784 research outputs found
Kinematic and kinetic patterns related to free-walking in parkinson’s disease
The aim of this study is to compare the properties of free-walking at a natural pace between mild Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients during the ON-clinical status and two control groups. In-shoe pressure-sensitive insoles were used to quantify the temporal and force characteristics of a 5-min free-walking in 11 PD patients, in 16 young healthy controls, and in 12 age-matched healthy controls. Inferential statistics analyses were performed on the kinematic and kinetic parameters to compare groups’ performances, whereas feature selection analyses and automatic classification were used to identify the signature of parkinsonian gait and to assess the performance of group classification, respectively. Compared to healthy subjects, the PD patients’ gait pattern presented significant differences in kinematic parameters associated with bilateral coordination but not in kinetics. Specifically, patients showed an increased variability in double support time, greater gait asymmetry and phase deviation, and also poorer phase coordination. Feature selection analyses based on the ReliefF algorithm on the differential parameters in PD patients revealed an effect of the clinical status, especially true in double support time variability and gait asymmetry. Automatic classification of PD patients, young and senior subjects confirmed that kinematic predictors produced a slightly better classification performance than kinetic predictors. Overall, classification accuracy of groups with a linear discriminant model which included the whole set of features (i.e., demographics and parameters extracted from the sensors) was 64.1%
German-speaking psychologists in English-speaking sources. Reflections on national trends in the history of psychology
The ideal of an universal science without national boundaries, has occasionally obscured the reality of the consistent national trends which have doubtless occurred in research and theorising of different specialities. In our field, according to Ribot, there were a century ago two existing branches of Psychology, in Germany and England respectively, which could be characterized by differentiating traits. This work aims to raise some reflections on the existence of these national trends in the History of Psychology, as regards to most prominent authors in the field. Our aim is to assess the presence and influence of German eminent scientists bom in the past century, in the current Psychology, as well as their possible clustering face to authors of different nationality. Both, a quantitative study of their influence on various selected English-speaking sources, and a qualitative analysis in terms of generation, nationality and scientific activity are included
Dynamic Measurements with the Bicone Interfacial Shear Rheometer: Numerical Bench-Marking of Flow Field-Based Data Processing
Flow field-based methods are becoming increasingly popular for the analysis of interfacial
shear rheology data. Such methods take properly into account the subphase drag by solving the
Navier–Stokes equations for the bulk phase flows, together with the Boussinesq–Scriven boundary
condition at the fluid–fluid interface and the probe equation of motion. Such methods have been
successfully implemented on the double wall-ring (DWR), the magnetic rod (MR), and the bicone
interfacial shear rheometers. However, a study of the errors introduced directly by the numerical
processing is still lacking. Here, we report on a study of the errors introduced exclusively by the
numerical procedure corresponding to the bicone geometry at an air–water interface. In our study, we
set an input value of the complex interfacial viscosity, and we numerically obtained the corresponding
flow field and the complex amplitude ratio for the probe motion. Then, we used the standard
iterative procedure to obtain the calculated complex viscosity value. A detailed comparison of the set
and calculated complex viscosity values was made in wide ranges of the three parameters herein
used, namely the real and imaginary parts of the complex interfacial viscosity and the frequency.
The observed discrepancies yield a detailed landscape of the numerically-introduced errors.This research was funded by Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, Gobierno de España,
Grant Numbers FIS2013-47350-C5-5-R and FIS2017-86007-C3-3-P. P.S.P. was funded by Consejería de Educación,
Juventud y Deporte, Comunidad de Madrid, Research Assistant Grant Number PEJ16/IND/AI-1253
Influence of the adequacy of data collection, during two years, in the management of communityacquired pneumonia in emergency departments
Objective. The aim of this study was to
analyze whether structured data collection
of patients with community-acquired
pneumonia (CAP) in the Emergency Department
(ED) improves compliance with
clinical guidelines regarding inpatient and
outpatient treatment and prescription of
antibiotics at discharge.
Material and methods. We performed a
quasi experimental, multicenter, pre/postintervention
study. The intervention consisted
of basic training for the participating
physicians and the incorporation of a
data collection sheet in the clinical history
chart, including the information necessary
for adequate decision making regarding
patient admission and treatment,
in the case of discharge. We analyzed the
adequacy of the final destination of patients
classified as Fine I-II and antibiotic
treatment in patients receiving outpatient
treatment, with each participating physician
including 8 consecutive patients (4
pre-intervention and 4 post-intervention).
