Extended Skyrme Interaction in the Spin Channel

Most of the Skyrme interactions are known to predict spin or isospin instabilities beyond the saturation density of nuclear matter which contradict predictions based on realistic interactions. A modification of the standard Skyrme interaction is proposed so that the ferromagnetic instability is removed. The new terms are density dependent and modify only the spin p-h interaction in the case of spin-saturated system. We have shown that these new terms change the total binding energy of odd-nuclei by only few tenths of keV. From the analysis of the spin instabilities of nuclear matter, restrictions on the parameters governing the spin-density dependent terms are evaluated. We conclude that with the extended Skyrme interaction, the Landau parameters G 0 and G 0 could be tuned with a large flexibility without changing the ground-state properties in nuclei and in nuclear matter.SCOPUS: cp.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Imaging Evaluation of Pulmonary and Non-Ischaemic Cardiovascular Manifestations of COVID-19

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been a pandemic challenge for the last year. Cardiovascular disease is the most described comorbidity in COVID-19 patients, and it is related to the disease severity and progression. COVID-19 induces direct damage on cardiovascular system, leading to arrhythmias and myocarditis, and indirect damage due to endothelial dysfunction and systemic inflammation with a high inflammatory burden. Indirect damage leads to myocarditis, coagulation abnormalities and venous thromboembolism, Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, Kawasaki-like disease and multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children. Imaging can support the management, assessment and prognostic evaluation of these patients. Ultrasound is the most reliable and easy to use in emergency setting and in the ICU as a first approach. The focused approach is useful in management of these patients due its ability to obtain quick and focused results. This tool is useful to evaluate cardiovascular disease and its interplay with lungs. However, a detailed echocardiography evaluation is necessary in a complete assessment of cardiovascular involvement. Computerized tomography is highly sensitive, but it might not always be available. Cardiovascular magnetic resonance and nuclear imaging may be helpful to evaluate COVID-19-related myocardial injury, but further studies are needed. This review deals with different modalities of imaging evaluation in the management of cardiovascular non-ischaemic manifestations of COVID-19, comparing their use in emergency and in intensive care. View Full-Tex

An Innovative, Open, Interoperable Citizen Engagement Cloud Platform for Smart Government and Users' Interaction

This paper introduces an open, interoperable, and cloud-computing-based citizen engagement platform for the management of administrative processes of public administrations, which also increases the engagement of citizens. The citizen engagement platform is the outcome of a 3-year Italian national project called PRISMA (Interoperable cloud platforms for smart government). The aim of the project is to constitute a new model of digital ecosystem that can support and enable new methods of interaction among public administrations, citizens, companies, and other stakeholders surrounding cities. The platform has been defined by the media as a flexible (enable the addition of any kind of application or service) and open (enable access to open services) Italian "cloud" that allows public administrations to access to a vast knowledge base represented as linked open data to be reused by a stakeholder community with the aim of developing new applications ("Cloud Apps") tailored to the specific needs of citizens. The platform has been used by Catania and Syracuse municipalities, two of the main cities of southern Italy, located in the Sicilian region. The fully adoption of the platform is rapidly spreading around the whole region (local developers have already used available application programming interfaces (APIs) to create additional services for citizens and administrations) to such an extent that other provinces of Sicily and Italy in general expressed their interest for its usage. The platform is available online and, as mentioned above, is open source and provides APIs for full exploitation.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figures, journal pape

Clinical Outcomes Among Major Breast Cancer Subtypes After Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy: Impact on Breast Cancer Recurrence and Survival

Background/aim: Prior studies have underlined the prognostic relevance of pathological complete response (pCR) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) in breast cancer. However, an accurate demonstration of treatment efficacy is dependent on its potential to predict long-term outcomes of recurrence and death, and this issue remains somewhat controversial. Patients and methods: One hundred and sixty-nine patients with breast cancer (BC) treated with NAC followed by surgery were enrolled in this retrospective study. After carrying out multivariable analyses, involving baseline characteristics (tumor stage, nodal status, histological grade, biological profile) and response status, we analysed the association between pCR and disease-free (DFS) and overall survival (OS) in various subtypes. Moreover, we investigated several residual disease-scoring combinations to check whether they could discriminate prognostic subsets according to their variable tumor range after NAC. Results: Overall, factors associated with pCR were non-luminal subtype (p<0.001), high grade (p=0.001) and HER2-overexpression (p=0.001). Residual tumor and nodal stage after NAC significantly correlated with DFS (p=0.007) and OS (p<0.001). Similarly, pCR after NAC showed significantly better DFS (p=0.01), particularly for HER2-positive (p=0.003), triple-negative (p=0.019) and HER2-positive Luminal B profiles (p=0.019). However, there was no statistical difference in the OS among patients who had PCR, compared to absence of pCR (p=0.40). Conclusion: Extent of residual disease and evidence of regression provide helpful prognostic details in BC patients treated with NAC. Achieving pCR after NAC is related with significantly better DFS, with the potential of maximized breast and axillary conservation based on clinical response. The distribution of expertise in a cross-disciplinary setting could provide safe and favourable prognosis, while improving cosmetic outcomes and quality of life

Arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis modulates the apocarotenoid biosynthetic pathway in saffron

