82 research outputs found
A Case Report of a Woman Affected with Rapid Cycling Bipolar Disorder I and Methabolic Syndrome Improved with Aripiprazole Monotherapy
Introduction
We present the case of a 51-years-old Caucasian woman with Bipolar Disorder I (BDI), treated for a long
time with typical antipsychotics and mood stabilizers. She referred to our outpatient service because she
wished to revise her precriptions, which had caused several side-effects, including metabolic syndrome,
gain of body weight, sedation, cognitive impairments, and extrapiramidal symptoms. Moreover, treatment
was poorly effective, the patient's compliance was lacking and she experienced frequent relapses.
Aims
We started treating the patient with aripiprazole at a daily dose of 15 mg. Our aim is to describe the
substantial clinical and metabolic improvements of a patient who poorly responded to previous
prescriptions.
Methods
Psychometric measures for the assessment of mood and social functioning were administered at baseline
and at the follow-up interviews. Body Mass Index was monitored and blood tests were performed to evaluate
the lipid profile (LDL, HDL, total cholesterol, triglycerides), blood glucose, and glycated haemoglobin.
Results
In the last two years the patient has regularly taken her therapies and attended to follow-up visits. Her social
functioning and tolerance to stressful situations have improved, as well as her metabolic profile. Noteworthy,
she had not needed further hospitalizations.
Conclusions
Our clinical observations support the efficacy of aripiprazole in the treatment of BDI. Switching to
aripiprazole should be considered in cases similar to the one we have described, characterized by poor
compliance, obesity or metabolic syndrome, sensitivity to manifest extrapiramidal syndrome (especially
tardive dyskinesia) and other side effects such as sedation and cognitive impairments
The psychopathology of body image in orthorexia nervosa
The human body has a complex meaning and role in everybody\u2019s life and experience. Body
image has two main components: body percept (the internal visual image of body shape and
size) and body concept (the level of satisfaction with one\u2019s body), whose specific alterations
may lead to different conditions, such as overestimation of one\u2019s own body dimensions,
negative feelings and thoughts towards the body, body avoidance and body checking behavior. Moreover, body dissatisfaction can be associated with a variety of other mental health
and psychosocial conditions, but only a few studies have explored the body image construct
in orthorexia nervosa (ON). ON is a condition characterized by concern and fixation about
healthy eating, with mixed results available in the literature about the presence of body image
disorders. The aim of this manuscript is to present the main findings from the literature about
the psychopathology of body image in ON. Summarizing, while theoretically the presence of
body image disturbances should help clinicians to differentiate ON from eating disorders,
further research is needed to confirm this finding. It is not clear whether the body image
disorder in ON depends on an altered body percept or body concept, and the relationship between the disordered eating behavior and body image disorder still needs to be disentangled.
Further studies regarding the relationship between ON and body image could be helpful to
better understand the relevance of body image as a transdiagnostic factor and its potential
value as target for treatment intervention
Exploiting web technologies to build autonomic wireless sensor networks
Most of the current wireless sensor networks are built for specific applications, with a tight coupling between them and the underlying communication protocols. We present a more flexible architectural approach for building WSNs, in which application-specific features are decoupled from the underlying communication infrastructure, although affecting the network behavior. We propose a framework based on Web technologies that provides a standard interface for accessing the network and configurable service components tailored to meet different application requirements, while optimizing the network scarce resources. Also, a set of ontologies is defined as part of the framework for representing shared knowledge of the WSN domain.8th IFIP/IEEE International conference on Mobile and Wireless CommunicationRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI
Data-Centric Edge Federation: A Multi-Edge Architecture for Data Stream Processing of IoT Applications
Emerging Internet of Things (IoT) applications demand data stream processing with low latency and high processing power. Although the cloud naturally provides huge processing capacity, high latency to move data to the datacenter is prohibitive. Edge computing is a recent paradigm where part of computing and storage resources are pushed from the cloud to the edge of the network. In edge computing, edge providers manage their resources near to IoT devices to meet low latency application requirements and reduce the network core bandwidth. To reach the maximum potential of edge computing, a big challenge is to promote the cooperation between edge providers. Currently, edge computing architectures are severely limited for providing cooperation mechanisms between distinct edge providers. In this paper, we propose a edge federation to leverage the cooperation between different edge providers. The edge federation uses interest information propagated in data streams that travel between edge providers to allow an stakeholder to react to inefficient resource allocation and service provision. The main objective of the federation is to create a consortium of edge providers to provide cooperation mechanisms and define and standardize the application interests. The proposed edge federation is (i) data-centric, since edge providers can share common interests and data and, thus, establish cooperation to increase the capacity to provide services for applications; (ii) distributed, since no assumption is made concerning the geo-location of the edge providers and their logical connections; (iii) opportunistic, because an edge provider can react dynamically to the environment change ; (iv) scalable, since the edge provider has the ability to analyze a data flow passing by its infrastructure and make decisions to increase network performance locally, which impacts the global performanc
