The Personal Virtual Library

Looking for "library" in the usual search engines of the World Wide Web gives: "Infoseek found 3,593,126 pages containing the word library" and it nicely proposes: "Search only within these 3,59 3,126 pages ?" "Yahoo! Found 1299 categories and 8669 sites for library" "LycOs: 1-10 von 512354 relevanten Ergebnissen" "AltaVista: About 14830527 documents match your query" and at the botto m: "Word count: library: 15466897" ! Excite: Top 10 matches and it does not say how many can be browsed... "Library" on the World Wide Web is really popular. At least fiveteen million pages ar e supposed to contain this word. Half of them may have disappeared by now but one more hit will be added once the search robots will have indexed this document ! The notion of Personal Library i s a modest attempt, in a small environment like a library, to give poor users lost in cyber-libraries the opportunity to keep their own private little shelves - virtually. In this paper, we will l ook at the usual functionalities of library systems before focusing on the description of the Personal Virtual Library (PVL). We will finally explain how it can easily be implemented on the top of a ny library system

Design of a study to investigate the mechanisms of obstructive sleep apnoea by means of drug-induced sleep endoscopy

Background Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is an independent risk factor of hypertension and cardiovascular diseases. Recurrent episodes of upper airways collapse during sleep causing blood oxygen desaturation, hypercapnia, and micro-arousals, are known to activate the sympathetic nervous system (SNS). However, whether changes in the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system and endothelial activation also occur remains contentious. Methods Based on routine use of drug-induced sleep endoscopy (DISE) for the work-up of OSA patients in our centre, we designed a prospective study to investigate the haemodynamic and humoral changes occurring during the apnoeic episodes reproduced in vivo in the course of DISE. Specifically, plasma aldosterone concentration and renin activity, C-terminal fragment of proendothelin-1, as a marker of endothelial damage, and free plasma catecholamines, will be measured at fixed times during DISE. The activity of catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT), a key catecholamine-inactivating enzyme that has been scantly investigated thus far owing to the lack of commercially available kits, will be also determined by a newly developed high performance liquid chromatography method, which is herein described. Results and conclusions The aim of this study is to provide novel information on the haemodynamic, hormonal, and SNS changes, and also on COMT activity modification concomitantly occurring during apnoea, thus contributing substantively to the understanding of the pathophysiology of OSA

Visual versus semi-quantitative analysis of 18F-FDG-PET in amnestic MCI. An European Alzheimer\u27s Disease Consortium (EADC) project

We aimed to investigate the accuracy of FDG-PET to detect the Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD) brain glucose hypometabolic pattern in 142 patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and 109 healthy controls. aMCI patients were followed for at least two years or until conversion to dementia. Images were evaluated by means of visual read by either moderately-skilled or expert readers, and by means of a summary metric of AD-like hypometabolism (PALZ score). Seventy-seven patients converted to AD-dementia after 28.6?19.3 months of follow-up. Expert reading was the most accurate tool to detect these MCI converters from healthy controls (sensitivity 89.6%, specificity 89.0%, accuracy 89.2%) while two moderately-skilled readers were less (p < 0.05) specific (sensitivity 85.7%, specificity 79.8%, accuracy 82.3%) and PALZ scorewas less (p < 0.001) sensitive (sensitivity 62.3%, specificity 91.7%, accuracy 79.6%). Among the remaining 67 aMCI patients, 50 were confirmed as aMCI after an average of 42.3 months, 12 developed other dementia, and 3 reverted to normalcy. In 30/50 persistent MCI patients, the expert recognized the AD hypometabolic pattern. In 13/50 aMCI, both the expert and PALZ score were negative while in 7/50, only the PALZ score was positive due to sparse hypometabolic clusters mainly in frontal lobes. Visual FDG-PET reads by an expert is the most accurate method but an automated, validated system may be particularly helpful to moderately-skilled readers because of high specificity, and should be mandatory when even a moderately-skilled reader is unavailable

Maturation of monocyte-derived dendritic cells with Toll-like receptor 3 and 7/8 ligands combined with prostaglandin E2 results in high interleukin-12 production and cell migration

Dendritic cells (DC) are professional antigen-presenting cells of the immune system that play a key role in regulating T cell-based immunity. In vivo, the capacity of DC to activate T cells depends on their ability to migrate to the T cell areas of lymph nodes as well as on their maturation state. Depending on their cytokine-secreting profile, DC are able to skew the immune response in a specific direction. In particular, IL-12p70 producing DC drive T cells towards a T helper 1 type response. A serious disadvantage of current clinical grade ex vivo generated monocyte-derived DC is the poor IL-12p70 production. We have investigated the effects of Toll-like receptor (TLR)-mediated maturation on ex vivo generated human monocyte-derived DC. We demonstrate that in contrast to cytokine-matured DC, DC matured with poly(I:C) (TLR3 ligand) and/or R848 (TLR7/8 ligand) are able to produce vast amounts of IL-12p70, but exhibit a reduced migratory capacity. The addition of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) improved the migratory capacity of TLR-ligand matured DC while maintaining their IL-12p70 production upon T cell encounter. We propose a novel clinical grade maturation protocol in which TLR ligands poly(I:C) and R848 are combined with PGE2 to generate DC with both high migratory capacity and IL-12p70 production upon T cell encounter

Interfacce Web per database bibliografici: il sistema di informazioni scientifiche del CERN

Analysis of how to develop and organise a scientific information service based on the Word Wide Web, the specificity of the databases word-oriented and the problems linked to the information retrieval on the WWW. The analysis is done both in the theoretical and in the practical point of view. The case of the CERN scientific information service is taken into account. We study the reorganisation of t he whole architecture and the development of the Web User Interface. We conclude with the description of the service Personal Virtual Library, developed for CERN Library Catalogue

Vie lombarde e venete. Circolazione e trasformazione dei saperi letterari nel Sette-Ottocento fra l'Italia settentrionale e l'Europa transalpina

Si indagano le forme d'interferenza storico-culturale e gli sviluppi di un sapere letterario che dall'Europa transalpina confluisce nell'Italia settentrionale

Monumenti e testimonianze della cultura volgare padovana nel Medioevo (secoli XIII-XIV)

Interesse per le letterature d'Oltralpe nel Veneto due-trecentesco. Problemi, temi, personaggi, arte narrativa dell' "Entr\ue9e d'Espagne"

Scrittori stranieri in lingua italiana dal Cinquecento ad oggi, Atti del convegno internazionale di studi

Atti di un convegno sull'uso dell'italiano da parte di scrittori stranier