues are not precise enough and, more importantly, do not support prioritization. We present new rules that can be used to prioritize these issues and show that the results achieved with the new rules better align with developers' perception of importance. In the second part of the dissertation we focus on how to help developers better reviewing test code. First, we investigate developers' needs when it comes to code reviewing, identifying seven high-level information needs that could be addressed through automated tools, saving up time for reviewers. Then, we focus on code review of test code specifically: we first study when and how developers review test code, identifying current practices, revealing the challenges faced during test code reviews, and uncovering needs for tools that can support the review of test code. Later, we investigate the impact of Test-Driven Code Review (TDR) on the code review effectiveness, showing that it can increase the number of test code issues found. We discuss when TDR can and can not be applied and why not all developers see TDR as a worthy practice.Software Engineerin
A new rehabilitation tool in fibromyalgia: the effects of perceptive rehabilitation on pain and function in a clinical randomized controlled trial
No full textntroduction/Objective. Fibromyalgia might benefit from a specific tactile and proprioceptive rehabilitation approach. The aim of this study was to perform a randomized controlled trial to determine the efficacy of perceptual surfaces (PS) and physical exercises with regard to chronic pain and physical function in fibromyalgia compared with a control group. Methods. Data from 54 females (18-60 years old) with a diagnosis of fibromyalgia and scoring >5 on the visual analog scale were divided into 3 groups and analyzed: group treated with perceptual surfaces (PS-group), physical exercises group (PE-group), and control group (CG). The Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ), Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ), and Fibromyalgia Assessment Scale (FAS) were administered at baseline (T0), at the end of the treatment (T1) (after 10 rehabilitation sessions over a 5-week period), and at the 12-week follow-up (T2). Results. The PS-group experienced a statistically significant improvement versus the CG in FAS and HAQ scores. Good efficacy with respect to pain and function in the PE-group compared with the CG in terms of FAS, HAQ, and FIQ scores was observed. The adherence ratio was 86% for the PE-group and CG and 90% for the PS-group. Conclusions. According to the results, the PS are as promising as the physical exercises, since results were simila
Bridging the Babel of Textual Criticism
No full textPost by Wout Dillen, guest author for FonteGaia. Wout Dillen is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Borås, Sweden, where his work is part of the DiXiT Marie Curie Initial Training Network. He developed the Lexicon of Scholarly Editing as an appendix to his Ph.D. dissertation, which was part of the ERC project CUTS (Creative Undoing and Textual Scholarship) at the University of Antwerp. Lexicographical Approaches to Encompassing a Multilingual Research Field. Although Textual Critic..
