NEUROBEHAVIORAL FUNCTIONS, SERUM PROLACTIN AND PLASMA RENIN ACTIVITY OF MANGANESE-EXPOSED WORKERS

Objective of this study was to assess effects of manganese (Mn) exposure on 56 workers employed in a Mn welding workshop of a machine building factory in Taiyuan (Shanxi Province, P.R. China) for a mean period of 16.1 years. The mean air Mn level in the workshop was 138.4 μg/m3. Neurobehavioral Core Test Battery (NCTB), including the Profile of Mood States (POMS), was performed. Blood pressure (BP) increase following immediate stand-up (BP-IS), serum prolactin (PRL) and plasma renin activity (PRA) in supine position were also determined. Most of the NCTB scores of the Mn-exposed workers were lower than those of the controls, while the POMS scores were higher, indicating a Mn-induced impairment of neurophysiological functions and a deflection of mood towards negative emotion states. PRL values of the Mn-exposed workers were higher than those of the controls. BP-IS of Mn-exposed workers was significantly lower than that of the controls. PRA of the same workers was augmented more than 200 %. In the Mn-exposed workers, the higher PRL values are possibly due to a reduced inhibitory effect on pituitary lactotrope cells by the tubero-infundibular dopamine system; the decreased BP-IS was referred to imbalance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic activities, whereas the higher basal PRA was thought to depend on neuroendocrine changes (including increased central sympathetic tone) and/or on a direct effect of Mn on renal juxta-glomerular cells. On the whole, this study demonstrates that occupational Mn exposure is responsible for neurobehavioral changes coexisting with alterations of neuroendocrine and humoral systems

Status of the Super-B factory Design

The SuperB international team continues to optimize the design of an electron-positron collider, which will allow the enhanced study of the origins of flavor physics. The project combines the best features of a linear collider (high single-collision luminosity) and a storage-ring collider (high repetition rate), bringing together all accelerator physics aspects to make a very high luminosity of 10$^{36}$ cm$^{-2}$ sec$^{-1}$. This asymmetric-energy collider with a polarized electron beam will produce hundreds of millions of B-mesons at the $\Upsilon$(4S) resonance. The present design is based on extremely low emittance beams colliding at a large Piwinski angle to allow very low $\beta_y^\star$ without the need for ultra short bunches. Use of crab-waist sextupoles will enhance the luminosity, suppressing dangerous resonances and allowing for a higher beam-beam parameter. The project has flexible beam parameters, improved dynamic aperture, and spin-rotators in the Low Energy Ring for longitudinal polarization of the electron beam at the Interaction Point. Optimized for best colliding-beam performance, the facility may also provide high-brightness photon beams for synchrotron radiation applications

Taming the pandemic? The importance of homemade plant-based foods and beverages as community responses to COVID-19

Household responses to COVID-19 in different corners of the world represent the primary health care that communities have relied on for preventing and mitigating symptoms. During a very complex and confusing time, in which public health services in multiple countries have been completely overwhelmed, and in some cases even collapsed, these first-line household responses have been quintessential for building physical, mental, and social resilience, and for improving individual and community health. This editorial discusses the outcomes of a rapid-response preliminary survey during the first phase of the pandemic among social and community contacts in five metropolises heavily affected by the COVID-19 health crisis (Wuhan, Milan, Madrid, New York, and Rio de Janeiro), and in twelve rural areas or countries initially less affected by the pandemic (Appalachia, Jamaica, Bolivia, Romania, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Georgia, Turkey, Pakistan, Cambodia, and South Africa). We summarized our perspectives as 17 case studies, observing that people have relied primarily on teas and spices (“food-medicines”) and that there exist clear international plant favorites, popularized by various new media. Urban diasporas and rural households seem to have repurposed homemade plant-based remedies that they use in normal times for treating the flu and other respiratory symptoms or that they simply consider healthy foods. The most remarkable shift in many areas has been the increased consumption of ginger and garlic, followed by onion, turmeric, and lemon. Our preliminary inventory of food medicines serves as a baseline for future systematic ethnobotanical studies and aims to inspire in-depth research on how use patterns of plant-based foods and beverages, both “traditional” and “new”, are changing during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Our reflections in this editorial call attention to the importance of ethnobiology, ethnomedicine, and ethnogastronomy research into domestic health care strategies for improving community health

The PLASMONX Project for advanced beam physics experiments

The Project PLASMONX is well progressing into its design phase and has entered as well its second phase of procurements for main components. The project foresees the installation at LNF of a Ti:Sa laser system (peak power > 170 TW), synchronized to the high brightness electron beam produced by the SPARC photo-injector. The advancement of the procurement of such a laser system is reported, as well as the construction plans of a new building at LNF to host a dedicated laboratory for high intensity photon beam experiments (High Intensity Laser Laboratory). Several experiments are foreseen using this complex facility, mainly in the high gradient plasma acceleration field and in the field of mono- chromatic ultra-fast X-ray pulse generation via Thomson back-scattering. Detailed numerical simulations have been carried out to study the generation of tightly focused electron bunches to collide with laser pulses in the Thomson source: results on the emitted spectra of X-rays are presented

Proposal for taking data with the KLOE-2 detector at the DAΦ\PhiNE collider upgraded in energy

This document reviews the physics program of the KLOE-2 detector at DA$\Phi$NE upgraded in energy and provides a simple solution to run the collider above the $\phi$-peak (up to 2, possibly 2.5 GeV). It is shown how a precise measurement of the multihadronic cross section in the energy region up to 2 (possibly 2.5) GeV would have a major impact on the tests of the Standard Model through a precise determination of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon and the effective fine-structure constant at the $M_Z$ scale. With a luminosity of about $10^{32}$cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$, DA$\Phi$NE upgraded in energy can perform a scan in the region from 1 to 2.5 GeV in one year by collecting an integrated luminosity of 20 pb$^{-1}$ (corresponding to a few days of data taking) for single point, assuming an energy step of 25 MeV. A few years of data taking in this region would provide important tests of QCD and effective theories by $\gamma\gamma$ physics with open thresholds for pseudo-scalar (like the $\eta'$), scalar ($f_0,f'_0$, etc...) and axial-vector ($a_1$, etc...) mesons; vector-mesons spectroscopy and baryon form factors; tests of CVC and searches for exotics. In the final part of the document a technical solution for the energy upgrade of DA$\Phi$NE is proposed.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figure

Surgery and postoperative radiotherapy a valid treatment for advanced oropharyngeal carcinoma

Since 1992 we have prospectively included all head and neck cancer patients in our health region in a departmental based register. Our hospital takes care of all head and neck cancer patients in our health region consisting of approximately 1 million people. In 1997, we evaluated the results of the treatment of oropharyngeal cancer in the 1992–1997 period. On the basis of this evaluation, we changed our treatment policy for tonsillar and base of tongue carcinoma. We first changed the treatment for the lesions with worst prognosis, i.e., those with T3–T4 carcinomas, from radiotherapy only, to radical surgery and postoperative radiotherapy. We have since that time increasingly also operated the smaller oropharyngeal carcinomas. The 2 years’ overall survival and disease-specific survival for all patients diagnosed in the 1992–1997 period was 56 and 63%, respectively. The results from a similar group of patients in the 6 years’ period from 2000 to 2005, after the change in treatment, have increased to 83 and 88%. When we looked at the subgroup of patients in the 2000–2005 period treated with surgery and postoperative radiotherapy, 45 out of 69 patients (65%) presenting with an oropharyngeal cancer were fit for operation. With radical surgery and postoperative radiation therapy, the 2 years overall survival is now 91%. The 2-year disease-specific survival is 96% and the locoregional control is 98%. This is a marked improvement as compared to radiotherapy alone and definitely competitive with modern radiochemotherapy

Knowledge-based matrix factorization temporally resolves the cellular responses to IL-6 stimulation

