Detection of chromosomal regions showing differential gene expression in human skeletal muscle and in alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma

BACKGROUND: Rhabdomyosarcoma is a relatively common tumour of the soft tissue, probably due to regulatory disruption of growth and differentiation of skeletal muscle stem cells. Identification of genes differentially expressed in normal skeletal muscle and in rhabdomyosarcoma may help in understanding mechanisms of tumour development, in discovering diagnostic and prognostic markers and in identifying novel targets for drug therapy. RESULTS: A Perl-code web client was developed to automatically obtain genome map positions of large sets of genes. The software, based on automatic search on Human Genome Browser by sequence alignment, only requires availability of a single transcribed sequence for each gene. In this way, we obtained tissue-specific chromosomal maps of genes expressed in rhabdomyosarcoma or skeletal muscle. Subsequently, Perl software was developed to calculate gene density along chromosomes, by using a sliding window. Thirty-three chromosomal regions harbouring genes mostly expressed in rhabdomyosarcoma were identified. Similarly, 48 chromosomal regions were detected including genes possibly related to function of differentiated skeletal muscle, but silenced in rhabdomyosarcoma. CONCLUSION: In this study we developed a method and the associated software for the comparative analysis of genomic expression in tissues and we identified chromosomal segments showing differential gene expression in human skeletal muscle and in alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, appearing as candidate regions for harbouring genes involved in origin of alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma representing possible targets for drug treatment and/or development of tumor markers

El mito del pishtaco en Lituma en los Andes de Mario Vargas Llosa

the myth of pishtaco plays an important role in the Vargas Llosa’s novel, not just as character but also in the plot’s structure. The paper aims to analyze the relation between the narrative techniques used in the novel and the social function of the indigenous tale. The myth, that provides a restructuring of reality in social critical situations, becomes in the novel a metaphor of literature as a rewrite of the world, a fundamental topic in the Vargas Llosas’s theory of narrative.El mito del pishtaco juega un papel relevante en la novela de Vargas Llosa, no sólo desde un punto de vista temático, sino también a nivel formal. El presente ensayo propone un análisis de la relación entre las técnicas narrativas empleadas en la construcción de la trama y la función social desarrollada por el mito en el imaginario indígena. El mito, que en los momentos críticos ofrece una reestructuración imaginaria de la realidad conflictiva, en la novela se transforma en una metáfora de la literatura como reescritura del mundo, elemento central en la teoría de la literatura de Vargas Llosa

La struttura del desiderio Note su antropologia e letteratura

El text analitza les relacions entre l'antropologia i la literatura a partir d'una distinció entre Antropologia literària i Antropologia de la literatura, per proposar a continuació un model teòric per a l'estudi de la narrativa des d'una perspectiva antropològica. L'estructura del desig mimètic elaborada per René Girard serveix de fonament per a la determinació de l'estructura comuna entre literatura i antropologia que, segons el punt de vista aquí proposat, es funda en una recerca d'alteritat generada per la incompletesa biològica de l'home i per la seva indeterminabilitat ontològica. Finalment, el concepte de la Wanderung romàntica, en oposició al model del viatge, és presentat com una metàfora per demostrar l'íntima relació entre les dues disciplines i la seva essència comuna.El texto analiza las relaciones entre antropología y literatura a partir de una distinción entre Antropología literaria y Antropología de la literatura, proponiendo sucesivamente un modelo teórico para el estudio de la narrativa desde una perspectiva antropológica. La estructura del deseo mimético elaborada por René Girard sirve de fundamento para determinarla estructura común subyacente a la literatura y a la antropología que, según el enfoque aquí propuesto, radica en una búsqueda de alteridad generada por la incompletitud biológica del hombre y por su indeterminación ontológica. Finalmente, el concepto de la Wanderung romántica, en oposición al modelo del viaje, sirve como metáfora para demostrar la íntima relación entre ambas disciplinas y su esencia común.The text analyzes the relationships between anthropology and literature. It begins by presenting a distinction between Literary Anthropology and Anthropology of Literature and it continues proposing a theoretical pattern for the study of narrative from an anthropological point of view. The structure of mimetic desire elaborated by René Girard works as a basis to determine the common structure underlying both literature and anthropology. The text proposes that such a structure is based on a pursuit of otherness generated by the man’s biological incompleteness and ontological indetermination. The last part of the essay presents the concept of romantic Wanderung, in opposition to the model of journey, as a metaphor to demonstrate the close relationship between both disciplines and their common essence

