Search results for "multiple"

Advanced energetics of a Multiple-Effects-Evaporation (MEE) desalination plant. Part II: Potential of the cost formation process and prospects for en…

2010

This paper represents the 2nd part of a paper in two parts. In part I a 2nd Principle analysis of a Multiple- Effects-Evaporation (MEE) process has been proposed. In this Part II perspectives for process improvement will be investigated, along two distinct research lines: the thermoeconomics-aided optimization of a new system and the increase of thermal efficiency for existing systems by a pinch-based plant retrofit. As concerns the first research line, a detailed productive structure for the plant stage (i.e. effect) examined in Part I is presented; the cost formation structure is then used to improve a simplified optimization process, revealing capable to properly reflect the interactions…

Molecular and patho-physiological basis of syndromes with developmental anomalies and intellectual disability

2013

Intellectual disability (ID) corresponds to abnormal intellectual performances and adaptive functions, beginning in childhood. It is estimated that 2-3% of individuals develop a ID, which represents a significant medical challenge since people with ID are frequently in situations of social dependence. Overall, a critical involvement of genetic factors in this disease is suspected. To date, several hundreds of genes are known to be responsible for ID. The ID is particularly characterized by extreme clinical and genetic heterogeneity, that made it resistant to conventional genetic studies. However, it is classicaly separated between syndromic ID, which may be clinically recognizable due to as…

The Exosomes-derived EGFR Ligand Amphiregulin (AREG) is a new key player in Multiple Myeloma Bone Destruction

Il Mieloma Multiplo (MM) è caratterizzato dalla presenza di aree osteolitiche dovute alla presenza di plasmacellule (PC) neoplastiche che causano l'interruzione della normale omeostasi ossea, promuovendo l'attività degli osteoclasti (OC) ed inibendo la funzione degli (OB). Al momento, uno dei campi di ricerca nella fisiopatologia del MM è proprio lo studio dei meccanismi che regolano l’attività degli OC e degli OB così come l’identificazione di target terapeutici per la prevenzione ed il trattamento delle lesioni osteolitiche. Negli ultimi anni è emerso che le vescicole extracellulari (EV), ed in particolare gli esosomi, giocano un ruolo fondamentale nel mediare il cross-talk tra le cellule…

Acceptance of Mobile Health Apps for Disease Management Among People With Multiple Sclerosis: Web-Based Survey Study

2018

Background: Mobile health (mHealth) apps might have the potential to promote self-management of people with multiple sclerosis (MS) in everyday life. However, the uptake of MS apps remains poor, and little is known about the facilitators and barriers for their efficient utilization, such as technology acceptance. Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the acceptance of mHealth apps for disease management in the sense of behavioral intentions to use and explore determinants of utilization among people with MS based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). Methods: Participants for this Web-based cross-sectional study were recruited throughout Germany with t…

Cannabinoids in the management of spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis.

2008

Anna Maria Malfitano, Maria Chiara Proto, Maurizio BifulcoDipartimento di Scienze Farmaceutiche, Università degli Studi di SalernoAbstract: The endocannabinoid system and cannabinoid-based treatments have been involved in a wide number of diseases. In particular, several studies suggest that cannabinoids and endocannabinoids may have a key role in the pathogenesis and therapy of multiple sclerosis (MS). In this study we highlight the main findings reported in literature about the relevance of cannabinoid drugs in the management and treatment of MS. An increasing body of evidence suggests that cannabinoids have beneficial effects on the symptoms of MS, including spasticity and pai…

COMPARATIVE EVALUATION OF CD229, CD319 AND CD54 FOR FLOW CYTOMETRIC IDENTIFICATION OF BONE MARROW NORMAL/REACTIVE AND CLONAL/ABERRANT PLASMA CELLS

2014

Hybrid blind robust image watermarking technique based on DFT-DCT and Arnold transform

2018

In this paper, a robust blind image watermarking method is proposed for copyright protection of digital images. This hybrid method relies on combining two well-known transforms that are the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) and the discrete cosine transform (DCT). The motivation behind this combination is to enhance the imperceptibility and the robustness. The imperceptibility requirement is achieved by using magnitudes of DFT coefficients while the robustness improvement is ensured by applying DCT to the DFT coefficients magnitude. The watermark is embedded by modifying the coefficients of the middle band of the DCT using a secret key. The security of the proposed method is enhanced by appl…

Group Importance Sampling for particle filtering and MCMC

2018

Bayesian methods and their implementations by means of sophisticated Monte Carlo techniques have become very popular in signal processing over the last years. Importance Sampling (IS) is a well-known Monte Carlo technique that approximates integrals involving a posterior distribution by means of weighted samples. In this work, we study the assignation of a single weighted sample which compresses the information contained in a population of weighted samples. Part of the theory that we present as Group Importance Sampling (GIS) has been employed implicitly in different works in the literature. The provided analysis yields several theoretical and practical consequences. For instance, we discus…

Investigating Low Level Protocols for Wireless Body Sensor Networks

2016

The rapid development of medical sensors has increased the interest in Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) applications where physiological data from the human body and its environment is gathered, monitored, and analyzed to take the proper measures. In WBANs, it is essential to design MAC protocols that ensure adequate Quality of Service (QoS) such as low delay and high scalability. This paper investigates Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols used in WBAN, and compares their performance in a high traffic environment. Such scenario can be induced in case of emergency for example, where physiological data collected from all sensors on human body should be sent simultaneously to take appropria…

A Review of Multiple Try MCMC algorithms for Signal Processing

2018

Many applications in signal processing require the estimation of some parameters of interest given a set of observed data. More specifically, Bayesian inference needs the computation of {\it a-posteriori} estimators which are often expressed as complicated multi-dimensional integrals. Unfortunately, analytical expressions for these estimators cannot be found in most real-world applications, and Monte Carlo methods are the only feasible approach. A very powerful class of Monte Carlo techniques is formed by the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. They generate a Markov chain such that its stationary distribution coincides with the target posterior density. In this work, we perform a t…