Finding Common Ground For Content And Technology: A Model For Course Development

A mathematics educator and an instructional technologist developed a practical, collaborative model that integrates content and technology and applied this model to a mathematics course for prospective elementary school teachers

Gene therapy for monogenic liver diseases: clinical successes, current challenges and future prospects

Over the last decade, pioneering liver-directed gene therapy trials for haemophilia B have achieved sustained clinical improvement after a single systemic injection of adeno-associated virus (AAV) derived vectors encoding the human factor IX cDNA. These trials demonstrate the potential of AAV technology to provide long-lasting clinical benefit in the treatment of monogenic liver disorders. Indeed, with more than ten ongoing or planned clinical trials for haemophilia A and B and dozens of trials planned for other inherited genetic/metabolic liver diseases, clinical translation is expanding rapidly. Gene therapy is likely to become an option for routine care of a subset of severe inherited genetic/metabolic liver diseases in the relatively near term. In this review, we aim to summarise the milestones in the development of gene therapy, present the different vector tools and their clinical applications for liver-directed gene therapy. AAV-derived vectors are emerging as the leading candidates for clinical translation of gene delivery to the liver. Therefore, we focus on clinical applications of AAV vectors in providing the most recent update on clinical outcomes of completed and ongoing gene therapy trials and comment on the current challenges that the field is facing for large-scale clinical translation. There is clearly an urgent need for more efficient therapies in many severe monogenic liver disorders, which will require careful risk-benefit analysis for each indication, especially in paediatrics

Hybrid approach for travel-time seismic tomography in elliptical anisotropic media

Hybrid approach for seismic travel time tomography is proposed in the case of elliptical anisotropic media. A sequential scheme is presented that combines Simulating Annealing with Linearized Least Squares inversion: at first, Simulated Annealing is implemented to obtain a velocity model that can be used as initial guess for successive Linearized Least Square inversion; in the meantime Linear Traveltime Interpolation is diffusely used to trace raypaths and calculate traveltimes. The procedure was tested both for a synthetic model and a field study. Since the field study come from a previous study, uniquely solved by Linearized Least Squares inversion without suggestions for initial guess of the velocity model, we were interested in evaluating upgrades from hybrid approach compared with solutions coming from a single technique. We found hybrid approach able to individuate a better velocity model with respect to a ”single technique” approach but, as the improvement was slight despite of the big amount of computation time needed by simulated annealing, we had also an indirect validation of the previous results of the field study

Staggered grids as a tool to improve the model resolution in seismic tomography for elliptical anisotropic media

In this study we present the use of staggered grid as a tool to improve the resolution of inverse model in seismic tomography in the case of elliptical anisotropic media. We analyze two synthetic models, both showing elliptical anisotropic characteristics, with different complexity: the first consists of a body with rectangular shape having inside an anomaly with higher velocity and the second one is characterized by morphological variation to simulate a watershed. This second case is studied for both cross-hole and high ray coverage configuration. Successively, a previous field survey is analyzed introducing staggered grids and the results are compared with the old ones, solved using a constant cells’ size model. Staggered grid give enhanced results in terms of the velocity model and can be used as a tool to improve the knowledge of the studied domain by determining cells with variable shape and size, useful to infer a good initial model for a further inversion. This conclusion applies also to isotropic media

Electrical Resistivity and Seismic Refraction Tomography to detect buried cavities

Paper: D03

STUDIES ON ANTICANDIDA AGENTS WITH A PYRROLE MOIETY - SYNTHESIS AND MICROBIOLOGICAL ACTIVITY OF SOME [(1-ALKYL),(1-ARYL) AND (1-BENZYL)-5-ARYL-3-CARBOXAMIDO-2-METHYL]PYRROLE DERIVATIVES

The synthesis of some [(1-alkyl), (1-aryl) and (1-benzyl)-5-aryl-3-carboxamido-2-metyl]pyrrole derivatives is reported. Their activity against Candida strains has been assessed and the structure-activity relationships for these compounds are discussed