Management of epilepsy in the elderly

Epilepsy among the elderly is a frequently occurring pathology, differing in etiology, clinical presentation and prognosis from those of young people. In addition, beyond a certain age, physiological modifications are produced in the metabolism which alter the pharmacokinetics of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs), increasing the risk of pharmacological interactions, already greater in these patients due to the frequency of polypharmacy. Furthermore, elderly patients are particularly sensitive to certain secondary effects of AEDs, as for example, cognitive disturbances, osteoporosis or weight increase. Given that the efficacy of the major AEDs is a priori quite similar, and that the epilepsies occurring in this age-group generally have a good prognosis, the selection of an AED will depend more upon its pharmacokinetics and ability to induce certain secondary effects than on its efficacy. In this respect, levetiracetam and pregabalin, followed by oxcarbazepine and lamotrigine have the most favorable pharmocokinetical profile. Moreover, on the whole these drugs have very few cognitive effects, do not induce osteoporosis and, with the exception of pregabalin, do not affect weight, making them the first selection for use in the treatment of epilepsy in the elderly

Familial amyloidosis with polyneuropathy type 1 caused by transthyretin mutation Val50Met (Val30Met): 4 cases in a non-endemic area

Introduction: Transthyretin-related familial amyloid polyneuropathy (TTR-FAP) typically arises as an autonomic neuropathy primarily affecting small fibres and it occurs in adult patients in their second or third decades of life. It progresses rapidly and can lead to death in approximately 10 years. Other phenotypes have been described in non-endemic areas. Objectives and methods: We described 4 cases from the Spanish province of Guipuzcoa, a non-endemic area, to highlight the clinical variability of this disease. Patients and results: Three patients presented a late-onset form manifesting after the age of 50, featuring a predominantly motor polyneuropathy initially causing distal impairment of the lower limbs followed by the upper limbs. One patient suffered severe neuropathic pain. None showed signs of autonomic involvement. The fourth patient, of Portuguese descent, presented a typical form with onset in her thirties, neuropathic pain and dysautonomia. All patients carry the Val50Met mutation in the TTR gene. Conclusion: FAP is a pleomorphic disease even in patients carrying the same mutation. In non-endemic areas, its main form of presentation may resemble a predominantly motor polyneuropathy developing in the sixth decade of life with no signs of dysautonomia. Given this non-specific presentation and the widely available technical means of studying the TTR gene, we believe that the protocol for the aetiological diagnosis of any polyneuropathy should include genetic sequencing of TTR. (C) 2016 Sociedad Espanola de Neurologia. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L.U

A survey on quality of service support on middelware-based distributed messaging systems used in multi agent systems

