Fatty images of the heart: spectrum of normal and pathological findings at computed tomography and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging.

Ectopic cardiac fatty images are not rarely detected incidentally at computed tomography and cardiac magnetic resonance, either in exams focused on the heart as in general thoracic imaging evaluations. A correct interpretation of these findings is essential in order to recognize their normal or pathological meaning, focusing on the eventually associated clinical implications. The development of techniques such as computed tomography and cardiac magnetic resonance allowed a detailed detection and evaluation of adipose tissue within the heart. This pictorial review illustrates the most common characteristics of cardiac fatty images at computed tomography and cardiac magnetic resonance, in a spectrum of normal and pathological conditions ranging from physiological adipose images to diseases presenting with cardiac fatty foci. Physiologic intramyocardial adipose tissue may normally be present in healthy adults, being not related to cardiac affections and without any clinical consequence. However cardiac fatty images may also be the expression of various diseases, comprehending arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia, post-myocardial infarction lipomatous metaplasia, dilated cardiomyopathy and lipomatous hypertrophy of the inter-atrial septum. Fatty neoplasms of the heart as lipoma and liposarcoma are also described

In-111 octreotide SPECT/CT in the early diagnosis of pulmonary sarcoidosis: A case report

Sarcoidosis is a granulomatous disease of unknown etiology. At present the best diagnostic imaging procedure to assess stage and activity of sarcoidosis is controversial. We report the case of a 50-year-old male admitted with a history of dyspnea and fatigue with past medical history negative for smoking, occupational and environmental risk factors. Physical examination, routine blood tests, and pulmonary function tests were normal except for hypercalciuria. A chest radiograph showed bilateral hilar lymphadenopathy. Single photon emission computed tomography and/or computed tomography (SPECT and/or CT) In-111 Octreotide (Octreoscan) scintigraphy confirmed morphologic involvement of bilateral hilar lymph nodes and a mediastinoscopy biopsy specimen provided diagnosis of pulmonary sarcoidosis (stage 0). This clinical case shows the effectiveness of In-111 Octreotide SPECT and/or CT in the early diagnosis of pulmonary sarcoidosis

Mechanical Hybrid KERS Based on Toroidal Traction Drives: An Example of Smart Tribological Design to Improve Terrestrial Vehicle Performance

We analyse in terms of efficiency and traction capabilities a recently patented traction drive, referred to as the double roller full-toroidal variator (DFTV). We compare its performance with the single roller full-toroidal variator (SFTV) and the single roller half-toroidal variator (SHTV). Modeling of these variators involves challenging tribological issues; the traction and efficiency performances depend on tribological phenomena occurring at the interface between rollers and disks, where the lubricant undergoes very severe elastohydrodynamic lubrication regimes. Interestingly, the DFTV shows an improvement of the mechanical efficiency over a wide range of transmission ratios and in particular at the unit speed ratio as in such conditions in which the DFTV allows for zero-spin, thus strongly enhancing its traction capabilities. The very high mechanical efficiency and traction performances of the DFTV are exploited to investigate the performance of a flywheel-based Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS), where the efficiency of the variator plays an important role in determining the overall energy recovery performance. The energy boost capabilities and the round-trip efficiency are calculated for the three different variators considered in this study. The results suggest that the energy recovery potential of the mechanical KERS can be improved with a proper choice of the variator

Design and Prototyping of Miniaturized Straight Bevel Gears for Biomedical Applications

This paper presents a semi-automated design algorithm for computing straight bevel gear involute profiles. The proposed formulation is based on the Tredgold approximation method. It allows the design of a pair of bevel gears with any desired number of teeth and relative axes inclination angles by implementing additive manufacturing technology. A specific case study is discussed to calculate the profiles of two straight bevel gears of a biomedical application. Namely, this paper illustrates the design of the bevel gears for a new laparoscopic robotic system, EasyLap, under development with a grant from POR Calabria 2014–2020 Fesr-Fse. A meshing analysis is carried out to identify potential design errors. Moreover, finite element-based tooth contact analysis is fulfilled for determining the vibrational performances of the conjugate tooth profiles throughout a whole meshing cycle. Simulation results and a built prototype are reported to show the engineering feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed design approach

Neonatal Hypersusceptibility to Endotoxin Correlates with Increased Tumor Necrosis Factor Production in Mice

