55 research outputs found
Static analysis for ECMAscript string manipulation programs
In recent years, dynamic languages, such as JavaScript or Python, have been increasingly used in a wide range of fields and applications. Their tricky and misunderstood behaviors pose a great challenge for static analysis of these languages. A key aspect of any dynamic language program is the multiple usage of strings, since they can be implicitly converted to another type value, transformed by string-to-code primitives or used to access an object-property. Unfortunately, string analyses for dynamic languages still lack precision and do not take into account some important string features. In this scenario, more precise string analyses become a necessity. The goal of this paper is to place a first step for precisely handling dynamic language string features. In particular, we propose a new abstract domain approximating strings as finite state automata and an abstract interpretation-based static analysis for the most common string manipulating operations provided by the ECMAScript specification. The proposed analysis comes with a prototype static analyzer implementation for an imperative string manipulating language, allowing us to show and evaluate the improved precision of the proposed analysis
Towards an integrated clinical framework for patient with shoulder pain
Background: Shoulder pain (SP) represents a common musculoskeletal condition that requires physical therapy
care. Along the years, the usual evaluation strategies based on clinical tests and diagnostic imaging has been
challenged. Clinical tests appear unable to clearly identify the structures that generated pain and interpretation of
diagnostic imaging is still controversial. The current patho-anatomical diagnostic categories have demonstrated
poor reliability and seem inadequate for the SP treatment.
Objectives: The present paper aims to (1) describe the different proposals of clinical approach to SP currently available
in the literature; to (2) integrate these proposals in a single framework in order to help the management of SP.
Conclusion: The proposed clinical framework, based on a bio-psychosocial vision of health, integrates symptoms
characteristics, pain mechanisms and expectations, preferences and psychosocial factors of patients that may guide
physiotherapist to make a diagnostic triage and to choose the right treatment for the individual patient
Probiotics in Orthopedics: From Preclinical Studies to Current Applications and Future Perspective
In recent years, probiotics have been emerging as an attractive therapeutic strategy for several diseases. In orthopedics, probiotics seem to be a promising supplementation for treatment of osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, muscle loss-related disease, wound and ulcer issues, and prevention of surgical antibiotic prophylaxis side effects. Although probiotics are still not included in guidelines for these conditions, several studies have reported theoretical benefits of their administration. Further high-level clinical trials are necessary to convert research into solid clinical practice. However, probiotics represent a cost-effective future perspective and may play a role in association with traditional orthopedic therapies
Pitfals in recognition and management of trigeminal neuralgia
BACKGROUND: Trigeminal neuralgia (TN) is a severe, disabling form of painful cranial neuropathy. Even though TN has a typical clinical picture, diagnosis it is often missed or delayed in clinical practice. In order to investigate the occurrence of diagnostic and therapeutic errors in TN, we studied 102 patients suffering from TN recruited through a multicentric survey. METHODS: We performed a Pubmed database search on errors and pittfalls in TN diagnosis and management. Then, patients with TN were consecutively enrolled in the period from February 2017 to October 2019, by several European Headache Centers participating in the study, following a call of the Headache and Pain Scientific Panels of the European Academy of Neurology (EAN). Diagnosis of Classical Trigeminal Neuralgia (CTN) was made according to the International Headache Society (IHS) criteria (Tölle et al., Pain Pract 6:153-160, 2006). All the patients were evaluated using telephone/frontal interviews conducted by headache/pain specialists using an ad hoc questionnaire. RESULTS: A number of 102 patients were recruited, mostly females (F:M ratio 2.64:1). Eighty-six percent of the patients consulted a physician at the time they experienced the first pain attacks. Specialists consulted before TN diagnosis were: primary care physicians (PCP) (43.1%), dentists (in 30.4%), otorhinolaryngologists (3.9%), neurosurgeons (3.9%), neurologists or headache specialists (14.7%), others (8%). The final diagnosis was made mainly by a neurologist or headache specialist (85.3%), and the mean interval between the disease onset and the diagnosis made by a specialist was 10.8 ± 21.2 months. The "diagnostic delay" was 7.2 ± 12.5 months, and misdiagnoses at first consultation were found in 42.1% of cases. Instrumental and laboratory investigations were carried out in 93.1% of the patients before the final diagnosis of TN. CONCLUSION: While TN has typical features and it is well defined by the available international diagnostic criteria, it is still frequently misdiagnosed and mistreated. There is a need to improve the neurological knowledge in order to promptly recognize the clinical picture of TN and properly adhere to the specific guidelines. This may result in a favorable outcome for patients, whose quality of life is usually severely impaired
Abstract Domains for Type Juggling
Web scripting languages, such as PHP and JavaScript, provide a wide range of dynamic features that make them both flexible and error-prone. In order to prevent bugs in web applications, there is a sore need for powerful static analysis tools. In this paper, we investigate how Abstract Interpretation may be leveraged to provide a precise value analysis providing rich typing information that can be a useful component for such tools. In particular, we define the formal semantics for a core of PHP that illustrates type juggling, the implicit type conversions typical of PHP, and investigate the design of abstract domains and operations that, while still scalable, are expressive enough to cope with type juggling. We believe that our approach can also be applied to other languages with implicit type conversions
Il trattamento chirurgico artroscopico: quando proporlo e risultati. Artropatia Acromio Clavicolare.
