212 research outputs found
The Image as a Communication Tool for Virtual Museums. Narration and the Enjoyment of Cultural Heritage
The challenge of contemporary museums is to make content accessible to a wider audience; in this way information related to the good becomes more communicative and usable in order to enhance its uniqueness. Accessibility goes through an innovative communication of content: the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) that are increasingly part of people’s daily lives. Communication in most cases occurs visually, so ICTs are increasingly focusing on a rethinking of this expressive form; images become a better support for high-quality data transfer
La informaciĂł fĂsica no especĂfica: el best-seller de la quimiometria
En aquesta conferència, homenatge al Prof. Enric
Casassas, el Prof. Forina exposa de manera molt didĂ ctica, tres
idees importants a tenir presents per tots els que treballen en
Quimiometria o utilitzen tècniques quimiomètriques. L'objectiu
sempre ha de ser resoldre una situaciĂł quĂmica real, procurant
emprar eines de qualitat coneguda i no cal tenir recança en
aplicar-les a situacions com ara la informaciĂł fĂsica no
especĂfica.This lecture, a tribute to Prof. Enric Casassas, Prof.
Forina presents in a very didactic way, three important ideas to
take into account for all those who are working in chemometrics
or use chemometric techniques. The main goal should always
be to resolve a real chemistry situation, trying to use tools of
known quality and we should not afraid to apply Chemometrics
to situations such as non-specific physical information
Calidad de servicio en computación en la nube: técnicas de modelado y sus aplicaciones
Recent years have seen the massive migration of enterprise applications to the cloud. One of the challenges posed by cloud applications is Quality-of-Service (QoS) management, which is the problem of allocating resources to the application to guarantee a service level along dimensions such as performance, availability and reliability. This paper aims at supporting research in this area by providing a survey of the state of the art of QoS modeling approaches suitable for cloud systems. We also review and classify their early application to some decision-making problems arising in cloud QoS management
EFFECTIVENESS OF SWITCHING FROM ORAL ZIPRASIDONE TO RISPERIDONE IN A PATIENT WITH COMORBID AUTISTIC DISORDER, PROFOUND INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY, GILBERT SYNDROME, AND EXACERBATION OF PSYCHOSIS
Autism and intellectual disability may hinder any other coexisting psychiatric diagnosis. Diagnoses are often based on behavioral observations, directly ob- tained or reported by family members or operators in frequent contact with the patient, and non-verbal communications, as well as on the psychological and physical symptoms manifested by the patient.
We describe the case of a 28-year-old Italian man, hospitalized in one of our long-term care wards for comorbid profound intellectual disability (IQ<25), autistic and psychotic disorders, and Gilbert syndrome, who manifested a severe exacerbation of psychosis, for which ziprasidone was prescribed. This condition para- doxically further deteriorated after the introduction of this drug. A subsequent switch to risperidone greatly and rapidly improved both psychosis-related and symp- toms emerging after the introduction of ziprasidone
Nasal delivery devices: A comparative study on cadaver model
Nasal nebulization is a more effective method of delivering topical medication than nasal spray. The purpose of this study was to assess the deposition patterns of nebulization in delivering topical agents to the nasal cavities in the human cadaveric model using a color-based method. We have compared these following nasal devices: single-dose vial irrigation, syringe-irrigation, common nasal spray, Spray-sol, MAD nasal, and Rinowash nasal douche. Endoscopic images were recorded at six anatomical regions prior to and following each nasal device application and four reviewers evaluated the amount of surface area staining. At the nasal vestibule, the blue dye distribution achieved with Spray-sol was more extensive than nasal sprays. At inferior turbinate and nasal cavity floor, single dose vial, syringe, MAD nasal, Spray-sol, and Rinowash demonstrated a greater extent of dye distribution than nasal spray. At the middle turbinate, the average score of both Spray-sol and MAD nasal was significantly higher than other nasal investigated devices. At the nasopharynx, Spray-sol nebulization covers a surface significantly greater than other devices. Compared to traditional sprays, Spray-sol and MAD nasal provided a more effective method of delivering topical agents to the deeper and higher portions of the nasal cavities