Intelligent Machining Systems

Machining is one of the most widespread manufacturing processes and plays a critical role in industries. As a matter of fact, machine tools are often called mother machines as they are used to produce other machines and production plants. The continuous development of innovative materials and the increasing competitiveness are two of the challenges that nowadays manufacturing industries have to cope with. The increasing attention to environmental issues and the rising costs of raw materials drive the development of machining systems able to continuously monitor the ongoing process, identify eventual arising problems and adopt appropriate countermeasures to resolve or prevent these issues, leading to an overall optimization of the process. This work presents the development of intelligent machining systems based on in-process monitoring which can be implemented on production machines in order to enhance their performances. Therefore, some cases of monitoring systems developed in different fields, and for different applications, are presented in order to demonstrate the functions which can be enabled by the adoption of these systems. Design and realization of an advanced experimental machining testbed is presented in order to give an example of a machine tool retrofit aimed to enable advanced monitoring and control solutions. Finally, the implementation of a data-driven simulation of the machining process is presented. The modelling and simulation phases are presented and discussed. So, the model is applied to data collected during an experimental campaign in order to tune it. The opportunities enabled by integrating monitoring systems with simulation are presented with preliminary studies on the development of two virtual sensors for the material conformance and cutting parameter estimation during machining processes

The interpersonal function in written discourse: a comparative study of English and Italian undergraduate writing

This study is a comparative analysis of university student writing in English and Italian (the native languages of the students). The main research issue investigated here relates to the differences and similarities in student writing across languages when the same text -type is produced within comparable situations. Cross -linguistic and cross -cultural variation in encoding and transmitting knowledge and in the way critical enquiry is conducted can be an area of potential difficulty when languages and cultures come into contact. Comparative analysis is a tool for investigating, explaining and, possibly, avoiding some of the potential errors and misunderstandings that may arise in cross -cultural communication. In particular the study focuses on writing conventions used by English and Italian native speaker students when writing about literature for their university courses.The data are texts of argumentative prose about literature (in the students' mother tongue) written for university examinations during an undergraduate degree course. The linguistic analysis focuses on discoursal devices related to the interpersonal metafunction. The fundamental hypothesis underlying the study is that the devices more centrally related to this metafunction can offer insights into the writing conventions adopted by the students. Whereas the interpersonal metafunction as the focus of analysis is a concept derived from Halliday, the actual linguistic analysis of discoursal features draws on different approaches to discourse study because the framework of analysis had to be flexible enough to encompass the investigation of two different languages and there was no standardised method of analysis for the present type of research. The linguistic areas focused upon are: person markers, `impersonal' and passive structures, modality, evaluative strategies (Politeness Theory), metadiscoursal features, devices establishing an overt link between writer and reader, rhetorical prominence and its effects on discourse.The Italian and English corpora of data (chosen to be representative of the text -type and the context of language production) have been manually analysed and tagged. The study is qualitative and descriptive (not normative): quantitative observations only contribute to identifying tendencies within a qualitative analysis. The findings have yielded tendencies and insights rather than clear -cut answers to the research questions, and the linguistic investigation itself has opened several potential areas for further research.The data show that the same argumentative text -type has a similar function in both sets of data, but the encoding of discoursal features indicates that the relation between the main participants (students and examiners) and that between the participants and the literary topics differ cross -linguistically. The English students show a more direct approach to the subject matter and the addressee than do the Italian students. This influences both the linguistic encoding of the argumentative mode in the two sets of data and the conventionalised projection of discourse roles in the students' texts. The study shows that awareness should be raised of the potential problems which might occur at the discourse level when students are asked to use unfamiliar writing conventions or have to write in a foreign language setting

New Perspectives on Treatment of Hepatitis B Before and After Liver Transplantation

