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BACKGROUND: Several studies have found a link between nutritional status and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease (PD). OBJECTIVE: The aim of our study was to assess both nutritional status and dietary habits of PD patients with respect to controls and to compare disease progression in relation to dietary habits, such as protein distribution diet (PRD) adherence. METHODS: We collected anthropometric measurements, Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) score, dietary habits, micro- and macronutrients intakes, body composition by Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA), muscle strength and gait speed of 66 PD patients and 58 controls (40 healthy controls and 18 subjects with essential tremor). Clinical scales and progression indexes were recorded in PD group. RESULTS: No significant differences emerged between PD and controls in anthropometric and BIA measurements; a comparable dietary intake between the two groups was recorded. Sarcopenia and dynapenia were comparable between the two groups. PD resulted more at risk of malnutrition than controls to MNA, only three patients and one control were malnourished. A notable inverse correlation was observed between MNA and PD Questionnaire 8. PD following a PRD showed a slower progression index. CONCLUSION: Nutritional status of PD patients is not so different from elderly controls. PRD is recommended for patients with PD.

Systematic triangulation may address common challenges in evaluation, such as the scarcity or unreliability of data, or the complexities of comparing and cross-checking evidence from diverse disciplines. Used to identify key evaluation findings, its application has proven to be effective in addressing the limitations encountered in country-level evaluation analysis conducted by the Independent Evaluation Office of the Global Environment Facility (GEF). These include the scarcity or unreliability of national statistics on environmental indicators and data series, especially in Least Developed Countries; challenges in evaluating the impacts of GEF projects; and inherent difficulties in defining the GEF portfolio of projects prior to the undertaking of the evaluation. In addition to responding to the need for further developing triangulation protocols, procedures and/or methodologies advocated by some authors, the approach offers a contribution to evaluation practice. This applies particularly to those evaluation units tasked with country-level evaluations in international organizations, facing similar constraints.

The current situation of technology separation among the different application domains of the Internet of Things (IoT) results in a market separation per application domain. This issue hinders the technical innovation and investments in the IoT business. In order to solve the issue, it is necessary to standardize common technologies of the IoT across the different application domains. This paper argues that a key direction of the future standardization of the IoT, in addition to standardizing specific technologies, is building over a standardized new architecture reference model for the IoT. Based on the analysis of existing key activities concerning the standardization of OSI, NGN and IoT from a functional architecture perspective, it suggests that the IoT standardization work be progressed in an evolutionary way in order to enable the integration of existing technologies, and focus on the interactions among functional entities or deployable components of the IoT to impose minimum constraints on future technical innovations. Topics discussed in the paper include characteristic capabilities of the IoT, ways of integrating the cloud computing technologies in the IoT perspective, and challenges faced by the IoT standardization work.

This article starts by introducing some interesting use cases of set-vices and capabilities to be supported in next-generation networks. The target environment, relevant services, and some critical capabilities identified by the ITU-T Focus Group on NGN for the first phase of NGN deployments - NGN Release 1 - are then described. Finally, some examples of services to capabilities mapping are provided.

This article describes service concepts, service requirements, and high-level network architecture requirements for layer 1 virtual private network service. It takes in consideration progress achieved in standardization, mainly inside ITU-T SG 13, which has been very active in this area.