Search results for "vector"
showing 10 items of 2660 documents
Epidemiology and clinical features of Mediterranean spotted fever in Italy
2006
Mediterranean Spotted Fever is caused by Rickettsia conorii and is transmitted to humans by Rhipicephalus sanguineus, the common dog tick. It is characterized by the symptomatologic triad: fever, exanthema and "tache noire", the typical eschar at the site of the tick bite. In Italy the most affected region is Sicily. The seasonal peak of the disease (from June through September) occurs during maximal activity of immature stage ticks. Severe forms of the disease have been reported in 6% of patients, especially adults with one of the following conditions: diabetes, cardiac disease, chronic alcoholism, glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency, end stage kidney disease. The mortality rate m…
Dosage individualization of erythropoietin using a profile-dependent support vector regression
2003
The external administration of recombinant human erythropoietin is the chosen treatment for those patients with secondary anemia due to chronic renal failure in periodic hemodialysis. The objective of this paper is to carry out an individualized prediction of the EPO dosage to be administered to those patients. The high cost of this medication, its side-effects and the phenomenon of potential resistance which some individuals suffer all justify the need for a model which is capable of optimizing dosage individualization. A group of 110 patients and several patient factors were used to develop the models. The support vector regressor (SVR) is benchmarked with the classical multilayer percept…
Successful adenovirus-mediated wild-type p53 gene transfer in patients with bladder cancer by intravesical vector instillation.
2002
PURPOSE: To study safety, feasibility, and biologic activity of adenovirus-mediated p53 gene transfer in patients with bladder cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Twelve patients with histologically confirmed bladder cancer scheduled for cystectomy were treated on day 1 with a single intratumoral injection of SCH 58500 (rAd/p53) at cystoscopy at one dose level (7.5 × 1011 particles) or a single intravesical instillation of SCH 58500 with a transduction-enhancing agent (Big CHAP) at three dose levels (7.5 × 1011 to 7.5 × 1013 particles). Cystectomies were performed in 11 patients on day 3, and transgene expression, vector distribution, and biologic markers of transgene activity were assessed by m…
Similar planning strategies for whole-body and arm movements performed in the sagittal plane
2003
The present paper looks for kinematic similarities between whole-body and arm movements executed in the sagittal plane. Eight subjects performed sit-to-stand (STS) and back-to-sit (BTS) movements at their preferred speed in the sagittal plane. Kinematics analysis focused on shoulder motion revealed that STS was composed of a straight, forward displacement followed by a curved, upward displacement while BTS was characterized by a curved, downward and straight, backward displacement. Curvature of the upward displacement was significantly greater than the downward one. Analysis of shoulder-velocity profiles showed that movement duration was significantly longer for BTS compared with STS and th…
Prediction of the hemoglobin level in hemodialysis patients using machine learning techniques
2013
HighlightsDifferent prediction algorithms were used to predict Hb levels in CRF patients.Prediction errors in the validation cohorts of patients were around 0.6g/dl.Difficulty to obtain lower errors due to the measuring machine precision (0.2g/dl).Relevance analysis of features have been applied for each predictor. Patients who suffer from chronic renal failure (CRF) tend to suffer from an associated anemia as well. Therefore, it is essential to know the hemoglobin (Hb) levels in these patients. The aim of this paper is to predict the hemoglobin (Hb) value using a database of European hemodialysis patients provided by Fresenius Medical Care (FMC) for improving the treatment of this kind of …
Temporal dynamics of hippocampal neurogenesis in chronic neurodegeneration.
2014
Increased neurogenesis has been reported in neurodegenerative disease, but its significance is unclear. In a mouse model of prion disease, Gomez-Nicola et al. detect increased neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus that partially counteracts neuronal loss. Targeting neurogenesis may have therapeutic potential.
Intra-individual gait patterns across different time-scales as revealed by means of a supervised learning model using kernel-based discriminant regre…
2017
Objective Traditionally, gait analysis has been centered on the idea of average behavior and normality. On one hand, clinical diagnoses and therapeutic interventions typically assume that average gait patterns remain constant over time. On the other hand, it is well known that all our movements are accompanied by a certain amount of variability, which does not allow us to make two identical steps. The purpose of this study was to examine changes in the intra-individual gait patterns across different time-scales (i.e., tens-of-mins, tens-of-hours). Methods Nine healthy subjects performed 15 gait trials at a self-selected speed on 6 sessions within one day (duration between two subsequent ses…
Path Following in Non-Visual Conditions.
2018
Path-following tasks have been investigated mostly under visual conditions, that is when subjects are able to see both the path and the tool, or limb, used for navigation. Moreover, only basic path shapes are usually adopted. In the present experiment, participants must rely exclusively on continuous, non-speech, and ecological auditory and vibrotactile cues to follow a path on a flat surface. Two different, asymmetric path shapes were tested. Participants navigated by moving their index finger over a surface sensing position and force. Results show that the different non-visual feedback modes did not affect the task's accuracy, yet they affected its speed, with vibrotactile feedback causin…
Nonlinear analysis of continuous ECG during sleep I. Reconstruction.
2000
In recent years evidence has accumulated that ECG signals are of a nonlinear nature. It has been recognized that strictly periodic cardiac rhythms are not accompanied by healthy conditions but, on the contrary, by pathological states. Therefore, the application of methods from nonlinear system theory for the analysis of ECG signals has gained increasing interest. Crucial for the application of nonlinear methods is the reconstruction (embedding) of the time series in a phase space with appropriate dimension. In this study continuous ECG signals of 12 healthy subjects recorded during different sleep stages were analysed. Proper embedding dimension was determined by application of two techniqu…
The remapping of time by active tool-use
2015
Multiple, action-based space representations are each based on the extent to which action is possible toward a specific sector of space, such as near/reachable and far/unreachable. Studies on tool-use revealed how the boundaries between these representations are dynamic. Space is not only multidimensional and dynamic, but it is also known for interacting with other dimensions of magnitude, such as time. However, whether time operates on similar action-driven multiple representations and whether it can be modulated by tool-use is yet unknown. To address these issues, healthy participants performed a time bisection task in two spatial positions (near and far space) before and after an active …