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19934-9_10Messaging systems are widely used in distributed systems to hide the details of the communications mechanism to the multi agents systems. However, the Quality of Service is treated in different way depending on the messaging system used. This article presents a review and further analysis of the quality of service treatment in the mainly messaging systems used in distributed multi agent systems. The review covers the issues related to the purpose of the functions provided and the scope of the quality of service offered by every messaging system. We propose ontology for classifying and decide which parameters are relevant to the user. The results of the analysis and the ontology can be used to select the most suitable messaging system to distributed multi agent architecture and to establish the quality of service requirements in a distributed system.The study described in this article is a part of the coordinated project SIDIRELI: Distributed Systems with Limited Resources. Control Kernel and Coordination. Education and Science Department, Spanish Government and European FEDER found. CICYT: MICINN: DPI2008-06737-C02-01/02.Poza-Lujan, J.; Posadas-Yagüe, J.; Simó Ten, JE. (2011). A survey on quality of service support on middelware-based distributed messaging systems used in multi agent systems. En International Symposium on Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence. Springer. 77-84. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19934-9_10S7784Gaddah, A., Kunz, T.: A survey of middleware paradigms for mobile computing. Technical Report SCE-03-16. Carleton University Systems and Computing Engineering (2003)Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents, http://www.fipa.org/Java Message Service Specification, http://java.sun.com/products/jms/docs.htmlCommon Object Request Broker Architecture, http://www.corba.org/Data Distribution Service, http://portals.omg.org/dds/Java Agent DEvelopment Framework, http://jade.tilab.com/Agent Oriented Software Pty Ltd., JACK Intelligent Agents: User Guide (1999)Nwana, H., Ndumu, D., Lee, L., Collis, J.: ZEUS: A tool-kit for building distributed multi-agent systems. Applied Artifical Intelligence Journal 13(1), 129–186 (1999)Perdikeas, M.K., Chatzipapadopoulos, F.G., Venieris, I.S., Marino, G.: Mobile Agent Standards and Available Platforms. Computer Networks Journal, Special Issue on ’Mobile Agents in Intelligent Networks and Mobile Communication Systems’ 31(10) (1999)Perrone, P.J., Chaganti, K.: J2EE Developer’s Handbook. Sam’s Publishing, Indianapolis (2003)Apache ActiveMQ, http://activemq.apache.org/IBM WebSphere MQSeries, http://mqseries.net/Object Management Group, http://www.omg.org/RTI Data Distribution Service. RTI corp., http://www.rti.com/OpenSplice DDS. PrismTech Ltd., http://www.prismtech.comVogel, A., Kerherve, B., von Bochmann, G., Gecsei, J.: Distributed Multimedia and QoS: A Survey. IEEE Multimedia 2(2), 10–19 (1995)Crawley, E., Nair, R., Rajagopalan, B.: RFC 2386: A Framework for QoS-based Routing in the Internet. IETF Internet Draft, 1–37 (1998)Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents. FIPA Quality of Service Ontology Specification. Doc: SC00094A (2002)Sun Microsystems, Inc. Java(TM) Message Service Specification Final Release 1.1 (2002)Object Management Group (OMG). The Common Object Request Broker Architecture and Specification. CORBA 2.4.2 (2001

Event Management Proposal for Distribution Data Service Standard

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00551-5_32This paper presents a proposal to extend the event management subsystem of the Distribution Data Service standard (DDS). The proposal allows user to optimize the use of DDS in networked control systems (NCS). DDS offers a simple event management system based on message filtering. The aim of the proposal is to improve the event management with three main elements: Events, Conditions and Actions. Actions are the new element proposed. Actions perform basic operations in the middleware, discharging the process load of control elements. The proposal is fully compatible with the standard and can be easily added to an existing system. Proposal has been tested in a distributed mobile robot navigation system with interesting results.The study described in this paper is a part of the coordinated project COBAMI: Mission-based Hierarchical Control. Education and Science Department, Spanish Government. CICYT: MICINN: DP1201 1-28507-C02-01/02.Poza-Lujan, J.; Posadas-Yagüe, J.; Simó Ten, JE. (2013). Event Management Proposal for Distribution Data Service Standard. En Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence. Springer. 259-266. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00551-5_32S259266Sánchez, J., Guarnes, M.Á., Dormido, S.: On the Application of Different Event-Based Sampling Strategies to the Control of a Simple Industrial Process. Sensors 9, 6795–6818 (2009)Sandee, J.H., Heemels, W.P.M.H., van den Bosch, P.P.J.: Case Studies in Event-Driven Control. In: Bemporad, A., Bicchi, A., Buttazzo, G. (eds.) HSCC 2007. LNCS, vol. 4416, pp. 762–765. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)Hadim, S., Nader, M.: Middleware Challenges and Approaches for Wireless Sensor Networks. IEEE Distributed Systems Online 7(3) (2006)Pardo-Castellote, G.: OMG Data-Distribution Service: architectural overview. In: Proceedings of 23rd International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems Workshops, Providence, USA, vol. 19-22, pp. 200–206 (2003)Object Management Group. Data Distribution Service for Real-time Systems Version 1.2 (2007), http://www.omg.org/Dorf, R.C., Bishop, R.H.: Modern Control Systems, 11th edn. Prentice Hall (2008)Poza-Luján, J., Posadas-Yagüe, J., Simó-Ten, J.: Quality of Service and Quality of Control Based Protocol to Distribute Agents. In: DCAI, pp. 73–80 (2010)Waldbusser, S.: RFC 2819 - Remote Network Monitoring Management Information Base. Network Working Group. Lucent Technologies (2000)Poza-Luján, J., Posadas-Yagüe, J., Simó-Ten, J.: Relationship between Quality of Control and Quality of Service in Mobile Robot Navigation. In: DCAI, pp. 557–564 (2012)K-Team Corporation. Khepera III robot, http://www.k-team.comBraitenberg, V.: Vehicles: Experiments on Synthetic Psychology. MIT Press, Cambridge (1984)Poza-Luján, J.: Propuesta de arquitectura distribuida de control inteligente basada en políticas de calidad de servicio. Universitat Politècnica de València Press (2012

