381 research outputs found
No labirinto transparente. LĂngua e sentido em EugĂ©nio de Andrade
AnaĂĄlise estilĂsitco-linguĂstica da poesia de EugĂ©nio de Andrad
Continuous global optimization for protein structure analysis
Optimization methods are a powerful tool in protein structure analysis. In this paper we show that they can be profitably used to solve relevant problems in drug design such as the comparison and recognition of protein binding
sites and the protein-peptide docking. Binding sites recognition is generally based on geometry often combined with physico-chemical properties of the site whereas the search for correct protein-peptide docking is often based on the minimization of an interaction energy model. We show that continuous global optimization methods can be used to solve the above problems and show some computational results
Comparison of mandibular arch expansion by the schwartz appliance using two activation protocols: A preliminary retrospective clinical study
Background and objectives: Dental crowding is more pronounced in the mandible than in the maxilla. When exceeding a significant amount, the creation of new space is required. The mandibular expansion devices prove to be useful even if the increase in the lower arch perimeter seems to be just ascribed to the vestibular inclination of teeth. The aim of the study was to compare two activation protocols of the Schwartz appliance in terms of effectiveness, particularly with regard to how quickly crowding is solved and how smaller is the increasing of vestibular inclination of the mandibular molars.
Materials and methods: We compared two groups of patients treated with different activation's protocols of the lower Schwartz appliance (Group 1 protocol consisted in turning the expansion screw half a turn twice every two weeks and replacing the device every four months; Group 2 was treated by using the classic activation protocol-1/4 turn every week, never replacing the device). The measurements of parameters such as intercanine distance (IC), interpremolar distance (IPM), intermolar distance (IM), arch perimeter(AP), curve of Wilson (COW), and crowding (CR) were made on dental casts at the beginning and at the end of the treatment.
Results: A significant difference between protocol groups was observed in the variation of COWL between time 0 and time 1 with protocol 1 with protocol 1 subjects showing a smaller increase in the parameter than protocol 2 subjects. The same trend was observed also for COWR, but the difference between protocol groups was slightly smaller and the interaction protocol-by-time did not reach the statistical significance. Finally, treatment duration in protocol 1 was significantly lower than in protocol 2.
Conclusion: The results of our study suggest that the new activation protocol would seem more effective as it allows to achieve the objective of the therapy more quickly, and likely leading to greater bodily expansion
Artificial co-drivers as a universal enabling technology for future intelligent vehicles and transportation systems
This position paper introduces the concept of artificial âco-driversâ as an enabling technology for future intelligent transportation systems. In Sections I and II, the design principles of co-drivers are introduced and framed within general humanârobot interactions. Several contributing theories and technologies are reviewed, specifically those relating to relevant cognitive architectures, human-like sensory-motor strategies, and the emulation theory of cognition. In Sections III and IV, we present the co-driver developed for the EU project interactIVe as an example instantiation of this notion, demonstrating how it conforms to the given guidelines. We also present substantive experimental results and clarify the limitations and performance of the current implementation. In Sections IV and V, we analyze the impact of the co-driver technology. In particular, we identify a range of application fields, showing how it constitutes a universal enabling technology for both smart vehicles and cooperative systems, and naturally sets out a program for future research
Finite volume scheme based on cell-vertex reconstructions for anisotropic diffusion problems with discontinuous coefficients
We propose a new second-order finite volume scheme for non-homogeneous and anisotropic diffusion problems based on cell to vertex reconstructions involving minimization of functionals to provide the coefficients of the cell to vertex mapping.
The method handles complex situations such as large preconditioning number diffusion matrices and very distorted meshes.
Numerical examples are provided to show the effectiveness of the method
Curve warning driver support systems. A sensitivity analysis to errors in the estimation of car velocity
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Gitelman syndrome associated with chondrocalcinosis: description of two cases
Gitelman syndrome is a rare inherited tubulopathy, characterized by hypomagnesemia, hypokalemia, metabolic alkalosis, hypocalciuria and hyperreninemic hyperaldosteronism. The clinical spectrum is wide and includes: cramps, myalgies, muscle weakness, until episodes of carpo-podalic spasm, tetania, rabdomyolisis and paralysis. Some cases have been described in literature underlining the association of this condition with chondrocalcinosis, as a typical example of hypomagnesemia-induced crystal deposition disease. The therapy of Gitelman syndrome consists on the administration of defective electrolytes, althought not always effective. We describe two cases of Gitelman syndrome associated with chondrocalcinosis showing the wide range of presentation of this clinical condition
An ontology-based approach for modelling and querying Alzheimerâs disease data
Background The recent advances in biotechnology and computer science have led to an ever-increasing availability of public biomedical data distributed in large databases worldwide. However, these data collections are far from being "standardized" so to be harmonized or even integrated, making it impossible to fully exploit the latest machine learning technologies for the analysis of data themselves. Hence, facing this huge flow of biomedical data is a challenging task for researchers and clinicians due to their complexity and high heterogeneity. This is the case of neurodegenerative diseases and the Alzheimer's Disease (AD) in whose context specialized data collections such as the one by the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) are maintained.Methods Ontologies are controlled vocabularies that allow the semantics of data and their relationships in a given domain to be represented. They are often exploited to aid knowledge and data management in healthcare research. Computational Ontologies are the result of the combination of data management systems and traditional ontologies. Our approach is i) to define a computational ontology representing a logic-based formal conceptual model of the ADNI data collection and ii) to provide a means for populating the ontology with the actual data in the Alzheimer Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI). These two components make it possible to semantically query the ADNI database in order to support data extraction in a more intuitive manner.Results We developed: i) a detailed computational ontology for clinical multimodal datasets from the ADNI repository in order to simplify the access to these data; ii) a means for populating this ontology with the actual ADNI data. Such computational ontology immediately makes it possible to facilitate complex queries to the ADNI files, obtaining new diagnostic knowledge about Alzheimer's disease.Conclusions The proposed ontology will improve the access to the ADNI dataset, allowing queries to extract multivariate datasets to perform multidimensional and longitudinal statistical analyses. Moreover, the proposed ontology can be a candidate for supporting the design and implementation of new information systems for the collection and management of AD data and metadata, and for being a reference point for harmonizing or integrating data residing in different sources
Extending Upward Planar Graph Drawings
In this paper we study the computational complexity of the Upward Planarity
Extension problem, which takes in input an upward planar drawing of
a subgraph of a directed graph and asks whether can be
extended to an upward planar drawing of . Our study fits into the line of
research on the extensibility of partial representations, which has recently
become a mainstream in Graph Drawing.
We show the following results.
First, we prove that the Upward Planarity Extension problem is NP-complete,
even if has a prescribed upward embedding, the vertex set of coincides
with the one of , and contains no edge.
Second, we show that the Upward Planarity Extension problem can be solved in
time if is an -vertex upward planar -graph. This
result improves upon a known -time algorithm, which however applies to
all -vertex single-source upward planar graphs.
Finally, we show how to solve in polynomial time a surprisingly difficult
version of the Upward Planarity Extension problem, in which is a directed
path or cycle with a prescribed upward embedding, contains no edges, and no
two vertices share the same -coordinate in
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