Use of balloon catheter dilation and steroid-eluting stent in light and severe rhinosinusitis of frontal sinus: a multicenter retrospective randomized study

OBJECTIVE: Frontal sinus surgery has an increased rate of re-stenosis, if compared to other sinuses, that mainly depends on recurrent inflammation and abnormal scarring at the frontal recess; its reduction represents one of the keys of therapeutic success. Balloon catheter dilation (BCD) and implantable sinus stents/spacers represent strategies to improve sinus ventilation respecting the integrity of mucosa and reducing abnormal post-surgical scarring. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness, safety and correct indication for the use of BCD and a non-absorbable stent (Relieva Stratus™ MicroFlow spacer) in the management of chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) of the frontal sinus. PATIENTS AND METHODS: In this multicentric retrospective study we included a population of 76 frontal sinuses with non-polypoid CRS. Forty-one frontal sinuses were treated with BCD alone and 35 with BCD + Spacer. We analysed both radiological (Lund-McKay CT scoring modified by Zienrich) and symptomatologic results (SNOT-20 questionnaire) before surgery and after 12 months, dividing patients in two main groups: group “L” (light/mild frontal CRS) and group “S” (moderate/severe frontal CRS). RESULTS: Our results confirm a good safety and effectiveness of BCD in management of frontal CRS and show a good safety, although without significant effectiveness, of Relieva Stratus™ MicroFlow spacer when added to BCD in the management of light and severe frontal CRS. CONCLUSIONS: BCD is an option in management of frontal CRS; the use of stents/spacers could become a new and effective tool in management of CSR, both in addition to standard therapies and in patients where the use of systemic drugs is contraindicated

Fingertip 3D position tracking using stereo vision algorithms

LAUREA SPECIALISTIC

Deep Chandra and multicolor HST observations of the jets of 3C 371 and PKS 2201+044

This paper presents multiwavelength imaging and broad-band spectroscopy of the relativistic jets in the two nearby radio galaxies 3C 371 and PKS 2201+044, acquired with Chandra, HST, VLA, and Merlin. Radio polarization images are also available. The two sources stand out as "intermediate'' between FRIs and FRIIs; their cores are classified as BL Lacs, although broad and narrow optical emission lines were detected at times. The multiwavelength images show jet morphologies with the X-ray emission peaking closer to the nucleus than the longer wavelengths. The jets are resolved at all wavelengths in a direction perpendicular to the jet axis. The jets SEDs are consistent with a single spectral component from radio to X-rays, interpreted as synchrotron emission. The SEDs show a progressive softening from the inner to the outer regions of the jet, indicating that the electron break energy moves to lower energies with distance from the core. Overall, the X-ray and multiwavelength properties of the jets of 3C 371 and PKS 2201+044 appear intermediate between those of FRIs and FRIIs.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ; 28 pages (emulateapj5), 17 figure

Silencing of Euchromatic Transposable Elements as a Consequence of Nuclear Lamina Dysfunction

Transposable elements (TEs) are mobile genomic sequences that are normally repressed to avoid proliferation and genome instability. Gene silencing mechanisms repress TEs by RNA degradation or heterochromatin formation. Heterochromatin maintenance is therefore important to keep TEs silent. Loss of heterochromatic domains has been linked to lamin mutations, which have also been associated with derepression of TEs. In fact, lamins are structural components of the nuclear lamina (NL), which is considered a pivotal structure in the maintenance of heterochromatin domains at the nuclear periphery in a silent state. Here, we show that a lethal phenotype associated with Lamin loss-of-function mutations is influenced by Drosophila gypsy retrotransposons located in euchromatic regions, suggesting that NL dysfunction has also effects on active TEs located in euchromatic loci. In fact, expression analysis of different long terminal repeat (LTR) retrotransposons and of one non-LTR retrotransposon located near active genes shows that Lamin inactivation determines the silencing of euchromatic TEs. Furthermore, we show that the silencing effect on euchromatic TEs spreads to the neighboring genomic regions, with a repressive effect on nearby genes. We propose that NL dysfunction may have opposed regulatory effects on TEs that depend on their localization in active or repressed regions of the genome

