Endoprostheses are commonly used in the treatment of biliary and pancreatic disorders. Fully-covered metal stents are intended for the palliation of malignant strictures in the biliary tree. We ...report a case of a patient affected by cancer of the pancreas who was treated with a proximal metallic biliary stent. The stent migrated to the oesophagus and was endoscopically removed. Proximal migration, although rare, should be kept in mind as a potential complication of the procedure.
In expressing emotional states, we generate a synaesthesic experience in our interlocutor when we transmit information about our feelings by the simultaneous use of several sensorial channels. These ...are referred to as verbal (the semantic content of the message) and non-verbal (gesture, gaze, tonal expression) modalities. From an engineering point of view the transmission of the same information by more than one sensorial channel should be considered as redundant. Is this true or does each channel transmit a specific piece of information? How much emotional information is transmitted by each channel and which plays a major role? As an attempt to address these questions, here we present a comparative analysis of the subjective perception of emotional states by the visual and auditory channels considered either singularly or in combination, always in the non-verbal modality. The results reveal that the audio and visual components of emotional messages convey much the same amount of information either separately or in combination, hence suggesting that each channel performs a robust encoding of the emotional features. Redundancy probably facilitates the recovery of emotional information in case one of the channels is impaired. This conclusion is challenged by language cultural specificity, since when tested on a foreign language the addressers rely more on visual information.
The detection of negative emotions through daily activities such as writing and drawing is useful for promoting wellbeing. The spread of human-machine interfaces such as tablets makes the collection ...of handwriting and drawing samples easier. In this context, we present a first publicly available database which relates emotional states to handwriting and drawing, that we call EMOTHAW (EMOTion recognition from HAndWriting and draWing). This database includes samples of 129 participants whose emotional states, namely anxiety, depression, and stress, are assessed by the Depression-Anxiety-Stress Scales (DASS) questionnaire. Seven tasks are recorded through a digitizing tablet: pentagons and house drawing, words copied in handprint, circles and clock drawing, and one sentence copied in cursive writing. Records consist in pen positions, on-paper and in-air, time stamp, pressure, pen azimuth, and altitude. We report our analysis on this database. From collected data, we first compute measurements related to timing and ductus. We compute separate measurements according to the position of the writing device: on paper or in-air. We analyze and classify this set of measurements (referred to as features) using a random forest approach. This latter is a machine learning method, based on an ensemble of decision trees, which includes a feature ranking process. We use this ranking process to identify the features which best reveal a targeted emotional state. We then build random forest classifiers associated with each emotional state. We provide accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity evaluation measures obtained from cross-validation experiments. Our results show that anxiety and stress recognition perform better than depression recognition.
In social interactions, the reciprocity norm implies to adjust one’s behavior to that of the other agents. Conversely, behaving according to self-interest involves taking into account the reciprocity ...principle only if it does not hinder the achievement of one’s goals. However, reciprocity and self-interest may conflict with each other, as when returning a kind action involves sacrificing the possibility to achieve a personal objective. The conflict could be exacerbated by some contextual factors, such as competitive pressures. This study investigated, in a competitive interaction context, which principle prevails when the two conflict. To this end, 276 unpaid participants (M = 138) took part in a two-stage experiment entailing a simulated interaction with a fictitious opponent, which behaved selfishly, fairly or altruistically toward them during the first stage. Participants had to decide whether or not to reciprocate the opponent’s previous behavior, which in the critical experimental conditions conflicted with the goal to successfully complete the experiment. So, they were faced with a moral dilemma. Competition degree was manipulated to make the conflict between reciprocity and self-interest more or less harsh. Moreover, we tested whether the putative effect of experimental manipulation was mediated by changes in context-related affective states and personal beliefs about morality. Results showed that decision-making was principally influenced by reciprocity. Regardless of the competition degree, participants preferred to engage in reciprocal behavior even when this compromised their personal interest. Affective states and beliefs changed in response to the experimental manipulation, but they did not mediate the effect of the independent variable on decision-making.
