Validation of ankle strength measurements by means of a hand-held dynamometer in adult healthy subjects

Uniaxial Hand-Held Dynamometer (HHD) is a low-cost device widely adopted in clinical practice to measure muscle force. HHD measurements depend on operator’s ability and joint movements. The aim of the work is to validate the use of a commercial HHD in both dorsiflexion and plantarflexion ankle strength measurements quantifying the effects of HHD misplacements and unwanted foot’s movements on the measurements. We used an optoelectronic system and a multicomponent load cell to quantify the sources of error in the manual assessment of the ankle strength due to both the operator’s ability to hold still the HHD and the transversal components of the exerted force that are usually neglected in clinical routine. Results showed that foot’s movements and angular misplacements of HHD on sagittal and horizontal planes were relevant sources of inaccuracy on the strength assessment. Moreover, ankle dorsiflexion and plantarflexion force measurements presented an inaccuracy less than 2% and higher than 10%, respectively. In conclusion, the manual use of a uniaxial HHD is not recommend ed for the assessment of ankle plantarflexion strength; on the contrary, it can be allowed asking the operator to pay strong attention to the HHD positioning in ankle dorsiflexion strength measurements

Erectile dysfunction and its management in patients with diabetes mellitus

Diabetes can be described as a syndrome of multiple closely related conditions induced by a chronic state of hyperglycaemia resulting from defective insulin secretion, insulin action or both. Chronic complications associated with diabetes (including neuropathy, vascular disease, nephropathy and retinopathy) are common, and of these, erectile dysfunction (ED) deserves special attention. ED and its correlation with cardiovascular disease require careful evaluation and appropriate treatment. PDE5 inhibitors (PDE5is) are an important tool for the treatment of ED, with new drugs coming onto the market since the late 90s. This review offers an overview of PDE5is and their use in treating ED in diabetes. We underline the differences between different types of PDE5i, focusing on available doses, duration of action, T ½, side effects and selectivity profiles in relation to patients with diabetes. We also discuss the link between diabetes and ED in presence of various associated cofactors (obesity, hypertension and its pharmacological treatments, atherosclerosis, hyperhomocysteinaemia, neuropathy, nephropathy, hypogonadism and depression). Finally a number of past and ongoing clinical trials on the use of PDE5is in patients with diabetes are presented to offer an overview of the appropriate treatment of ED in this condition

The Economic Consequences of the Covid-19 First Wave and the New International Scenarios. An Historical Dimension

The Covid-19 crisis is urging scholars to ponder the perspectives of the globalization process which started at the end of the XXth Century. The pandemic is creating a sense of insecurity and uncertainty which has few precedents in the current age, pervading wider and wider sectors of the population. Moving from the analysis of the first wave of the pandemic (March 2020), this essay proposes a model of analysis of the effects of the pandemic by framing the economic emergency produced by it from a historical and theoretical perspective. The paper will also try to indicate the traits and the model of a new economic paradigm: the birth of a new globalization that would surely feature competitions between its biggest geoeconomics areas, but that would also offer the opportunity to promote novel perspectives for development and to achieve a brand-new convergence between the private and public interest

Extraction of the microscopic properties of quasi-particles using deep neural networks

We use deep neural networks (DNN) to obtain the microscopic characteristics of partons in terms of dynamical degrees of freedom on the basis of an off-shell quasiparticle description. We aim to infer masses and widths of quasi-gluons, up/down, and strange quarks using constraints on the macroscopic thermodynamic observables obtained by the first-principles calculations lattice QCD. In this work, we use 3 independent dimensionless thermodynamic observables from lQCD for minimization. First, we train our DNN using the DQPM (Dynamical QuasiParticle Model) Ansatz for the masses and widths. Furthermore, we use the DNN capabilities to generalize this Ansatz, to evaluate which quasiparticle characteristics are desirable to describe different thermodynamic functions simultaneously. To evaluate consistently the microscopic properties obtained by the DNN in the case of off-shell quarks and gluons, we compute transport coefficients using the spectral function within Kubo-Zubarev formalism in different setups. In particular, we make a comprehensive comparison in the case of the dimensionless ratios of shear viscosity over entropy density $\eta/s$ and electric conductivity over temperature $\sigma_Q/T$, which provide additional constraints for the parameter generalization of the considered models.Comment: 22 pages, 20 figure

The Economic Consequences of the Covid-19 First Wave and the New International Scenarios. An Historical Dimension

The Covid-19 crisis is urging scholars to ponder the perspectives of the globalization process which started at the end of the XXth Century. The pandemic is creating a sense of insecurity and uncertainty which has few precedents in the current age, pervading wider and wider sectors of the population. Moving from the analysis of the first wave of the pandemic (March 2020), this essay proposes a model of analysis of the effects of the pandemic by framing the economic emergency produced by it from a historical and theoretical perspective. The paper will also try to indicate the traits and the model of a new economic paradigm: the birth of a new globalization that would surely feature competitions between its biggest geoeconomics areas, but that would also offer the opportunity to promote novel perspectives for development and to achieve a brand-new convergence between the private and public interest