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

Towards Specification of Tango V10

International audienceMore than 40 laboratories use Tango Controls as a framework for their control systems. During its 18 years of existence, Tango Controls has evolved and matured. The latest 9.3.3 release is regarded as the most stable and feature-reach version of the framework. However, it makes use of already outdated CORBA technology which impacts all the stack, from the low-level transport protocol up to the client API and tools. The Tango Community decided to move forward and is preparing for so-called Tango Controls v10. Tango v10 is meant to be more a new implementation of the framework than a release of new features. The new implementation shall make the code easier to maintain and extend as well as remove legacy technologies. At the same time, it shall keep the Tango Controls objective philosophy and allows the new implementation to coexist with the old one at the same laboratory. The first step in the process is to provide a formal specification of current concepts and protocol. This specification will be base for the development and verification of new source code. Formal specification of Tango Controls and its purpose will be presented along with used tools and methodologies

Tango Controls RFCs

International audienceIn 2019, the Tango Controls Collaboration decided to write down a formal specification of the existing Tango Controls protocol as Requests For Comments (RFC). The work resulted in a Markdown-formatted specification rendered in HTML and PDF on Readthedocs.io. The specification is already used as a reference during Tango Controls source code maintenance and for prototyping a new implementation. All collaborating institutes and several companies were involved in the work. In addition to providing the reference, the effort brought the Community more value: review and clarification of concepts and their implementation in the core libraries in C++, Java and Python. This paper summarizes the results, provides technical and organizational details about writing the RFCs for the existing protocol and presents the impact and benefits on future maintenance and development of Tango Controls

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