Unsuspected Hyoid Bone Fracture Following a Sport Laryngeal Trauma

A years old man sustained a fracture of the hyoid bone following closed neck injury while weight lifting in the gym Though commonly occurring in association of other neck fractures of the laryngeal skeleton the fracture was isolated Isolated hyoid bone fractures resulting from trauma other than strangulation are very rare and occur more frequently in young men more than in women These fractures are usually managed conservatively with good results as indeed our case wa

User Segmentation in e-Government Services

Abstract. E-Government is becoming more attentive towards providing intelligent personalized services to citizens so that they can receive better services with less time and effort. This work presents an approach for inferring user segments that could be properly exploited to offer personalized services that better satisfy user needs and their expectations. User segments are derived starting from data that essentially describe demographic characteristics of users and that are gathered by questionnaires. A clustering process is performed on gathered data in order to derive user segments, i.e. groups of users sharing similar characteristics. Finally, for each derived segment, we define a user profile that summarizes characteristics shared by users belonging to the same segment. The suitability of the proposed approach is shown by providing results obtained on a case study

When Early Experiences Build a Wall to Others ’ Emotions: An Electrophysiological and Autonomic Study

Facial expression of emotions is a powerful vehicle for communicating information about others ’ emotional states and it normally induces facial mimicry in the observers. The aim of this study was to investigate if early aversive experiences could interfere with emotion recognition, facial mimicry, and with the autonomic regulation of social behaviors. We conducted a facial emotion recognition task in a group of ‘‘street-boys’ ’ and in an age-matched control group. We recorded facial electromyography (EMG), a marker of facial mimicry, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), an index of the recruitment of autonomic system promoting social behaviors and predisposition, in response to the observation of facial expressions of emotions. Results showed an over-attribution of anger, and reduced EMG responses during the observation of both positive and negative expressions only among street-boys. Street-boys also showed lower RSA after observation of facial expressions and ineffective RSA suppression during presentation of non-threatening expressions. Our findings suggest that early aversive experiences alter not only emotion recognition but also facial mimicry of emotions. These deficits affect the autonomic regulation of social behaviors inducing lower social predisposition after the visualization of facial expressions and an ineffective recruitment of defensive behavior in response to non-threatening expressions