1,591 research outputs found
Assessment of Natural Resources Use for Sustainable Development - DPSIR Framework for Case Studies in Portsmouth and Thames Gateway, U.K.
This chapter reports on the uses of the DPSIR framework to assess the sustainability of the intertidal environments within the two UK case study areas, Portsmouth and Thames Gateway. It focuses on statutory conservation areas dominated by intertidal habitats. Two are located in Portsmouth (Portsmouth and Langstone Harbours) and four in the Thames Gateway (Benfleet Marshes, South Thames Estuary, Medway Estuary and the Swale in the Thames Gateway). Based on the reduction of a number of pressures and impacts observed in recent decades and the improvement of overall environmental quality, all six SSSIs are considered to be sustainable in the short and medium term. In the future, it is possible that the impacts of climate change, especially sea-level rise, might result in further reduction in the area and/or quality of intertidal habitats. Further integration between conservation and planning objectives (both for urban development and management of flood risk) at local level is needed to support the long-term sustainability of intertidal habitats
Human Gait Analysis in Neurodegenerative Diseases: a Review
This paper reviews the recent literature on technologies and methodologies for quantitative human gait analysis in the context of neurodegnerative diseases. The use of technological instruments can be of great support in both clinical diagnosis and severity assessment of these pathologies. In this paper, sensors, features and processing methodologies have been reviewed in order to provide a highly consistent work that explores the issues related to gait analysis. First, the phases of the human gait cycle are briefly explained, along with some non-normal gait patterns (gait abnormalities) typical of some neurodegenerative diseases. The work continues with a survey on the publicly available datasets principally used for comparing results. Then the paper reports the most common processing techniques for both feature selection and extraction and for classification and clustering. Finally, a conclusive discussion on current open problems and future directions is outlined
Cell wall proteomics reveals a strong association of acta to the peptidoglycan promoting listeria monocytogenes invasiveness
Comunicaciones a congreso
Assessment of severity in aortic stenosis – Incremental value of endocardial function parameters compared to standard indexes
Several studies have reported that patients (pts) with severe aortic stenosis and similar pressure gradients or even similar aortic valve areas may have quite different symptomatic status and clinical outcomes suggesting that other factors might have a significant impact on the pathophysiology of this disease. Our purpose was to assess the severity of subendocardial wall dysfunction in symptomatic and asymptomatic pts with aortic stenosis using tissue Doppler imaging (TDI), strain rate imaging (SRI) and cyclic variation of integrated backscatter (IB). We studied 68 pts with aortic valvar stenosis and 46 subjects with no signs of heart disease. SRI/IB indexes were calculated in the apical four chambers views at endocardial level. Early diastolic endocardial strain rate showed the best correlation with transvalvar pressure gradients and valve areas. Compared with controls, symptomatic pts showed a more marked decrease in endocardial strain, strain rate and cyclic variation of IB. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves suggested that the thresholds offering an adequate compromise between sensitivity and specificity for the prediction of symptoms were >/=60 mm Hg for the pressure gradient, less than 0.60 cm(2)/m(2) for aortic valve area, less than 20% for strain, less than 2.0 s(-1) for strain rate and less than 3.0 dB for cyclic variation. The combination of pressure gradient, aortic valve area and SRI/IB parameters resulted in an improvement of the overall performance for predicting the symptomatic state. Thus, SRI/IB parameters have an incremental value in differentiating symptomatic and asymptomatic pts with aortic stenosis compared with conventional hemodynamic parameters
Metallo-Dielectric Multilayer Structure for Lactose Malabsorption Diagnosis through H2 Breath Test
A metallo-dielectric multilayer structure is proposed as a novel approach to
the analysis of lactose malabsorption. When lactose intolerance occurs, the
bacterial overgrowth in the intestine causes an increased spontaneous emission
of H2 in the human breath. By monitoring the changes in the optical properties
of a multilayer palladium-polymeric structure, one is able to detect the
patient's disease and the level of lactose malabsorption with high sensitivity
and rapid response
Frontiers in Pigment Cell and Melanoma Research
We identify emerging frontiers in clinical and basic research of melanocyte
biology and its associated biomedical disciplines. We describe challenges and
opportunities in clinical and basic research of normal and diseased melanocytes
that impact current approaches to research in melanoma and the dermatological
sciences. We focus on four themes: (1) clinical melanoma research, (2) basic
melanoma research, (3) clinical dermatology, and (4) basic pigment cell
research, with the goal of outlining current highlights, challenges, and
frontiers associated with pigmentation and melanocyte biology. Significantly,
this document encapsulates important advances in melanocyte and melanoma
research including emerging frontiers in melanoma immunotherapy, medical and
surgical oncology, dermatology, vitiligo, albinism, genomics and systems
biology, epidemiology, pigment biophysics and chemistry, and evolution
Diamond Detectors for the TOTEM Timing Upgrade
This paper describes the design and the performance of the timing detector
developed by the TOTEM Collaboration for the Roman Pots (RPs) to measure the
Time-Of-Flight (TOF) of the protons produced in central diffractive
interactions at the LHC. The measurement of the TOF of the protons allows the
determination of the longitudinal position of the proton interaction vertex and
its association with one of the vertices reconstructed by the CMS detectors.
The TOF detector is based on single crystal Chemical Vapor Deposition (scCVD)
diamond plates and is designed to measure the protons TOF with about 50 ps time
precision. This upgrade to the TOTEM apparatus will be used in the LHC run 2
and will tag the central diffractive events up to an interaction pileup of
about 1. A dedicated fast and low noise electronics for the signal
amplification has been developed. The digitization of the diamond signal is
performed by sampling the waveform. After introducing the physics studies that
will most profit from the addition of these new detectors, we discuss in detail
the optimization and the performance of the first TOF detector installed in the
LHC in November 2015.Comment: 26 pages, 18 figures, 2 tables, submitted for publication to JINS
Evidence for non-exponential elastic proton-proton differential cross-section at low |t| and sqrt(s) = 8 TeV by TOTEM
The TOTEM experiment has made a precise measurement of the elastic
proton-proton differential cross-section at the centre-of-mass energy sqrt(s) =
8 TeV based on a high-statistics data sample obtained with the beta* = 90
optics. Both the statistical and systematic uncertainties remain below 1%,
except for the t-independent contribution from the overall normalisation. This
unprecedented precision allows to exclude a purely exponential differential
cross-section in the range of four-momentum transfer squared 0.027 < |t| < 0.2
GeV^2 with a significance greater than 7 sigma. Two extended parametrisations,
with quadratic and cubic polynomials in the exponent, are shown to be well
compatible with the data. Using them for the differential cross-section
extrapolation to t = 0, and further applying the optical theorem, yields total
cross-section estimates of (101.5 +- 2.1) mb and (101.9 +- 2.1) mb,
respectively, in agreement with previous TOTEM measurements.Comment: Final version published in Nuclear Physics
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