National and Private Ambitions in the Patronage of French Cardinals at the Papal Court (Fifteenth to Sixteenth centuries)

Few French cardinals left important traces in the form of architectural patronage in Rome during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a period characterised by the alternation of times of strong tension between the French kings and the Papacy, and phases of political harmony. French cardinals’ relations with Rome reflected such a changeable contingent political situation: their position was extremely delicate because they owed obedience to the pope, as princes of the church, and to their king, as French nobles and bishops. Generally, their engagement was projected more towards France, typically in the areas of family influence, than towards Rome. Nevertheless, some French cardinals, such as Guillaume d’Estouteville, Jean Jouffroy, Jean de Bilhères, and Jean Du Bellay, were well-established in Rome, participating in cultural life and artistic production. Analysing their architectural patronage helps to evaluate if they were agents of the King of France aiming to promote, in part by supporting art and architecture, royal policy at the papal court, or if they were driven by personal ambitions. Comparing these men with the patronage of Thomas Leroy—not a cardinal, but a Breton-prelate established in Rome where he undertook a brilliant career in the Curia—permits us to place the conduct of cardinals in a more general context, and to verify if it was different from that of other French resident prelates

Tradizione e innovazione nella committenza architettonica dei cardinali francesi della prima metà del Cinquecento

Il breve contributo riassume gli esiti principali del progetto di ricerca "Tradizione e innovazione nella committenza architettonica dei cardinali francesi della prima metà del Cinquecento", supportato sul nascere dalla J. Paul Getty Foundation quindi da Sapienza, che ha studiato i cardinali francesi considerati una categoria di analisi particolarmente interessante rispetto al tema del ‘transfer culturale’ nell’Europa del Rinascimento.Grazie al loro status, agli imponenti mezzi finanziari a disposizione e al fatto di essere strettamente legati alla Corona ma anche in contatto continuo con la corte pontificia, infatti, i cardinali hanno potuto giocare un ruolo di ‘vettori’ tra l’Italia e la Francia, contribuendo in modo sostanziale alla diffusione di modelli formali, funzionali e cerimoniali che a loro volta hanno influenzato l'architettura

Hyperthermia phased arrays pre-treatment evaluation.

In the hyperthermia treatment of deep-seated tumours by a phased array of radiofrequency (RF) antennas, heatability will be investigated in terms of power-to-tumour and other figures-of-merit of hyperthermia treatments to be optimised. The assumption is that each source is individually constrained to not exceed a maximal nominal power. The nominal power may differ from a source to another as a physical limit or an operative modality.Under such constraint, new procedures for the maximisation of (i) power-to-tumour, (ii) heating efficiency and, in general, (iii) power ratios as tumour-heating selectivity are proposed. (iv) The problem whether a tumour is equally heatable after turning off some antennas is addressed as array thinning.An array of eight dipoles arranged on two lines around a head/neck is introduced to perform a numerical analysis. The achievable power-to-tumour according to the new optimizations and other performance indices adopted from the literature is tested against values of power that can be found to be sufficient for heating tumours to clinical temperatures. New solutions to data rendering in hyperthermia heating are proposed

Le dessin d’architecture (xvie-xviiie siècles)

Programme de l’année 2006-2007 : Le dessin d’architecture (xvie-xviiie siècles). Généralités et approches méthodologiques

Le dessin d’architecture (xvie-xviiie siècle)

Programme de l'année 2007-2008 : Le dessin d’architecture (xvie-xviiie siècle). Généralités et approches méthodologiques

Le dessin d’architecture (xvie-xviiie siècles)

Programme de l’année 2006-2007 : Le dessin d’architecture (xvie-xviiie siècles). Généralités et approches méthodologiques

Signatures of Massive Black Hole Merger Host Galaxies from Cosmological Simulations I: Unique Galaxy Morphologies in Imaging

