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ispartof: COMPUTER SPEECH AND LANGUAGE vol:58 pages:441-480 status: published

To compare the clinical outcome (in particular of marginal peri-implant bone level changes) between immediately loaded straight implants which had definitive abutments placed at implant placement and never removed versus implants which had no intermediate abutments.Thirty-two edentulous patients had one of their jaws rehabilitated with a provisional screw-retained resin reinforced cross-arch fixed prosthesis supported by four immediately loaded implants: two central straight implants and two either tilted or straight distal implants. The two central straight implants were randomly allocated in two equal groups to receive or not an intermediate abutment (Multi-Unit Abutment, MUA) according to a parallel group design. To be immediately loaded implants had to be inserted with a minimum torque of 30 Ncm, which was achieved by all implants. After 4 months, definitive screw-retained metal-ceramic prostheses were delivered and patients were followed-up to 5 years after loading. Prostheses were removed every 8 months to facilitate professionally delivered maintenance. Outcome measures were prosthesis and implant failures, complications, peri-implant marginal bone level changes and bleeding on probing (BoP).Five-years after loading one patient dropped out from each group. No implant or prosthetic failure occurred. Three patients of the abutment group versus one of the no-abutment group were affected by complications (risk difference = 0.125; 95% CI: -0.13 to 0.37; Fisher exact test, P = 0.600). At 5 years, both groups lost marginal bone in a statistically significant way (0.32 ± 0.40 mm for patients of the abutment group and 0.35 ± 0.29 mm for patients of the no-abutment group), with no difference in bone loss between groups at patient levels (difference = 0.03 mm; 95% CI: -0.23 to 0.29 mm; P = 0.809). At 5 years, BoP was significantly higher in the no-abutment group than in the abutment group (difference between medians = 25%; 95% CI: 12.5% to 25%; P0.001). By considering only the average of the two central study implants per patient with and without intermediate abutments, there were no differences in bone loss (difference: -0.05 mm; 95% CI: -0.41 to 0.31 mm; P = 0.763), while marginal bleeding was significantly higher in the no-abutment group (difference between medians = 25%; 95% CI: 0% to 50%; P = 0.004).The present results suggest that intermediate abutments may not be needed at immediately loaded cross-arch screw-retained prostheses, unless there is the necessity to correct implant angulation.

Background: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is characterized by motor deficits which may not completely respond to the dopaminergic therapy, thus posing a therapeutic challenge. Non-invasive brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) have shown promising results as possible alternative of treatment in different neurological disorders including PD. The therapeutic effect of tDCS, which may increase (anodal currents) or decrease (cathodal currents) the cortical excitability level, likely relies on modulation of cortico-subcortical interactions and abnormal patterns of cortical activation. Objective: To investigate safety and therapeutic potential of different montages of tDCS in PD patients with asymmetric motor symptoms. Patients and methods: Patients with asymmetric PD were recruited. While on-treatment, participants underwent 7 separate experimental sessions. The tDCS was applied with the following different electrode montages: anodal and cathodal stimulation of the primary motor cortex (M1) contralateral to the more affected body side, anodal and cathodal stimulation of M1 contralateral to the less affected body side, and sham-stimulation. We evaluated the clinical effects on motor function by means of the MDS-UPDRS, by evaluation of bradykinesia of the arms and by the finger tapping test. All experiments were performed according to a double-blinded design. The dopaminergic medication was continued in all subjects throughout the course of the experiment. Results: 16 patients (8M/8F) were included (aged 58±11.5 years). Compared to baseline and sham stimulation, the motor performances improved in both hands after anodal tDCS of M1 contralateral to the more affected body side. Also the cathodal stimulation of M1 contralateral to the less affected body side was shown to improve the motor performances. Conclusions: Our results confirm the therapeutic potential of tDCS in PD patients, providing useful information on which is the best tDCS montage to apply as a treatment option.

The 2016 speaker recognition evaluation (SRE’16) is the latest edition in the series of benchmarking events conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). I4U is a joint entry to SRE’16 as the result from the collaboration and active exchange of information among researchers from sixteen Institutes and Universities across 4 continents. The joint submission and several of its 32 sub-systems were among top-performing systems. A lot of efforts have been devoted to two major challenges, namely, unlabeled training data and dataset shift from Switchboard-Mixer to the new Call My Net dataset. This paper summarizes the lessons learned, presents our shared view from the sixteen research groups on recent advances, major paradigm shift, and common tool chain used in speaker recognition as we have witnessed in SRE’16. More importantly, we look into the intriguing question of fusing a large ensemble of sub-systems and the potential benefit of large-scale collaboration., published version, peerReviewed

Soils originating from chemical decomposition do not undergo any sorting in their grading resulting in a well-graded material. Their composition may be influenced by weathering in one or more aspects, e.g. particle size, particle size distribution, mineralogy or particle morphology. Each of these aspects and their effects on the mechanical behaviour have been studied separately in the past. To identify the dominant parameters a series of standard oedometer tests was carried out to investigate the influences of the grading and mineralogy on the Normal Compression Line (NCL) separately. This was achieved taking the most and least decomposed granite sampled at a same location and reconstituting them to the same grading to study the influence of mineralogy or reconstituting one of them to both the gradings to study that of grading. In the first case, the NCLs were practically coincident, while in the second they were further apart, showing that the grading has greater importance in determining the mechanical behaviour in compression.

We describe a bio-feedback system for rehabilitation based on an accelerometric sensor, a processing unit and an output unit. The sensory unit, which incorporates a cell with three uni-axial accelerometers and three rate gyroscopes, is mounted on the subject's back (L5 level) using a velcro belt and allows to evaluate the trunk accelerations in the anterior-posterior (AP) and medial-lateral (ML) directions. The processing unit is composed by a laptop with Arduino board, able to acquire in real time data coming from sensory unit through the data acquisition module of Max/MSP, and to produce an audio output. The output unit is a pair of headphones which produce a kind of sound whose activation level is proportional to the magnitude of patient's displacement. A set of experiments have been carried out in order to measure the performance of this system, and results show that it can significantly improve rehabilitation times.

PURPOSE: To evaluate the efficacy of prophylactic antibiotics for dental implant placement. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Twelve Italian private practices agreed to participate in this trial, each centre providing 30 patients. One hour prior to implant placement, patients were randomised, for consumption orally of 2 g amoxicillin or identical placebo tablets. Patients needing bone augmentation procedures were not included. Outcome measures were prosthesis and implant failures, adverse events and post-operative biological complications. Patients were seen 1 week, 2 weeks and 4 months post-operatively. RESULTS: One centre did not deliver any data and 14 patients had to be excluded from the trial for various reasons. One hundred and fifty-eight patients were evaluated in each group and none dropped out at 4 months. Two prostheses and two implants failed in the antibiotics group, compared with four prostheses and nine implants in the placebo group. There were no statistically significant differences for prosthesis failures, implant losses, complications and side effects. CONCLUSIONS: No statistically significant differences were observed. However, four times more patients in the placebo group experienced implant failures than in the antibiotic group, and this requires further investigation.