Relationship between quality of control and quality of service in mobile robot navigation

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28765-7_67This article presents the experimental work developed to test the viability and to measure the efficiency of an intelligent control distributed architecture. To do this, a simulated navigation scenario of Braitenberg vehicles has been developed. To test the efficiency, the architecture uses the performance as QoS parameter. The measuring of the quality of the navigation is done through the ITAE QoC parameter. Tested scenarios are: an environment without QoS and QoC man-aging, an environment with a relevant message filtering and an environment with a predictive filtering by the type of control. The results obtained show that some of the processing performed in the control nodes can be moved to the middleware to optimize the robot navigation.The work described in this article is a part of the coordinated project SIDIRELI: (Distributed Systems with Limited Resources) and COBAMI (Mission-Based Control) Education and Science Department, Spanish Government and European FEDER found. MICINN CICYT: SIDIRELI: DPI2008-06737-C02-01/02, COBAMI: DPI2011-28507-C02-02.Poza-Lujan, J.; Posadas-Yagüe, J.; Simó Ten, JE. (2012). Relationship between quality of control and quality of service in mobile robot navigation. En Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence: 9th International Conference. Springer. 557-564. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28765-7_67S557564Vogel, A., Kerherve, B., von Bochmann, G., Gecsei, J.: Distributed Multimedia and QoS: A Survey. IEEE Multimedia 2(2), 10–19 (1995)Crawley, E., Nair, R., Rajagopalan, B.: RFC 2386: A Framework for QoS-based Routing in the Internet. IETF Internet Draft, 1–37 (1998)Bradner, S.: RFC 2026: The Internet Standards Process. IETF Internet Draft, sec.10 (1996)Object Management Group (OMG): Data Distribution Service for Real-Time Systems, v1.1. Document formal (April 12, 2005)Poza, J.L., Posadas, J.L., Simó, J.E.: QoS-based middleware architecture for distributed control systems. In: International Symposium on Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence. DCAI, Salamanca, Spain (2008)Poza, J.L., Posadas, J.L., Simó, J.E.: A Survey on Quality of Service Support on Middleware-Based Distributed Messaging Systems Used in Multi Agent Systems. In: 9th International Conference on Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. DCAI, Salamanca, Spain (2011)Dorf, R.C., Bishop, R.H.: Modern Control Systems, 11th edn. Prentice Hall (2008)Soucek, S., Sauter, T.: Quality of Service Concerns in IPBased Control Systems. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics 51(6) (December 2004)Poza, J.L., Posadas, J.L., Simó, J.E.: Multi-Agent Architecture with Support to Quality of Service and Quality of Control. In: 11th International Conference on Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning, Paisley, UK (2010)Braitenberg, V.: Vehicles: Experiments on Synthetic Psychology. MIT Press, Cambridge (1984)Gabel, O., Litz, L.: QoS-adaptive Control in NCS with Variable Delays and Packet Losses – A Heuristic Approach. In: 43rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (2004)Poza, J.L., Posadas, J.L., Simó, J.E.: From the Queue to the Quality of Service Policy: A Middleware Implementation. In: Omatu, S., Rocha, M.P., Bravo, J., Fernández, F., Corchado, E., Bustillo, A., Corchado, J.M. (eds.) IWANN 2009, Part II. LNCS, vol. 5518, pp. 432–437. Springer, Heidelberg (2009

