Search results for "medicine.symptom"

Prevalence and characteristics of antidepressant drug prescriptions in older Italian patients.

2012

ABSTRACTBackground: During last few decades, the proportion of elderly persons prescribed with antidepressants for the treatment of depression and anxiety has increased. The aim of this study was to evaluate prevalence of antidepressant prescription and related factors in elderly in-patients, as well as the consistency between prescription of antidepressants and specific diagnoses requiring these medications.Methods: Thirty-four internal medicine and four geriatric wards in Italy participated in the Registro Politerapie SIMI–REPOSI study during 2008. In all, 1,155 in-patients, 65 years or older, were enrolled. Prevalence of the use of antidepressants was calculated at both admission and dis…

Force probe simulations of a reversibly rebinding system: Impact of pulling device stiffness.

2017

We present a detailed study of the parameter dependence of force probe molecular dynamics (FPMD) simulations. Using a well studied calix[4]arene catenane dimer as a model system, we systematically vary the pulling velocity and the stiffness of the applied external potential. This allows us to investigate how the results of pulling simulations operating in the constant velocity mode (force-ramp mode) depend on the details of the simulation setup. The system studied has the further advantage of showing reversible rebinding meaning that we can monitor the opening and the rebinding transition. Many models designed to extract kinetic information from rupture force distributions work in the limit…

Diabetes and renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system: Implications for covid-19 patients with diabetes treatment management

2020

In the context of the COVID-19 continuous spreading, this paper focuses on the increased risk of diabetic patients regarding the metabolic control and the uncertainties related to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Chronic hyperglycaemia negatively affects the immune system, which triggers an increase of morbidity and mortality for viral infections. A key aspect of COVID-19 resides in the involvement of renin-angiotensin-aldosterone (RAAS) system that causes a cascade of reactions mediated by vasoactive peptides with implications in vasoconstriction, vascular permeability, oxidative stress remodelling and tissue injuries. Activation of RAAS at pulmonary level, is responsible for the local damage. Many q…

Smap-based retrieval of vegetation opacity and albedo

2020

Over land the vegetation canopy affects the microwave brightness temperature by emission, scattering and attenuation of surface soil emission. The questions addressed in this study are: 1) what is the transparency of the vegetation canopy for different biomes around the Globe at the low-frequency L-band?, 2) what is the seasonal amplitude of vegetation microwave optical depth for different biomes?, 3) what is the effective scattering at this frequency for different vegetation types?, 4) what is the impact of imprecise characterization of vegetation microwave properties on retrieval of soil surface conditions? These questions are addressed based on the recently completed one full annual cycl…

Vegetation vulnerability to drought in Spain

2014

[EN] Frequency of climatic extremes like long duration droughts has increased in Spain over the last century.The use of remote sensing observations for monitoring and detecting drought is justified on the basis that vegetation vigor is closely related to moisture condition. We derive satellite estimates of bio-physical variables such as fractional vegetation cover (FVC) from MODIS/EOS and SEVIRI/MSG time series. The study evaluates the strength of temporal relationships between precipitation and vegetation condition at time-lag and cumulative rainfall intervals. From this analysis, it was observed that the climatic disturbances affected both the growing season and the total amount of vegeta…

2018

The Radar Vegetation Index (RVI) is a well-established microwave metric of vegetation cover. The index utilizes measured linear scattering intensities from co- and cross-polarization and is normalized to ideally range from 0 to 1, increasing with vegetation cover. At long wavelengths (L-band) microwave scattering does not only contain information coming from vegetation scattering, but also from soil scattering (moisture & roughness) and therefore the standard formulation of RVI needs to be revised. Using global level SMAP L-band radar data, we illustrate that RVI runs up to 1.2, due to the pre-factor in the standard formulation not being adjusted to the scattering mechanisms at these lo…

PHYSICS-based retrieval of scattering albedo and vegetation optical depth using multi-sensor data integration

2017

Vegetation optical depth and scattering albedo are crucial parameters within the widely used τ-ω model for passive microwave remote sensing of vegetation and soil. A multi-sensor data integration approach using ICESat lidar vegetation heights and SMAP radar as well as radiometer data enables a direct retrieval of the two parameters on a physics-derived basis. The crucial step within the retrieval methodology is the calculus of the vegetation scattering coefficient KS, where one exact and three approximated solutions are provided. It is shown that, when using the assumption of a randomly oriented volume, the backscatter measurements of the radar provide a sufficient first order estimate and …

Comparison of cloud-reconstruction methods for time series of composite NDVI data

2010

Land cover change can be assessed from ground measurements or remotely sensed data. As regards remotely sensed data, such as NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) parameter, the presence of atmospherically contaminated data in the time series introduces some noise that may blur the change analysis. Several methods have already been developed to reconstruct NDVI time series, although most methods have been dedicated to reconstruction of acquired time series, while publicly available databases are usually composited over time. This paper presents the IDR (iterative Interpolation for Data Reconstruction) method, a new method designed to approximate the upper envelope of the NDVI time s…

Analysis of the radar vegetation index and assessment of potential for improvement

2018

The Radar Vegetation Index (RVI) is widely applied to indicate vegetation cover. The index includes the backscattering intensities of co- and cross-polarization that do not only contain information coming from vegetation scattering at longer wavelength (L-band), but also from the soil underneath. A forward modelling approach using active and passive microwave-derived parameters to obtain the scattering contribution of the soil is pursued. The idea of this research study is a subtraction of the attenuated soil scattering contribution from the measured backscattering intensities, to provide a clean vegetation-based solution, called improved RVI (RVII). For latter analysis, the vegetation volu…

Problems in the identity of "Crioceras" barremense Kilian, 1895 (Ancyloceratida, Late Barremian), and their proposed resolution

2010

17 pages; The study of "Crioceras" barremense KILIAN was undertaken as a part of the revision of the Hemihoplitidae. This species was considered "classic" and has been used as the index of an Upper Barremian subzone; this usage raises a number of problems. The type specimen from Tyrol was a fragment described and illustrated by UHLIG as Crioceras sp. ind. aff. roemeri. This specimen could not be retrieved, and a topotype could not be collected. Our study revealed that there is both a biostratigraphic hiatus and important differences between conceptions of this species: (1) that ascribed UHLIG's type specimen (Upper Barremian, Tyrol), (2) KILIAN's concept of the specimen he found and named "…