The first 1000 days of a child's life, spanning from the time of conception until 2 years of age, are a key period of laying down the foundations of optimum health, growth, and development across the lifespan. Although the role of health prevention programs targeting families and children in the first 1000 days of life is well recognized, investments in this key period are scarce, and the provision of adequate health care services is insufficient. The aim of this viewpoint is to provide a holistic digital health framework cocreated with policy makers, health care professionals, and families to support more effective efforts and health care programs dedicated to the first 1000 days of life as the first line of prevention.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderstanding and controlling the electronic properties of two-dimensional materials are crucial for their potential applications in nano- and optoelectronics. Monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides have garnered significant interest due to their strong light-matter interaction and extreme sensitivity of the band structure to the presence of photogenerated electron-hole pairs. In this study, we investigate the transient electronic structure of monolayer WS on a graphene substrate after resonant excitation of the A-exciton using time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Pregnancy is a complex period characterized by significant transformations. How a woman adapts to these changes can affect her quality of life and psychological well-being. Recently developed digital solutions have assumed a crucial role in supporting the psychological well-being of pregnant women.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Advancements in technology offer new opportunities to support vulnerable populations, such as pregnant women and women diagnosed with breast cancer, during physiologically and psychologically stressful periods.
Objective: This study aims to adapt and co-design the World Health Organization's Self-Help Plus intervention into a mobile health intervention for these target groups.
Methods: On the basis of the Obesity-Related Behavioral Intervention Trials and Center for eHealth Research and Disease Management models, low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes were developed.
The growth of high-quality graphene on flat and rigid templates, such as metal thin films on insulating wafers, is regarded as a key enabler for technologies based on 2D materials. In this work, the growth of decoupled graphene is introduced via non-reducing low-pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) on crystalline Cu(111) films deposited on sapphire. The resulting film is atomically flat, with no detectable cracks or ripples, and lies atop of a thin CuO layer, as confirmed by microscopy, diffraction, and spectroscopy analyses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Pregnancy is a complex time characterized by major transformations in a woman, which impact her physical, mental, and social well-being. How a woman adapts to these changes can affect her quality of life and psychological well-being. The literature indicates that pregnant women commonly experience psychological symptoms, with anxiety, stress, and depression being among the most frequent.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Empirical evidence has shown that virtual reality (VR) scenarios can increase the effects of relaxation techniques, reducing anxiety by enabling people to experience emotional conditions in more vivid settings.
Objective: This pilot randomized controlled study aims to investigate whether the progressive muscle relaxation technique (PMRT) associated with a personalized scenario in VR promotes psychological well-being and facilitates the recall of relaxing images more than the standard complementary intervention that involves the integration of PMRT and guided imagery (GI).
Methods: On the basis of a longitudinal, between-subject design, 72 university students were randomly exposed to one of two experimental conditions: (1) standard complementary procedure (PMRT and GI exposure) and (2) experimental procedure (PMRT and personalized VR exposure).
Being immersed in a natural context has a beneficial and pervasive impact on well-being. Virtual Reality (VR) is a technology that can help expose people to naturalistic scenarios virtually, overcoming obstacles that prevent them from visiting real natural environments. VR could also increase engagement and relaxation in older adults with and without cognitive impairment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExploiting the light-matter interplay to realize advanced light responsive multimodal platforms is an emerging strategy to engineer bioinspired systems such as optoelectronic synaptic devices. However, existing neuroinspired optoelectronic devices rely on complex processing of hybrid materials which often do not exhibit the required features for biological interfacing such as biocompatibility and low Young's modulus. Recently, organic photoelectrochemical transistors (OPECTs) have paved the way towards multimodal devices that can better couple to biological systems benefiting from the characteristics of conjugated polymers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCopper (Cu) is the electrical conductor of choice in many categories of electrical wiring, with household and building installation being the major market of this metal. This work demonstrates the coating of Cu wires-with diameters relevant for low-voltage (LV) applications-with graphene. The chemical vapor deposition (CVD) coating process is rapid, safe, scalable, and industrially compatible.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSingle-layer molybdenum ditelluride (MoTe) has attracted attention due to the smaller energy difference between the semiconducting (1H) and semimetallic (1T') phases with respect to other two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). Understanding the phenomenon of polymorphism between these structural phases is of great fundamental and practical importance. In this paper, we report a 1H to 1T' phase transition occurring during the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) synthesis of single-layer MoTe at 730 °C.