Association of kidney disease measures with risk of renal function worsening in patients with type 1 diabetes

Background: Albuminuria has been classically considered a marker of kidney damage progression in diabetic patients and it is routinely assessed to monitor kidney function. However, the role of a mild GFR reduction on the development of stage 653 CKD has been less explored in type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) patients. Aim of the present study was to evaluate the prognostic role of kidney disease measures, namely albuminuria and reduced GFR, on the development of stage 653 CKD in a large cohort of patients affected by T1DM. Methods: A total of 4284 patients affected by T1DM followed-up at 76 diabetes centers participating to the Italian Association of Clinical Diabetologists (Associazione Medici Diabetologi, AMD) initiative constitutes the study population. Urinary albumin excretion (ACR) and estimated GFR (eGFR) were retrieved and analyzed. The incidence of stage 653 CKD (eGFR < 60 mL/min/1.73 m2) or eGFR reduction > 30% from baseline was evaluated. Results: The mean estimated GFR was 98 \ub1 17 mL/min/1.73m2 and the proportion of patients with albuminuria was 15.3% (n = 654) at baseline. About 8% (n = 337) of patients developed one of the two renal endpoints during the 4-year follow-up period. Age, albuminuria (micro or macro) and baseline eGFR < 90 ml/min/m2 were independent risk factors for stage 653 CKD and renal function worsening. When compared to patients with eGFR > 90 ml/min/1.73m2 and normoalbuminuria, those with albuminuria at baseline had a 1.69 greater risk of reaching stage 3 CKD, while patients with mild eGFR reduction (i.e. eGFR between 90 and 60 mL/min/1.73 m2) show a 3.81 greater risk that rose to 8.24 for those patients with albuminuria and mild eGFR reduction at baseline. Conclusions: Albuminuria and eGFR reduction represent independent risk factors for incident stage 653 CKD in T1DM patients. The simultaneous occurrence of reduced eGFR and albuminuria have a synergistic effect on renal function worsening

Emission of forward neutrons by 158A GeV indium nuclei in collisions with Al, Cu, Sn and Pb

The cross sections of forward emission of one, two and three neutrons by 158A GeV 115In nuclei in collisions with Al, Cu, Sn and Pb targets are reported. The measurements were performed in the framework of the ALICE-LUMI experiment at the SPS facility at CERN. Various corrections accounting for the absorption of beam nuclei and produced neutrons in target material and surrounding air were introduced. The corrected cross section data are compared with the predictions of the RELDIS model for electromagnetic fragmentation of 115In in ultraperipheral collisions, as well as with the results of the abrasion-ablation model for neutron emission in hadronic interactions. The measured neutron emission cross sections well agree with the RELDIS results, with the exception of In-Al collisions where the measured cross sections are larger compared to RELDIS. This is attributed to a relatively large contribution of hadronic fragmentation of In on Al target with respect to electromagnetic fragmentation, on the contrary to similar measurements performed earlier with 30A GeV 208Pb colliding with Al.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, 11 tables: updates to the paper structure, typos fixed in version

A Multigap Resistive Plate Chambers array for the Extreme Energy Events Project

The Extreme Energy Events (EEE) Project is a Centro Fermi - CERN - INFN - MIUR Collaboration Project, for the study of extremely high-energy cosmic rays, which exploits the Multigap Resistive Plate Chamber (MRPC) technology. The excellent time resolution and good tracking capability of this detector allows us to study Extensive Air Showers (EAS) with an array of telescopes distributed all over the Italian territory. Each telescope is installed in a High School, with the additional goal to introduce students to particle and astroparticle Physics. The EEE array is composed, so far, of 47 telescopes, each made of three MRPC planes, spanning more than 10 degrees in latitude and 11 in longitude, organized in clusters and single telescope stations. The status of the experiment and the results, obtained during two recent coordinated data taking periods, will be reported. The observation of Forbush decreases, coincidence events among different telescopes and the muon decay, using more than 5 billion tracks collected in the last few months, are of particular interest

\u3c6 and \u3c9 meson production in annihilation and the OZI rule

The phipi+/omegapi+ ratio from npBAR annihilations on a liquid hydrogen target, for nBAR momenta between 64 and 297 MeV/c, was measured using the OBELIX spectrometer at LEAR. The ratio R(phipi/omegapi) = sigma(npBAR --> phipi+)/sigma(npBAR --> omegapi+) turned out 0.110 +/- 0.015(stat) +/- 0.006syst. Implications of this result on the OZI rule are discussed

Study of the OZI-rule violation in antiproton annihilation in deuterium at rest

The branching ratios of \u3a6\u3c0 12 and \u3c9\u3c0 12 final states were measured for the antiproton annihilation in gaseous deuterium at rest. A significant violation of the OZI rule was found

First results from OBELIX on reactions with detected neutral poins in the final state

We describe some results obtained by the OBELIX experiment at LEAR by exploiting the whole spectrometer, including the electromagnetic calorimeter, to study the antiproton-proton annihilation at rest in an NTP hydrogen target. In particular, we give some information on the calibration of the calorimeter, as obtained from the analysis of two-prong events, and we describe the status of the analysis of the first sample of \uaball neutrals\ubb events collected in gaseous hydrogen. A preliminary result on the branching ratio of the annihilation reaction p\u2c9p\u2192\u3c00\u3c00 is reported

Transverse momentum and transverse mass distributions of mesons produced in p-A and Pb-Pb interactions at the CERN SPS

We present a study of the transverse momentum and transverse mass of J/11,mesons pro- duced in nucleus-nucleus and p-nucleus reactions. They include the most recent data col- lected by the NA50 experiment in Pb-Pb and p-A reactions at 158 GeV/c and 400 GeV/c incident momentum respectively. Together with S-U results previously published by ex- periment NA38, the mean squared transverse momentum of J/Psi mesons exhibit a scaling behaiiour which could result from initial state parton interaction. However, for the most central Pb-Pb collisions a saturation effect is observed as a function of centrality

Status and perspective of the DarkSide experiment at LNGS

The DarkSide experiment aims to perform a background-free direct search for dark matter with a dual-phase argon TPC. The current phase of the experiment, DarkSide-50, is acquiring data at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso and produced the most sensitive limit on the WIMP-nucleon cross section ever obtained with a liquid argon target (2.0 7 10-44cm2for a WIMP mass of 100 GeV/c2). The future phase of the experiment will be a 20 t fiducial mass detector, designed to reach a sensitivity of 3c 1 7 10-47cm2(at 1 TeV/c2WIMP mass) with a background-free exposure of 100 ty. This work contains a discussion of the current status of the DarkSide-50 WIMP search and of the results which are more relevant for the construction of the future detector