Arm sqeeze test: a new clinical test for differential diagnosis between cervical nerve root compression and shoulder disease.
Introduction Objective of this study is to evaluate the diagnostic
Values of the Arm Squeeze Test. The test consists in squeezing the
middle third of the upper arm. Our hypothesis is that squeezing is
responsible for pain only in patients with cervical nerve root compression from C5 to Tl.
Materials and methods. 1567 patients were included in this study,
Diagnosis of cervical nerve root compression or shoulder disease was
clinically and strumentally formulated before performing test. Secondary, patients were subdivided as follow: 903 with rotator cuff tear,
155 with shoulder adhesive capsulitis 101with acromioclavicular
(AC) joint arthropathy, 55 with calcifying tendonitis, and 48 affected
by gleno-humeral arthritis. The study sample included 305 patients
with cervical nerve root compression from C5 to Tl with pain irradiating to one or both shoulders, 350 healthy volunteers were
recruited as contrails. The test was positive when score on a VAS
Scale was 3 points or higher on squeezing the middle third of the
upper arm compared to AC joint and antero-lateral-subacromial area.
Results were analyzed with Pearson Test.
Results The test was positive in 295/305 (96.7 %) of patients with
cervical nerve root compression, compared to 35/903 (3.87 %), 3/155
(1.93 %), O/lO1 (0 %>, 1/55 (I.SI %), 4/4S (833 %) of those with
rotator cuff tear, adhesive capsulitis, AC arthropaty, calcifying tendonitis and glenohumeral arthritis, respectively. A positive result was
obtained in 14/350 asymptomatic subjects (4 %). If cervical nerve
root compression was compared to shoulder conditions, the test had
sensitivity from 0.97 to 0.99 and specificity from 0,93 lo 0.96.
Respect to controls, sensitivity was 0.98 and specificity was 0,97,
Discussion Differential diagnosis between cervico-brachialgy and
shoulder pain is often challenging,
Conclusions The Arm Squeeze Test may be useful to distinguish
cervical nerve root compression from shoulder disease in case of
doubtful diagnosis
Fourier-transform Infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy fingerprints subpopulations of extracellular vesicles of different sizes and cellular origin
Identification of extracellular vesicle (EV) subpopulations remains an open challenge. To date, the common strategy is based on searching and probing set of molecular components and physical properties intended to be univocally characteristics of the target subpopulation. Pitfalls include the risk to opt for an unsuitable marker set–which may either not represent the subpopulation or also cover other unintended subpopulations–and the need to use different characterization techniques and equipment. This approach focused on specific markers may result inadequate to routinely deal with EV subpopulations that have an intrinsic high level of heterogeneity. In this paper, we show that Fourier-transform Infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy can provide a collective fingerprint of EV subpopulations in one single experiment. FT-IR measurements were performed on large (LEVs, ~600 nm), medium (MEVs, ~200 nm) and small (SEVs ~60 nm) EVs enriched from two different cell lines medium: murine prostate cancer (TRAMP-C2) and skin melanoma (B16). Spectral regions between 3100–2800 cm−1 and 1880–900 cm−1, corresponding to functional groups mainly ascribed to lipid and protein contributions, were acquired and processed by Principal Component Analysis (PCA). LEVs, MEVs and SEVs were separately grouped for both the considered cell lines. Moreover, subpopulations of the same size but from different sources were assigned (with different degrees of accuracy) to two different groups. These findings demonstrate that FT-IR has the potential to quickly fingerprint EV subpopulations as a whole, suggesting an appealing complement/alternative for their characterization and grading, extendable to healthy and pathological EVs and fully artificial nanovesicles
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