•Emotional expressions.•Multimodal communication.•Needs and challenges in emotionally and believable ICT interfaces.
Demand for and delivery so far of sophisticated computational instruments able to ...recognize, process and store relevant interactional signals, as well as interact with people, displaying suitable autonomous reactions appropriately sensitive to environmental changes, have produced great expectations in Information Communication Technology (ICT). Knowing what an appropriate continuation of an interaction is depends on detecting the addresser's register and a machine interface unable to assess differences will have difficulty managing interactions. Progress toward understanding and modeling such facets is crucial for implementing behaving Human Computer Interaction (HCI) systems that will simplify user access to future, profitable, remote and nearby social services. This paper raises new research questions via new means for socio‐behavioral and emotional investigations, and suggests the gathering of new experimental data and theories across a spectrum of research concepts, in order to develop new psychological and computational approaches crucial for implementing believable and trustable HCI systems which exploit synthetic agents, robots, and sophisticated humanlike interfaces.
Abstract Conventional pancreatic resections for pancreatic neck and body diseases include pancreaticoduodenectomy, distal pancreatectomy with or without splenectomy, and total pancreatectomy. Recent ...studies have reported encouraging results of non-traditional pancreatic resections, including central pancreatectomy (CP), for central pancreatic disease. This surgical approach offers the potentials of low postoperative morbidity and preservation of metabolic functions. This study performs a systematic review on CP. A comprehensive literature search was conducted, for the period 1992–2015, on three worldwide databases: PubMed, Scopus, ISI-Web of Knowledge. We focused on indications, morbidity and mortality of this surgical procedure. The review shows that CP is particularly suitable for small-medium size diseases localized into the pancreatic body. This procedure is associated with an increased postoperative morbidity but an excellent postoperative pancreatic function. CP is a safe and effective procedure when performed following the right indications.
Staphylococcus aureus is one of the major causes of hospital- and community-associated bacterial infections throughout the world, which are difficult to treat due to the rising number of ...drug-resistant strains. New molecules displaying potent activity against this bacterium are urgently needed. In this study, d- and l-deoxynojirimycin (DNJ) and a small library of their N-alkyl derivatives were screened against S. aureus ATCC 29213, with the aim to identify novel candidates with inhibitory potential. Among them, N-nonyloxypentyl-l-DNJ (l-NPDNJ) proved to be the most active compound against S. aureus ATCC 29213 and its clinical isolates, with the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) value of 128 μg/mL. l-NPDNJ also displayed an additive effect with gentamicin and oxacillin against the gentamicin- and methicillin-resistant S. aureus isolate 00717. Sub-MIC values of l-NPDNJ affected S. aureus biofilm development in a dose-dependent manner, inducing a strong reduction in biofilm biomass. Moreover, real-time reverse transcriptase PCR analysis revealed that l-NPDNJ effectively inhibited at sub-MIC values the transcription of the spa, hla, hlb and sea virulence genes, as well as the agrA and saeR response regulator genes.
Ospitare e assistere le donne Esposito, Anna
Mélanges de l'Ecole française de Rome. Moyen âge,
12/2019
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Nella Roma tardomedievale, città esemplare per rilevare la presenza di pellegrini – e non solo negli anni giubilari –, si può rilevare un fenomeno per molti versi interessante: l’istituzione di ...numerose ‘case’ ed ospizi per accogliere donne forestiere e straniere. Già segnalate nel ‘300, solo nel secolo successivo si può dire per ogni «natione» viene istituito un ospizio riservato esclusivamente alle proprie pellegrine, spesso retto da mulieres religiose, pinzoche, terziarie, e aperto all’accoglienza più o meno temporanea di laiche devote. Ad esempio, l’ospizio per le donne «ultramontane» di Sant’Andrea e di San Nicolò (chiamato «lo spitale delle todesche»), che si affiancava al dormitorio per le donne nell’ospedale di Santa Maria dell’Anima dei Tedeschi; i due ospedaletti per il ricovero di donne castigliane, uno presso Santa Maria della Pace vicino a piazza Navona, l’altro ai piedi dell’Araceli, e le numerose ‘case’ di donne provenienti da diverse città e regioni italiane. Nella relazione si cercherà di dare conto in primo luogo dell’organizzazione interna di queste domus e dei rapporti con i benefattori istituzionali, quindi della vita a Roma delle loro ospiti.
Depression is one of the most common mental health issues. (It affects more than 4% of the world’s population, according to recent estimates.) This article shows that the joint analysis of linguistic ...and acoustic aspects of speech allows one to discriminate between depressed and nondepressed speakers with an accuracy above 80%. The approach used in the work is based on networks designed for sequence modeling (bidirectional Long-Short Term Memory networks) and multimodal analysis methodologies (late fusion, joint representation and gated multimodal units). The experiments were performed over a corpus of 59 interviews (roughly 4 hours of material) involving 29 individuals diagnosed with depression and 30 control participants. In addition to an accuracy of 80%, the results show that multimodal approaches perform better than unimodal ones owing to people’s tendency to manifest their condition through one modality only, a source of diversity across unimodal approaches. In addition, the experiments show that it is possible to measure the “confidence” of the approach and automatically identify a subset of the test data in which the performance is above a predefined threshold. It is possible to effectively detect depression by using unobtrusive and inexpensive technologies based on the automatic analysis of speech and language.
