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Domenico Formica

Bio: Domenico Formica is an academic researcher from Università Campus Bio-Medico. The author has contributed to research in topics: Computer science & Respiratory monitoring. The author has an hindex of 24, co-authored 138 publications receiving 2355 citations.


Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A bimodal balance–recovery model is suggested that links interhemispheric balancing and functional recovery to the structural reserve spared by the lesion, which could enable NIBS to be tailored to the needs of individual patients.
Abstract: Noninvasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques can be used to monitor and modulate the excitability of intracortical neuronal circuits. Long periods of cortical stimulation can produce lasting effects on brain function, paving the way for therapeutic applications of NIBS in chronic neurological disease. The potential of NIBS in stroke rehabilitation has been of particular interest, because stroke is the main cause of permanent disability in industrial nations, and treatment outcomes often fail to meet the expectations of patients. Despite promising reports from many clinical trials on NIBS for stroke recovery, the number of studies reporting a null effect remains a concern. One possible explanation is that the interhemispheric competition model--which posits that suppressing the excitability of the hemisphere not affected by stroke will enhance recovery by reducing interhemispheric inhibition of the stroke hemisphere, and forms the rationale for many studies--is oversimplified or even incorrect. Here, we critically review the proposed mechanisms of synaptic and functional reorganization after stroke, and suggest a bimodal balance-recovery model that links interhemispheric balancing and functional recovery to the structural reserve spared by the lesion. The proposed model could enable NIBS to be tailored to the needs of individual patients.

570 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
18 Oct 2013-Sensors
TL;DR: The working principles of the most promising MR-compatible FOS are reviewed in terms of their relevant advantages and disadvantages, together with their applications in medicine.
Abstract: During last decades, Magnetic Resonance (MR)—compatible sensors based on different techniques have been developed due to growing demand for application in medicine. There are several technological solutions to design MR-compatible sensors, among them, the one based on optical fibers presents several attractive features. The high elasticity and small size allow designing miniaturized fiber optic sensors (FOS) with metrological characteristics (e.g., accuracy, sensitivity, zero drift, and frequency response) adequate for most common medical applications; the immunity from electromagnetic interference and the absence of electrical connection to the patient make FOS suitable to be used in high electromagnetic field and intrinsically safer than conventional technologies. These two features further heightened the potential role of FOS in medicine making them especially attractive for application in MRI. This paper provides an overview of MR-compatible FOS, focusing on the sensors employed for measuring physical parameters in medicine (i.e., temperature, force, torque, strain, and position). The working principles of the most promising FOS are reviewed in terms of their relevant advantages and disadvantages, together with their applications in medicine.

180 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This work gives an overview of the findings about the safety concerns of exposure to static magnetic fields, radio-frequency fields, and time varying magnetic field gradients, focusing primarily on the physics of the interactions between these electromagnetic fields and biological matter.
Abstract: The literature on biological effects of magnetic and electromagnetic fields commonly utilized in magnetic resonance imaging systems is surveyed here. After an introduction on the basic principles of magnetic resonance imaging and the electric and magnetic properties of biological tissues, the basic phenomena to understand the bio-effects are described in classical terms. Values of field strengths and frequencies commonly utilized in these diagnostic systems are reported in order to allow the integration of the specific literature on the bio-effects produced by magnetic resonance systems with the vast literature concerning the bio-effects produced by electromagnetic fields. This work gives an overview of the findings about the safety concerns of exposure to static magnetic fields, radio-frequency fields, and time varying magnetic field gradients, focusing primarily on the physics of the interactions between these electromagnetic fields and biological matter. The scientific literature is summarized, integrated, and critically analyzed with the help of authoritative reviews by recognized experts, international safety guidelines are also cited.

169 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a flexible sensor based on an FBG encapsulated into Dragon skin 20 silicone rubber was used for developing a wearable system for respiratory and cardiac rates' monitoring, which was evaluated on healthy volunteers to evaluate its suitability for monitoring respiratory frequency and heart rate.
Abstract: There is a growing demand for strain sensors that can be embedded into wearables for several potential applications. Among others, respiratory and cardiac rates’ monitoring from chest wall displacements have driven the development of strain sensors based on fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) coupled with polymers. In this paper, we addressed the fabrication of a flexible sensor based on an FBG encapsulated into Dragon skin 20 silicone rubber. The sensor is intended to be used for developing a wearable system for respiratory and cardiac rates’ monitoring. The sensor’s response to strain, temperature changes, and relative humidity variations has been experimentally assessed. By considering the repetitive strains induced on the chest wall by the phenomena of interest, the hysteresis response has also been analyzed. Then, an elastic band was equipped with the flexible sensor. The feasibility of this wearable system has been preliminarily assessed on healthy volunteers to evaluate its suitability for monitoring respiratory frequency ( $f_{\mathbf {R}}$ ) and heart rate (HR). The interesting results suggest that the proposed system is easy to be worn, non-invasive, stretchy, and seems to be suitable to well-match the chest wall displacements for monitoring $f_{\mathbf {R}}$ and HR. Such findings call for further investigation targeted to evaluate the accuracy of the FBG-based wearable system in monitoring respiratory and cardiac activities and the system usability in both clinical and sports sciences.