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>External stimulations of cells by hormones, cytokines or growth factors activate signal transduction pathways that subsequently induce a re-arrangement of cellular gene expression. The analysis of such changes is complicated, as they consist of multi-layered temporal responses. While classical analyses based on clustering or gene set enrichment only partly reveal this information, matrix factorization techniques are well suited for a detailed temporal analysis. In signal processing, factorization techniques incorporating data properties like spatial and temporal correlation structure have shown to be robust and computationally efficient. However, such correlation-based methods have so far not be applied in bioinformatics, because large scale biological data rarely imply a natural order that allows the definition of a delayed correlation function.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We therefore develop the concept of graph-decorrelation. We encode prior knowledge like transcriptional regulation, protein interactions or metabolic pathways in a weighted directed graph. By linking features along this underlying graph, we introduce a partial ordering of the features (e.g. genes) and are thus able to define a graph-delayed correlation function. Using this framework as constraint to the matrix factorization task allows us to set up the fast and robust graph-decorrelation algorithm (GraDe). To analyze alterations in the gene response in <it>IL-6 </it>stimulated primary mouse hepatocytes, we performed a time-course microarray experiment and applied GraDe. In contrast to standard techniques, the extracted time-resolved gene expression profiles showed that <it>IL-6 </it>activates genes involved in cell cycle progression and cell division. Genes linked to metabolic and apoptotic processes are down-regulated indicating that <it>IL-6 </it>mediated priming renders hepatocytes more responsive towards cell proliferation and reduces expenditures for the energy metabolism.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>GraDe provides a novel framework for the decomposition of large-scale 'omics' data. We were able to show that including prior knowledge into the separation task leads to a much more structured and detailed separation of the time-dependent responses upon <it>IL-6 </it>stimulation compared to standard methods. A Matlab implementation of the GraDe algorithm is freely available at <url>http://cmb.helmholtz-muenchen.de/grade</url>.</p

SuperB: next-generation e+e- B-factory collider

International audienceThe SuperB international team continues to optimize the design of an electron-positron collider, which will allow the enhanced study of the origins of flavor physics. The project combines the best features of a linear collider (high single- collision luminosity) and a storage-ring collider (high rep- etition rate), bringing together all accelerator physics as- pects to make a very high luminosity of 10^36 cm^−2 sec^−1 . This asymmetric-energy collider with a polarized electron beam will produce hundreds of millions of B-mesons at the Υ(4S) resonance. The present design is based on ex- tremely low emittance beams colliding at a large Piwin- ski angle to allow very low β⋆y without the need for ultra short bunches. Use of crab-waist sextupoles will enhance the luminosity, suppressing dangerous resonances and al- lowing for a higher beam-beam parameter. The project has flexible beam parameters, improved dynamic aperture, and spin-rotators in the Low Energy Ring for longitudinal po- larization of the electron beam at the Interaction Point. Op- timized for best colliding-beam performance, the facility may also provide high-brightness photon beams for syn- chrotron radiation applications

Association of blood lead concentrations with mortality in older women: a prospective cohort study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Blood lead concentrations have been associated with increased risk of cardiovascular, cancer, and all-cause mortality in adults in general population and occupational cohorts. We aimed to determine the association between blood lead, all cause and cause specific mortality in elderly, community residing women.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Prospective cohort study of 533 women aged 65–87 years enrolled in the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures at 2 US research centers (Baltimore, MD; Monongahela Valley, PA) from 1986–1988. Blood lead concentrations were determined by atomic absorption spectrometry. Using blood lead concentration categorized as < 8 μg/dL (0.384 μmol/L), and ≥ 8 μg/dL (0.384 μmol/L), we determined the relative risk of mortality from all cause, and cause-specific mortality, through Cox proportional hazards regression analysis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Mean blood lead concentration was 5.3 ± 2.3 μg/dL (range 1–21) [0.25 ± 0.11 μmol/L (range 0.05–1.008)]. After 12.0 ± 3 years of > 95% complete follow-up, 123 (23%) women who died had slightly higher mean (± SD) blood lead 5.56 (± 3) μg/dL [0.27(± 0.14) μmol/L] than survivors: 5.17(± 2.0) [0.25(± 0.1) μmol/L] (<it>p </it>= 0.09). Women with blood lead concentrations ≥ 8 μg/dL (0.384 μmol/L), had 59% increased risk of multivariate adjusted all cause mortality (Hazard Ratio [HR], 1.59; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.02–2.49) (p = 0.041) especially coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality (HR = 3.08 [CI], (1.23–7.70)(p = 0.016), compared to women with blood lead concentrations < 8 μg/dL(< 0.384 μmol/L). There was no association of blood lead with stroke, cancer, or non cardiovascular deaths.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Women with blood lead concentrations of ≥ 8 μg/dL (0.384 μmol/L), experienced increased mortality, in particular from CHD as compared to those with lower blood lead concentrations.</p