Neuromotor Rehabilitation and Cognitive Outcomes in Patients with Traumatic Brain Injury through the Method BAPNE

After the acute phase of hospitalization, patients with severe brain injury, requiring interventions in health and social care in the long term: the work of rehabilitators is to facilitate the recovery of several disorders caused by trauma and involves all possible areas to return the patient to full functionality within the autonomy and satisfaction of basic needs, and psychological support they need.The recent use of body percussion through BAPNE method in neurorehabilitation offers the possibility of studying the development of motor skills, attention, coordination, memory and social interaction of patients with neurological diseases.The experimental protocol involves 52 patients with GCA selected on the basis of shared and structured requirements.The trial will provide the coaching protocol BAPNE (in two weekly sessions of 50 minutes to a maximum of 10 weeks in a group of patients), to the traditional rehabilitation activities. The control group will continue to perform exclusively the cognitive and neuromotor rehabilitation according to traditional protocols.All subjects will be: monitored the levels of cortisol in-time 0 - 75-180 days; recorded beats per minute through a heart rate monitor on your wrist; through the use of Lybra (equilibrium) and Kimeja (virtual reality) will be recorded data regarding the ability to adjust the balance of the patient in standing and sitting using the visual input and data relating to the patient's ability to coordinate fine motor skills in a virtual environment; through the administration of neuropsychological tests (HADS, NPI) will be detected improvements in mood and behavioral disturbances in the regression if available. At 6 months after administration of the protocol is expected to re-test to assess if present, the maintenance of the effects of rehabilitation obtained. The research is led by three neurologists from the center of neurorehabilitation Fondazione Roboris ASL RME in Rome

Online positive interventions to promote well-being and resilience in the adolescent population: A narrative review

Numerous studies have shown an alarming prevalence of depression, anxiety, and behavior disorders in youth. Thus, prevention of psychological problems in this population becomes crucial. According to the World Health Organization (1), prevention should also include the promotion and development of the individual''s strengths in order to reduce vulnerability to suffering from mental disorders. In addition, other key elements of prevention are the reach, adoption, implementation, and maintenance of interventions. The information and communication technologies, especially the Internet, have much to offer in terms of the prevention and promotion of positive mental health in adolescents. This paper reviews these fields of research-prevention, positive psychology, Internet, and adolescents-and discusses the potential of positive interventions delivered over the Internet as effective and sustainable health promotion tools. The paper provides a brief description of the systems developed so far and a summary of selected features of the studies detected in the literature review. The overall conclusions are that there is a need for more controlled studies with long-term follow-ups, the interventions should be designed considering the specific features of the target users and the specific contexts where the interventions will be delivered, and they could be enhanced by the use of other technologies, such as smartphones, sensors, or social networks

The effect of the fuel-cell unit size on the efficiency of a fuel-cell-topped Rankine cycle

Thermodynamic Considerations The fundamental (thermodynamic) reason for interest in fuel cells is the reduction of combustion irreversibility (Obert and Gaggioli, 1963; In ordinary combustion, a fuel is brought in direct contact with oxygen to react, producing oxidation products. The result is a conversion of chemical energy of the fuel to thermal energy of the products Fuel cells, on the other hand, lower the electrochemical potential value of either the fuel or oxygen by first passing ions through an electrolyte and producing electricity in this Currently

Mental Wellbeing:Future Agenda Drawing from Design, HCI and Big Data

Most HCI work on the exploration and support of mental wellbeing involves mobiles, sensors, and various on-line systems which focus on tracking users. However, adoption of, and adherence to such systems is not ideal. Are there innovative ways to better design for mental wellbeing? A promising novel approach is to encourage changes to behavior through the use of tailored feedback informed by machine learning algorithms applied to large sets of use data. This one day workshop aims to explore novel ways to actively engage participants through interactive systems, with an overall aim to shape the research agenda of future HCI work on mental wellbeing. The workshop is designed in an innovative format offering a mixture of traditional presentation, hands-on design and future-thinking activities. The workshop brings together both practitioners and HCI researchers from across a range areas addressing mental wellbeing

Implementing quality by design for biotech products: are regulators on track?