128 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
13 Dec 2017-Sensors
TL;DR: This work reviews the main methodologies adopted to investigate BLE performance, and analyzes throughput, maximum number of connectable sensors, power consumption, latency and maximum reachable range with the aim to identify what are the current limits of BLE technology.
Abstract: Small, compact and embedded sensors are a pervasive technology in everyday life for a wide number of applications (e.g., wearable devices, domotics, e-health systems, etc.). In this context, wireless transmission plays a key role, and among available solutions, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is gaining more and more popularity. BLE merges together good performance, low-energy consumption and widespread diffusion. The aim of this work is to review the main methodologies adopted to investigate BLE performance. The first part of this review is an in-depth description of the protocol, highlighting the main characteristics and implementation details. The second part reviews the state of the art on BLE characteristics and performance. In particular, we analyze throughput, maximum number of connectable sensors, power consumption, latency and maximum reachable range, with the aim to identify what are the current limits of BLE technology. The main results can be resumed as follows: throughput may theoretically reach the limit of ~230 kbps, but actual applications analyzed in this review show throughputs limited to ~100 kbps; the maximum reachable range is strictly dependent on the radio power, and it goes up to a few tens of meters; the maximum number of nodes in the network depends on connection parameters, on the network architecture and specific device characteristics, but it is usually lower than 10; power consumption and latency are largely modeled and analyzed and are strictly dependent on a huge number of parameters. Most of these characteristics are based on analytical models, but there is a need for rigorous experimental evaluations to understand the actual limits.

116 citations


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Journal Article
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose that the brain produces an internal representation of the world, and the activation of this internal representation is assumed to give rise to the experience of seeing, but it leaves unexplained how the existence of such a detailed internal representation might produce visual consciousness.
Abstract: Many current neurophysiological, psychophysical, and psychological approaches to vision rest on the idea that when we see, the brain produces an internal representation of the world. The activation of this internal representation is assumed to give rise to the experience of seeing. The problem with this kind of approach is that it leaves unexplained how the existence of such a detailed internal representation might produce visual consciousness. An alternative proposal is made here. We propose that seeing is a way of acting. It is a particular way of exploring the environment. Activity in internal representations does not generate the experience of seeing. The outside world serves as its own, external, representation. The experience of seeing occurs when the organism masters what we call the governing laws of sensorimotor contingency. The advantage of this approach is that it provides a natural and principled way of accounting for visual consciousness, and for the differences in the perceived quality of sensory experience in the different sensory modalities. Several lines of empirical evidence are brought forward in support of the theory, in particular: evidence from experiments in sensorimotor adaptation, visual \"filling in,\" visual stability despite eye movements, change blindness, sensory substitution, and color perception.

2,271 citations

01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: Biomechanics and motor control of human movement is downloaded so that people can enjoy a good book with a cup of tea in the afternoon instead of juggling with some malicious virus inside their laptop.
Abstract: Thank you very much for downloading biomechanics and motor control of human movement. Maybe you have knowledge that, people have search hundreds times for their favorite books like this biomechanics and motor control of human movement, but end up in infectious downloads. Rather than enjoying a good book with a cup of tea in the afternoon, instead they juggled with some malicious virus inside their laptop.

