Accuracy of EMG linear envelope in identifying the peak of muscular activity during walking.

Background: The linear-envelope peak (LEP) of surface EMG signal is widely used in gait analysis to characterize muscular activity, especially in clinics.

Research Question: This study is designed to evaluate LEP accuracy in identifying muscular activation and assessing activation timing during walking.

Methods: Surface EMG signals from gastrocnemius lateralis (GL) and tibialis anterior (TA) were analyzed in 100 strides per subject (31 healthy subjects) during ground walking.

A WAV file dataset of bottlenose dolphin whistles, clicks, and pulse sounds during trawling interactions.

Globally, interactions between fishing activities and dolphins are cause for concern due to their negative effects on both mammals and fishermen. The recording of acoustic emissions could aid in detecting the presence of dolphins in close proximity to fishing gear, elucidating their behavior, and guiding potential management measures designed to limit this harmful phenomenon. This data descriptor presents a dataset of acoustic recordings (WAV files) collected during interactions between common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) and fishing activities in the Adriatic Sea.

Ultrasound-guided Axillary Vein Puncture for Cardiac Device Implantation: A Safe and Effective Approach.

Ultrasound-guided axillary vein access is an effective alternative to conventional subclavian and cephalic access for cardiac implantable electronic device implantation. The aim of this study was to compare the safety, efficacy, and radiation exposure data of the ultrasound-guided axillary approach with other conventional access techniques. The study population included 130 consecutive patients, stratified as 65 (64% male; median age, 79 years) in the study group and 65 (66% male; median age, 81 years) in the control group.

Prevalence of Antimicrobial Prescribing in Long-Term Care Facilities in a Local Health Authority of Northern Italy.

Background: Almost half of antimicrobial prescriptions in long-term care facilities (LTCFs) is inappropriate. This broad use might represent a strong contributor to antimicrobial resistance in these facilities. This study aimed to assess antibiotic use patterns and potential associated factors with a survey of LTCFs in the local health authority (LHA) of Novara.

Muscle Co-Contraction Detection in the Time-Frequency Domain.

Background: Muscle co-contraction plays a significant role in motion control. Available detection methods typically only provide information in the time domain. The current investigation proposed a novel approach for muscle co-contraction detection in the time-frequency domain, based on continuous wavelet transform (CWT).

Machine Learning for Detection of Muscular Activity from Surface EMG Signals.

Background: Muscular-activity timing is useful information that is extractable from surface EMG signals (sEMG). However, a reference method is not available yet. The aim of this study is to investigate the reliability of a novel machine-learning-based approach (DEMANN) in detecting the onset/offset timing of muscle activation from sEMG signals.

Renal involvement in sarcoidosis: histological patterns and prognosis, an Italian survey.

Background: Granulomatous interstitial nephritis in sarcoidosis (sGIN) is generally clinically silent, but in <1% causes acute kidney injury (AKI).

Methods: This Italian multicentric retrospective study included 39 sarcoidosis-patients with renal involvement at renal biopsy: 31 sGIN-AKI, 5 with other patterns (No-sGIN-AKI), 3 with nephrotic proteinuria. We investigate the predictive value of clinical features, laboratory, radiological parameters and histological patterns regarding steroid response.

Machine-Learning-Based Prediction of Gait Events From EMG in Cerebral Palsy Children.

Machine-learning techniques are suitably employed for gait-event prediction from only surface electromyographic (sEMG) signals in control subjects during walking. Nevertheless, a reference approach is not available in cerebral-palsy hemiplegic children, likely due to the large variability of foot-floor contacts. This study is designed to investigate a machine-learning-based approach, specifically developed to binary classify gait events and to predict heel-strike (HS) and toe-off (TO) timing from sEMG signals in hemiplegic-child walking.

Intra-subject approach for gait-event prediction by neural network interpretation of EMG signals.

Background: Machine learning models were satisfactorily implemented for estimating gait events from surface electromyographic (sEMG) signals during walking. Most of them are based on inter-subject approaches for data preparation. Aim of the study is to propose an intra-subject approach for binary classifying gait phases and predicting gait events based on neural network interpretation of sEMG signals and to test the hypothesis that the intra-subject approach is able to achieve better performances compared to an inter-subject one.

Modeling Perturbed Posture Through An Adaptive Sliding Mode Approach.

Upright stance maintenance under perturbed condition is a complex phenomenon in which the Central Nervous System(CNS) is engaged to regulate the balance preventing subject to fall. Many models of unperturbed stance are present in literature. However, the necessity to model balance maintenance in presence of external disturbance is still an open problem.

Description of Postural Strategies through a Variable Structure Control.

Human postural strategies in balance maintenance are the results of the complex control action played by the Central Nervous System (CNS). Literature underlined that such strategies become more evident when external perturbations challenge the stance. In this study, a new model of balance maintenance under support base movement perturbation is formulated.

Complexity Measures of Postural Control in Type-2 Diabetic Subjects.

Balance maintenance is commonly analyzed by evaluating the center of pressure (COP) displacement, which presents an acknowledged non-stationary behavior. The latter led to an evaluation of COP regularity through complexity measures such as the approximate (AppEn) and sample entropy (SampEn). These indexes quantify the regularity of time-series in terms of inner pattern recurrence; however, they are highly dependent on the input parameters used for their computation.

Fractal Analysis of Motor Control in Knee Arthroplasty Patients.

Knee osteoarthritis is commonly treated through total knee arthroplasty (TKA) or unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA) and therefore the assessment of postoperative differences in functional capabilities between TKA and UKA patients appears of primary importance. Throughout the years, fractal analysis has been applied to several biological time-series, revealing to be particularly useful for assessing human balance and motor control by quantifying complexity and repeatability of dynamic measures. In this study, fractal dimension (FD) has been computed on ground reaction force and momentum acquired during squatting movement in two groups of TKA and UKA patients and a control group of healthy subjects (CTRL).