Revisión de las arquitecturas de control distribuido

El documento se organiza de la siguiente forma. En el capítulo 2 se definen las arquitecturas de control y se contextualizan las arquitecturas revisadas. En el capítulo 3 se revisan las arquitecturas domóticas, inicialmente se repasan las características de los sistemas domóticos, para a continuación revisar ocho arquitecturas. En el capítulo 4 se sigue un esquema similar al capítulo anterior pero con las arquitecturas de navegación de robots. Finalmente se exponen algunas conclusiones acerca de las arquitecturas expuestas, así como la propuesta de características de optimización de arquitecturas y posibles líneas de investigación en el campo de las arquitecturas de control.Una de las claves en el control de sistemas es la arquitectura escogida para implementar dicho control. La elección de la arquitectura o el diseño de la misma determinarán, en gran medida el rendimiento que el control proporcionará al usuario. Existe una gran cantidad de arquitecturas de control en todos los ámbitos que éste cubre. Por ello parece conveniente realizar una revisión y exposición de las mismas, ya que de ésta manera se dispondrá de información suficiente para poder diseñar una arquitectura con las características más adecuadas a las funciones requeridas. En el presente documento se realiza una revisión exhaustiva de diferentes arquitecturas en dos de los ámbitos del control: la domótica y la navegación de robots. Estos dos ámbitos, que a primera vista parecen lejanos están, en parte, relacionados ya que cubren todos los ámbitos de las necesidades de control temporal, desde los bajos requerimientos de la domótica hasta las necesidades de tiempo real estricto de la navegación reactiva de robots. En el documento se hace especial hincapié en las características que las arquitecturas de control deben tener, ya que seleccionar correctamente las características de los requerimientos del sistema a controlar permitirá seleccionar o diseñar correctamente la arquitectura de un sistema.Posadas Yagüe, JL.; Poza Luján, JL. (2009). Revisión de las arquitecturas de control distribuido. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/640

Mobile-Based Distributed System for Managing Abandoned or Lost Pets

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00551-5_24This paper presents the work in progress of a mobile-based distributed system which aims to minimize the social impact of abandoned or lost animals. System is based on the use of smart mobile devices to provide message warnings of animals localized. Messages are stored in a database to be processed. In order to enter data such as photography, audio and artificial images, system uses different mobile device interfaces. Data processing consists mainly in matching localized animals with lost animals, assigning abandoned animals at shelters and generating notifications for animal shelters or authorities. Currently, the system is in the development phase. The technical challenges in which we are working are to optimize data and metadata matching, and the management of message warning.The study described in this paper is a part of the coordinated project COBAMI: Mission-based Hierarchical Control. Education and Science Department, Spanish Government. CICYT: MICINN: DP1201 1-28507-C02-01/02.Garrote-Hildebrand, D.; Poza-Lujan, J.; Posadas-Yagüe, J.; Simó Ten, JE. (2013). Mobile-Based Distributed System for Managing Abandoned or Lost Pets. En Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence. Springer. 197-200. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00551-5_24S197200Lord, L.K., Wittum, T.E., Ferketich, A.K., Funk, J.A., Rajala-Schultz, P.J.: Search methods that people use to find owners of lost pets. Journal of the Veterinary Association 230(12), 1835–1840 (2007)Weiss, E., Slater, M., Lord, L.: Frequency of Lost Dogs and Cats in the United States and the Methods Used to Locate Them. Animals 2, 301–315 (2012)Laplante, P.A.: Exciting Real-Time Location Applications. IT Professional 13(2), 4–5 (2011), doi:10.1109/MITP.2011.22IFPUG (International Function Point Users Group). The IFPUG Guide to IT and Software Measurement. Auerbach Publications (2012)Yun, L., Peiji, S.: Applying RFID to the pet’s information management to realize collaboration. In: 7th Int. Conf. on Proc. Serv. Syst. Serv. Manage., Tokyo, Japan, pp. 1–6 (2010)Android SDK, http://developer.android.com/sdkClarck, J.E., Johnson, P.B.: Sencha Touch Mobile Javascript Framework. Packt Publishing (2012

