Effect of Sea Breeze on Air Pollution in the Greater Athens Area. Part II: Analysis of Different Emission Scenarios

The Mediterranean Campaign of Photochemical Tracers–Transport and Chemical Evolution that took place in the greater Athens area from 20 August to 20 September 1994 has confirmed the role of sea-breeze circulation in photochemical smog episodes that had been suggested already by a number of experiments and numerical studies. The meteorological and photochemical modeling of this campaign were discussed in Part I. Part II focuses on the study of the 14 September photochemical smog event associated with a sea-breeze circulation. The objective of the study is to identify and to understand better the nonlinear processes that produce high ozone concentrations. In particular, the effect of land and sea breezes is investigated by isolating the effect of nighttime and daytime emissions on ozone concentrations. The same principle then is used to isolate the effect on ozone concentrations of the two main sources of emissions in the greater Athens area: the industrial area around Elefsis and the Athens urban area. Last, the buildup of ozone from one day to another is investigated. From this study, it comes out that ozone production in the Athens area is mainly a 1-day phenomenon. The increased values of photochemical pollutant (up to 130 ppb at ground level) reached during summertime late afternoons on mountain slopes to the north and northeast of the city are related mainly to the current-day emissions. Nevertheless, the recirculation of old pollutants can have an important effect on ozone concentrations in downtown Athens, the southern part of the peninsula, and over the sea, especially near Aigina Island

Standardization for Defence Procurement - European Handbook : CEN Workshop 10

The European Commission (EC), DG Enterprise, endeavours the competitiveness of the European Defence Industry. The plethora of (national) standards, more than 10.000, are recognised by the EC as a major constraint and cost driver. Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) or Electromagnetic Environmental Effects (EEE) are considered by the EC as a major topic, with 7 other topics such as environmental engineering, energetic materials, batteries, electrical interfaces. An EMC expert group with representatives from industry, including Aerotech Telub, Intellect, EADS, Ericsson Microwave, Fincantieri, MBDA, Thales, and national MoDs rationalized in 2004 a list of 329 EEE standards, implicitly abandoning national, including American, standards, and develop guidelines for the procurement process. A limited number of widely accepted and cost effective standards, suitable for use by MoD’s (acquisition) and industry (product development), has been defined after making comparisons. Comparisons were carried out on some standards against STANAG 4370 AECTP 500. The Expert Group agreed; That no one standard is better or worse than another in achieving an end goal. Differences are not sufficient to prevent the use of AECTP 500. There are sufficient similarities to AECTP 500 to adopt this as the fundamental replacement standard. There was sufficient agreement on NATO-, IEC- and EN-produced standards to make worthwhile agreement to use a number of standards as replacement for some (or some parts) of existing National Standards. This document gives recommendations on the use of the standards, the scope and \ud limitations. It also emphasizes the constraints with respect to the standardisation process of National MoD’s, NATO, Industry and EN/IEC

Bone metastases and immunotherapy in patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer

Background Bone metastases (BoM) are a negative prognostic factor in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Beyond its supportive role, bone is a hematopoietic organ actively regulating immune system. We hypothesized that BoM may influence sensitivity to immunotherapy. Methods Pretreated non-squamous (cohort A) and squamous (cohort B) NSCLCs included in the Italian Expanded Access Program were evaluated for nivolumab efficacy according to BoM. Results Cohort A accounted for 1588 patients with non-squamous NSCLC, including 626 (39%) with (BoM+) and 962 (61%) without BoM (BoM-). Cohort B accounted for 371 patients with squamous histology including 120 BoM+ (32%) and 251 (68%) BoM- cases. BoM+ had lower overall response rate (ORR; Cohort A: 12% versus 23%, p < 0.0001; Cohort B: 13% versus 22%, p = 0.04), shorter progression free survival (PFS; Cohort A: 3.0 versus 4.0 months, p < 0.0001; Cohort B: 2.7 versus 5.2 months, p < 0.0001) and overall survival (OS; Cohort A: 7.4 versus 15.3 months, p < 0.0001; Cohort B: 5.0 versus 10.9 months, p < 0.0001). Moreover, BoM negatively affected outcome irrespective of performance status (PS; OS in both cohorts: p < 0.0001) and liver metastases (OS cohort A: p < 0.0001; OS Cohort B: p = 0.48). At multivariate analysis, BoM independently associated with higher risk of death (cohort A: HR 1.50; cohort B: HR 1.78). Conclusions BoM impairs immunotherapy efficacy. Accurate bone staging should be included in clinical trials with immunotherapy