This work shows that fillers - short utterances like "ehm" and "uhm" - allow one to predict whether someone is above median along the Big-Five personality traits. The experiments have been performed ...over a corpus of 2,988 fillers uttered by 120 different speakers in spontaneous conversations. The results show that the prediction accuracies range between 74 and 82 percent depending on the particular trait. The proposed approach includes a feature selection step - based on Quantum Evolutionary Algorithms - that has been used to detect the personality markers, i.e., the subset of the features that better account for the prediction outcomes and, indirectly, for the personality of the speakers. The results show that only a relatively few features tend to be consistently selected, thus acting as reliable personality markers.
Considered the increasing use of assistive technologies in the shape of virtual agents, it is necessary to investigate those factors which characterize and affect the interaction between the user and ...the agent, among these emerges the way in which people interpret and decode synthetic emotions, i.e., emotional expressions conveyed by virtual agents. For these reasons, an article is proposed, which involved 278 participants split in differently aged groups (young, middle-aged, and elders). Within each age group, some participants were administered a "naturalistic decoding task," a recognition task of human emotional faces, while others were administered a "synthetic decoding task" namely emotional expressions conveyed by virtual agents. Participants were required to label pictures of female and male humans or virtual agents of different ages (young, middle-aged, and old) displaying static expressions of disgust, anger, sadness, fear, happiness, surprise, and neutrality. Results showed that young participants showed better recognition performances (compared to older groups) of anger, sadness, and neutrality, while female participants showed better recognition performances (compared to males) of sadness, fear, and neutrality; sadness and fear were better recognized when conveyed by real human faces, while happiness, surprise, and neutrality were better recognized when represented by virtual agents. Young faces were better decoded when expressing anger and surprise, middle-aged faces were better decoded when expressing sadness, fear, and happiness, while old faces were better decoded in the case of disgust; on average, female faces where better decoded compared to male ones.
The Tsuji‐Trost reaction of cyclopentenyl carbonates was explored by experimental studies and computational calculations, in search for the synthetic conditions enabling the stereoconvergent ...synthesis of cyclopentenyl nucleosides. Under common conditions, cyclopentenyl reagents provide Tsuji‐Trost products only in a weakly stereoconvergent manner. However, changes in the amount of catalyst (up to 1 eq) affect either the regio‐ and stereoselectivity of the reaction, selectively leading to cis configured cyclopentenyl N9‐linked purine nucleosides, regardless the relative configuration (cis or trans) of the starting substrates. DFT studies clarified that this could be due to the low activation energy related to the crucial, Pd‐dependent π‐inversion step.
Stoichiometric Tsuji‐Trost reaction of cyclopentenyl carbonates proceeds in stereoconvergent manner, selectively leading to cis configured nucleosides, regardless the relative configuration (cis or trans) of the starting substrates. As indicated by DFT calculations, the reaction outcome relies on the low activation energy related to the crucial, Pd‐dependent π‐inversion step. This approach may represent a useful strategy for the synthesis of bioactive carbocyclic nucleosides.
The Front Cover illustrates the role of Pd catalysis on the stereoconvergent conversion of cis and trans cyclopentenyl carbonates into the corresponding cis nucleosides by Tsuji–Trost reaction. In ...the cover image, a policeman with a “Pd” bib closes a highway lane, indicating to a car an alternative direction, which is shared with an incoming truck. The cartoon has been realized by D. D'Alonzo. More information can be found in the Research Article by A. Esposito, D. D'Alonzo et al.
Herein we report the synthesis, conformational analysis and the evaluation of the antiviral activity of six-membered nucleoside analogues having a piperidine ring as the preorganized (deoxy)ribose ...bioisostere. Mutagenic nucleobase-containing nucleosides 1 and 2 were obtained by appropriate manipulation of the well-known glycomimetic agent deoxynojirimycin as easily accessible starting material. In vitro assays revealed activity of 5-iododeoxyuridine analogue 1 against all DNA viruses tested. As suggested by DFT analysis and pH-dependent NMR experiments, antiviral activity was correlated to the biomimetic character of the piperidine ring, as it is able to resemble the deoxyribose conformations adopted by natural nucleosides when interacting with viral enzymes.
Display omitted
•Synthesis of piperidine nucleosides by an iminosugar-based route.•Six-membered iminosugar-based nucleosides with a low energy barrier between bioactive conformers.•New nucleoside analogues with antiviral potential.
PDF
