Students, Severe Illness, and Palliative Care: Results From a Pilot Study on a School-Based Intervention.

This study was aimed at piloting a school-based intervention on severe illness, within a project focused on spreading knowledge of palliative care among high school students (phases 0-2 Medical Research Council Framework). The intervention entailed the screening of a topic-related movie, 2 classroom meetings, and the development of a class-based multimedia production. Five classes from 5 high schools participated in this study, and a before-after evaluation was used to assess intervention feasibility and impact.

Exploring early glaucoma and the visual field test: classification and clustering using Bayesian networks.

Bayesian networks (BNs) are probabilistic models used for classification and clustering in several fields. Their ability to deal with unobserved variables and to integrate data and expert knowledge make them an appropriate technique for modeling eye functionality measurements in glaucoma. In this study, a set of BNs is used to simultaneously perform classification of early glaucoma and cluster data into different stages of disease.

Detecting changes in retinal function: Analysis with Non-Stationary Weibull Error Regression and Spatial enhancement (ANSWERS).

Visual fields measured with standard automated perimetry are a benchmark test for determining retinal function in ocular pathologies such as glaucoma. Their monitoring over time is crucial in detecting change in disease course and, therefore, in prompting clinical intervention and defining endpoints in clinical trials of new therapies. However, conventional change detection methods do not take into account non-stationary measurement variability or spatial correlation present in these measures.

Motion analysis of front crawl swimming applying CAST technique by means of automatic tracking.

Kinematic analysis of swimming is of interest to improve swimming performances. Although the video recordings of underwater swimmers are commonly used, the available methodologies are rarely precise enough to adequately estimate the three dimensional (3D) joint kinematics. This is mainly due to difficulties in obtaining the required kinematic parameters (anatomical landmarks, joint centres and reference frames) in the swimming environment.

Influence of reactive oxygen species production by monoamine oxidase activity on aluminum-induced mitochondrial permeability transition.

Treatment of Ca2+-loaded mitochondria with both aluminum and tyramine results in a swelling of higher amplitude than with aluminum alone, while tyramine alone is ineffective. The phenomenon is accompanied by H2O2 production and thiol and pyridine nucleotide oxidation. Cyclosporin A, N-ethylmaleimide or dithioerythritol completely prevent these effects, while catalase exhibits a lower inhibition, pointing to the induction of the permeability transition (MPT) by an oxidative stress.