Remo Bedini

Noisy cooperative intermittent processes: From blinking quantum dots to human consciousness

We study the superposition of a non-Poisson renewal process with the presence of a superimposed Poisson noise. The non-Poisson renewals mark the passage between meta-stable states in system with self-organization. We propose methods to measure the amount of information due to the two independent processes independently, and we see that a superficial study based on the survival probabilities yield stretched-exponential relaxations. Our method is in fact able to unravel the inverse-power law relaxation of the isolated non-Poisson processes, even when noise is present. We provide examples of this behavior in system of diverse nature, from blinking nano-crystals to weak turbulence. Finally we focus our discussion on events extracted from human electroencephalograms, and we discuss their connection with emerging properties of integrated neural dynamics, i.e. consciousness.

A web based health technology assessment in tele-echocardiography: the experience within an Italian project

Due to major advances in the information technology, telemedicine applications are ready for a widespread use. Nonetheless, to allow their diffusion in National Health Care Systems (NHCSs) specific methodologies of health technology assessment (HTA) should be used to assess the standardization, the overall quality, the interoperability, the addressing to legal, economic and cost benefit aspects. One of the limits to the diffusion of the digital tele-echocardiography (T-E) applications in the NHCS lacking of a specific methodology for the HTA. In the present study, a solution offering a structured HTA of T-E products was designed. The methodology assured also the definition of standardized quality levels for the application. The first level represents the minimum level of acceptance; the other levels are accessory levels useful for a more accurate assessment of the product. The methodology showed to be useful to rationalize the process of standardization and has received a high degree of acceptance by the subjects involved in the study.

Fast rhythms coalescence with the sleep slow oscillation

Objectives: The aim of this study was to move forward from: ‘‘snapshot’’ cognitive probe studies used to establish selective attention in insomnia and understand processing of salient sleep words over time within the context of approach and avoidance. Methods: The novel methodology to insomnia research, eye tracking, was used to monitor the eye movements of individuals with psychophysiological insomnia (PI) and good sleepers (GS) to sleep positive, sleep negative and neutral words over a three second period. Results: The data shows that individuals with insomnia are less accurate [F(1.39) = 4.6, P < .05], take longer to fixate on the target word [F(1.39) = 5.0, P < .05] and take longer to move from distractor to target word [F(1.39) = 3.9, P < .05]. There is a trend towards significance suggestive of faster processing of positive sleep words compared to sleep negative or neutral words [F(2.78) = 2.9, P = .07]. Conclusions: Irrespective of word salience, the PI would appear to show detrimental processing overall compared to GS. Interesting questions arise within this context of whether this is an artefact of fatigue or there is indeed a processing impairment. The trend toward faster processing of sleep positive words would suggest that there is a possible selective processing impairment.