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Objectives: To evaluate patients’ participation during physical therapy sessions as assessed with the Pittsburgh rehabilitation participation scale (PRPS) as a possible predictor of functional gain after rehabilitation training. Methods: All patients aged 65 years or older consecutively admitted to a Department of Rehabilitation and Aged Care (DRAC) were evaluated on admission regarding their health, nutritional, functional and cognitive status. Functional status was assessed with the functional independence measure (FIM) on admission and at discharge. Participation during rehabilitation sessions was measured with the PRPS. Functional gain was evaluated using the Montebello rehabilitation factor score (MRFS efficacy), and patients stratified in two groups according to their level of functional gain and their sociodemographic, clinical and functional characteristics were compared. Predictors of poor functional gain were evaluated using a multivariable logistic regression model adjusted for confounding factors. Result: A total of 556 subjects were included in this study. Patients with poor functional gain at discharge demonstrated lower participation during physical therapy sessions were significantly older, more cognitively and functionally impaired on admission, more depressed, more comorbid, and more frequently admitted for cardiac disease or immobility syndrome than their counterparts. There was a significant linear association between PRPS scores and MRFS efficacy. In a multivariable logistic regression model, participation was independently associated with functional gain at discharge (odds ratio 1.51, 95 % confidence interval 1.19–1.91). Conclusion: This study showed that participation during physical therapy affects the extent of functional gain at discharge in a large population of older patients with multiple diseases receiving in-hospital rehabilitation

Given a diagonal anisotropic expanding matrix $D\in\ZZ^{\di\times\di},$ we show that it is always possible to detect a unimodular matrix $A\in\ZZ^{\di\times\di}$ that satisfies the pseudo-commuting properties \[DA=A^nD.\] In particular when $\di=2$ the more general relation \[DA^m=A^nD\] holds.

We generate various new radial kernels by taking derivatives of known kernels with respect to scale. This is different from the well-known scale mixtures used before. In addition, we provide a simple recipe that explicitly constructs new kernels from the negative Laplacian of known kernels. Surprisingly, these two methods for generating new kernels can be proven to coincide for certain standard classes of radial kernels. The resulting radial kernels are positive definite, and a few illustrations are provided.

The aim of the paper is to provide a method for approximating non regular surfaces from a set of scattered data in a faithful way. The method we propose is effective and particularly well-suited for recovering geophysical surfaces with faults or drainage patterns. Some real examples will be presented. © Springer-Verlag 2014.

There are no studies that have identified the ability to recognize and manage delirium among Italian health providers caring for patients at risk. Therefore, the Italian Association of Psychogeriatrics (AIP) conducted a multicenter survey among doctors, nurses, psychologists and physiotherapists to assess their competence regarding the theme of delirium and its management in the everyday clinical practice.

When the data are unevenly distributed and the behaviour of a function changes abruptly, the approximant can present undue oscillations. We present an algorithm to identify a domain decomposition, such that on each subdomain the behaviour of the function is sufficiently homogeneous in order to calculate separate approximants and to blend them together. © 2013 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

We present a numerical method for the detection of faults and gradient faults of two dimensional functions when uniformly scattered and noisy data are given. The method recognizes the presence of a discontinuity curve by a suitable statistic. Moreover, we discuss the recovery of such curves and provide a computational bound for the pointwise error and convergence properties.

The paper presents a simple procedure for the construction of quasi-interpolation operators in spaces of m-harmonic splines in R(d), which reproduce polynomials of high degree. The procedure starts from a generator phi(0), which is easy to derive but with corresponding quasi-interpolation operator reproducing only linear polynomials, and recursively defines generators phi(1), phi(2), ... , phi(m-1) with corresponding quasi-interpolation operators reproducing polynomials of degree up to 3. 5 2m - 1 respectively. The construction of phi(j); from phi(j-1) is explicit, simple and independent of m. The special case d = 1 and the special cases d = 2. m = 2, 3,4 are discussed in details.

The aim of the paper is to provide a computationally effective way to construct stable bases on general non-degenerate lattices. In particular, we define new stable bases on hexagonal lattices and we give some numerical examples which show their usefulness in applications.

