Quantitative magnetic resonance characterization of the effect of physical training on skeletal muscle of the Ts65Dn mice, a model of Down syndrome

Down syndrome (DS) is characterized by muscle hypotonia and low muscle strength associated with motor dysfunction. Elucidation of the determinants of muscle weakness in DS would be relevant for therapeutic approaches aimed at treating/mitigating a physical disability with a strong impact on the quality of life in persons with DS. The Ts65Dn mice is a recognized mouse model of DS, with trisomic mice presenting gross motor and muscle phenotypes. The aim of this work was to assess the effect of physical exercise, a well-known tool to improve skeletal muscle condition, in the hindlimbs of trisomic and euploid male mice using quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) metabolomics and histological fiber typing were used to further characterize the post-exercise muscle. Quantitative MRI showed not significantly different amounts of skeletal muscle in proximal hindlimbs in trisomic and euploid mice both at baseline and after physical exercise (P>0.05). Similar results were obtained for hindlimbs subfascia adipose tissue, and subcutaneous adipose tissue (P>0.05). MRS showed lower amounts of exercise-related metabolites (valine, isoleucine, leucine) in euploid vs. trisomic mice after exercise (P <=.0.05). The percentage of slow-twitch fibers was similar in the two genotypes (P>0.05). We conclude that in DS adapted physical exercise (one month of training) does not induce quantitative changes in skeletal muscle or fiber type composition therein; however, the metabolic response of skeletal muscle to exercise may be affected by trisomy. These findings prompt further research investigating the role of physical exercise as a cue to clarify the mechanisms of the muscular deficit found in DS

SP-FISPACT 2001: a computer code for activation and decay calculations for intermediate energies. A connection of FISPACT with MCNPX

Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - Biblioteca Centrale - P.le Aldo Moro, 7, Rome / CNR - Consiglio Nazionale delle RichercheSIGLEITItal

The Lockdown and Smart Working Effects on Electric Energy Consumption: The Analysis for a Group of Employees

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the use of smart working: the working activity carried out also outside the office and not only at the office. This has interesting consequences also on the energy sector, since it can decrease commuting consumption and shifts electric consumption from the tertiary to domestic sector. In this work the electric consumption performance of a (representative) group of 10 employees, working with classical office equipment, has been investigated. The variation of the electric load curves has been analyzed in the office and at home before, during and after the 2020 lockdown restrictions introduced by the Italian government. Consumption changes, with respect to the previous year, have been analyzed and discussed. The variations of the electric load curves affect, in case of adoption of PV (photovoltaic) panels, PV self-sufficiency and PV self-consumption. In the case considered, while the former does not vary significantly (with values of about 40-50%), the latter decreases, in case of the office building, from 44% to 24% and it increases, in case of households, from 32% to 50%. These consequences have to be taken into account when programming new PV plant installations

Residual activation of the SPES Front-End system: a comparative study between the MCNPX and FLUKA codes

A study of the residual activation of the Front- End system structure of the SPES (Selective Production of Exotic Species) facility, currently under construction at the Legnaro National Laboratories of INFN, Italy, is performed. The study provides useful information for the planning of inspections, maintenance operations and decommissioning of the facility as well as for the assessment of radiological conditions and safety requirements in the design and operation of any accelerator-driven radioactive ion beam facility. To better assess the obtained results, two Monte Carlo codes were independently used: MCNPX combined with CINDER’90 and FLUKA. The results of the two calculation procedures are compared at each step: fissions, fluxes, activation, dose rate. Since the energy range considered does not represent a typical application for any of the two codes, the comparison of the collected results can provide useful inputs for the developers. In particular, the agreement of the two codes on the global quantities is good, being of the order of 20–40% on average, and never larger than a factor 2. Nevertheless, the comparative study shows that, in this energy range, FLUKA seems to underestimate the angular straggling of protons and to overestimate the proton interaction cross-sections, with respect to MCNPX

Towards Smart Cities for Tourism: the POLIS-EYE Project

Novel and widespread ICT and Internet of Things (IoT) technology can provide fine-grained real-time information to the tourist sector, both to support the demand side (tourists) and the supply side (managers and organizers). We present the POLIS-EYE project that aims to build decision-support systems helping tourist-managers to organize and optimize policies and resources. In particular, we focus on a service to monitor and forecast people presence in tourist areas by combining heterogeneous datasets with a special focus on data collected from the mobile phone network

The RIB production target for the SPES project

Facilities making use of the Isotope Separator On-Line (ISOL) method for the production of Radioactive Ion Beams (RIB) attract interest because they can be used for nuclear structure and reaction studies, astrophysics research and interdisciplinary applications. The ISOL technique is based on the fast release of the nuclear reaction products from the chosen target material together with their ionization into short-lived nuclei beams. Within this context, the SPES (Selective Production of Exotic Species) facility is now under construction in Italy at INFN-LNL (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare - Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro). The SPES facility will produce RIBs mainly from n-rich isotopes obtained by a 40MeV cyclotron proton beam (200 \u3bcA) directly impinging on a uranium carbide multi-foil fission target. The aim of this work is to describe and update, from a comprehensive point of view, the most important results obtained by the analysis of the on-line behavior of the SPES production target assembly. In particular an improved target configuration has been studied by comparing different codes and physics models: the thermal analyses and the isotope production are re-evaluated. Then some consequent radioprotection aspects, which are essential for the installation and operation of the facility, are presented