[EN] Crocus sativus L. (saffron) has been propagated for millennia to produce the precious spice saffron from the red stigmas. The inebriant organoleptic and bioactive properties mainly depend on the content of crocins (dyeing capacity), picrocrocin (flavor), and safranal (aroma), apocarotenoids deriving from zeaxanthin. In this study, an integrated biochemical and molecular analysis was carried out on fresh saffron stigmas to investigate the in-fluence exerted by the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus (AMF) Rhizophagus intraradices on the production of the main saffron apocarotenoids responsible for the properties of the spice. Since mineral enrichment due to AM symbiosis has been related to changes in the secondary metabolism of plants, the mineral content of saffron corms at flowering was also analyzed. Rare arbuscules (AMF trade structures) were found in mycorrhized plants. However, the expression of D27, CCD7, and NCED involved in the synthesis of strigolactones (SLs) and abscisic acid (ABA), which promote AM symbiosis, did not change in the stigmas. The transcription of beta-LYC and CCD4a/ b was not affected by AMF, whereas that of CCD2, which encodes the key enzyme producing major apocar-otenoids, was upregulated. The crocin content was reduced in treated plants even if the expression of ALDH, UGT74AD1, and UGT91P3, involved in crocin synthesis, did not change. Conversely, UGT709G1, implicated in picrocrocin synthesis, was overexpressed in the inoculated plants, thus the safranal content was increased in the spice.This research was funded by the program Interreg V-A Francia Italia Alcotra (Grant No. 1139 "ANTEA - Attivita innovative per lo sviluppo della filiera transfrontaliera del fiore edule"; and grant no. 8336 "ANTES-Fiori eduli e piante aromatiche: attivita capitalizzazione dei progetti ANTEA ed ESSICA").Stelluti, S.; Grasso, G.; Nebauer, SG.; Alonso, GL.; Renau-Morata, B.; Caser, M.; Demasi, S.... (2024). Arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis modulates the apocarotenoid biosynthetic pathway in saffron. Scientia Horticulturae. 323. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scienta.2023.11244132

Efficacy and safety of once-weekly bortezomib in multiple myeloma patients

AbstractIn a recent phase 3 trial, bortezomib-melphalan-prednisone-thalidomide followed by maintenance treatment with bortezomib-thalidomide demonstrated superior efficacy compared with bortezomib-melphalan-prednisone. To decrease neurologic toxicities, the protocol was amended and patients in both arms received once-weekly instead of the initial twice-weekly bortezomib infusions: 372 patients received once-weekly and 139 twice-weekly bortezomib. In this post-hoc analysis we assessed the impact of the schedule change on clinical outcomes and safety. Long-term outcomes appeared similar: 3-year progression-free survival rate was 50% in the once-weekly and 47% in the twice-weekly group (P > .999), and 3-year overall survival rate was 88% and 89%, respectively (P = .54). The complete response rate was 30% in the once-weekly and 35% in the twice-weekly group (P = .27). Nonhematologic grade 3/4 adverse events were reported in 35% of once-weekly patients and 51% of twice-weekly patients (P = .003). The incidence of grade 3/4 peripheral neuropathy was 8% in the once-weekly and 28% in the twice-weekly group (P < .001); 5% of patients in the once-weekly and 15% in the twice-weekly group discontinued therapy because of peripheral neuropathy (P < .001). This improvement in safety did not appear to affect efficacy. This study is registered at http://www.clinicaltrials.gov as NCT01063179

A System Development Kit for Big Data Applications on FPGA-based Clusters: The EVEREST Approach

Modern big data workflows are characterized by computationally intensive kernels. The simulated results are often combined with knowledge extracted from AI models to ultimately support decision-making. These energy-hungry workflows are increasingly executed in data centers with energy-efficient hardware accelerators since FPGAs are well-suited for this task due to their inherent parallelism. We present the H2020 project EVEREST, which has developed a system development kit (SDK) to simplify the creation of FPGA-accelerated kernels and manage the execution at runtime through a virtualization environment. This paper describes the main components of the EVEREST SDK and the benefits that can be achieved in our use cases.Comment: Accepted for presentation at DATE 2024 (multi-partner project session

Circulating inflammatory biomarkers, adipokines and breast cancer risk—a case-control study nested within the EPIC cohort

Background Inflammation has been hypothesized to play a role in the development and progression of breast cancer and might differently impact breast cancer risk among pre and postmenopausal women. We performed a nested case-control study to examine whether pre-diagnostic circulating concentrations of adiponectin, leptin, c-reactive protein (CRP), tumour necrosis factor-alpha, interferon-gamma and 6 interleukins were associated with breast cancer risk, overall and by menopausal status. Methods Pre-diagnostic levels of inflammatory biomarkers were measured in plasma from 1558 case-control pairs from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) cohort. We used conditional logistic regression to estimate the odds ratios (ORs) of breast cancer at blood collection, per one standard deviation increase in biomarker concentration. Results Cases were diagnosed at a mean age of 61.4 years on average 8.6 years after blood collection. No statistically significant association was observed between inflammatory markers and breast cancer risk overall. In premenopausal women, borderline significant inverse associations were observed for leptin, leptin-to-adiponectin ratio and CRP [OR= 0.89 (0.77-1.03), OR= 0.88 (0.76-1.01) and OR= 0.87 (0.75-1.01), respectively] while positive associations were observed among postmenopausal women [OR= 1.16 (1.05-1.29), OR= 1.11 (1.01-1.23), OR= 1.10 (0.99-1.22), respectively]. Adjustment for BMI strengthened the estimates in premenopausal women [leptin: OR = 0.83 (0.68-1.00), leptin-to-adiponectin ratio: OR = 0.80 (0.66-0.97), CRP: OR = 0.85 (0.72-1.00)] but attenuated the estimates in postmenopausal women [leptin: OR = 1.09 (0.96-1.24), leptin-to-adiponectin ratio: OR = 1.02 (0.89-1.16), CRP: OR = 1.04 (0.92-1.16)]. Conclusions Associations between CRP, leptin and leptin-to-adiponectin ratio with breast cancer risk may represent the dual effect of obesity by menopausal status although this deserves further investigation