open5noThe hepatitis B virus (HBV) infects more than 260 million people globally, with increasing incidence, especially in developing countries. Despite antiviral therapies, HBV-related end-stage liver disease remains one of the most important indications for liver transplantation worldwide. Although new available treatments have improved the outcome of patients with both compensated and decompensated liver disease in some specific clinical settings as acute-on-chronic liver failure mortality is still high. Moreover, the incidence of HBV-related hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) seems to be increasing and represents a major challenge for the transplant team. In the post-transplant setting, combination of anti-HBV immunoglobulins and oral nucleos(t)ides provided significant improvement on graft and patient survival. Furthermore, recent data suggested the possibility of personalized therapeutic algorithms based on pre and post-transplant viral and host risk factors. Finally, liver grafts from HBV core antibody (anti-HBc) positive or hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) donors can be safely used in order to expand the donor pool, considering adequate allocation and tailored prophylaxis after LT. In this review we have focused on the evolution of antiviral therapy for HBV, highlighting useful information to aid the transplant hepatologist in clinical practice.ReviewopenZanetto, Alberto; Ferrarese, Alberto; Bortoluzzi, Ilaria; Burra, Patrizia; Russo, Francesco PaoloZanetto, Alberto; Ferrarese, Alberto; Bortoluzzi, Ilaria; Burra, Patrizia; Russo, FRANCESCO PAOL

Estudo da passivação do ferro em soluções de fosfato alcalinas através de técnicas eletroquímicas, microscopia eletrônica de varredura e espectroscopia de energia dispersiva

TCC (graduação) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Ciências Físicas e Matemáticas, Curso de Química.Estudou-se a passivação do ferro em soluções alcalinas de monohidrogenofosfato de sódio (pH 8,9 — 11,0) através de técnicas eletroquimicas, microscopia eletrônica de varredura (MEV) e Espectroscopia de Energia Dispersiva (EED). Foram empregadas como variáveis de estudo a concentração do eletrólito, o tempo e o potencial de polarização, o pH e a temperatura da solução. Os resultados do estudo potenciostático do fenômeno de passivação mostraram que com o aumento da concentração eletrolitica há uma diminuição da densidade da corrente de corrosão. A partir dos resultados obtidos, notou-se que o tempo de polarização exerce uma influência acentuada sobre o sistema. Para t 30 s o valor do potencial de corrosão (E con.) após 1,0 h de ensaio é semelhante ao de um eletrodo isento de polarização. Quando t 30 s há um deslocamento do E co, para valores mais nobres. O potencial de corrosão está associado à natureza da espécie na interface metalfilme e filme-solução. As micrografias eletrônicas de varredura evidenciaram que o filme formado com o eletrodo polarizado em +0,50 V durante 1200 s é mais homogêneo e menos rugoso do que o filme formado espontaneamente na ausência de polarização ou com tempos de polarização muito pequenos (t < 120 s). No que diz respeito A. espessura do filme verificou-se que é necessário um tempo mínimo de polarização (,I_-p olariza0-0) de 100 s para que a superfície do eletrodo seja bloqueada. Ainda de acordo com os nossos experimentos, a espessura do filme não exerce influência sobre o Eco,r, ao contrário do proposto por alguns autores. A temperatura do sistema mostrou influência sobre a velocidade de precipitação do filme e, consequentemente, em seu nível de organização, tornando filmes precipitados em menores temperaturas mais compactos e por isso com valores mais nobres de potencial de corrosão. 0 pH do eletrólito demonstrou ter importante influência sobre a composição química do filme passivante, e consequentemente nas características passivantes do filme. As microscopias eletrônicas de varredura mostraram que o filme passivante é constituído de material amorfo e as análises via espectroscopia de energia dispersiva mostraram que a constituição do filme varia conforme as condições experimentais durante a sua precipitação

Development of tridimensional carbon fiber/epoxy composites reinforced through the thickness and the mechanical characterization of interlaminar fracture toughness and vibration properties