High Erk-1 activation and Gadd45a expression as prognostic markers in high risk pediatric haemolymphoproliferative diseases
Studies on activated cell-signaling pathways responsible for neoplastic transformation are numerous in solid tumors and in adult leukemias. Despite of positive results in the evolution of pediatric hematopoietic neoplasias, there are some high-risk subtypes at worse prognosis. The aim of this study was to asses the expression and activation status of crucial proteins involved in cell-signaling pathways in order to identify molecular alterations responsible for the proliferation and/or escape from apoptosis of leukemic blasts. The quantitative and qualitative expression and activation of Erk-1, c-Jun, Caspase8, and Gadd45a was analyzed, by immunocytochemical (ICC) and western blotting methods, in bone marrow blasts of 72 patients affected by acute myeloid leukemia (AML), T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and stage IV non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL). We found an upregulation of Erk-1, Caspase8, c-Jun, and Gadd45a proteins with a constitutive activation in 95.8%, 91.7%, 86.2%, 83.4% of analyzed specimens, respectively. It is worth noting that all AML patients showed an upregulation of all proteins studied and the high expression of GADD45a was associated to the lowest DFS median (p = 0.04). On univariate analysis, only Erk-1 phosphorylation status was found to be correlated with a significantly shorter 5-years DFS in all disease subgroups (p = 0.033) and the lowest DFS median in ALL/NHL subgroup (p = 0.04). Moreover, the simultaneous activation of multiple kinases, as we found for c-Jun and Erk-1 (r = 0.26; p = 0.025), might synergistically enhance survival and proliferation potential of leukemic cells. These results demonstrate an involvement of these proteins in survival of blast cells and, consequently, on relapse percentages of the different subgroups of patients
Role of interferon lambda 4 and ALT levels in optimising treatment of HCV for patients with low-stage fibrosis
The use of new anti-HCV drugs is currently limited by high costs and dual therapy; pegylated interferon
and ribavirin (peg-IFN+RBV) still represents the only affordable treatment in patients with low-stage fibrosis.
We evaluated the role of Interferon lambda4 (IFNL4) polymorphisms and its combination with on-treatment
alanine transaminase (ALT) modification in predicting sustained virological response (SVR) in HCV genotype
1 and 4 patients with low-stage fibrosis. We retrospectively analysed 124 patients with Metavir ≤F2, who
received dual therapy at our centre. Genotyping for IFNL4 polymorphisms was assessed at baseline, as well
as ALT levels (baseline and week 2, 4, 12 and 24 of therapy). Thirty patients (24%) were TT/TT, 74 (60%)
TT/DG and 20 (16%) DG/DG. The SVR rate was significantly higher in TT/TT genotype compare to TT/DG
and DG/DG (97% vs. 53% and 50%, respectively, p=0.001). Patients that achieved a 60% reduction of
ALT baseline value after 4 weeks of therapy had a significantly higher SVR rate (94% vs. 52%, p<0.001).
Factors significantly associated with SVR were TT/TT genotype (p=0.029), RVR (p=0.019) and 60% ALT reduction
at 4 week of therapy (p=0.005). The absence of both TT/TT genotype and 60% ALT reduction
were negative predictors of SVR (p<0.001). In conclusion, the combined use of IFNL4 polymorphisms and
ALT reduction at 4 week of treatment is able to optimize candidates’ selection for peg-IFN+RBV, discriminating
those that could still benefit from dual therapy from the ones that need the new regimen
In-flight calibration and verification of the Planck-LFI instrument
In this paper we discuss the Planck-LFI in-flight calibration campaign. After
a brief overview of the ground test campaigns, we describe in detail the
calibration and performance verification (CPV) phase, carried out in space
during and just after the cool-down of LFI. We discuss in detail the
functionality verification, the tuning of the front-end and warm electronics,
the preliminary performance assessment and the thermal susceptibility tests.
The logic, sequence, goals and results of the in-flight tests are discussed.
All the calibration activities were successfully carried out and the instrument
response was comparable to the one observed on ground. For some channels the
in-flight tuning activity allowed us to improve significantly the noise
performance.Comment: Long technical paper on Planck LFI in flight calibration campaign:
109 pages in this (not final) version, 100 page in the final JINST versio
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