196,224 research outputs found
Palliative sedation in patients with cancer
No full textBackground: Palliative sedation involves the use of sedative medication to relieve refractory symptoms in patients by reducing their level of consciousness. Although it is considered an acceptable clinical practice from most ethical points of view, palliative sedation is still a widely debated procedure and merits better understanding. Methods: The relevant medical literature pertaining to palliative sedation was analyzed and reviewed from various technical, relational, and bioethical perspectives. Results: Proportionate palliative sedation is considered to be the most clinically appropriate modality for performing palliative sedation. However, guidelines must be followed to ensure that it is performed correctly. Benzodiazepines represent the first therapeutic option and careful monitoring of dosages is essential to avoid oversedation or undersedation. Conclusions: Proportionate palliative sedation is used to manage and relieve refractory symptoms in patients with cancer during their last days or hours of life. Evidence suggests that its use has no detrimental effect on survival. A different decision-making process is used to manage the withdrawal of hydration than the process used to determine whether proportionate palliative sedation is appropriate. Communication between patients, their relatives, and the health care staff is important during this medical intervention
RISING: Radio Frequency Identification and Inertial Navigation for Indoor Localization in Emergency Management and Building Maintenance
No full textDistributed Utility Estimation with Heterogeneous Relative Information
No full textIn this letter, we consider a scenario where a set of agents, interconnected by a network topology, aim at computing an estimate of their own utility, importance or value, based on pairwise relative information having heterogeneous nature. In more detail, the agents are able to measure the difference between their value and the value of some their neighbors, or have an estimate of the ratio between their value and the value the remaining neighbors. This setting may find application in problems involving information provided by heterogeneous sensors (e.g., differences and ratios), as well as in scenarios where estimations provided by humans have to be merged with sensor measurements. Specifically, we develop a distributed algorithm that lets each agent asymptotically compute a utility value. To this end, we first characterize the task at hand in terms of a least-squares minimum problem, providing a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a unique global minimum, and then we show that the proposed algorithm asymptotically converges to a global minimum. This letter is concluded by numerical analyses that corroborate the theoretical findings
A multivariable stability margin in the presence of time-varying, bounded rate gains.
No full textIn this paper we consider a MIMO asymptotically stable linear plant. For such a system the classical con-
cepts of quadratic stability margin and multivariable gain margin can be dened. These margins have the
following interpretation: consider the closed-loop system composed of the plant and several real parameters,
one inserted in each channel of the loop; then any time-varying (time-invariant) parameters whose amplitudes
are smaller than the quadratic stability (multivariable gain) margin result in a stable closed-loop system. For
time-varying parameters whose magnitudes are between these two stability measures, stability may depend
on the rate of variation of the parameters. Therefore it makes sense to consider the stability margin given
by the maximal allowable rate of variation of the parameters which guarantees stability of the closed loop
system. As shown in this paper, a lower bound on this margin can be obtained with the aid of parameter
dependent Lyapunov functions
An Interlaced Extended Kalman Filter
No full textIn this paper an estimation algorithm for a class of discretetime nonlinear systems is proposed. The system structure we deal with
is partitionable into m subsystems, each affine w.r.t. the corresponding
part of the state vector. The algorithm consists of a bank of m interlaced
Kalman filters, and each of them estimates a part of the state, considering
the remaining parts as known time-varying parameters whose values
are evaluated by the other filters at the previous step. The procedure
neglects the subsystem coupling terms in the covariance matrix of the
state estimation error and counteracts the errors so introduced by
suitably “increasing” the noise covariance matrices. Comparisons through
numerical simulations with the extended Kalman filter and its modified
versions proposed in the literature illustrate the good tradeoff provided
by the algorithm between the reduction of the computational load and
the estimation accuracy
An approach to model complex interdependent infrastructures
No full textDeveloped countries rely on many infrastructures as energy transportation, water supply, telecommunication, etc., which are more and more mutually dependent. This phenomenon represents a new and very dangerous vulnerability: an accidental or malicious (e.g., terroristic attack) fault could spread across,
amplifying its negative consequences. This imposes to develop methodologies and tools to support decision makers and infrastructures’ stakeholders in the analysis
of these new scenarios, and in defining suitable protection strategies. To this end, in this paper, we propose an approach to model interdependent infrastructures
which, on the bases of mostly qualitative information, is able to set up a (rather sophisticated) simulator.
Abbreviated MRI Protocol for the Assessment of Ablated Area in HCC Patients
No full textWe uploaded the images of the article: Granata V, Grassi R, Fusco R, Setola SV, Belli A, Piccirillo M, Pradella S, Giordano M, Cappabianca S, Brunese L, Grassi R, Petrillo A, Izzo F. Abbreviated MRI Protocol for the Assessment of Ablated Area in HCC Patients. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Mar 30;18(7):3598. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18073598. PMID: 33808466; PMCID: PMC8037601
The role of chemotherapy in the treatment of bone and soft tissue sarcomas
No full textWhile surgery remains the cornerstone of treatment of bone and soft tissue sarcomas, chemotherapy has improved the 5-year overall survival in osteosarcoma and Ewing's sarcoma from 10% to 70% in localized disease. Patients with metastases at presentation treated with surgery combined with chemotherapy have a 3-year survival of 30-50%, but cure is still rare. The role of adjuvant chemotherapy in soft tissue sarcoma has yet to be determined, but it is likely that some patients will benefit. As some bone sarcomas do not respond to chemotherapy, surgery remains the only effective treatment, and there are no effective drugs to treat relapsing patients. Radiotherapy has both a curative role in combination with chemotherapy in soft tissue and Ewing's sarcoma and a palliative role in the other sarcomas. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
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