Aphasia is a highly disabling acquired language disorder generally caused by a left-lateralized brain damage. Even if traditional therapies have been shown to induce an adequate clinical improvement, ...a large percentage of patients are left with some degree of language impairments. Therefore, new approaches to common speech therapies are urgently needed in order to maximize the recovery from aphasia. The recent application of virtual reality (VR) to aphasia rehabilitation has already evidenced its usefulness in promoting a more pragmatically oriented treatment than conventional therapies (CT). In the present study, thirty-six chronic persons with aphasia (PWA) were randomly assigned to two groups. The VR group underwent conversational therapy during VR everyday life setting observation, while the control group was trained in a conventional setting without VR support. All patients were extensively tested through a neuropsychological battery which included not only measures for language skills and communication efficacy but also self-esteem and quality of life questionnairies. All patients were trained through a conversational approach by a speech therapist twice a week for six months (total 48 sessions). After the treatment, no significant differences among groups were found in the different measures. However, the amount of improvement in the different areas was distributed over far more cognitive and psychological aspects in the VR group than in the control group. Indeed, the within-group comparisons showed a significant enhancement in different language tasks (i.e., oral comprehension, repetition, and written language) only in the VR group. Significant gains, after the treatment, were also found, in the VR group, in different psychological dimensions (i.e., self-esteem and emotional and mood state). Given the importance of these aspects for aphasia recovery, we believe that our results add to previous evidence which points to the ecological validity and feasibility of VR treatment for language recovery and psychosocial well-being.
Mini-EUSO is part of the JEM-EUSO program and operates on board the International Space Station (ISS). It is a UV-telescope with single-photon counting capability looking at nighttime downwards to ...the Earth through a nadir-facing UV-transparent window. As part of the pre-flight tests, the Mini-EUSO engineering model, a telescope with 1/9 of the original focal surface and a lens of 2.5 cm diameter, has been built and tested. Tests of the Mini-EUSO engineering model have been made in laboratory and in open-sky conditions. Laboratory tests have been performed at the TurLab facility, located at the Physics Department of the University of Turin, equipped with a rotating tank containing different types of materials and light sources. In this way, the configuration for the observation of the Earth from space was emulated, including the Mini-EUSO trigger schemes. In addition to the qualification and calibration tests, the Mini-EUSO engineering model has also been used to evaluate the possibility of using a JEM-EUSO-type detector for applications such as observation of space debris. Furthermore, observations in open-sky conditions allowed the studies of natural light sources such as stars, meteors, planets, and artificial light sources such as airplanes, satellites reflecting the sunlight, and city lights. Most of these targets could be detected also with Mini-EUSO. In this paper, the tests in laboratory and in open-sky conditions are reported, as well as the obtained results. In addition, the contribution that such tests provided to foresee and improve the performance of Mini-EUSO on board the ISS is discussed.
The EUSO@TurLab project aims at performing experiments to reproduce Earth UV emissions as seen from a low Earth orbit by the planned missions of the JEM-EUSO program. It makes use of the TurLab ...facility, which is a laboratory, equipped with a 5 m diameter and 1 m depth rotating tank, located at the Physics Department of the University of Turin. All the experiments are designed and performed based on simulations of the expected response of the detectors to be flown in space. In April 2016 the TUS detector and more recently in October 2019 the Mini-EUSO experiment, both part of the JEM-EUSO program, have been placed in orbit to map the UV Earth emissions. It is, therefore, now possible to compare the replicas performed at TurLab with the actual images detected in space to understand the level of fidelity in terms of reproduction of the expected signals. We show that the laboratory tests reproduce at the order of magnitude level the measurements from space in terms of spatial extension and time duration of the emitted UV light, as well as the intensity in terms of expected counts per pixel per unit time when atmospheric transient events, diffuse nightlow background light, and artificial light sources are considered. Therefore, TurLab is found to be a very useful facility for testing the acquisition logic of the detectors of the present and future missions of the JEM-EUSO program and beyond in order to reproduce atmospheric signals in the laboratory.
The enthalpic and entropic components of ligand-protein binding free energy reflect the interactions and dynamics between ligand and protein. Despite decades of study, our understanding and hence our ...ability to predict these individual components remains poor. In recent years, there has been substantial effort and success in the prediction of relative and absolute binding free energies, but the prediction of the enthalpic (and entropic) contributions in biomolecular systems remains challenging. Indeed, it is not even clear what kind of performance in terms of accuracy could currently be obtained for such systems. It is, however, relatively straight-forward to compute the enthalpy of binding. We thus evaluated the performance of absolute enthalpy of binding calculations using molecular dynamics simulation for ten inhibitors against a member of the bromodomain family, BRD4-1, against isothermal titration calorimetry data. Initial calculations, with the AMBER force-field showed good agreement with experiment (
R
2
= 0.60) and surprisingly good accuracy with an average of root-mean-square error (RMSE) = 2.49 kcal mol
−1
. Of the ten predictions, three were obvious outliers that were all over-predicted compared to experiment. Analysis of various simulation factors, including parameterization, buffer concentration and conformational dynamics, revealed that the behaviour of a loop (the ZA loop on the periphery of the binding site) strongly dictates the enthalpic prediction. Consistent with previous observations, the loop exists in two distinct conformational states and by considering one or the other or both states, the prediction for the three outliers can be improved dramatically to the point where the
R
2
= 0.95 and the accuracy in terms of RMSE improves to 0.90 kcal mol
−1
. However, performance across force-fields is not consistent: if OPLS and CHARMM are used, different outliers are observed and the correlation with the ZA loop behaviour is not recapitulated, likely reflecting parameterization as a confounding problem. The results provide a benchmark standard for future study and comparison.
The enthalpic and entropic components of ligand-protein binding free energy reflect the interactions and dynamics between ligand and protein.
Every year, 700 million twenty-foot (container) equivalent units pass through the container terminals of the harbours all over the world. Only a small percentage (34%) are scanned to inspect the ...presence of radioactive materials. The need for controls is hampered essentially by three factors: the amount of both time and personnel necessary to control each container and the use of scanning methods based on systems potentially harmful for the personnel itself. Muon tomography can become a strategy for fast and reliable inspection of containers without using ionizing radiation. This technology takes advantage of multiple Coulomb scattering of the muons (particle produced by cosmic rays) through media to understand the composition and the geometry of the scanned volume. The TECNOMUSE project has the purpose to realize a muon tomography scanner based on a novel geometry and, for the first time, using Resistive Plate Chambers detectors. In this work, the preliminary results from the TECNOMUSE scanner are evaluated via Monte Carlo simulations. Many different simulations have been made with the aim to assess the detection capabilities of the device, its spatial resolution and the time required to reconstruct and distinguish different materials.
This paper describes a new method for watermarking CSG models. The method is intended for verification purposes and is based on digital signature techniques. It computes the watermark from selected ...attributes of the model and stores it in one or more places into the model itself. Because it does not alter the original model structure, it is compatible with copyright protection watermarking techniques and can be used many times to have a multiple watermark; moreover, no pre-processing phase is required before using the model. The verification phase requires a small a priori data knowledge, and no secret at all.
A distributed watermark extension of the schema shows strong localisation capabilities. Watermark data can be stored in control nodes or in comments, and we discuss the two possibilities for their characteristics of storage requirements, localisation capability, and rendering speed. The algorithm is very fast both in casting and verifying the watermark.
This method can be easily used with public key certificates and thus is ready to be integrated in any existing Public Key Infrastructure. Our non-distributed test implementation is also described.
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