This study is focused on the assessment of the interlaminar fracture toughness in mode II and vibration mechanical properties of composites reinforced through the thickness with rectangular z-pinned manufactured by VARTM (Vacuum-assisted resin transfer molding) process. The influence of z-pinning in the mechanical properties of laminated structures is carried out and for the specimens with different z-pins sizes and pin areal densities are manufactured after Design of Experiment (DOE) matrix determination. For the composites fabricated without a polymeric mold, vibration properties z-pins reinforced composites demonstrated that the size and density of insertion of z-pins has a direct influence on the natural frequency of vibration, on the damping, or loss, and the amplitude of vibration. With the optimization made by the method of response surface (MSR), in a mono-objective analysis, it was demonstrated that it is possible to obtaining reductions in the maximum amplitude of forced vibration of 115%, and in an analysis multi objective has been shown that with a given insertion density and size of z-pins 81% reductions in maximum forced vibration amplitude and increases of 25% and 11% can be achieved damping factor and natural frequency of vibration, respectively. For the composites manufactured with polymeric mold, the fracture toughness in mode II was investigated and the results showed that pinning in composites improved the fracture resistance for all pinning proposals built. For the NPC (Non-precracked) step, the highest (GIIc)value achieved was for a 0.50 mm with a 2% pin density insertion, being 106% higher than the unpinned specimen. For the PC (Precracked) step, the thicker pins 1.00 mm and 1.10 mm acted again as a positive influence to mitigate the delamination and achieved elevated values of (GIIc), 77.5% and 78.3% higher than the unpinned specimen, respectively. The statistical results pointed that for the NPC case, the increase in density of pins always generates an increase in the fracture toughness and the contribution of the pin size to increase the fracture toughness. From there, increasing the size of the pin has little influence in NPC. For PC case, was shown that the pin size increasing decreases the fracture resistance, except for low pin density. Furthermore, the Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) trained with part of these experimental data showed excellent predictive capacity of fracture toughness. The modal responses of the laminates fabricated with a polymeric mold the experimental results indicated that, in most cases, there was an increase in the natural frequency and highlights the reduction, from approx. 60% to 70%, in the amplitude of vibration for all specimens with z-pin reinforcement in comparison to the unpinned. Furthermore, the experimental data compared the statistical results pointed that z pins had a positive influence increasing and decreasing natural frequency and forced vibration amplitude, respectively, of z-pinned composites compared to the non-reinforced and the trained ANN with the experimental data presented a very good agreement with experimental tests carried out in this investigation for predicting modal response.Este estudo tem como objetivo analisar a influência da inserção de z-pins retangulares com diferentes tamanhos e densidades de inserção, determinados pela matriz de experimentos de um Planejamento de Experimentos (DOE), nas propriedades mecânicas de tenacidade à fratura interlaminar em modo II e de vibrações de compósitos reforçados através da espessura fabricados por VARTM (Vacuum-assisted resin transfer molding). Para os compósitos fabricados sem molde polimérico, as propriedades de vibração dos compósitos reforçados com z-pins demonstraram que o tamanho e a densidade de inserção têm influência direta na frequência natural de vibração, no amortecimento e na amplitude de vibração. Com a otimização feita pelo método de superfície de resposta (MSR), em uma análise monoobjetiva, foi demonstrado que é possível obter reduções na amplitude máxima de vibração forçada de 115%, e em uma análise multiobjetiva foi demonstrado que com uma determinada densidade de inserção e tamanho dos z-pins têm-se 81% de redução na amplitude máxima de vibração forçada e aumentos de 25% e 11% podem ser alcançados no fator de amortecimento e na frequência natural de vibração, respectivamente. Para os compósitos fabricados com molde polimérico, a tenacidade à fratura em modo II foi investigada e os resultados mostraram que a inserção de z-pins aumentou a resistência à delaminação para todas os corpos de prova. Para a etapa NPC (Non-precracked), o maior valor de (GIIc) foi para o pino de 0,50 mm com inserção de 2%, sendo 106% superior ao corpo de prova sem reforço através da espessura. Para a etapa PC (Precracked), os pinos maiores com 1,00 mm e 1,10 mm atuaram novamente como uma influência positiva para mitigar a delaminação e atingiram valores elevados de (GIIc), 77,5% e 78,3% maiores que o corpo de prova sem pino, respectivamente. Os resultados estatísticos apontaram que para o caso NPC, o aumento da densidade de inserção sempre gera um aumento na tenacidade à fratura. A partir disto, aumentar o tamanho do pino tem pouca influência no NPC. Para a etapa PC foi demonstrado que o aumento do tamanho do pino diminui a resistência à fratura, exceto para baixa densidade de inserção. Além disso, as Redes Neurais Artificiais (Artifial Neural Network - ANN) treinadas com parte dos dados experimentais mostraram excelente capacidade preditiva das propriedades de tenacidade à fratura interlaminar. Para as respostas modais dos laminados fabricados com molde polimérico, os resultados experimentais indicaram que, na maioria dos casos, houve um aumento na frequência natural e houve uma redução, entre 60% a 70%, na amplitude de vibração para todos os corpos de prova reforçados com z-pins quando comparados aos sem reforço através da espessura. Além disso, os dados experimentais comparados com os resultados estatísticos apontaram que os z-pins tiveram uma influência positiva aumentando a frequência natural e diminuindo a amplitude de vibração forçada dos compósitos reforçados com z-pins, além disso, a ANN treinada com os dados experimentais apresentou concordância com os resultados dos testes experimentais realizados neste trabalho para se prever as respostas modais