Video-EEG long term monitoring as a new service at Mater Dei Hospital

Introduction: Video-EEG long-term monitoring (LTM) was introduced into Mater Dei Hospital (MDH) in May 2012. The audit aims to evaluate LTM in terms of diagnostic outcomes and impact on patient management. Methods: Analysis was carried out after retrospective review of 30 inpatients who underwent LTM at MDH between May 2012 and May 2014. 31 LTM sessions were performed. Referrals were made by 3 consultant neurologists. LTM and medical records were compared to evaluate whether LTM determined a change in diagnosis and how this affected management outcomes. Results: Patient ages ranged from 3 months to 73 years (35.5% paediatric cases) (16 male , 15 female studies). The most common indication was for uncontrolled seizures (54.8%), followed by suspected non-epileptic seizures (NES) (29%). The average hospital stay was 2 days for paediatric patients and 5 for adult cases. Major monitoring interruptions were recorded in 5 paediatric and 1 adult case. Comparing pre- with post-LTM diagnosis showed that the investigation changed or identified a new diagnosis in 38.7%, confirmed the diagnosis in 29%, and was inconclusive in 32.3% (inconclusive in 45.5% of paediatric cohort and 25% of adult cohort). It led to medication optimisation in 38.7% and neuropsychiatry referrals in 22.6%. The remaining were unchanged, not followed up or referred for other tests. None were referred for surgery. Conclusion: LTM is an important tool which influenced patient management through changes in medication or referrals in 64.5% of cases. Continuous evaluation of the techniques used and resources available is recommended to increase the yield of conclusive LTM studies.peer-reviewe

Software Fault Prediction using Bio-Inspired Algorithms to Select the Features to be employed: An Empirical Study

In recent past, the use of bio-inspired algorithms got a significant attention in software fault predictions, where they can be used to select the most relevant features for a dataset aiming to increase the prediction accuracy of estimation techniques. The most-earlier and widely investigated algorithms are Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). More recently, researchers have analyzed other algorithms inspired from nature. In this paper, we consider GA and PSO as baseline/benchmark algorithms and evaluate their performances against seven recently-employed bio-inspired algorithms and metaheuristics, namely Ant Colony Optimization, Bat Search, Bee Search, Cuckoo Search, Harmony Search, Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm, and Tabu Search, for feature selection in software fault prediction. We present experiments with seven open source datasets and three estimation techniques: Random Forest, Support Vector Regression, and Linear Regression. We found that it is not always true that the recently introduced algorithms outperform the earlier introduced algorithms

Essays on firms in the global economy

This thesis explores how taxes and subsidies can influence the decisions of strategic firms acting in the global economy. Chapter 1 considers tax/subsidy competition for a multinational enterprise (MNE) between the governments of two potential host countries. It is shown that the MNE's decision to locate in the proximity of firms producing a homogeneous product may be the result of government subsidies that aim to capitalise on the potential for knowledge spillovers to indigenous industry; and that fiscal competition to host the MNE may increase the welfare of both winning and losing countries when it leads to the relocation of multinationals away from countries that do not have the potential to benefit from knowledge spillovers to countries that do. Chapter 2 analyses the impact of anti-profit-shifting policies in a model with competition for an MNE's production plant and its profits between two governments that have at their disposal two fiscal policy instruments. It is shown that any gains in tax revenues resulting from more costly profit shifting may be partly offset by higher subsidies in the bidding stage for the MNE's plant such that the positive impact of anti-tax avoidance policies on host countries' tax revenues may be smaller than anticipated. [Continues.]</div

Case number 10 : Dandy-Walker syndrome

Ms. SA is an 8-year-old known case of Dandy-Walker syndrome managed through supraventricular and infraventricular peritoneal shunts. Having acquired normal developmental milestones till seven years of age, she currently has cognitive impairment, gait abnormality and speech defects following shunt complications.peer-reviewe

Complex delay dynamics on railway networks: from universal laws to realistic modelling

Railways are a key infrastructure for any modern country. The reliability and resilience of this peculiar transportation system may be challenged by different shocks such as disruptions, strikes and adverse weather conditions. These events compromise the correct functioning of the system and trigger the spreading of delays into the railway network on a daily basis. Despite their importance, a general theoretical understanding of the underlying causes of these disruptions is still lacking. In this work, we analyse the Italian and German railway networks by leveraging on the train schedules and actual delay data retrieved during the year 2015. We use {these} data to infer simple statistical laws ruling the emergence of localized delays in different areas of the network and we model the spreading of these delays throughout the network by exploiting a framework inspired by epidemic spreading models. Our model offers a fast and easy tool for the preliminary assessment of the {effectiveness of} traffic handling policies, and of the railway {network} criticalities.Comment: 32 pages (with appendix), 28 Figures (with appendix), 2 Table

