The Italian Consensus Conference on Pain in Neurorehabilitation

Pain is frequent in several neurological conditions, such as stroke, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, diabetic neuropathy, but it is often underestimated and therefore untreated or not successfully treated. Pain reduces quality of life, it may be the cause of adaptive disorders (such as anxiety and depression) and, in patients undergoing rehabilitation, it may negatively impact rehabilitation procedures and hamper the outcome. Unfortunately, there are no significant data regarding the impact of pain in neurorehabilitation patients and what would be the impact of an appropriate pain treatment on rehabilitation outcome. Accordingly, there are no guidelines providing indications on how to treat pain in patients with pain during rehabilitation treatment and thereafter. Given this background, and to comply with the Italian law 38 released on 2010 by the Italian Ministry of Health to guarantee adequate care and treatment of patients with pain both in hospital and in primary care, the Italian Society for Neurological Rehabilitation (SIRN) along with the Italian Society for Physical and Rehabilitative Medicine (SIMFER), promoted a work-in-progress platform, the Italian Consensus Conference on Pain in Neurorehabilitation (ICCPNR)

The pathophysiology of migraine: year 2005

Migraine is a complex patholophysiology in which both central and peripheral components of the trigeminal pain pathway probably play a significant role, both in the symptoms and signs of the attack and in the mechanisms of action of antimigraine compounds, such as triptans, which constitute the most important therapy for aborting migraine pain and posses several mechanisms on 5–HT receptor–mediated actions. The experimental neurogenic inflammation model represents a simple procedure to obtain preliminary information on well characterized receptortargeted drugs. The apparent paradox observed with certain drugs that are shown to be effective in this model but not in clinical trials offers the opportunity to better manipulate structure–activity to obtain the best pharmacological profile using an array of experimental models. The observation that nitric oxide donors induce migraine–like pain in migraineours and that nitric oxide plays a pivotal role in the control of several functions in the central nervous system, has prompted the use of such molecules for better understanding the pathophysiology of migraine attacks. A link between central and peripheral components of the trigeminal pain pathway is provided by the observation that cortical spreading depression in the rat activates trigeminovascular afferents and induces a series of cortical meningeal and brainstem events consistent with the development of headache. Studies in humans support the hypothesis that cortical spreading depression underlies migraine.aura. Therefore, tt is possible that visual, motor or sensory aura might be responsible for the generation of the pain through the above mechanism

Distributed energy-aware resource allocation in multi-antenna multi-carrier interference networks with statistical CSI

Resource allocation for energy efficiency optimization in multi-carrier interference networks with multiple receive antennas is tackled. First, a one-hop network is considered, and then, the results are extended to the case of a two-hop network in which amplify-and-forward relaying is employed to enable communication. A distributed algorithm which optimizes a system-wide energy-efficient performance function, and which is guaranteed to converge to a stable equilibrium point, is provided. Unlike most previous works, in the definition of the energy efficiency, not only the users' transmit power but also the circuit power that is required to operate the devices is taken into account. All of the proposed procedures are guaranteed to converge and only require statistical channel state information, thus lending themselves to a distributed implementation. The asymptotic regime of a saturated network in which both the active users and the number of receive antennas deployed in each receiver grow large is also analyzed. Numerical results are provided to confirm the merits of the proposed algorithms

Pressure tuning of light-induced superconductivity in K3C60

Optical excitation at terahertz frequencies has emerged as an effective means to manipulate complex solids dynamically. In the molecular solid K3C60, coherent excitation of intramolecular vibrations was shown to transform the high temperature metal into a non-equilibrium state with the optical conductivity of a superconductor. Here we tune this effect with hydrostatic pressure, and we find it to disappear around 0.3 GPa. Reduction with pressure underscores the similarity with the equilibrium superconducting phase of K3C60, in which a larger electronic bandwidth is detrimental for pairing. Crucially, our observation excludes alternative interpretations based on a high-mobility metallic phase. The pressure dependence also suggests that transient, incipient superconductivity occurs far above the 150 K hypothesised previously, and rather extends all the way to room temperature.Comment: 33 pages, 17 figures, 2 table

