Internet-Based Birth-Cohort Studies: Is This the Future for Epidemiology?

BACKGROUND: International collaborative cohorts the NINFEA and the ELF studies are mother-child cohorts that use the internet for recruitment and follow-up of their members. The cohorts investigated the association of early life exposures and a wide range of non-communicable diseases. OBJECTIVE: The objective is to report the research methodology, with emphasis on the advantages and limitations offered by an Internet-based design. These studies were conducted in Turin, Italy and Wellington, New Zealand. METHODS: The cohorts utilized various online/offline methods to recruit participants. Pregnant women who became aware volunteered, completed an online questionnaire, thus obtaining baseline information. RESULTS: The NINFEA study has recruited 7003 pregnant women, while the ELF study has recruited 2197 women. The cohorts targeted the whole country, utilizing a range of support processes to reduce the attrition rate of the participants. For the NINFEA and ELF cohorts, online participants were predominantly older (35% and 28.9%, respectively), highly educated (55.6% and 84.9%, respectively), and were in their final trimester of pregnancy (48.5% and 53.6%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Internet-based cohort epidemiological studies are feasible, however, it is clear that participants are self-selective samples, as is the case for many birth cohorts. Internet-based cohort studies are potentially cost-effective and novel methodology for conducting long-term epidemiology research. However, from our experience, participants tend to be self-selective. In marked time, if the cohorts are to form part of a larger research program they require further use and exploration to address biases and overcome limitations

The MOCAST+ Study on a Quantum Gradiometry Satellite Mission with Atomic Clocks

In the past twenty years, satellite gravimetry missions have successfully provided data for the determination of the Earth static gravity field (GOCE) and its temporal variations (GRACE and GRACE-FO). In particular, the possibility to study the evolution in time of Earth masses allows us to monitor global parameters underlying climate changes, water resources, flooding, melting of ice masses and the corresponding global sea level rise, all of which are of paramount importance, providing basic data on, e.g. geodynamics, earthquakes, hydrology or ice sheets changes. Recently, a large interest has developed in novel technologies and quantum sensing, which promise higher sensitivity, drift-free measurements, and higher absolute accuracy for both terrestrial surveys and space missions, giving direct access to more precise long-term measurements. Looking at a time frame beyond the present decade, in the MOCAST+ study (MOnitoring mass variations by Cold Atom Sensors and Time measures) a satellite mission based on an “enhanced” quantum payload is proposed, with cold atom interferometers acting as gravity gradiometers, and atomic clocks for optical frequency measurements, providing observations of differences of the gravitational potential. The main outcomes are the definition of the accuracy level to be expected from this payload and the accuracy level needed to detect and monitor phenomena identified in the Scientific Challenges of the ESA Living Planet Program, in particular Cryosphere, Ocean and Solid Earth. In this paper, the proposed payload, mission profile and preliminary platform design are presented, with end-to-end simulation results and assessment of the impact on geophysical applications

IL PROGETTO C.R.I.U. (Consultazione Remota di Informazioni Universitarie)

Questa relazione descrive il sistema CRIU, che ha lo scopo di fornire una interfaccia agevole, tramite telefono, ad informazioni contenute in basi di dati distribuite sulla rete. CRIU si propone come alternativa ai sistemi che ricercano e visualizzano informazioni presenti sulla rete in forma grafica. Infatti, CRIU utilizza solo un telefono a tastiera: attraverso menu' pronunciati a voce e opportuni codici numerici l'utente comunica con il sistema, che a sua volta decodifica il comando, ottiene dagli archivi le informazioni desiderate in forma testuale ed elabora le informazioni fornendo un riassunto in forma di testo. Il testo viene poi convertito in voce ed inviato all'utente stesso. Il sistema realizza un servizio tipico dei `call-center automatici' con accesso telefonico. Servizi di questo tipo sono attualmente sempre piu' richiesti e diffusi, sia per l'utenza telefonica generica (vedi ad esempio il sistema Loquendo della Telecom Italia \footnote{www.loquendo.it}) che per l'utenza disabile, dove uno degli strumenti di comunicazione con il mondo resta il telefono. Nel nostro caso il servizio e' stato applicato ad un contesto universitario, dove le informazioni sono relative ai corsi, ai docenti ed alle informazioni relative ai singoli studenti; queste informazioni sono contenute in diversi archivi che sono distribuiti su internet. Uno degli scopi del sistema, oltre che quello di realizzare un sistema utilizzabile praticamente, e' di costruire un ambiente per sperimentare diverse metodologie di {\em man-machine interface}, per lo studio e la ricerca di sistemi per l'interfacciamento di un utente umano con un calcolatore per l'accesso a sistemi di basi di dati. Le caratteristiche, le prestazioni ed il costo delle soluzioni riassunte in questa relazione costituiscono un riferimento per il confronto con altre soluzioni che si possono sviluppare in futuro. Sono state realizzate tre generazioni del sistema, che differiscono per gli strumenti hardware e software utilizzati; le caratteristiche principali delle tre generazioni sono riassunte in questa relazione. La presente relazione descrive le caratteristiche principali del sistema; informazioni piu' dettagliate possono essere fornite inviando una richiesta a [email protected]. Diverse estensioni del sistema sono possibili; e' stata infatti gia' realizzata, ma non viene descritte in questa relazione, una soluzione che utilizza il metalinguaggio Voice-XML; il confronto delle sue caratteristiche con quelle di CRIU verra' descritto prossimamente

Ultrasonography Monitoring of Optic Nerve Sheath Diameter and Retinal Vessels in Patients with Cerebral Hemorrhage

Evaluation of the diagnostic accuracy of optic nerve sheath diameter (ONSD) and Doppler indices of central retinal arteries and veins for the detection of increased intracranial pressure (ICP) in intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) and of the usefulness of a second assessment of these variables in the monitoring of ICH

New Developments for the HDB++ TANGO Archiving System

International audienceTANGO HDB++ is a high performance event-driven archiving system which stores data with micro-second resolution timestamps, using archivers written in C++. HDB++ currently supports MySQL and Apache Cassandra back-ends but could be easily extended to support additional back-ends. Since the initial release many improvements and new features have been added to the HDB++. In addition to bug-fixes and optimizations, the support for context-based archiving allows to define an archiving strategy for each attribute, specifying when it has to be archived or not. Temporary archiving is supported by means of a time-to-live parameter, available on a per-attribute basis. The Cassandra back-end is using Cassandra TTL native feature underneath to implement the time-to-live feature. With dynamic loading of specific libraries switching back-ends can be done on-the-fly and is as simple as changing a property. Partition and maintenance scripts are now available for HDB++ and MySQL. The HDB++ tools, such as extraction libraries and GUIs, followed HDB++ evolution to help the user to take full advantage of the new features