Hip fracture. Preliminary results supporting significative correlations between the psychological wellbeing of patients and their relative caregivers

Background and aim. Hip fracture is one of the major causes of loss of self-sufficiency in older patients. The associated caregiving rehabilitation task often falls to the lot of a member of the patient’s family. Our study aims at assessing the relationship between the psychological well-being of patients with hip fracture and their caregivers. Methods. The study was carried-out on 53 elderly patients with hip fracture and their primary caregivers. The Mini Mental State Examination (patient), Activities of Daily Living (patient), Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (patient), Geriatric Depression Scale (patient), Psychological General Well-Being Index (patient/caregiver) and the Caregiver Burden Inventory (caregiver) were administered to each participant. Results. The results revealed significant correlations between stress levels and the psychological well-being of hip-fracture patients and relative caregivers. In particular, the Caregiver Burden Inventory’s total score was negatively related to the patient’s Psychological General Well-Being Index score (p < 0.05) and with Anxiety (p < 0.05), Depressed Mood (p < 0.01), Positive Well-being (p < 0.05) and General Health (p < 0.05) subscale scores, as well as with the patient’s Activities of Daily Living (p < 0.05) score. Patients’ Psychological General Well-Being Index scores were related to the caregivers’ General Health subscale (p < 0.01), and negatively related to Caregiver Burden Inventory Time Dependence (p < 0.05) and Social Burden (p < 0.05) subscales, as well as with the Geriatric Depression Scale score (p < 0.05). Conclusion. A mutual relationship seems to exist between a patient’s psychological well-being and his/her caregiver’s burden. These findings highlight the importance of a bio-psychosocial approach to both patients and caregivers

Semantics of Input-Consuming Logic Programs

Input-consuming programs are logic programs with an additional restriction on the selectability (actually, on the resolvability) of atoms. this class of programs arguably allows to model logic programs employing a dynamic selection rule and constructs such as delay declarations: as shown also in [5], a large number of them are actually input-consuming. \ud in this paper we show that - under some syntactic restrictions - the tex2html_wrap_inline117-semantics of a program is correct and fully abstract also for input-consuming programs. this allows us to conclude that for a large class of programs employing delay declarations there exists a model-theoretic semantics which is equivalent to the operational one

Prevalence of Vertebral Fractures in Osteoporotic HIP Fractured Patients: The Focus Study

Osteoporosis is a multifactorial systemic skeletal disease, characterized by low bone mass and microarchitectural modifications of bone tissue, with a consequent increase in fragility fractures. Vertebral fractures are the most prevalent osteoporotic fractures and osteoporotic hip fractures are the most serious complication of osteoporosis resulting in increased mortality and high socio-economic cost. The coexistence of these two pathological conditions in elderly patients has been previously described, leading to even worse functional outcomes than each one alone. To determine the prevalence of vertebral fractures in osteoporotic hip fractured women and to evaluate the relationship between prevalence of vertebral fractures and pre-existing factors such us autonomy in daily life activity, quality of walking, numbers of falls, cognitive aspects and comorbidities. 946 osteoporotic hip fractured women aged more than 60 years and with an X-ray evaluation of spine were consecutively enrolled in 25 Orthopaedic, Physical Medicine and geriatric centers in Italy. After spine X-ray morphometry patients were divided in two groups: previous vertebral fracture (F) and no previous fracture (NF). Moreover anamnestic, demographical and outcome related data (ADL, IADL, CIRS, SPMSQ, FAC and RANKIN scale) were collected. Prevalent vertebral fractures were present in 502 (54%) patients. 119 (13.7%) patients had at least one severe fracture. The F compared to NF group showed statistically significant worse scores regarding the pre hip fracture values of RANKIN, CIRS, SPMSQ, IADL and the overall number of falls (p<0.001). Moreover the F group showed statistically significant lower values of serif 25(OH)D than NF group (p<.0.001). Previous Vertebral fractures in hip fractured patients are a common issue and negatively influence several functional and cognitive outcome measures in these patients

Annual to seasonal glacier mass balance in High Mountain Asia derived from Pl\ue9iades stereo images: examples from the Pamir and the Tibetan Plateau

\ua9 Copyright: Glaciers are crucial sources of freshwater in particular for the arid lowlands surrounding High Mountain Asia. To better constrain glacio-hydrological models, annual, or even better, seasonal information about glacier mass changes is highly beneficial. In this study, we evaluate the suitability of very-high-resolution Pl\ue9iades digital elevation models (DEMs) to measure glacier mass balance at annual and seasonal scales in two regions of High Mountain Asia (Muztagh Ata in Eastern Pamirs and parts of western Nyainq\ueantanglha, south-central Tibetan Plateau), where recent estimates have shown contrasting glacier behaviour. The average annual mass balance in Muztagh Ata between 2019 and 2022 was -0.07ĝ€\uaf\ub1ĝ€\uaf0.20ĝ€\uafmĝ€\uafw.e.ĝ€\uafa-1, suggesting the continuation of a recent phase of slight mass loss following a prolonged period of balanced mass budgets previously observed. The mean annual mass balance in western Nyainq\ueantanglha was highly negative for the same period (-0.60ĝ€\uaf\ub1ĝ€\uaf0.15ĝ€\uafmĝ€\uafw.e.ĝ€\uafa-1), suggesting increased mass loss rates compared to the approximately previous 5 decades. The 2022 winter (+0.13ĝ€\uaf\ub1ĝ€\uaf0.24ĝ€\uafmĝ€\uafw.e.) and summer (-0.35ĝ€\uaf\ub1ĝ€\uaf0.15ĝ€\uafmĝ€\uafw.e.) mass budgets in Muztagh Ata and western Nyainq\ueantanglha (-0.03ĝ€\uaf\ub1ĝ€\uaf0.27ĝ€\uafmĝ€\uafw.e. in winter; -0.63ĝ€\uaf\ub1ĝ€\uaf0.07ĝ€\uafmĝ€\uafw.e. in summer) suggest winter- and summer-accumulation-type regimes, respectively. We support our findings by implementing the Sentinel-1-based Glacier Index to identify the firn and wet-snow areas on glaciers and characterize the accumulation type. The good match between the geodetic and Glacier Index results supports the potential of very-high-resolution Pl\ue9iades data to monitor mass balance at short timescales and improves our understanding of glacier accumulation regimes across High Mountain Asia