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Virtual reality (VR) is an innovative tool that can facilitate exposure to either stressful or relaxing stimuli and enables individuals who have difficulties visualizing scenes to be involved in a more realistic sensorimotor experience. It also facilitates multisensory stimulation, a sense of presence, and achievement of relaxation. VR scenarios representing visual and auditory elements of natural relaxing environments can facilitate the learning of relaxation techniques such as the progressive muscle relaxation technique (PMRT).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The nursing role significantly changed following reforms in the nurse training process. Nowadays, nurses are increasingly trained to promote and improve the quality of clinical practice and to provide support in the assistance of patients and communities. Opportunities and threats are emerging as a consequence of the introduction of new disruptive technologies in public health, which requires the health care staff to develop new digital skills.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Virtual Reality Environments (VREs) are widely deployed in mental health treatments, often associated with relaxation techniques. The personalization of natural VR-based scenarios is a key element that can further facilitate users' sense of presence and relaxation. This study explored the role of VREs' personalization in the user experience with an environment supporting relaxation, by deploying mixed methods.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Mobile health solutions aimed at monitoring tasks among people with diabetes mellitus (DM) have been broadly applied. However, virtual coaches (VCs), embedded or not in mobile health, are considered valuable means of improving patients' health-related quality of life and ensuring adherence to self-care recommendations in diabetes management. Despite the growing need for effective, healthy coping digital interventions to support patients' self-care and self-management, the design of psychological digital interventions that are acceptable, usable, and engaging for the target users still represents the main challenge, especially from a psychosocial perspective.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGraphene grown chemical vapour deposition (CVD) on copper foil has emerged as a high-quality, scalable material, that can be easily integrated on technologically relevant platforms to develop promising applications in the fields of optoelectronics and photonics. Most of these applications require low-contaminated high-mobility graphene (, approaching 10 000 cm V s at room temperature) to reduce device losses and implement compact device design. To date, these mobility values are only obtained when suspending or encapsulating graphene.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVan der Waals heterostructures show many intriguing phenomena including ultrafast charge separation following strong excitonic absorption in the visible spectral range. However, despite the enormous potential for future applications in the field of optoelectronics, the underlying microscopic mechanism remains controversial. Here we use time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy combined with microscopic many-particle theory to reveal the relevant microscopic charge transfer channels in epitaxial WS_{2}/graphene heterostructures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Motivation is a core component of diabetes self-management because it allows adults with diabetes mellitus (DM) to adhere to clinical recommendations. In this context, virtual coaches (VCs) have assumed a central role in supporting and treating common barriers related to adherence. However, most of them are mainly focused on medical and physical purposes, such as the monitoring of blood glucose levels or following a healthy diet.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe change in bending rigidity with temperature κ(T) for 2D materials is highly debated: theoretical works predict both increase and decrease. Here we present measurements of κ(T), for a 2D material: AB-stacked bilayer graphene. We obtain κ(T) from phonon dispersion curves measured with helium atom scattering in the temperature range 320-400 K.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: ONCO-TreC platform consists of a mobile application delivered to patients as electronic diary and a web-based dashboard managed by healthcare professionals. We aim to compare the effectiveness of ONCO-TreC electronic diary with a standard paper diary, in improving adherence to oral cancer therapy in patients with solid and haematological tumours.
Methods And Analysis: This is an open label, superiority, randomised controlled trial conducted in two Italian oncology units.
Background: COVID-19 pandemic worsened vulnerability of patients with dementia (PWD). This new reality associated with government restriction and isolation worsened stress burden and psychological frailties in PWD caregivers.
Objective: To give tele-psychological support to caregivers and evaluate the effect of this intervention by quantifying stress burden and quality of life during the first COVID-19 lockdown.
The aim of the "Smuovi La Salute" ("Shake Your Health") project was to implement an integrated and comprehensive model to prevent and treat overweight and obesity in low socioeconomic status (SES) and minority groups living in three different districts in the north of Italy. An app and a cookbook promoting transcultural nutrition and a healthy lifestyle were developed, and no-cost physical activities were organized. Healthy lifestyle teaching was implemented in 30 primary school classrooms.
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