Distributed sensor architecture for intelligent control that supports quality of control and quality of service

This paper is part of a study of intelligent architectures for distributed control and communications systems. The study focuses on optimizing control systems by evaluating the performance of middleware through quality of service (QoS) parameters and the optimization of control using Quality of Control (QoC) parameters. The main aim of this work is to study, design, develop, and evaluate a distributed control architecture based on the Data-Distribution Service for Real-Time Systems (DDS) communication standard as proposed by the Object Management Group (OMG). As a result of the study, an architecture called Frame-Sensor-Adapter to Control (FSACtrl) has been developed. FSACtrl provides a model to implement an intelligent distributed Event-Based Control (EBC) system with support to measure QoS and QoC parameters. The novelty consists of using, simultaneously, the measured QoS and QoC parameters to make decisions about the control action with a new method called Event Based Quality Integral Cycle. To validate the architecture, the first five Braitenberg vehicles have been implemented using the FSACtrl architecture. The experimental outcomes, demonstrate the convenience of using jointly QoS and QoC parameters in distributed control systems.The study described in this paper is a part of the coordinated project COBAMI: Mission-based Hierarchical Control. Education and Science Department Spanish Government. CICYT: MICINN: DPI2011-28507-C02-01/02 and project "Real time distributed control systems" of the Support Program for Research and Development 2012 UPV (PAID-06-12).Poza-Lujan, J.; Posadas-Yagüe, J.; Simó Ten, JE.; Simarro Fernández, R.; Benet Gilabert, G. (2015). Distributed sensor architecture for intelligent control that supports quality of control and quality of service. Sensors. 15(3):4700-4733. https://doi.org/10.3390/s150304700S4700473315

Impact of age and gender in the pharmaceutical expenditure of anxiolytics in primary health care

Elsevier user license: Permitted: For non-commercial purposes: Read, print & download Text & data mine Translate the article Not Permitted: Reuse portions or extracts from the article in other works Redistribute or republish the final article Sell or re-use for commercial purposesStudy the prescription of anxiolytics in Primary Health Care measured by the number of daily doses prescribed (DDD) to each patient (adjusting for age and gender) in order to quantify the pharmaceutical expenditure of anxiolytics.Guadalajara Olmeda, MN.; De La Poza, E.; Barrachina Martínez, I.; Vivas Consuelo, DJJ. (2011). Impact of age and gender in the pharmaceutical expenditure of anxiolytics in primary health care. Value in Health. 14(7):A300-A300. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jval.2011.08.373SA300A30014

Optimizations on semantic environment management: an application for humanoid robot home assistance

© 2014 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.This article introduces some optimization mechanisms focused on environment management, object recognition, and environment interaction. Although the generality of the presented system, this work will be focused on its application on home assistance humanoid robots. For this purpose, a generic environment formalization procedure for semantic scenery description is introduced. As the main contribution of this work, some techniques for a more efficient use of the environment knowledge are proposed. That way, the application of an areabased discrimination mechanism will avoid to process large amounts of data, useless in the current context, improving the object recognition, and characterizing the available interactions in the current area. Finally, the formalized description, and the optimization procedure, will be tested and verified on a specific home scenario using a humanoid robotThis work has been supported by the Spanish Science and Innovation Ministry MICINN under the CICYT project COBAMI: DPI2011-28507-C02-01/02. The responsibility for the content remains with the authors.Munera Sánchez, E.; Posadas-Yagüe, J.; Poza-Lujan, J.; Blanes Noguera, F.; Simó Ten, JE. (2014). Optimizations on semantic environment management: an application for humanoid robot home assistance. En 2014 IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots. IEEE. 720-725. doi:10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2014.7041442S72072