Quality by design (QbD) is an innovative approach to drug development that has started to be implemented into the regulatory framework, but currently mainly for chemical drugs. The recent marketing authorization of the first monoclonal antibody developed using extensive QbD concepts in the European Union paves the way for future further regulatory approvals of complex products employing this cutting-edge technological concept. In this paper, we report and comment on insights and lessons learnt from the non-public discussions in the European Medicines Agency's Biologicals Working Party and Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use on the key issues during evaluation related to the implementation of an extensive QbD approach for biotechnology-derived medicinal products. Sharing these insights could prove useful for future developments in QbD for biotech products in general and monoclonal antibodies in particular

Evaluating the use of robotic and virtual reality rehabilitation technologies to improve function in stroke survivors: A narrative review

This review evaluates the effectiveness of robotic and virtual reality technologies used for neurological rehabilitation in stroke survivors. It examines each rehabilitation technology in turn before considering combinations of these technologies and the complexities of rehabilitation outcome assessment. There is high-quality evidence that upper-limb robotic rehabilitation technologies improve movement, strength and activities of daily living, whilst the evidence for robotic lower-limb rehabilitation is currently not as convincing. Virtual reality technologies also improve activities of daily living. Whilst the benefit of these technologies over dose-controlled conventional rehabilitation is likely to be small, there is a role for both technologies as part of a broader rehabilitation programme, where they may help to increase the intensity and amount of therapy delivered. Combining robotic and virtual reality technologies in a rehabilitation programme may further improve rehabilitation outcomes and we would advocate randomised controlled trials of these technologies in combination

Characterization of Historic Mortar Samples and Period Analysis: A Case Study

The Imperial Temple in Antiochia Ad Cragum is estimated to be first constructed at the end of 2nd or start of 3rd century, the time of the Severan dynasty. However, archaeological evidence also suggests that there were interventions during the Byzantine era, with burials over the temple platform, a wine press on the northern side, and walls constructed perpendicular to the temple on the southern side, use of which are unidentified. There is also a retaining wall in the back of the temple that holds the earth against erosion from the hill on the back, but it is curiously close to the Temple if built as part of original construction. The goal of this study is to investigate the authors’ hypotheses of a multi-phase use and to identify which elements found on the site may be contemporary to each other by comparing the composition of mortar samples collected from different areas, supplemented by a geoarchaeological investigation. Five samples of mortar from the various areas around the temple were collected and tested using three methods: X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and thin section petrographic analyses. While all mortar samples include similar locally sourced hydrated lime and sand mixtures, three distinct construction styles are identified in the visual analysis of the building elements, the mortar analyses, and the geoarchaeological investigations. One sample from the walls of the wine press pool includes fibers. The unique interdisciplinary work utilizing both material analyses and geoarchaeology strengthens the conclusions that can be drawn from individual fields of study and provides more support for the hypotheses of the phased destruction and changing use of the monument

Emotions in context: examining pervasive affective sensing systems, applications, and analyses

Pervasive sensing has opened up new opportunities for measuring our feelings and understanding our behavior by monitoring our affective states while mobile. This review paper surveys pervasive affect sensing by examining and considering three major elements of affective pervasive systems, namely; “sensing”, “analysis”, and “application”. Sensing investigates the different sensing modalities that are used in existing real-time affective applications, Analysis explores different approaches to emotion recognition and visualization based on different types of collected data, and Application investigates different leading areas of affective applications. For each of the three aspects, the paper includes an extensive survey of the literature and finally outlines some of challenges and future research opportunities of affective sensing in the context of pervasive computing

Sleep dysfunctions influence decision making in undemented Parkinson's disease patients: a study in a virtual supermarket

In the early-middle stages of Parkinson's disease (PD), polysomnographic studies show early alterations of the structure of the sleep, which may explain frequent symptoms reported by patients, such as daytime drowsiness, loss of attention and concentration, feeling of tiredness. The aim of this study was to verify if there is a correlation between the sleep dysfunction and decision making ability. We used a Virtual Reality version of the Multiple Errand Test (VMET), developed using the NeuroVR free software (http://www.neurovr2.org), to evaluate decision-making ability in 12 PD not-demented patients and 14 controls. Five of our not-demented 12 PD patients showed abnormalities in the polysomnographic recordings associated to significant differences in the VMET performance