Blood-Based Treatments for Severe Dry Eye Disease: The Need of a Consensus

The use of blood-based eye drops as therapy for various diseases of the ocular surface has become increasingly popular in ophthalmic practice during recent years. The rationale for their use is based on the promotion of cellular proliferation and migration thanks to the supply of metabolically active substances, in particular growth factors. Blood-derived eye drops have been used for the treatment of several ocular surface disorders, such as dry eye disease, corneal ulcer, persistent epithelial defect, neurotrophic keratitis, ocular surface burn, recurrent corneal erosion, and limbal stem-cell deficiency. Both autologous (from patients themselves) and heterologous (from adult donors or from cord blood sampled at birth)-derived products exist, and each source has specific pros and cons. Despite an extensive literature, several issues are still under debate and the aim of this manuscript is to review the indications, preparation methods and storage, characterization of content, rationale for clinical outcomes, patient stratification, length of treatment, and rationale for repeated treatments at disease relapse. A rationale based on a "5 Ws and 2 Hs" protocol is proposed as a way of thinking, with the attempt to clarify Who, Why, When, Where, What, and How to use these treatment options

Terahertz phase slips in striped La_2−xBa_xCuO₄

Interlayer transport in high-TC cuprates is mediated by superconducting tunneling across the CuO2 planes. For this reason, the terahertz frequency optical response is dominated by one or more Josephson plasma resonances and becomes highly nonlinear at fields for which the tunneling supercurrents approach their critical value IC. These large terahertz nonlinearities are in fact a hallmark of superconducting transport. Surprisingly, however, they have been documented in La2−xBaxCuO4 (LBCO) also above TC for doping values near x=1/8 and interpreted as an indication of superfluidity in the stripe phase. Here, electric-field-induced second harmonic is used to study the dynamics of time-dependent interlayer voltages when LBCO is driven with large-amplitude terahertz pulses, in search of other characteristic signatures of Josephson tunneling in the normal state. We show that this method is sensitive to the voltage anomalies associated with 2π Josephson phase slips, which near x=18 are observed both below and above TC. These results document a regime of nonlinear transport that shares features of fluctuating stripes and superconducting phase dynamics

Imaging magnetic vortex configurations in ferromagnetic nanotubes

We image the remnant magnetization configurations of CoFeB and permalloy nanotubes (NTs) using x-ray magnetic circular dichroism photo-emission electron microscopy. The images provide direct evidence for flux-closure configurations, including a global vortex state, in which magnetization points circumferentially around the NT axis. Furthermore, micromagnetic simulations predict and measurements confirm that vortex states can be programmed as the equilibrium remnant magnetization configurations by reducing the NT aspect ratio.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, link to supplementary informatio

Equilibrium states for potentials with \sup\phi - \inf\phi < \htop(f)

In the context of smooth interval maps, we study an inducing scheme approach to prove existence and uniqueness of equilibrium states for potentials $\phi$ with he `bounded range' condition \sup \phi - \inf \phi < \htop, first used by Hofbauer and Keller. We compare our results to Hofbauer and Keller's use of Perron-Frobenius operators. We demonstrate that this `bounded range' condition on the potential is important even if the potential is H\"older continuous. We also prove analyticity of the pressure in this context.Comment: Added Lemma 6 to deal with the disparity between leading eigenvalues and operator norms. Added extra references and corrected some typo

Topical Treatment with Cord Blood Serum in Glaucoma Patients: A Preliminary Report

Purpose. To report data happened to be observed in two glaucoma patients treated with Cord Blood Serum (CBS) eyedrops. Design. Case report. Retrospective data analysis Methods. CBS topical eyedrops, characterized in advance for growth factors (GFs) content, were administered for two months with the aim to relieve their subjective symptoms, in two patients who had referred ocular surface discomfort, although in absence of any sign of keratopathy. As patients were also affected by advanced glaucoma at risk of vision loss, and under treatment with hypotensive drugs, they had been also monitored over the same period with IOP controls and Visual field tests in our Unit. Results. During subsequent visits, data from Mean Deviation and Pattern Standard Deviation in the Visual fields were retrospectively collected and compared before and after treatment with CBS, and an amelioration was observed. Conclusions. CBS contains a combination of GFs, which potentially exert a neuroprotective action and candidate CBS as an interesting natural source to be delivered in neurodegenerative ocular disorders. The incidentally observed amelioration in these two patients deserves further investigation in this respec