Results. A total of 738 patients were included:
378 pre-intervention and 360
post-intervention. In the pre-intervention
group, Fine V was more frequent and patients
were older, had more ischemic heart
disease, active neoplasms and fewer risk
factors for atypical pneumonia. Of the
patients with Fine I-II, 23.7% were inadequately
admitted and 19.6% of those
discharged received treatment not recommended
by guidelines. No differences
were observed in the target variables between
the two groups.
Conclusion. The adequacy of the decision
to admit patients with Fine I-II CAP and
outpatient antibiotic treatment can be improved
in the ED. Structured data collection
does not improve patient outcome
Vortex-assisted dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction for the determination of molybdenum in plants by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry
A new procedure for determining trace concentrations of Mo in plants combining dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction and inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry is proposed here. An automated discrete sample introduction system using a Flow Blurring® multiple nebulizer (FBMN) and a solenoid valve were used to insert an organic rich phase into the plasma. The experimental conditions for the microextraction procedure were: 0.5% m v−1 of 8-hydroxyquinoline, pH 3.6 and 50 μL of 1-undecanol as the extractant. A limit of detection of the instrument of 0.20 μg L−1, a limit of detection of the procedure of 17 μg kg−1 and an enhancement factor of 246 were obtained employing the developed procedure. Three certified reference materials were used to check the accuracy and no significant differences were found at the 95% confidence level between certified and determined values. The developed procedure was also successfully applied to the determination of Mo in three different varieties of sugar cane leaves samples.The authors express their gratitude to the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior CAPES (Grant CAPES-DGU 243/11) for the research fellowship provided to J.A.V.A.B. J.A.N. is thankful to Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq, Brazil) for financial support. The authors are grateful to the Government of Spain (CTQ2011-23968 and PHB2010-0018-PC) and the Regional Government of Valencia (Spain) (ACOMP/2013/072) for the financial support, Agilent Technologies Inc. for the loan of the ICP-OES spectrometer and OneNeb® (Division of Ingeniatrics Tecnologías S.L.) for the FBMN prototype provided
Analysis of Sliding-mode controlled impedance matching circuits for inductive harvesting devices
A sea-wave energy harvesting, articulated device is presented in this work. This hand-made, wooden device is made combining the coil windings of an array of three single transducers. Taking advantage of the sea waves sway, a linear oscillating motion is produced in each transducer generating an electric pulse. Magnetic fundamentals are used to deduce the electrical model of a single transducer, a solenoid-magnet device, and after the model of the whole harvesting array. The energy obtained is stored in a battery and is used to supply a stand-alone system pay-load, for instance a telecom relay or weather station. To maximize the harvested energy, an impedance matching circuit between the generator array and the system battery is required. Two dc-to-dc converters, a buck-boost hybrid cell and a Sepic converter are proposed as impedance adaptors. To achieve this purpose, sliding mode control laws are introduced to impose a loss free resistor behavior to the converters. Although some converters operating at discontinuous conduction mode, like the buck-boost converter, can exhibit also this loss free resistor behavior, they usually require a small input voltage variation range. By means of sliding mode control the loss free resistor behavior can be assured for any range of input voltage variation. After the theoretical analysis, several simulation and experimental results to compare both converters performance are given
Kinematic and kinetic patterns related to free-walking in Parkinson's disease
The aim of this study is to compare the properties of free-walking at a natural pace
between mild Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients during the ON-clinical status and two control groups.
In-shoe pressure-sensitive insoles were used to quantify the temporal and force characteristics of a
5-min free-walking in 11 PD patients, in 16 young healthy controls, and in 12 age-matched healthy
controls. Inferential statistics analyses were performed on the kinematic and kinetic parameters
to compare groups’ performances, whereas feature selection analyses and automatic classification
were used to identify the signature of parkinsonian gait and to assess the performance of group
classification, respectively. Compared to healthy subjects, the PD patients’ gait pattern presented
significant differences in kinematic parameters associated with bilateral coordination but not in
kinetics. Specifically, patients showed an increased variability in double support time, greater gait
asymmetry and phase deviation, and also poorer phase coordination. Feature selection analyses
based on the ReliefF algorithm on the differential parameters in PD patients revealed an effect of
the clinical status, especially true in double support time variability and gait asymmetry. Automatic
classification of PD patients, young and senior subjects confirmed that kinematic predictors produced
a slightly better classification performance than kinetic predictors. Overall, classification accuracy of
groups with a linear discriminant model which included the whole set of features (i.e., demographics
and parameters extracted from the sensors) was 64.1
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