High familial burden of cancer correlates with improved outcome from immunotherapy in patients with NSCLC independent of somatic DNA damage response gene status

Family history of cancer (FHC) is a hallmark of cancer risk and an independent predictor of outcome, albeit with uncertain biologic foundations. We previously showed that FHC-high patients experienced prolonged overall (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) following PD-1/PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitors. To validate our findings in patients with NSCLC, we evaluated two multicenter cohorts of patients with metastatic NSCLC receiving either first-line pembrolizumab or chemotherapy. From each cohort, 607 patients were randomly case-control matched accounting for FHC, age, performance status, and disease burden. Compared to FHC-low/negative, FHC-high patients experienced longer OS (HR 0.67 [95% CI 0.46-0.95], p\u2009=\u20090.0281), PFS (HR 0.65 [95% CI 0.48-0.89]; p\u2009=\u20090.0074) and higher disease control rates (DCR, 86.4% vs 67.5%, p\u2009=\u20090.0096), within the pembrolizumab cohort. No significant associations were found between FHC and OS/PFS/DCR within the chemotherapy cohort. We explored the association between FHC and somatic DNA damage response (DDR) gene alterations as underlying mechanism to our findings in a parallel cohort of 118 NSCLC, 16.9% of whom were FHC-high. The prevalence of\u2009 65\u20091 somatic DDR gene mutation was 20% and 24.5% (p\u2009=\u20090.6684) in FHC-high vs. FHC-low/negative, with no differences in tumor mutational burden (6.0 vs. 7.6 Mut/Mb, p\u2009=\u20090.6018) and tumor cell PD-L1 expression. FHC-high status identifies NSCLC patients with improved outcomes from pembrolizumab but not chemotherapy, independent of somatic DDR gene status. Prospective studies evaluating FHC alongside germline genetic testing are warranted

A Microscope Automated Fluidic System to Study Bacterial Processes in Real Time

Most time lapse microscopy experiments studying bacterial processes ie growth, progression through the cell cycle and motility have been performed on thin nutrient agar pads. An important limitation of this approach is that dynamic perturbations of the experimental conditions cannot be easily performed. In eukaryotic cell biology, fluidic approaches have been largely used to study the impact of rapid environmental perturbations on live cells and in real time. However, all these approaches are not easily applicable to bacterial cells because the substrata are in all cases specific and also because microfluidics nanotechnology requires a complex lithography for the study of micrometer sized bacterial cells. In fact, in many cases agar is the experimental solid substratum on which bacteria can move or even grow. For these reasons, we designed a novel hybrid micro fluidic device that combines a thin agar pad and a custom flow chamber. By studying several examples, we show that this system allows real time analysis of a broad array of biological processes such as growth, development and motility. Thus, the flow chamber system will be an essential tool to study any process that take place on an agar surface at the single cell level

The Atlas3D project -- XIII. Mass and morphology of HI in early-type galaxies as a function of environment

We present the Atlas3D HI survey of 166 nearby early-type galaxies (ETGs) down to M(HI)~10^7 M_sun. We detect HI in ~40% of all ETGs outside the Virgo cluster and in ~10% of all ETGs inside it. This demonstrates that it is common for non-cluster ETGs to host HI. The HI morphology varies from regular discs/rings (the majority of the detections) to unsettled gas distributions. The former are either small discs (M(HI)<10^8 M_sun) confined within the stellar body and sharing the same kinematics of the stars, or large discs/rings (M(HI) up to 5x10^9 M_sun) extending to tens of kpc from the host galaxy and frequently kinematically decoupled from the stars. Neutral hydrogen provides material for star formation in ETGs. Galaxies with central HI exhibit signatures of star formation in ~70% of the cases, ~5 times more frequently than galaxies without central HI. The central ISM is dominated by molecular gas. In ETGs with a small gas disc the conversion of HI into H_2 is as efficient as in spirals. The ETG HI mass function has M*~2x10^9 M_sun and slope=-0.7. ETGs host much less HI than spirals as a family. However, a significant fraction of them is as HI-rich as spirals. The main difference between ETGs and spirals is that the former lack the high-column-density HI typical of the bright stellar disc of the latter. We find an envelope of decreasing M(HI) with increasing environment density. The gas-richest ETGs live in the poorest environments (where star-formation is more common), galaxies in the centre of Virgo have the lowest HI content, and the cluster outskirts are a transition region. We find an HI morphology-density relation. At low environment density HI is mostly distributed on large discs/rings. More disturbed HI morphologies dominate environment densities typical of rich groups, confirming the importance of processes occurring on a galaxy-group scale for the evolution of ETGs.Comment: Accepted for publication on MNRA

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

Smoking status during first-line immunotherapy and chemotherapy in NSCLC patients: A case–control matched analysis from a large multicenter study

Background: Improved outcome in tobacco smoking patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) following immunotherapy has previously been reported. However, little is known regarding this association during first-line immunotherapy in patients with high PD-L1 expression. In this study we compared clinical outcomes according to the smoking status of two large multicenter cohorts. Methods: We compared clinical outcomes according to the smoking status (never smokers vs. current/former smokers) of two retrospective multicenter cohorts of metastatic NSCLC patients, treated with first-line pembrolizumab and platinum-based chemotherapy. Results: A total of 962 NSCLC patients with PD-L1 expression ≥50% who received first-line pembrolizumab and 462 NSCLC patients who received first-line platinum-based chemotherapy were included in the study. Never smokers were confirmed to have a significantly higher risk of disease progression (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.49 [95% CI: 1.15–1.92], p = 0.0022) and death (HR = 1.38 [95% CI: 1.02–1.87], p = 0.0348) within the pembrolizumab cohort. On the contrary, a nonsignificant trend towards a reduced risk of disease progression (HR = 0.74 [95% CI: 0.52–1.05], p = 0.1003) and death (HR = 0.67 [95% CI: 0.45–1.01], p = 0.0593) were reported for never smokers within the chemotherapy cohort. After a random case–control matching, 424 patients from both cohorts were paired. Within the matched pembrolizumab cohort, never smokers had a significantly shorter progression-free survival (PFS) (HR = 1.68 [95% CI: 1.17–2.40], p = 0.0045) and a nonsignificant trend towards a shortened overall survival (OS) (HR = 1.32 [95% CI: 0.84–2.07], p = 0.2205). On the contrary, never smokers had a significantly longer PFS (HR = 0.68 [95% CI: 0.49–0.95], p = 0.0255) and OS (HR = 0.66 [95% CI: 0.45–0.97], p = 0,0356) compared to current/former smoker patients within the matched chemotherapy cohort. On pooled multivariable analysis, the interaction term between smoking status and treatment modality was concordantly statistically significant with respect to ORR (p = 0.0074), PFS (p = 0.0001) and OS (p = 0.0020), confirming the significantly different impact of smoking status across the two cohorts. Conclusions: Among metastatic NSCLC patients with PD-L1 expression ≥50% receiving first-line pembrolizumab, current/former smokers experienced improved PFS and OS. On the contrary, worse outcomes were reported among current/former smokers receiving first-line chemotherapy