UKF Magnetometer-Free Sensor Fusion for Pelvis Pose Estimation During Treadmill Walking.

Inertial measurement units are an efficient tool to estimate the orientation of a rigid body with respect to a global or navigation frame. Thanks to their relatively small scale, these devices are often employed in clinical environments in form of wearable devices. A direct consequence of this large use of inertial sensors has been the development of many sensor fusion techniques for pose estimation in many practical applications.

EMG-Based Characterization of Walking Asymmetry in Children with Mild Hemiplegic Cerebral Palsy.

Hemiplegia is a neurological disorder that is often detected in children with cerebral palsy. Although many studies have investigated muscular activity in hemiplegic legs, few EMG-based findings focused on unaffected limb. This study aimed to quantify the asymmetric behavior of lower-limb-muscle recruitment during walking in mild-hemiplegic children from surface-EMG and foot-floor contact features.

Effect of different doses of remifentanil on stress response during laparoscopic cholecystectomy.

Objectives: An adequate perioperative analgesia reduces neuroendocrine stress response and postoperative complica-tions. Opioids are the most effective parenteral drugs to control pain and stress response.

Design: This is a prospective randomized double-blinded controlled study.

Glucose effectiveness and its components in relation to body mass index.

Background: Obesity is known to induce a deterioration of insulin sensitivity (S ), one of the insulin-dependent components of glucose tolerance. However, few studies investigated whether obesity affects also the insulin-independent component, that is glucose effectiveness (S ). This cross-sectional study aimed to analyse S and its components in different body mass index (BMI) categories.

Co-activation patterns of gastrocnemius and quadriceps femoris in controlling the knee joint during walking.

Muscular co-activation is a well-known mechanism for lower limb joint stabilization in both healthy and pathological individuals. This muscular feature appears particularly important for the knee joint, not only during challenging motor tasks such as cutting and landing but also during walking, due to knee cyclic loading. Gastrocnemius acts on the knee joint with a flexor activity and co-activations with quadriceps muscles lead to greater knee ligament strain with respect to an isolated burst of either muscle.

Validity of the Nintendo Wii Balance Board for the Assessment of Balance Measures in the Functional Reach Test.

The functional reach test (FRT) is widely used for assessing dynamic balance stability in elderly and pathological subjects. Force platforms (FPs) represent a fundamental part of the instrumented FRT experimental setup due to the central role of center-of-pressure (COP) displacement in FRT analysis. Recently, the nintendo wii balance board (NBB) has been suggested as a low-cost and reliable device for ground reaction force and COP measurement in poorly dynamic motor tasks.

Assessment of glucose effectiveness from short IVGTT in individuals with different degrees of glucose tolerance.

Aims: Minimal model analysis of intravenous glucose tolerance test (IVGTT) data represents the reference method to assess insulin sensitivity (S) and glucose effectiveness (S) that quantify the insulin-dependent and insulin-independent processes of glucose disappearance, respectively. However, test duration (3 h) and need for modeling expertise limit the applicability of this method. Aim of this study was providing a simple predictor of S applicable to short test (1 h), as previously done with S.

The Use of Ropivacaine in Therapeutic Treatment of Oral Aphthosis.

The use of anaesthetic drugs in the treatment of oral aphthosis is one of the pharmaceutical possibilities that a doctor can use for the most painful forms. Normally, Lidocaine or Diclofenac is used to treat this disease, but they can be used for a very limited time and so they are of little practical use. In this study, the authors have used Ropivacaine whose pharmaceutical kinetics allows the analgesic effect to be active for 60 to 90 minutes.

Balance assessment during squatting exercise: A comparison between laboratory grade force plate and a commercial, low-cost device.

Testing balance through squatting exercise is a central part of many rehabilitation programs and sports and plays also an important role in clinical evaluation of residual motor ability. The assessment of center of pressure (CoP) displacement and its parametrization is commonly used to describe and analyze squat movement and the laboratory-grade force plates (FP) are the gold standard for measuring balance performances from a dynamic view-point. However, the Nintendo Wii Balance Board (NWBB) has been recently proposed as an inexpensive and easily available device for measuring ground reaction force and CoP displacement in standing balance tasks.

[The economic value of vaccinations: a systematic review of Italian economic evaluations and HTA reports].

Introduction: Decision-making in healthcare should rely on evidence-based approaches able to make possible a transparent and robust assessment of all the aspects related to health technologies. One of the assessment elements is represented by the efficiency that is the specific objective of economic evaluations and also of Health Technology Assessment (HTA). The collection and synthesis of evidence is the first indispensable step in order to foster a proper convey of scientific knowledge to the decision-makers.

eCTG: an automatic procedure to extract digital cardiotocographic signals from digital images.

Background And Objective: Cardiotocography (CTG), consisting in the simultaneous recording of fetal heart rate (FHR) and maternal uterine contractions (UC), is a popular clinical test to assess fetal health status. Typically, CTG machines provide paper reports that are visually interpreted by clinicians. Consequently, visual CTG interpretation depends on clinician's experience and has a poor reproducibility.

Capturing the chance for pneumococcal vaccination in the hospital setting.

Introduction: Because of the relevant burden of pneumococcal diseases, newborns, people at risk and elderly are recommended vaccination but coverage is still low for problems in catching them. This study evaluates the proportion of eligible patients seen at hospital level in the view of assessing its potential role in vaccination campaigns.

Methods: This is a retrospective analysis of discharge data of all patients over 49 years of age admitted between 2011 and 2013 to "A.