Septic shock is a major cause of mortality in neonates. The hypothesis was tested that neonatal, age is associated with altered sensitivity to shock-inducing bacterial products or proinflammatory, cytokines (or both). Mice of different ages were inoculated with various doses of lipopolysaccharide, (LPS), superantigenic staphylococcal enterotoxin B (SEB), or recombinant tumor necrosis factor-α, (rTNF-α), alone or in combination with the sensitizing agent D-galactosamine. Neonatal mice were, markedly more susceptible to LPS-induced lethality but more resistant to SEB than were adults (P, \u3c .05). Mice of different ages did not differ, however, in their sensitivity to lethal activities of rTNFα. Neonatal susceptibility to LPS and SEB correlated directly with plasma TNF-α but not IFN-γ, levels, which was confirmed by TNF-α and IFN-γ blockade experiments. These data document, marked age-related differences in the pathophysiology of septic shock and suggest that IFN-γ is, not an obligatory mediator of either LPS- or SEB-induced lethality in neonates

Coherent backscattering and dynamical light localization in liquid crystals driven throughout chaotic regimes

An important effect of dynamical localization of light waves in liquid crystal electro-hydrodynamic instabilities is reported by investigating coherent backscattering effects. Recurrent multiple scattering in dynamic and chaotic complex fluids lead to a cone of enhanced backscattered light. The cone width and the related mean free path dependence on the dynamic scattering regimes emphasize the diverse light localization scales related to the internal structures present in the sample. The systems investigated up to now were mainly nano-powdered solutions or biological tissues, without any external control on the disorder. Here, an anisotropic complex fluid is "driven" throughout chaotic regimes by an external electric field, giving rise to dynamics that evolve through several spatio-temporal patterns

Secreted miR-210-3p as non-invasive biomarker in clear cell renal cell carcinoma

The most common subtype of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is clear cell RCC (ccRCC). It accounts for 70-80% of all renal malignancies representing the third most common urological cancer after prostate and bladder cancer. The identification of non-invasive biomarkers for the diagnosis and responsiveness to therapy of ccRCC may represent a relevant step-forward in ccRCC management. The aim of this study is to evaluate whether specific miRNAs deregulated in ccRCC tissues present altered levels also in urine specimens. To this end we first assessed that miR-21-5p, miR-210-3p and miR-221-3p resulted upregulated in ccRCC fresh frozen tissues compared to matched normal counterparts. Next, we evidenced that miR-210-3p resulted significantly upregulated in 38 urine specimens collected from two independent cohorts of ccRCC patients at the time of surgery compared to healthy donors samples. Of note, miR- 210-3p levels resulted significantly reduced in follow-up samples. These results point to miR-210-3p as a potential non-invasive biomarker useful not only for diagnosis but also for the assessment of complete resection or response to treatment in ccRCC management

On the Benefits of Using Object-Oriented Programming for the Objective Evaluation of Vehicle Dynamic Performance in Concurrent Simulations

Assessing passenger cars’ dynamic performance is a critical aspect for car industries, due to its impact on the overall vehicle safety evaluation and the subjective nature of the involved handling and comfort metrics. Accordingly, ISO standards, such as ISO 4138 and ISO 3888, define several specific driving tests to assess vehicle dynamics performance objectively. Consequently, proper evaluation of the dynamic behaviour requires measuring several physical quantities, including accelerations, speed, and linear and angular displacements obtained after instrumenting a vehicle with multiple sensors. This experimental activity is highly demanding in terms of hardware costs, and it is also significantly time-consuming. Several approaches can be considered for reducing vehicle development time. In particular, simulation software can be exploited to predict the approximate behaviour of a vehicle using virtual scenarios. Moreover, motion platforms and detail-scalable numerical vehicle models are widely implemented for the purpose. This paper focuses on a customized simulation environment developed in C++, which exploits the advantages of object-oriented programming. The presented framework strives to perform concurrent simulations of vehicles with different characteristics such as mass, tyres, engine, suspension, and transmission systems. Within the proposed simulation framework, we adopted a hierarchical and modular representation. Vehicles are modelled by a 14 degree-of-freedom (DOF) full-vehicle model, capable of capturing the dynamics and complemented by a set of scalable-detail models for the remaining sub-systems such as tyre, engine, and steering system. Furthermore, this paper proposes the usage of autonomous virtual drivers for a more objective evaluation of vehicle dynamic performances. Moreover, to further evaluate our simulator architecture’s efficiency and assess the achieved level of concurrency, we designed a benchmark able to analyse the scaling of the performances with respect to the number of different vehicles during the same simulation. Finally, the paper reports the proposed simulation environment’s scalability resulting from a set of different and varying driving scenarios