Virtual Reality to Stimulate Cognitive Behavior of Alzheimer's and Dementia Patients

Seniority and Alzheimer’s and dementia’s diseases lead to progressive cognitive impairment. The exploitation of Virtual Reality is investigated to test innovative entertainment and therapeutic activities that can provide new stimuli and interests for patients. The game approach activates mechanisms able to train memory and energize the mind through visuospatial and sound inputs. A full-immersive application has been developed to allow the patient to perform this kind of experience at home for daily training, becoming short therapeutic cycles, thanks to the affordability, the transportability and the flexibility of the infrastructure put in place. The cognitive path foresees successive levels of interaction, alternating relaxing and inspiring settings and exercises. It can improve the quality of life by learning to manage and monitor actions and feelings. In this way, these kind of experience can generate positive benefits not only for those who show fragility, but also for their families in addition to a tool to support health workers for diagnostics and training

A multielement probe for coincident temperature and pressure measurements

Small, multielement probes are described which measure total pressure and temperature coincidentally at one or several points in gas stream

Design and Analysis of a Deep Drawing and Inprocess Electromagnetic Sheet Metal Forming Process

The design as well as the subsequent analysis of a deep drawing and in-process electromagnetic sheet metal forming calibration will be described in this paper. Due to the quite different forming processes concerning the occurred strain rates, an investigation on the microstructure of the formed workpieces will be pointed out. Furthermore, the design steps regarding the integrated tool coil will be presented and the resulting examples discussed. Finally, the setup of the integrated process as well as the feasibility will be shown on an exemplary semi-industrial workpiece

The experience of family carers attending a joint reminiscence group with people with dementia: A thematic analysis

Reminiscence therapy has the potential to improve quality of life for people with dementia. In recent years reminiscence groups have extended to include family members, but carers' experience of attending joint sessions is undocumented. This qualitative study explored the experience of 18 family carers attending 'Remembering Yesterday Caring Today' groups. Semi-structured interviews were transcribed and subjected to thematic analysis. Five themes were identified: experiencing carer support; shared experience; expectations (met and unmet), carer perspectives of the person with dementia's experience; and learning and comparing. Family carers' experiences varied, with some experiencing the intervention as entirely positive whereas others had more mixed feelings. Negative aspects included the lack of respite from their relative, the lack of emphasis on their own needs, and experiencing additional stress and guilt through not being able to implement newly acquired skills. These findings may explain the failure of a recent trial of joint reminiscence groups to replicate previous findings of positive benefit. More targeted research within subgroups of carers is required to justify the continued use of joint reminiscence groups in dementia care

A novel method for pulmonary research: Assessment of bioenergetic function at the air–liquid interface

AbstractAir–liquid interface cell culture is an organotypic model for study of differentiated functional airway epithelium in vitro. Dysregulation of cellular energy metabolism and mitochondrial function have been suggested to contribute to airway diseases. However, there is currently no established method to determine oxygen consumption and glycolysis in airway epithelium in air–liquid interface. In order to study metabolism in differentiated airway epithelial cells, we engineered an insert for the Seahorse XF24 Analyzer that enabled the measure of respiration by oxygen consumption rate (OCR) and glycolysis by extracellular acidification rate (ECAR). Oxidative metabolism and glycolysis in airway epithelial cells cultured on the inserts were successfully measured. The inserts did not affect the measures of OCR or ECAR. Cells under media with apical and basolateral feeding had less oxidative metabolism as compared to cells on the inserts at air-interface with basolateral feeding. The design of inserts that can be used in the measure of bioenergetics in small numbers of cells in an organotypic state may be useful for evaluation of new drugs and metabolic mechanisms that underlie airway diseases

A beamforming video recorder for integrated observations of dolphin behavior and vocalizations

Author Posting. © Acoustical Society of America, 2005. This article is posted here by permission of Acoustical Society of America for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 117 (2005): 1005-1008, doi:10.1121/1.1831284.In this Letter we describe a beamforming video recorder consisting of a video camera at the center of a 16 hydrophone array. A broadband frequency-domain beamforming algorithm is used to estimate the azimuth and elevation of each detected sound. These estimates are used to generate a visual cue indicating the location of the sound source within the video recording, which is synchronized to the acoustic data. The system provided accurate results in both lab calibrations and a field test. The system allows researchers to correlate the acoustic and physical behaviors of marine mammals during studies of social interactions.This research was funded by NSF Ocean Sciences CAREER award 9733391

Optical observations of NEA 3200 Phaethon (1983 TB) during the 2017 apparition

The near-Earth asteroid 3200 Phaethon (1983 TB) is an attractive object not only from a scientific viewpoint but also because of JAXA's DESTINY+ target. The rotational lightcurve and spin properties were investigated based on the data obtained in the ground-based observation campaign of Phaethon. We aim to refine the lightcurves and shape model of Phaethon using all available lightcurve datasets obtained via optical observation, as well as our time-series observation data from the 2017 apparition. Using eight 1-2-m telescopes and an optical imager, we acquired the optical lightcurves and derived the spin parameters of Phaethon. We applied the lightcurve inversion method and SAGE algorithm to deduce the convex and non-convex shape model and pole orientations. We analysed the optical lightcurve of Phaethon and derived a synodic and a sidereal rotational period of 3.6039 h, with an axis ratio of a/b = 1.07. The ecliptic longitude (lambda) and latitude (beta) of the pole orientation were determined as (308, -52) and (322, -40) via two independent methods. A non-convex model from the SAGE method, which exhibits a concavity feature, is also presented.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, 1 figure in Appendix A. Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A

Dynamical Transition in the Open-boundary Totally Asymmetric Exclusion Process

We revisit the totally asymmetric simple exclusion process with open boundaries (TASEP), focussing on the recent discovery by de Gier and Essler that the model has a dynamical transition along a nontrivial line in the phase diagram. This line coincides neither with any change in the steady-state properties of the TASEP, nor the corresponding line predicted by domain wall theory. We provide numerical evidence that the TASEP indeed has a dynamical transition along the de Gier-Essler line, finding that the most convincing evidence was obtained from Density Matrix Renormalisation Group (DMRG) calculations. By contrast, we find that the dynamical transition is rather hard to see in direct Monte Carlo simulations of the TASEP. We furthermore discuss in general terms scenarios that admit a distinction between static and dynamic phase behaviour.Comment: 27 pages, 18 figures. v2 to appear in J Phys A features minor corrections and better-quality figure

Exact Spectral Gaps of the Asymmetric Exclusion Process with Open Boundaries

We derive the Bethe ansatz equations describing the complete spectrum of the transition matrix of the partially asymmetric exclusion process with the most general open boundary conditions. By analysing these equations in detail for the cases of totally asymmetric and symmetric diffusion, we calculate the finite-size scaling of the spectral gap, which characterizes the approach to stationarity at large times. In the totally asymmetric case we observe boundary induced crossovers between massive, diffusive and KPZ scaling regimes. We further study higher excitations, and demonstrate the absence of oscillatory behaviour at large times on the ``coexistence line'', which separates the massive low and high density phases. In the maximum current phase, oscillations are present on the KPZ scale $t\propto L^{-3/2}$. While independent of the boundary parameters, the spectral gap as well as the oscillation frequency in the maximum current phase have different values compared to the totally asymmetric exclusion process with periodic boundary conditions. We discuss a possible interpretation of our results in terms of an effective domain wall theory.Comment: 42 pages, 25 figures; added appendix and minor correction