Data-Centric Resource Management in Edge-Cloud Systems for the IoT
A major challenge in emergent scenarios such as the Cloud-assisted Internet of Things is efficiently managing the resources involved in the system while meeting requirements of applications. From the acquisition of physical data to its transformation into valuable services or information, several steps must be performed, involving the various players in such a complex ecosystem. Support for decentralized data processing on IoT devices and other devices near the edge of the network, in combination with the benefits of cloud technologies has been identified as a promising approach to reduce communication overhead, thus reducing delay for time sensitive IoT applications. The interplay of IoT, edge and cloud to achieve the final goal of producing useful information and value-added services to end user gives rise to a management problem that needs to be wisely tackled. The goal of this work is to propose a novel resource management framework for edge-cloud systems that supports heterogeneity of both devices and application requirements. The framework aims to promote the efficient usage of the system resources while leveraging the Edge Computing features, to meet the low latency requirements of emergent IoT applications. The proposed framework encompasses (i) a lightweight and data-centric virtualization model for edge devices, (ii) a set of components responsible for the resource management and the provisioning of services from the virtualized edge-cloud resources
SATYA: A Reputation-based Approach for Service Discovery and Selection in Service Oriented Architectures
ABSTRACT We present SATYA, a system that computes a reputation value for Web service providers in order to enhance the service discovery and selection process increasing reliability in SOA transactions. In this work, objective values of service evaluations supplied by monitoring entities are used along with subjective evaluations supplied by service consumers. The objective and subjective values are compared in order to: (i) validate subjective evaluations; (ii) minimize the degree of subjectivity of computed reputation values; and (iii) discover consumers' preferences in terms of QoS metrics. By assigning Web services a trustable reputation value, SATYA enhances the service descriptions provided by registries with additional information to be used during the service discovery phase
Exploiting web technologies to build autonomic wireless sensor networks
Most of the current wireless sensor networks are built for specific applications, with a tight coupling between them and the underlying communication protocols. We present a more flexible architectural approach for building WSNs, in which application-specific features are decoupled from the underlying communication infrastructure, although affecting the network behavior. We propose a framework based on Web technologies that provides a standard interface for accessing the network and configurable service components tailored to meet different application requirements, while optimizing the network scarce resources. Also, a set of ontologies is defined as part of the framework for representing shared knowledge of the WSN domain.8th IFIP/IEEE International conference on Mobile and Wireless CommunicationRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI
Functional activities of the Tsh protein from avian pathogenic Escherichia coli (APEC) strains
The temperature-sensitive hemagglutinin (Tsh) expressed by strains of avian pathogenic Escherichia (E.) coli (APEC) has both agglutinin and protease activities. Tsh is synthesized as a 140 kDa precursor protein, whose processing results in a 106 kDa passenger domain (Tshs) and a 33 kDa β-domain (Tshβ). In this study, both recombinant Tsh (rTsh) and supernatants from APEC, which contain Tshs (106 kDa), caused proteolysis of chicken tracheal mucin. Both rTsh (140 kDa) and pellets from wild-type APEC, which contain Tshβ (33 kDa), agglutinated chicken erythrocytes. On Western blots, the anti-rTsh antibody recognized the rTsh and 106 kDa proteins in recombinant E. coli BL21/pET 101-Tsh and in the supernatants from APEC grown at either 37℃ or 42℃. Anti-rTsh also recognized a 33 kDa protein in the pellets from APEC13 cultures grown in either Luria-Bertani agar, colonization factor antigen agar, or mucin agar at either 26℃, 37℃, or 42℃, and in the extracts of outer membrane proteins of APEC. The 106 kDa protein was more evident when the bacteria were grown at 37℃ in mucin agar, and it was not detected when the bacteria were grown at 26℃ in any of the culture media used in this study. Chicken anti-Tsh serum inhibited hemagglutinating and mucinolytic activities of strain APEC13 and recombinant E. coli BL21/pET101-Tsh. This work suggests that the mucinolytic activity of Tsh might be important for the colonization of the avian tracheal mucous environment by APEC
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