Auto-Tuned Multi-Objective Structured H2/H-infinity Control Design Methodology for Gust Load Alleviation

Aircraft structures are sized, in part, by gust and turbulence loads. Gust load alleviation (GLA) seeks to improve aircraft efficiency by reducing these loads through active control. However, their dynamic and unpredictable nature as well as the limitations imposed by system delays and dynamics make for a challenging control problem. Doppler wind lidar sensors allow atmospheric disturbances to be detected with ample lead time, significantly improving achievable GLA performance. Due to relatively high levels of measurement noise, such sensors require an estimator which produces a wind profile along the aircraft's direction of travel. A lidar-based GLA control design methodology must aim to make full use of this information while respecting system limitations, addressing secondary objectives, avoiding excessive actuator use, and ensuring an adequate level of robustness, not to mention questions of certifiability. Structured H-infinity optimal preview control has proven, in many respects, to be suitable for this purpose, however it has several drawbacks. Firstly, the certification specifications partly define gust loads in terms of time-domain peak responses to discrete gusts. The link between a system's transitory time-domain response and its H-infinity norm is indirect and often poor, so tuning H-infinity specifications to meet the time-domain requirements is seldom trivial. Secondly, the lidar-based wind estimation system necessarily introduces dynamic effects and noise-induced uncertainties into the wind estimate. These have heretofore been neglected in control synthesis, forcing the designer to indirectly compensate for them by iteratively adjusting the control specifications. Together, these issues result in a difficult and unnecessarily time-consuming design process, potentially degrading its achievable performance and limiting the degree to which it can be scaled up to industrial problems. This thesis aims to address these obstacles by developing and expanding the structured optimal preview control methodology. A new type of discrete gust specification based on the H2 norm and a novel discrete gust impulse filter is introduced, allowing the discrete gust response to be systematically tuned. A method for analytically computing a linear model of the combined lidar and wind estimation system is developed, and the resulting model is added to the control problem, ensuring that control synthesis takes its characteristics into account. Finally, on the basis of the previous two developments, an automated iterative control tuning scheme is proposed and developed, largely eliminating the need for manually adjusted control specifications. Though not demonstrated in the present work, this method opens the door to integrated aeroservoelastic control design in multidisciplinary aircraft desig

A Practical Approach to Automated Multiobjective Gust Load Alleviation Control Design in a Structured H_2/H_infinity Framework

A gust load alleviation controller must reduce gust loads in the face of a challenging control problem and competing requirements. This may involve time- and frequency-domain objectives, limitations on the size and complexity of the controller, high-order aeroelastic aircraft models, limited system performance, and robustness against complex aeroelastic uncertainties. Tuning such a controller is often difficult and time consuming, and simplified approaches tend to fall short of the performance which can actually be reached. Using a weighted H_2 specification and a set of relatively simple heuristics, gust load alleviation controllers can be automatically iterated to reach a set of performance objectives and constraints. This method is shown to work fairly well and to consistently produce the same outcome, however the design process is sensitive to randomness in the synthesis tool

The STRIP instrument of the Large Scale Polarization Explorer: microwave eyes to map the Galactic polarized foregrounds

In this paper we discuss the latest developments of the STRIP instrument of the "Large Scale Polarization Explorer" (LSPE) experiment. LSPE is a novel project that combines ground-based (STRIP) and balloon-borne (SWIPE) polarization measurements of the microwave sky on large angular scales to attempt a detection of the "B-modes" of the Cosmic Microwave Background polarization. STRIP will observe approximately 25% of the Northern sky from the "Observatorio del Teide" in Tenerife, using an array of forty-nine coherent polarimeters at 43 GHz, coupled to a 1.5 m fully rotating crossed-Dragone telescope. A second frequency channel with six-elements at 95 GHz will be exploited as an atmospheric monitor. At present, most of the hardware of the STRIP instrument has been developed and tested at sub-system level. System-level characterization, starting in July 2018, will lead STRIP to be shipped and installed at the observation site within the end of the year. The on-site verification and calibration of the whole instrument will prepare STRIP for a 2-years campaign for the observation of the CMB polarization.Comment: 17 pages, 15 figures, proceedings of the SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation conference "Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far-Infrared Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy IX", on June 15th, 2018, Austin (TX