Towards novelty-driven recommender systems

Abstract We get recommendations about everything and in a pervasive way. Recommender systems act like compasses for our journey in complex conceptual spaces and we more and more rely on recommendations to ground most of our decisions. Despite their extraordinary efficiency and reliability, recommender systems are far from being flawless. They display instead serious drawbacks that might seriously reduce our open-mindedness and our capacity of experiencing diversity and possibly conflicting views. In this paper, we carefully investigate the very foundations of recommendation algorithms in order to identify the determinants of what could be the next generation of recommender systems. We postulate that it is possible to overcome the limitations of current recommender systems, by getting inspiration from the way in which people seek for novelties and give value to new experiences. From this perspective, the notion of adjacent possible seems a relevant one to redesign recommender systems in a way that better aligns with the natural inclination of human beings towards new and pleasant experiences. We claim that this new generation of recommenders could help in overcoming the pitfalls of current technologies, namely the tendency towards a lack of diversity, polarization, the emergence of echo-chambers and misinformation

Camalexin Quantification in Arabidopsis thaliana Leaves Infected with Botrytis cinerea

Phytoalexins are heterogeneous low molecular mass secondary metabolites with antimicrobial activity produced in response to pathogen invasion attempts at the infection site and represent an important part of the plant defense repertoire. Camalexin (3-Thiazol-2′-yl-indole) is a known phytoalexin first detected and isolated in Camelina sativa, from which it takes its name, infected with Alternaria brassicae (Browne et al., 1991). Production of camalexin is also induced in Arabidopsis thaliana leaves by a range of biotrophic and necrotrophic plant pathogens (bacteria, oomycetes, fungi and viruses) (Ahuja et al., 2012) as well as by abiotic stresses, such as UV and chemicals (e.g. acifluorfen, paraquat, chlorsulfuron and α-amino butyric acid) (Zhao et al., 1998; Tierens et al., 2002). Camalexin originates from tryptophan and CYP79B2 and CYP71B15 (PAD3) are P450 enzymes that catalyze important steps in its biosynthetic pathway (Glawischnig, 2007). In this protocol the detection and quantification of camalexin produced in Arabidopsis leaves infected with the necrotrophic fungus Botrytis cinerea is described

XTribe: a web-based social computation platform

In the last few years the Web has progressively acquired the status of an infrastructure for social computation that allows researchers to coordinate the cognitive abilities of human agents in on-line communities so to steer the collective user activity towards predefined goals. This general trend is also triggering the adoption of web-games as a very interesting laboratory to run experiments in the social sciences and whenever the contribution of human beings is crucially required for research purposes. Nowadays, while the number of on-line users has been steadily growing, there is still a need of systematization in the approach to the web as a laboratory. In this paper we present Experimental Tribe (XTribe in short), a novel general purpose web-based platform for web-gaming and social computation. Ready to use and already operational, XTribe aims at drastically reducing the effort required to develop and run web experiments. XTribe has been designed to speed up the implementation of those general aspects of web experiments that are independent of the specific experiment content. For example, XTribe takes care of user management by handling their registration and profiles and in case of multi-player games, it provides the necessary user grouping functionalities. XTribe also provides communication facilities to easily achieve both bidirectional and asynchronous communication. From a practical point of view, researchers are left with the only task of designing and implementing the game interface and logic of their experiment, on which they maintain full control. Moreover, XTribe acts as a repository of different scientific experiments, thus realizing a sort of showcase that stimulates users' curiosity, enhances their participation, and helps researchers in recruiting volunteers.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, 1 table, 2013 Third International Conference on Cloud and Green Computing (CGC), Sept. 30 2013-Oct. 2 2013, Karlsruhe, German

Luminol-based Assay for Detection of Immunity Elicitor-induced Hydrogen Peroxide Production in Arabidopsis thaliana Leaves

In Arabidopsis thaliana, one of the very early immune-related responses induced after elicitor perception is the oxidative burst, i.e. reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation including superoxide anion and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). ROS production plays different roles in a wide range of biotic and abiotic stress responses, including the closure of stomata and the regulation of cell expansion. In particular, elicitor-induced H2O2 is produced mainly by the membrane localized NAD(P)H oxidases RESPIRATORY BURST OXIDASE HOMOLOGUE D and F. In this protocol, we describe a simple and reproducible luminol/peroxidase-based assay to detect and evaluate immunity-related accumulation of H2O2 produced in Arabidopsis leaf discs treated with immunity elicitors, such as oligogalacturonides (OGs), flagellin (flg22) or the elongation factor-thermo-unstable (EF-Tu - elf18). This method is based on the detection of the luminescence released by excited-luminol molecules generated after the horseradish peroxidase (HRP)-catalyzed oxidation of luminol molecules in the presence of H2O2. Levels as well as duration of the luminescence are proportional to the amount of H2O2 produced by elicited leaf discs