1,689 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The author guides the reader in about 350 pages from descriptive and basic statistical methods over classification and clustering to (generalised) linear and mixed models to enable researchers and students alike to reproduce the analyses and learn by doing.
Abstract: The complete title of this book runs ‘Analyzing Linguistic Data: A Practical Introduction to Statistics using R’ and as such it very well reflects the purpose and spirit of the book. The author guides the reader in about 350 pages from descriptive and basic statistical methods over classification and clustering to (generalised) linear and mixed models. Each of the methods is introduced in the context of concrete linguistic problems and demonstrated on exciting datasets from current research in the language sciences. In line with its practical orientation, the book focuses primarily on using the methods and interpreting the results. This implies that the mathematical treatment of the techniques is held at a minimum if not absent from the book. In return, the reader is provided with very detailed explanations on how to conduct the analyses using R [1]. The first chapter sets the tone being a 20-page introduction to R. For this and all subsequent chapters, the R code is intertwined with the chapter text and the datasets and functions used are conveniently packaged in the languageR package that is available on the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN). With this approach, the author has done an excellent job in enabling researchers and students alike to reproduce the analyses and learn by doing. Another quality as a textbook is the fact that every chapter ends with Workbook sections where the user is invited to exercise his or her analysis skills on supplemental datasets. Full solutions including code, results and comments are given in Appendix A (30 pages). Instructors are therefore very well served by this text, although they might want to balance the book with some more mathematical treatment depending on the target audience. After the introductory chapter on R, the book opens on graphical data exploration. Chapter 3 treats probability distributions and common sampling distributions. Under basic statistical methods (Chapter 4), distribution tests and tests on means and variances are covered. Chapter 5 deals with clustering and classification. Strangely enough, the clustering section has material on PCA, factor analysis, correspondence analysis and includes only one subsection on clustering, devoted notably to hierarchical partitioning methods. The classification part deals with decision trees, discriminant analysis and support vector machines. The regression chapter (Chapter 6) treats linear models, generalised linear models, piecewise linear models and a substantial section on models for lexical richness. The final chapter on mixed models is particularly interesting as it is one of the few text book accounts that introduce the reader to using the (innovative) lme4 package of Douglas Bates which implements linear mixed-effects models. Moreover, the case studies included in this

1,679 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Beatriz Pelaz1, Christoph Alexiou2, Ramon A. Alvarez-Puebla3, Frauke Alves4, Frauke Alves5, Anne M. Andrews6, Sumaira Ashraf1, Lajos P. Balogh, Laura Ballerini7, Alessandra Bestetti8, Cornelia Brendel1, Susanna Bosi9, Mónica Carril10, Warren C. W. Chan11, Chunying Chen, Xiaodong Chen12, Xiaoyuan Chen13, Zhen Cheng14, Daxiang Cui15, Jianzhong Du16, Christian Dullin5, Alberto Escudero1, Alberto Escudero17, Neus Feliu18, Mingyuan Gao, Michael D. George, Yury Gogotsi19, Arnold Grünweller1, Zhongwei Gu20, Naomi J. Halas21, Norbert Hampp1, Roland K. Hartmann1, Mark C. Hersam22, Patrick Hunziker23, Ji Jian24, Xingyu Jiang, Philipp Jungebluth25, Pranav Kadhiresan11, Kazunori Kataoka26, Ali Khademhosseini27, Jindřich Kopeček28, Nicholas A. Kotov29, Harald F. Krug30, Dong Soo Lee31, Claus-Michael Lehr32, Kam W. Leong33, Xing-Jie Liang34, Mei Ling Lim18, Luis M. Liz-Marzán10, Xiaowei Ma34, Paolo Macchiarini35, Huan Meng6, Helmuth Möhwald4, Paul Mulvaney8, Andre E. Nel6, Shuming Nie36, Peter Nordlander21, Teruo Okano, Jose Oliveira, Tai Hyun Park31, Reginald M. Penner37, Maurizio Prato9, Maurizio Prato10, Víctor F. Puntes38, Vincent M. Rotello39, Amila Samarakoon11, Raymond E. Schaak40, Youqing Shen24, Sebastian Sjöqvist18, Andre G. Skirtach41, Andre G. Skirtach4, Mahmoud Soliman1, Molly M. Stevens42, Hsing-Wen Sung43, Ben Zhong Tang44, Rainer Tietze2, Buddhisha Udugama11, J. Scott VanEpps29, Tanja Weil4, Tanja Weil45, Paul S. Weiss6, Itamar Willner46, Yuzhou Wu4, Yuzhou Wu47, Lily Yang, Zhao Yue1, Qian Zhang1, Qiang Zhang48, Xian-En Zhang, Yuliang Zhao, Xin Zhou, Wolfgang J. Parak1 
14 Mar 2017-ACS Nano
TL;DR: An overview of recent developments in nanomedicine is provided and the current challenges and upcoming opportunities for the field are highlighted and translation to the clinic is highlighted.
Abstract: The design and use of materials in the nanoscale size range for addressing medical and health-related issues continues to receive increasing interest. Research in nanomedicine spans a multitude of areas, including drug delivery, vaccine development, antibacterial, diagnosis and imaging tools, wearable devices, implants, high-throughput screening platforms, etc. using biological, nonbiological, biomimetic, or hybrid materials. Many of these developments are starting to be translated into viable clinical products. Here, we provide an overview of recent developments in nanomedicine and highlight the current challenges and upcoming opportunities for the field and translation to the clinic.

926 citations