Estimating abundance and habitat suitability in a micro-endemic snake: the Walser viper

Recently described species suffer lack of information that hampers setting up appropriate conservation strategies. The situation is particularly complex with micro-endemic snakes, for which detection and monitoring are particularly challenging. The Walser viper Vipera walser is a recently described snake inhabiting a small area of the SW Italian alps. We combined information on species distribution with repeated monitoring to identify the areas most suitable for the species, and to obtain estimates of species abundance. Species distribution models were used to identify the topographical, climatic, and land-cover features related to the occurrence of vipers. Furthermore, repeated transects and N-mixture models were used to estimate abundance and to identify factors related to the variation of abundance. The available data suggested that the species has a disjunct range, with a Northern range of ~45 km2 , and a southern range of ~225 km2. Distribution models suggested that vipers are associated with areas with open egetation,altitude between 1300 and 2300 m, high precipitation, low forest cover, low slope, and southern aspect. N-mixture models confirmed very low detection probability of these vipers, and suggested that the species has a low abundance,with the highest abundance in south-facing plots. We provide the first quantitative information on habitats and abundance variation for Walser vipers. The broad confidence intervals of abundance estimates exemplify the complexity of providing range-wide measures of abundance for secretive species. Given the narrow range of these vipers, continuous monitoring is required to understand how they respond to ongoing environmental changes in mountainous areas

A Model-Theoretic Reconstruction of the Operational Semantics of Logic Programs

AbstractIn this paper we define a new notion or truth on Herbrand interpretations extended with variables which allows us to capture, by means of suitable models, various observable properties, such as the ground success set, the set of atomic consequences, and the computed answer substitutions. The notion of truth extends the classical one to account for non-ground formulas in the interpretations. The various operational semantics are all models. An ordering on interpretations is defined to overcome the problem that the intersection of a set of models is not necessarily a model. The set of interpretations with this partial order is shown to be a complete lattice, and the greatest lower bound of any set of models is shown to be a model. Thus there exists a least model, which is the least Herbrand model and therefore the ground success set semantics. Richer operational semantics are non-least models, which can, however, be effectively defined by fixpoint constructions. The model corresponding to the computed answer substitutions operational semantics is the most primitive one (the others can easily be obtained from it)

ReptIslands: Mediterranean islands and the distribution of their reptile fauna

Aim: Analyses of biogeographical patterns and macroecology of islands require large datasets reporting the occurrence of species. The Mediterranean region is a biodiversity hotspot, which hosts a large number of reptile species and has been the focus of many studies. Nevertheless, comprehensive inventories describing the features and biodiversity of these environments are lacking. We gathered a dataset summarizing data on reptile distribution on islands of the Mediterranean basin and Macaronesia, also including detailed information on the geographical features. Location: Islands from the Mediterranean Basin, the Atlantic Ocean within the Mediterranean biogeographical region, and Macaronesia (Canary and Savage Islands, Azores, Madeira and Cape Verde). Time period: Present. Taxon: Reptiles (squamates and turtles). Methods: Initially, we developed a geographical database describing islands of the study region, then gathered information on reptile occurrences from 757 bibliographical sources, including atlases, published papers and the grey literature. Through a critical review of these sources, we also obtained information on the status of populations (native, island endemic or non-native) and on the reliability of occurrence data. Results: We obtained basic geographical information from 1875 islands covering the whole study region and with a very broad range of geographical features. We gathered &gt;4150 records of reptile occurrence on islands, referring to 198 taxonomic units (species or species complexes); information on population status was available for 84.9% of records. Data are provided as comma-delimited text files. Main conclusions: The database provides a key resource for biogeographical analyses and can also serve as a backbone for conservation studies. The availability of a large database on island features can also be useful for biogeographers working on other taxonomic groups. Nevertheless, more data are required for some geographical areas, in order to ascertain the status (e.g., native vs. non-native) of many populations and to understand the interplay between natural and human-driven processes

Il percorso ideale nella gestione del paziente con osteoporosi severa:dalla valutazione del rischio all'approccio multidisciplinare

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Concurrent and Reactive Constraint Programming

The Italian Logic Programming community has given several contributions to the theory of Concurrent Constraint Programming. In particular, in the topics of semantics, verification, and timed extensions. In this paper we review the main lines of research and contributions of the community in this fiel