Publications by authors named "Andrea Merello"

Immersive technology, such as extended reality, holds promise as a tool for educating ophthalmologists about the effects of low vision and for enhancing visual rehabilitation protocols. However, immersive simulators have not been evaluated for their ability to induce changes in the oculomotor system, which is crucial for understanding the visual experiences of visually impaired individuals. This study aimed to assess the REALTER (Wearable Egocentric Altered Reality Simulator) system's capacity to induce specific alterations in healthy individuals' oculomotor systems under simulated low-vision conditions.

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Bluetooth-enabled wearables can be linked to form synchronized networks to provide insightful and representative data that is exceptionally beneficial in healthcare applications. However, synchronization can be affected by inevitable variations in the component's performance from their ideal behavior. Here, we report an application-level solution that embeds a Neural network to analyze and overcome these variations.

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The present work aims to introduce a novel robotic platform suitable for investigating perception in multi-sensory motion tasks for individuals with and without sensory and motor disabilities. The system, called RoMAT, allows the study of how multisensory signals are integrated, taking into account the speed and direction of the stimuli. It is a robotic platform composed of a visual and tactile wheel mounted on two routable plates to be moved under the finger and the visual observation of the participants.

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Motion tracking provides unique insights into motor, cognitive, and social development by capturing subtle variations into how movements are planned and controlled. Here, we present a low-cost, wearable movement measurement platform, KiD, specifically designed for tracking the movements of infants and children in a variety of natural settings. KiD consists of a small, lightweight sensor containing a nine-axis inertial measurement unit plus an integrated processor for computing rotations.

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Vestibular perception is useful to maintain heading direction and successful spatial navigation. In this study, we present a novel equipment capable of delivering both rotational and translational movements, namely the RT-Chair. The system comprises two motors and it is controlled by the user via MATLAB.

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Post-genomic methodologies have provided novel tools for evaluating safety and efficacy of cancer chemopreventive agents. We exposed rats to environmental cigarette smoke (ECS) for 28 days, with or without oral administration of N-acetylcysteine (NAC). As assessed by 32P-postlabelling, ECS caused a 10-fold increase of DNA adduct levels, which were significantly reduced by NAC.

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We showed previously that p53 mutations play a role in cigarette smoke-related carcinogenesis not only in humans but also in A/J mice. In fact, (UL53-3 x A/J)F(1) mice, carrying a dominant-negative germ-line p53 mutation, responded to exposure to environmental cigarette smoke more efficiently than their wild-type (wt) littermate controls in terms of molecular alterations, cytogenetic damage, and lung tumor yield. To clarify the mechanisms involved, we analyzed by cDNA array the expression of 1,185 cancer-related genes in the lung of the same mice.

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