The independent prognostic value of blood pressure (BP) variability in treated hypertension is not yet clear. We investigated the relationship between BP variability, evaluated by noninvasive ...monitoring, and cardiovascular outcome in treated hypertensive patients.
The occurrence of fatal and nonfatal cardiovascular events was evaluated in 1472 treated patients. Subjects with the standard deviation of daytime or night-time systolic BP below or above the median of the population were classified as having low or high BP variability. Specifically, 738 and 734 patients had low and high daytime BP variability, respectively, and 739 and 733 subjects had low and high night-time BP variability, respectively.
During follow-up (4.88 ± 2.9 years, range 0.2–11.6 years) there were 119 events. The event rates per 100 patient-years in subjects with low and high BP variability according to daytime BP were 1.18 and 2.01, respectively, and in those with low and high BP variability according to night-time BP were 1.2 and 2.05, respectively. Event-free survival was significantly different between the low and high BP variability groups (
P = .006 for both daytime and night-time BP). However, after adjustment for other covariates in a Cox multivariate analysis, the adverse prognostic relevance of high BP variability was no longer detectable, whereas age, smoking habit, LDL cholesterol, diabetes, previous events, LV hypertrophy, and daytime or night-time systolic BP resulted independent predictors of risk.
Increased BP variability is associated with higher incidence of cardiovascular events, but also with other relevant prognostic factors. Indeed, in multivariate analysis the possible adverse prognostic impact of BP variability is no longer evident. Thus, in treated hypertension, BP variability evaluated by noninvasive monitoring is not an independent predictor of outcome.
The catalytic and biological properties of dirhodium tetracarboxylates (Rh
(μ-O
CR)
L
, L = axial ligand and R = CH
-, CH
CH
-,
.) largely depend on the nature of bridging carboxylate equatorial μ-O
...CR ligands, which can be easily exchanged by solvent molecules when R is CF
(
μ-O
CR is trifluoroacetate, tfa). Here, we prepared the Rh
(OAc)(tfa)
compound and investigated its interaction with bovine pancreatic ribonuclease and lysozyme under the same conditions used to study the reactivity of these proteins with Rh
(OAc)
and
-Rh
(OAc)
(tfa)
. UV-vis absorption spectroscopy and
F nuclear magnetic resonance studies indicate that Rh
(OAc)(tfa)
rapidly loses tfa ligands and interacts with the proteins. Crystallographic data demonstrate that the reaction of Rh
(OAc)(tfa)
with proteins can lead to products that are significantly different when compared to those obtained with Rh
(OAc)
and
-Rh
(OAc)
(tfa)
: the dirhodium centre can bind the side chain of His residues at both axial and equatorial sites, at variance with what is found in the case of Rh
(OAc)
and
-Rh
(OAc)
(tfa)
. These data indicate that the hydrolysis of dirhodium tetracarboxylates plays a significant role in defining their reaction with proteins allowing the formation of unexpected reaction products. These results suggest that
-Rh
(OAc)
(tfa)
and Rh
(OAc)(tfa)
can be used to obtain different dirhodium/peptide and dirhodium/protein adducts with distinct catalytic properties and can explain the different cytotoxicity exhibited by tfa-containing dirhodium tetracarboxylates.
Dirhodium complexes of general formula Rh
2
(O
2
CR)
4
L
2
are a well-known class of bimetallic compounds that are used as efficient catalysts for a variety of reactions and have been shown to be ...potent antibacterial and anticancer agents. The catalytic and biological properties of these complexes largely depend on the nature of the bridging carboxylate ligands. Trifluoroacetate (tfa)-containing dirhodium compounds have been used to build artificial metalloenzymes upon reaction with peptides and have been shown to be more cytotoxic than dirhodium tetraacetate. However, there is no structural information on the interaction between these compounds and proteins. Here,
cis
-Rh
2
(μ-O
2
CCH
3
)
2
(μ-O
2
CCF
3
)
2
(
cis
-Rh
2
(OAc)
2
(tfa)
2
) has been synthesized and its reaction with bovine pancreatic ribonuclease (RNase A) and hen egg white lysozyme (HEWL) was analyzed using a combination of different techniques, including Fluorine-19 nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and macromolecular X-ray crystallography, with the aim to unveil the differences in the reactivity of tfa-containing dihrodium complexes with proteins when compared to Rh
2
(OAc)
4
.
cis
-Rh
2
(OAc)
2
(tfa)
2
and Rh
2
(OAc)
4
bind the N atoms of His side chains of RNase A at the axial position; however the fluorine-containing compound rapidly loses its tfa ligands, while Rh
2
(OAc)
4
can retain the acetate ligands upon protein binding. The reactivity of
cis
-Rh
2
(OAc)
2
(tfa)
2
with HEWL is slightly distinct when compared to that of Rh
2
(OAc)
4
under the same experimental conditions; however, both
cis
-Rh
2
(OAc)
2
(tfa)
2
and Rh
2
(OAc)
4
degrade when soaked within HEWL crystals. These results provide a structural-based guide for the design of new heterogenous chiral dirhodium/peptide and dirhodium/protein adducts with application in the fields of organic synthesis and asymmetric catalysis.
cis
-Rh
2
(OAc)
2
(tfa)
2
has been synthesized and its reaction with RNase A and lysozyme was analyzed using a combination of different techniques, including fluorine NMR and X-ray crystallography.
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