In this paper our concern is the recovery of a highly regular function by a discrete set of data with arbitrary distribution. We consider the case of a nonstationary multiquadric interpolant that presents numerical breakdown. Therefore we propose a global least squares multiquadric approximant with a center set of maximal size and obtained by a new thinning technique. The new thinning scheme removes the local bad conditions in order to obtain a well conditioned matrix. The choice of working on local subsets of the data set $X$ provides an effective solution. Some numerical examples to validate the goodness of our proposal are given.

The aim of this paper is to provide a fast method, with a good quality of reproduction, to recover functions from very large and irregularly scattered samples of noisy data, which may present outliers. To the given sample of size N, we associate a uniform grid and, around each grid point, we condense the local information given by the noisy data by a suitable estimator. The recovering is then performed by a stable interpolation based on isotropic polyharmonic B-splines. Due to the good approximation rate, we need only M ≪ N degrees of freedom to recover the phenomenon faithfully. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In this paper we discuss the problem of detecting the faults and or the gradient faults of a function when scattered and noisy data are given.

In this paper, we propose a method belonging to the class of special meshless kernel techniques for solving Poisson problems. The method is based on a simple new construction of an approximate particular solution of the nonhomogeneous equation in the space of polyharmonic splines. High order Lagrangian polyharmonic splines are used as a basis to approximate the nonhomogeneous term and a closed-form particular solution is given. The coefficients can be computed by convolution products of known vectors. This can be done in all dimensions, without numerical integration nor solution of systems. Numerical experiments are presented in two dimensions and show the quality of the approximations for different test examples

We propose an adaptive local procedure, which uses the modified Shepard's method with local polyharmonic interpolants. The aim is to reconstruct, in a faithful way, a function known by a large and highly irregularly distributed sample. Such a problem is generally related to the recovering of geophysical surfaces, where the sample is measured according to the behaviour of the surface. The adaptive local procedure is used to calculate, by an efficient algorithm, an interpolating polyharmonic function, when a very large sample is assigned. When we consider a sample of size $N<104$, we propose an approximating polyharmonic function obtained by combining adaptively a global interpolant, relevant to a subset of the data, with local adaptive interpolants. The goodness of the approximating functions in two different cases is shown by real examples.

In this paper we present a technique for recovering functions of three variables when scattered data on tracks are given. The aim is to obtain a good quality of reproduction with a contained computational cost. In order to do this we exploit the data structure which allows to solve lower dimension problems

The aim of thepaper is to provide, in any dimensions ,a multiresolution analysis associated witha new family of polyharmonic B-splines, that unlike the elementary B-splines, havea more ``rotational invariant" behavior.

In this paper we adress the construction of polyharmonic prewavelets in low dimensions, extending the approach of Riemenschneider and Scen [10] to the non-othonormal setting. Such prewavelets are derived from the polyharmonic Lagrangean spline and its dual. We provide formula for an efficient construction of the functions, filters, and the associated multiresolution analysis.

This paper applies difference operators to conditionally positive definite kernels in order to generate kernel B-splines that have fast decay towards infinity. Interpolation by these new kernels provides better condition of the linear system, while the kernel B-spline inherits the approximation orders from its native kernel. We proceed in two different ways: either the kernel B -spline is constructed adaptively on the data knot set X , or we use a fixed difference scheme and shift its associated kernel B-spline around. In the latter case, the kernel B-spline so obtained is strictly positive in general. Furthermore, special kernel B-splines obtained by hexagonal second finite differences of multiquadrics are studied in more detail. We give suggestions in order to get a consistent improvement of the condition of the interpolation matrix in applications. © Springer Science 2006.

In this paper, we deal with two different problems. First, we provide the convergence rates of multiresolution approximations, with respect to the supremum norm, for the class of elliptic splines defined in Ref. 10, and in particular for polyharmonic splines. Secondly, we consider the problem of recovering a function from a sample of noisy data. To this end, we define a linear and smooth estimator obtained from a multiresolution process based on polyharmonic splines. We discuss its asymptotic properties and we prove that it converges to the unknown function almost surely.