Effects of Music Therapy On Hospitalized Patients with Severe Mental Illnesses

Previous studies reported that music therapy (MT) exerts a positive effect on many medical and neuropsychiatric disorders. The use of MT has been proposed also for patients with severe mental illnesse (SMI), altrough further studies are still needed. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effects on a structured MT program on clinical and social functioning indices of patient with SMI, hospitalized in an psychiatric emergency ward. The MT intervention followed the Benenzon model of MT and was delivered biweekly to 61 patients consecutively admittted to the psychiatric emergency ward. Subjects who did not complete the two-week MT intervention (N=45) were considered as the control group. all subjects were administred the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) to evaluate the general psychopatology, the Hospital Anxiety And Depression Scale (HADS) for affective symptomatology, the Clinical Global Impression Scale (CGI-S) for severity of symptoms and the Global Assestment of Functioning (GAF) for psychosocial functioning. A repeated measures analysis of variance revealed that patients who unerwent the MT intervention had a statistically significant reduction of general and affective psychopatology scores and of symptoms severity with respect to the control group, after observation period. Our result are in line with previous studies confirming that MT may exert positive effects on psychopatology (in particular, on affective symptomatology) of patient with SMI, and extend this observation to an emergency setting, with short period of hospital stay

A Predictive Maintenance Remote System based on Partial Discharges Measurements on Wind Turbines

The environmental matters fostered the power generation using renewable energies. This led, among the different possible solutions, to the diffusion of wind farms for wind power generation. Different types of sensors capable to detect the Partial discharges (PD) activity in the power generator and in the other electrical apparatuses installed in the nacelle can be useful as a diagnostic tool for a predictive maintenance program. The sensors able to reveal irradiated and/or conducted PD signals can be connected to an automated acquisition system. In order to monitor continuously the electrical apparatuses in the nacelle, this acquisition system can be remotely connected to a control unit by means of an Ethernet or a Wi-Fi connection. After a preliminary measurements campaign to define the environmental noise, four sensors have been installed on board of each of two nacelles: two sensors, antenna type, have been used to detect irradiated PD signals while other two sensors, high frequency current transformers, have been used to reveal conducted PD pulses. All sensors have been optimized and the output signals have been filtered and amplified. The conditioned signals have been acquired by means of a high-speed A/D converter. An ad hoc developed software allows to set the measurement parameters and to store the acquired data on a remote storage unit. In order to obtain information about the actual status of the electrical apparatuses the measurements have been performed on two nacelles for months

PDIV and RPDIV on different temperatures on different kind of type I insulating system

Nowadays the massive adoption of electronic converters to supply electrical motors leads to critical problems during the normal operation. In fact when the motors are supplied by electronic converters, the stator insulating system could be subjected to over voltages due to reflection and resonance phenomena. Frequently this over voltages exceed the partial discharge inception voltage and partial discharge activity incepts. The presence of partial discharge activity impliesthe degradation of the dielectric characteristics of the type I insulating system and in the short\uadmedium time, leads to a total breakdown discharge. Three different types of type I insulating system used in rotating electrical machines fed from inverters have been considered and studied. The PDIV and RPDIV at different temperatures have been measured and compared. During this research study the stators of asyncronous motors have been subjected to sinusoidal waveform and unipolar positive voltage pulses at different temperatures. In order to perform the RPDIV measurements a modified surge tester has been used so to apply unipolar positive voltage pulses at the terminals of the windings. The correlation between the repetitive partial discharge inception voltage and the partial discharges inception voltage measured at different temperatures has been studied