Low-frequency gravitational wave experiments such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna and pulsar timing arrays are expected to detect individual massive black hole (MBH) binaries and mergers. However, secure methods of identifying the exact host galaxy of each MBH merger amongst the large number of galaxies in the gravitational wave localization region are currently lacking. We investigate the distinct morphological signatures of MBH merger host galaxies, using the Romulus25 cosmological simulation. We produce mock telescope images of 201 simulated galaxies in Romulus25 hosting recent MBH mergers, through stellar population synthesis and dust radiative transfer. Based on comparisons to mass- and redshift-matched control samples, we show that combining multiple morphological statistics via a linear discriminant analysis enables identification of the host galaxies of MBH mergers, with accuracies that increase with chirp mass and mass ratio. For mergers with high chirp masses (>10^8.2 Msun) and high mass ratios (>0.5), the accuracy of this approach reaches >80%, and does not decline for at least >1 Gyr after numerical merger. We argue that these trends arise because the most distinctive morphological characteristics of MBH merger and binary host galaxies are prominent classical bulges, rather than relatively short-lived morphological disturbances from their preceding galaxy mergers. Since these bulges are formed though major mergers of massive galaxies, they lead to (and become permanent signposts for) MBH binaries and mergers that have high chirp masses and mass ratios. Our results suggest that galaxy morphology can aid in identifying the host galaxies of future MBH binaries and mergers.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures. Submitted to Ap

Current state of the art of regional hyperthermia treatment planning: A review

Locoregional hyperthermia, i.e. increasing the tumor temperature to 40-45 °C using an external heating device, is a very effective radio and chemosensitizer, which significantly improves clinical outcome. There is a clear thermal dose-effect relation, but the pursued optimal thermal dose of 43 °C for 1 h can often not be realized due to treatment limiting hot spots in normal tissue. Modern heating devices have a large number of independent antennas, which provides flexible power steering to optimize tumor heating and minimize hot spots, but manual selection of optimal settings is difficult. Treatment planning is a very valuable tool to improve locoregional heating. This paper reviews the developments in treatment planning software for tissue segmentation, electromagnetic field calculations, thermal modeling and optimization techniques. Over the last decade, simulation tools have become more advanced. On-line use has become possible by implementing algorithms on the graphical processing unit, which allows real-time computations. The number of applications using treatment planning is increasing rapidly and moving on from retrospective analyses towards assisting prospective clinical treatment strategies. Some clinically relevant applications will be discussed

Radio hyperthermia for re-treatment of superficial tumours.

Relapse remains an unsolved problem for previously radio-treated patients. Our purpose is to evaluate the role of radio-hyperthermia (RT-HT) in the retreatment of superficial recurrences.From 1998 to 2007, 51 patients affected by four histological types (breast recurrences (group A), melanoma recurrences (group B), head and neck recurrences (group C), and others (group D)) of 76 superficial lesions, were enrolled at Mauriziano Hospital at the Research Institute of Cancer Care Candiolo (IRCC) in Turin. All patients had previously undergone RT except 6 patients of group B. The total mean retreatment dose was 31.8 Gy (20-60 Gy), while the mean of HT sessions was 5 (1 to 8), temperature ranged from 38.5 degrees C (T min) to 44 degrees C (T max).Acute cutaneous toxicity was 77.6% G1, 22.4% G2, none for G3. Forty-five days later we observed: for group A 65.9% complete response (CR), 29.5% partial response (PR), 4.5% non-response (NR); for group B 33.3% CR, 25% PR and 41.7% NR; for group C 40% CR, 13.3% PR, 46.7% NR, for group D 60% CR and 40% NR. 18 months later group A presented 72.7% local control (LC), 20.5% stable disease (SD) and 6.8% non-control (NC), group B 50% LC, 16,7% SD and 33.3% NC, group C 33.3% LC, 40% SD and 26.7% NC, group D 40% LC and 60% NC. Early response, size of lesionsor =3 cm, T maxor =42 degrees C and RT dosesor =40 Gy were predictive outcome factors.We confirmed that radio-hyperthermia is useful in re-irradiation with a very high patient compliance

Numerical Modeling of the Internal Temperature in the Mammary Gland

The microwave thermometry method for the diagnosis of breast cancer is based on an analysis of the internal temperature distribution.This paper is devoted to the construction of a mathematical model for increasing the accuracy of measuring the internal temperature of mammary glands, which are regarded as a complex combination of several components, such as fat tissue, muscle tissue, milk lobules, skin, blood flows, tumor tissue. Each of these biocomponents is determined by its own set of physical parameters. Our numerical model is designed to calculate the spatial distributions of the electric microwave field and the temperature inside the biological tissue. We compare the numerical simulations results to the real medical measurements of the internal temperature.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure