La descrizione del mondo. Reportage immaginari dalla città asiatica

Il volume elettronico raccoglie una selezione dei "reportage immaginari" elaborati negli anni 2011/12 e 2012/13 dagli studenti dell'atelier storia/progetto del Politecnico di Torino "Progettare la città asiatica", diretto da Michele Bonino e Filippo De Pieri. Con un'introduzione dei due curator

Time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation for composite bosons as the strong-coupling limit of the fermionic BCS-RPA approximation

The linear response to a space- and time-dependent external disturbance of a system of dilute condensed composite bosons at zero temperature, as obtained from the linearized version of the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation, is shown to result also from the strong-coupling limit of the time-dependent BCS (or broken-symmetry RPA) approximation for the constituent fermions subject to the same external disturbance. In this way, it is possible to connect excited-state properties of the bosonic and fermionic systems by placing the Gross-Pitaevskii equation in perspective with the corresponding fermionic approximationsComment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Functional single nucleotide polymorphisms in dopaminergic receptors D2 predict clinical response to Cariprazine

Cariprazine (CAR) is an antipsychotic drug for the treatment of schizophrenia (SCZ) and bipolar disorder (BD), and it acts as a partial agonist on the dopamine receptors (DR), D2, and D3. Although many single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in genes coding for these receptors are known to influence response to antipsychotics, to date, no study on CAR pharmacogenetics exists. In this pilot study, we investigated the relationship between SNPs in DRD2 (rs1800497 and rs6277) and DRD3 (rs6280), and response to CAR treatment, evaluated by the psychometric Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), in a cohort of Caucasian patients. We found a significant association between DRD2 rs1800497 and rs6277 and response to CAR treatment. When genotypes were combined into an arbitrary score, the receiver operating characteristic curve analysis showed that using a cut-off value of -2.5 the response to CAR treatment could be predicted with a positive likelihood ratio of 8.0. Our study report, for the first time, a correlation between SNPs in DRD2 and response to CAR treatment. After confirmation in a larger cohort of patients, our results could open the way for the identification of new tools for the provision of response to CAR treatment

"La descrizione del mondo". Reportage immaginari dalla città asiatica

Il volume elettronico raccoglie una selezione dei "reportage immaginari" elaborati negli anni 2011/12 e 2012/13 dagli studenti dell'atelier storia/progetto del Politecnico di Torino "Progettare la città asiatica", diretto da Michele Bonino e Filippo De Pieri. Con un'introduzione dei due curator

Prediction of antipsychotics efficacy based on a polygenic risk score: a real-world cohort study.

Background: Response to antipsychotics is subject to a wide interindividual variability, due to genetic and non-genetic factors. Several single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been associated with response to antipsychotics in genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Polygenic risk scores (PRS) are a powerful tool to aggregate into a single measure the small effects of multiple risk alleles. Materials and methods: We studied the association between a PRS composed of SNPs associated with response to antipsychotics in GWAS studies (PRS <sub>response</sub> ) in a real-world sample of patients (N = 460) with different diagnoses (schizophrenia spectrum, bipolar, depressive, neurocognitive, substance use disorders and miscellaneous). Two other PRSs composed of SNPs previously associated with risk of schizophrenia (PRS <sub>schizophrenia1</sub> and PRS <sub>schizophrenia2</sub> ) were also tested for their association with response to treatment. Results: PRS <sub>response</sub> was significantly associated with response to antipsychotics considering the whole cohort (OR = 1.14, CI = 1.03-1.26, p = 0.010), the subgroup of patients with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder or bipolar disorder (OR = 1.18, CI = 1.02-1.37, p = 0.022, N = 235), with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (OR = 1.24, CI = 1.04-1.47, p = 0.01, N = 176) and with schizophrenia (OR = 1.27, CI = 1.04-1.55, p = 0.01, N = 149). Sensitivity and specificity were sub-optimal (schizophrenia 62%, 61%; schizophrenia spectrum 56%, 55%; schizophrenia spectrum plus bipolar disorder 60%, 56%; all patients 63%, 58%, respectively). PRS <sub>schizophrenia1</sub> and PRS <sub>schizophrenia2</sub> were not significantly associated with response to treatment. Conclusion: PRS <sub>response</sub> defined from GWAS studies is significantly associated with response to antipsychotics in a real-world cohort; however, the results of the sensitivity-specificity analysis preclude its use as a predictive tool in clinical practice

Melanoma metastasis mimicking gastric cancer: a challenge that starts from diagnosis

The gastrointestinal tract is an uncommon site of metastasis in melanoma. However, when the primary melanoma cannot be found, the diagnosis of gastric melanoma by endoscopic biopsy is problematic mainly because some tumors are amelanotic and do not contain melanin granules detectable by microscopy. A 56-year-old Caucasian man with melanoma was referred to us following an initial histopathological diagnosis via gastroscopy of poorly differentiated primary gastric carcinoma. A computerized tomography (CT) scan showed metastatic disease and on the basis of this information we started palliative chemotherapy. However, the atypical presentation of the disease with subcutaneous metastases prompted us to make a more in-depth evaluation. Immunohistochemical evaluation modified the diagnosis to melanoma. After only one cycle of chemotherapy, treatment was changed to dabrafenib + trametinib, which was better tolerated and initially induced a partial response. The patient is currently in good clinical condition 20 months after diagnosis. Our case report highlights the difficulty in diagnosing melanoma of the gastrointestinal tract and indicates the need for pathologists and clinicians to consider such a possibility when they are faced with a diagnosis of poorly differentiated gastric cancer and unusual sites of metastasis

Extremely low-frequency electromagnetic fields do not affect DNA damage and gene expression profiles of yeast and human lymphocytes

We studied the effects of extremely low-frequency (50 Hz) electromagnetic fields (EMFs) on peripheral human blood lymphocytes and DBY747 Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Graded exposure to 50 Hz magnetic flux density was obtained with a Helmholtz coil system set at 1, 10 or 100 microT for 18 h. The effects of EMFs on DNA damage were studied with the single-cell gel electrophoresis assay (comet assay) in lymphocytes. Gene expression profiles of EMF-exposed human and yeast cells were evaluated with DNA microarrays containing 13,971 and 6,212 oligonucleotides, respectively. After exposure to the EMF, we did not observe an increase in the amount of strand breaks or oxidated DNA bases relative to controls or a variation in gene expression profiles. The results suggest that extremely low-frequency EMFs do not induce DNA damage or affect gene expression in these two different eukaryotic cell systems

Shrinking of a condensed fermionic cloud in a trap approaching the BEC limit

We determine the zero-temperature density profile of a cloud of fermionic atoms in a trap subject to a mutual attractive interaction, as the strength of the interaction is progressively increased. We find a significant decrease of the size of the atomic cloud as it evolves from the weak-coupling (BCS) regime of overlapping Cooper pairs to the strong-coupling (Bose-Einstein) regime of non-overlapping bound-fermion pairs. Most significantly, we find a pronounced increase of the value of the density at the center of the trap (even by an order of magnitude) when evolving between the two regimes. Our results are based on a generalized Thomas-Fermi approximation for the superfluid state, that covers continuously all coupling regimes.Comment: 5 pages, 3 postscript figure

Grey solitons in a strongly interacting superfluid Fermi Gas

The Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer to Bose-Einstein condensate (BCS to BEC) crossover problem is solved for stationary grey solitons via the Boguliubov-de Gennes equations at zero temperature. These \emph{crossover solitons} exhibit a localized notch in the gap and a characteristic phase difference across the notch for all interaction strengths, from BEC to BCS regimes. However, they do not follow the well-known Josephson-like sinusoidal relationship between velocity and phase difference except in the far BEC limit: at unitary the velocity has a nearly linear dependence on phase difference over an extended range. For fixed phase difference the soliton is of nearly constant depth from the BEC limit to unitarity and then grows progressively shallower into the BCS limit, and on the BCS side Friedel oscillations are apparent in both gap amplitude and phase. The crossover soliton appears fundamentally in the gap; we show, however, that the density closely follows the gap, and the soliton is therefore observable. We develop an approximate power law relationship to express this fact: the density of grey crossover solitons varies as the square of the gap amplitude in the BEC limit and a power of about 1.5 at unitarity.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, part of New Journal of Physics focus issue "Strongly Correlated Quantum Fluids: From Ultracold Quantum Gases to QCD Plasmas," in pres

An alternative to Neutral Red as a dye for environmental contaminant biomonitoring.

Many methods have been proposed for evaluating of toxic compound presence in water and then to assess the risks to both humans and animals. A common standards procedure for the measuring of contaminant toxicity strength in sea water organisms utilizes the response of a dye (Neutral Red), which accumulates in the acidic vescicles of biological sensors (i.e. Mollusc). When marine Mollusc such as mussels are exposed to pollutants, one of the characteristic pathological alterations is a decreased integrity in the lysosomal membrane. In this work we propose a comparison with the responses obtained with another dye, Acridine Orange. The results show that the response of Acridine Orange is linear in the whole operative pH range (i.e., between pH 4 and 7,4), while Neutral Red is insensitive between pH 6 and 7,4. In addition, Neutral Red shows a protonophore behaviour. We propose therefore that the use of Acridine Orange is preferred to that of Neutral Red, as well that Acridine Orange should be alternative to Neutral Red for the monitoring of stressing environment contaminants by means of biological sensors