The small GTPase Rab29 is a common regulator of immune synapse assembly and ciliogenesis

Acknowledgements We wish to thank Jorge Galán, Gregory Pazour, Derek Toomre, Giuliano Callaini, Joel Rosenbaum, Alessandra Boletta and Francesco Blasi for generously providing reagents and for productive discussions, and Sonia Grassini for technical assistance. The work was carried out with the financial support of Telethon (GGP11021) and AIRC.Peer reviewedPostprin

Alignment of the ALICE Inner Tracking System with cosmic-ray tracks

37 pages, 15 figures, revised version, accepted by JINSTALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) experiment devoted to investigating the strongly interacting matter created in nucleus-nucleus collisions at the LHC energies. The ALICE ITS, Inner Tracking System, consists of six cylindrical layers of silicon detectors with three different technologies; in the outward direction: two layers of pixel detectors, two layers each of drift, and strip detectors. The number of parameters to be determined in the spatial alignment of the 2198 sensor modules of the ITS is about 13,000. The target alignment precision is well below 10 micron in some cases (pixels). The sources of alignment information include survey measurements, and the reconstructed tracks from cosmic rays and from proton-proton collisions. The main track-based alignment method uses the Millepede global approach. An iterative local method was developed and used as well. We present the results obtained for the ITS alignment using about 10^5 charged tracks from cosmic rays that have been collected during summer 2008, with the ALICE solenoidal magnet switched off.Peer reviewe

Pulmonary silicosis and systemic lupus erythematosus in men: a report of two cases

We report two cases of coexistence of pulmonary silicosis and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). The patients are two men with SLE exposed to silica for 20 years. The hypothesis that silica exposure is linked to a wide variety of known or suspected autoimmune diseases, including SLE, has been discussed in the last decade but few cases of pulmonary silicosis and SLE were reported. Our purpose was to bring attention to the increasing evidence that silica may also cause or stimulate SLE, and to suggest that the researchers look for occupational exposure, mainly in male SLE patients. (C) 2002 Editions scientifiques et medicales Elsevier SAS.691687

Presence of micronuclei in lymphocytes of mercury exposed workers

We have investigated the presence of micronuclei in mercury exposed workers. The study group consisted of 15 workers from a mercury-producing plant, mean age 39.5 years and a mean exposed period of 12 years. At the time of testing and for the six previous months, the exposed population had urinary mercury levels below the currently accepted limit of 50 ug/g creatinine. A significant increase in the percentage of micronuclei was observed in the mercury exposed individuals when compared to the non exposed group. We have not found any correlation between the percentage of micronuclei and age, length of exposure or urinary mercury concentrations. Our results suggest a genotoxic effect of mercury, which is observed in workers exposed chronically to levels considered biologically safe for the exposed population.21114115