The n-acetyl phenylalanine glucosamine derivative attenuates the inflammatory/catabolic environment in a chondrocyte-synoviocyte co-culture system

Osteoarthritis (OA), the most prevalent degenerative joint disease, still lacks a true disease-modifying therapy. The involvement of the NF-κB pathway and its upstream activating kinases in OA pathogenesis has been recognized for many years. The ability of the N-acetyl phenylalanine glucosamine derivative (NAPA) to increase anabolism and reduce catabolism via inhibition of IKKα kinase has been previously observed in vitro and in vivo. The present study aims to confirm the chondroprotective effects of NAPA in an in vitro model of joint OA established with primary cells, respecting both the crosstalk between chondrocytes and synoviocytes and their phenotypes. This model satisfactorily reproduces some features of the previously investigated DMM model, such as the prominent induction of ADAMTS-5 upon inflammatory stimulation. Both gene and protein expression analysis indicated the ability of NAPA to counteract key cartilage catabolic enzymes (ADAMTS-5) and effectors (MCP-1). Molecular analysis showed the ability of NAPA to reduce IKKα nuclear translocation and H3Ser10 phosphorylation, thus inhibiting IKKα transactivation of NF-κB signalling, a pivotal step in the NF-κB-dependent gene expression of some of its targets. In conclusion, our data confirm that NAPA could truly act as a disease-modifying drug in OA

Sleep Quality through Vocal Analysis: a Telemedicine Application

Voice is a reservoir of valuable health data. Recent studies highlighted its efficacy in predicting sleep quality, and its potential as biomarker of neurodegeneration. This study assesses the feasibility of a Telemedicine system for the evaluation of sleep quality through brief vocal recordings. Machine Learning models were employed in the binary classification between good and poor sleepers, with great performance in scoring poor sleep quality - 88% and 85% F-1 score on a 5-fold Cross Validation (CV) for females and males, respectively. Moreover, the correlation between perceived sleep quality and a validated global score was studied, as well as the influence of external factors and sleep-wake schedule

Speech impairment in Parkinson’s disease: acoustic analysis of unvoiced consonants in Italian native speakers

The study of the influence of Parkinson’s Disease (PD) on vocal signals has received much attention over the last decades. Increasing interest has been devoted to articulation and acoustic characterization of different phonemes. Method: In this study we propose the analysis of the Transition Regions (TR) of specific phonetic groups to model the loss of motor control and the difficulty to start/stop movements, typical of PD patients. For this purpose, we extracted 60 features from pre-processed vocal signals and used them as input to several machine learning models. We employed two data sets, containing samples from Italian native speakers, for training and testing. The first dataset - 28 PD patients and 22 Healthy Control (HC) - included recordings in optimal conditions, while in the second one - 26 PD patients and 18 HC- signals were collected at home, using non-professional microphones. Results: We optimized two support vector machine models for the application in controlled noise conditions and home environments, achieving 98% ± 1.1 and 88% ± 2.8 accuracy in 10-fold cross-validation, respectively. Conclusion: This study confirms the high capability of the TRs to discriminate between PD patients and healthy controls, and the feasibility of automatic PD assessment using voice recordings. Moreover, the promising performance of the implemented model discloses the option of voice processing using low-cost devices and domestic recordings, possibly self-managed by the patients themselves

Correlation between wearable inertial sensor data and standardised Parkinson's disease axial impairment measures using machine learning

Wearable sensors represent a valuable means for monitoring motion signs and symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (PD). In this paper, we explore the potential of a single inertial sensor to yield information correlated to the patient’s subjective perception of axial motion impairment during daily activities. This latter is expressed using as a relevant metric the sum of MDS-UPDRS items 2.11-2.13. Methods: thirty-one patients with PD were enrolled in this study, and asked to perform a timed-up-and-go test while wearing an inertial sensor on their thigh. Several time- and frequency-domain features were extracted from the inertial signals. They were fed to a random forest regression model for the prediction of the axial impairment metric. The model was optimized using 10-fold cross-validation and performance were assessed using leave-one-subject-out test. Results: Pearson correlation coefficient with the addressed metric of 0.76 (0.86) and mean absolute error of 1.70 (1.52) were obtained in patients under (not under) dopaminergic therapy. Moreover, moderate to strong correlations were found between the predicted score and some important disease progression, axial impairment, and motor performance metrics. Conclusion: a single wearable inertial sensor may be used for assessing motor disabilities of patients with PD

