Assessing Sleep Habits in Italian Community-Dwelling Adolescents: Psychometric Properties of the School Sleep Habits Survey Scales

Background. In the field of adolescent sleep research, different sleep surveys have been implemented; however, psychometric properties of these instruments have been investigated only minimally. Methods. In order to assess the psychometric properties of the Sleep-Wake Problems Behaviour Scale (SWP), the Sleepiness Scale (SLS), and the Morningness/Eveningness Questionnaire (ME), a moderately large sample of community-dwelling Italian adolescents (N = 778; 59.8% female; mean age = 15.77 years) was administered the Italian translation of the School Sleep Habits Survey. Results. Internal consistency estimates values were satisfactory for all measures; dimensionality analyses suggested a unidimensional structure for SWP, SLS and ME, respectively. Goodness-of-fit statistics for the one-factor model of the SLS, SWP, and ME scale items were adequate for all measures. Non -redundant taxometric analysis results consistently suggested a dimensional latent structure for the SLS, SWP, and ME, respectively. Conclusion. Our findings supported the use of the SLS, SWP, and ME total scores as measures of sleepiness, sleep-wake problem, and morningness/eveningness, at least among Italian community -dwelling adolescents, and encourage practitioners to rely on the conventional percentiles in order to interpret the SLS, SWP, and ME total scores

Cytotoxic activities of new iron(III) and nickel(II) chelates of some S-methyl-thiosemicarbazones on K562 and ECV304 cells

The S-methyl-thiosemicarbazones of the 2- hydroxy-R-benzaldehyde (R= H, 3-OH 3-OCH3 or 4-OCH3) reacted with the corresponding aldehydes in the presence of FeCl3 and NiCl2. New ONNO chelates of iron(III) and nickel (II) with hydroxy- or methoxy-substitued N1,N4-diarylidene-Smethyl- thiosemicarbazones were characterized by means of elemental analysis, conductivity and magnetic measurements, UV-Vis, IR and 1H-NMR spectroscopies. Cytotoxic activities of the compounds were determined using K562 chronic myeloid leukemia and ECV304 human endothelial cell lines by MTT assay. It was determined that monochloro N1-4- methoxysalicylidene-N4-4-methoxysalicylidene-S-methylthiosemicarbazidato- iron(III) complex showed selective anti-leukemic effects in K562 cells while has no effect in ECV304 cells in the 0.53 μg/ml (IC50) concentrations. Also, some methoxy-substitued nickel(II) chelates exhibit high cytotoxic activitiy against both of these cell lines in low concentrations. Cytotoxicity data were evaluated depending on cell lines origin and position of the substituents on aromatic rings

Icomp: A Mobile Portal Model Based On Reflective Middleware And Mobile Agents

Mobile Computing enables information access anytime, anywhere. However, the needs of users and the constraints generated by the mobile environment raise the necessity to personalize access to services. This paper describes ICoMP (I-centric Communication Mobile Portal), which is a mobile portal that offers services based upon user profiles (these contain information including: preferences, available resources, location and environment context). Notably, ICoMP follows an I-Centric approach, whereby the system dynamically adapts to manage both user requirements and changes in the mobile environment. ICoMP's infrastructure extends a reflective middleware (ReMMoC) with both context support, and an agent platform (Grasshopper) to improve access to information and application services. In this paper, we evaluate our implementation of the ICoMP portal in terms of memory footprint cost and support for mobile applications. © Springer-Verlag 2004.32848897Salber, D., Dey, A.K., Abowd, G.D., The Context Toolkit: Aiding the Development of Context-Enabled Applications (1999) Proceedings of the CHI 99 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: The CHI Is the Limit, pp. 434-441. , Pitsburgh, PA, May ACM PressMandato, D., Kovacs, E., Hohl, F., Amir-Alikhani, H., CAMP: A Context - Aware Mobile Portal (2002) IEEE Communicatios Magazine, pp. 90-97. , JanuarySadeh, N.M., (2002) A Semantic Web Environment for Context - Aware Mobile Services, , Carniege Mellon UniversityArbanowski, St., Van De Meer, S., Steglich, St., Popescu-Zeletin, R., The Human Communication Space: Towards I-centric Communications (2001) Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 5 (1)Grace, P., Blair, G., Samuel, S., ReMMoC: A Reflective Middleware to Support Mobile Client Interoperability (2003) Proceedings of International Symposium on Distributed Objects and Applications (DOA), , Sicily, Italy, Novembe

Prevenzione della Malattia di Lyme per i lavoratori esposti al rischio di morso da zecca

La malattia di Lyme è un’affezione multisistemica dovuta a Borrelia burgdorferi, trasmessa all’uomo dalle zecche, che si manifesta con una sintomatologia cutanea, neurologica, articolare e talvolta cardiaca. E’ tipica nelle nostre regioni nel periodo primavera-estate. Il periodo di incubazione ha durata variabile, da pochi giorni ad alcuni mesi. E’ classica la distinzione del decorso della malattia non trattata in tre stadi: il primo caratterizzato da manifestazioni cutanee (eritema migrante) il secondo da manifestazioni neurologiche ed eventualmente cardiache e il terzo da manifestazioni articolari. Nella maggior parte dei casi l’esordio è contrassegnato dalla comparsa nella sede della puntura della zecca dell’eritema migrante, che inizia con una papula eritematosa, che si espande ad anello, mentre nella zona centrale si osservano aree rosso acceso o vescicolose o necrotiche. L’eritema è spesso accompagnato da febbre, brivido, astenia, cefalea, artromialgie, linfoadenopatia regionale e talvolta generalizzata. Nel 50% dei casi compaiono eritemi multipli lontani dalla sede della puntura, simili a quello iniziale, ma spesso più piccoli e meno migranti. La sintomatologia regredisce generalmente in alcune settimane, anche nei casi non trattati, ma nel 25% dei casi l’eritema recidiva. Nel 20-30 % dei casi l’eritema non si osserva. Dopo alcune settimane o qualche mese dall’inizio della malattia, nel 15-20% dei casi si manifesta l’interessamento del sistema nervoso, e meno spesso (4-8% dei casi), del cuore