Formation of a Nematic Fluid at High Fields in Sr3Ru2O7

In principle, a complex assembly of strongly interacting electrons can self-organise into a wide variety of collective states, but relatively few such states have been identified in practice. We report that, in the close vicinity of a metamagnetic quantum critical point, high purity Sr3Ru2O7 possesses a large magnetoresistive anisotropy, consistent with the existence of an electronic nematic fluid. We discuss a striking phenomenological similarity between our observations and those made in high purity two-dimensional electron fluids in GaAs devices.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, 11 extra pages of supplementary informatio

Anomalous out-of-equilibrium dynamics in the spin-ice material Dy2Ti2O7 under moderate magnetic fields

This work was supported by Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (ANPCyT) through grants PICT 2013-2004, PICT 2014-2618 and PICT 2017-2347, and Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) through Grant PIP 0446.We study experimentally and numerically the dynamics of the spin ice material Dy2Ti2O7 in the low temperature (T) and moderate magnetic field (B) regime (T ∈ [0.1, 1.7]  K, B ∈ [0, 0.3]  T). Our objective is to understand the main physics shaping the out-of-equilibrium magnetisation vs temperature curves in two different regimes. Very far from equilibrium, turning on the magnetic field after having cooled the system in zero field (ZFC) can increase the concentration of magnetic monopoles (localised thermal excitations present in these systems); this accelerates the dynamics. Similarly to electrolytes, this occurs through dissociation of bound monopole pairs. However, for spin ices the polarisation of the vacuum out of which the monopole pairs are created is a key factor shaping the magnetisation curves, with no analog. We observe a threshold field near 0.2 T for this fast dynamics to take place, linked to the maximum magnetic force between the attracting pairs. Surprisingly, within a regime of low temperatures and moderate fields, an extended Ohm's law can be used to describe the ZFC magnetisation curve obtained with the dipolar spin-ice model. However, in real samples the acceleration of the dynamics appears even sharper than in simulations, possibly due to the presence of avalanches. On the other hand, the effect of the field nearer equilibrium can be just the opposite to that at very low temperatures. Single crystals, as noted before for powders, abandon equilibrium at a blocking temperature TB which increases with field. Curiously, this behaviour is present in numerical simulations even within the nearest-neighbours interactions model. Simulations and experiments show that the increasing trend in TB is stronger for B||[100]. This suggests that the field plays a part in the dynamical arrest through monopole suppression, which is quite manifest for this field orientation.PostprintPeer reviewe

Middle cerebral artery ischemic stroke and COVID-19: a case report

We present a clinical case of a patient with SARS-CoV-2 infection and respiratory symptoms, complicated with a pro-thrombotic state involving multiple vascular territories and concomitant interleukin-6 increase. This case underlines the possibility to develop a COVID-19-related coagulopathy

Field-tuned order by disorder in frustrated Ising magnets with antiferromagnetic interactions

We demonstrate the appearance of thermal order by disorder in Ising pyrochlores with staggered antiferromagnetic order frustrated by an applied magnetic field. We use a mean-field cluster variational method, a low-temperature expansion, and Monte Carlo simulations to characterize the order-by-disorder transition. By direct evaluation of the density of states, we quantitatively show how a symmetry-broken state is selected by thermal excitations. We discuss the relevance of our results to experiments in 2D and 3D samples and evaluate how anomalous finite-size effects could be exploited to detect this phenomenon experimentally in two-dimensional artificial systems, or in antiferromagnetic all-in-all-out pyrochlores like Nd2Hf2O7 or Nd2Zr2O7, for the first time.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe