Statistics and medicine: the indispensable know-how of the researcher

Statistics has often been misunderstood in Medicine, but it is indispensable knowledge both for the experimenter and the reader. Statistical methods allow to study diseases, patients, and epidemiological events. The modern researcher cannot refuse to know and to use statistics. A deeper understanding is required to prepare a research project and to avoid colossal mistakes of misleading. The aim of this paper is to provide an organized and structured point of view on the use of statistics in Medicine and Research, showing the principal resources to organize a scientific study from the declaration of a hypothesis to the report of the results

Chapter Precision agriculture and conservation of coastal landscapes

The application of Precision Agriculture strategies represents an opportunity for farmers to obtain economic benefits. In the area of Metapontino, as demonstrated by the experimentation conducted, the challenge of producing food and at the same time protecting nature and safeguarding biodiversity, it is possible to face it through the introduction of global positioning systems (GPS), a technology capable of integrating the information on soil type, climate, cultivar, crop and farm management, topography and economy

Perseverative responding and neuroanatomical alterations in adult heterozygous reeler mice are mitigated by neonatal estrogen administration

According to the "extreme-male brain" theory, elevated fetal testosterone levels may partly explain the skewed sex ratio found in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Correcting this testosterone imbalance by increasing estrogen levels may mitigate the abnormal phenotype. Accordingly, while control heterozygous reeler (rl/+) male mice - a putative model of neuroanatomical and behavioral endophenotypes in ASD - show a decreased number of Purkinje cells (PC) compared to control wild-type (+/+) littermates, neonatal estradiol administration has been shown to correct this deficit in the short-term (i.e. on postnatal day 15). Here, we further investigated the neuroanatomical and behavioral abnormalities of rl/+ male mice and the potential compensatory effects of neonatal treatment with estradiol. In a longitudinal study, we observed that: i) infant rl/+ mice showed reduced motivation for social stimuli; ii) adult rl/+ male mice showed reduced cognitive flexibility; iii) the number of amygdalar parvalbumin-positive GABAergic interneurons were remarkably reduced in rl/+ mice; iv) neonatal estradiol administration into the cisterna magna reverted the abnormal profile both at the behavioral and at the neuroanatomical level in the amygdala but did not compensate for the cerebellar abnormalities in adulthood. This study supports the view that an increased excitation-to-inhibition ratio in the cerebellum and in the amygdala during a critical window of development could be crucial to the social and cognitive phenotype of male rl/+ mice, and that acute estradiol treatment during this critical window may mitigate symptoms' severity

DNA Barcoding and Phylogeny of Patellids from Asturias (Northern Spain)

The main role for genetics in marine invertebrates is the identification of species and groups of interbreeding individuals. In Asturias exists an ancient culinary tradition of consumption for limpets (Patella s.s.) but there is a lack of studies about these species. We have sampled Asturian marine Patella s.s. specimens and conducted sequencing of the mtDNA COI gene. We have confirmed the presence of four Patella s.s. in the Asturian coasts (P. vulgata, P. depressa, P.aspera, and P. rustica). Our work raises concerns about the current state of the P. vulgata populations in Asturias, where it is exploited, due to its low levels of genetic variation. Our phylogenetic analyses using Bayesian approaches confirmed that patellids belong to four different clades but gives a new version about how these clades are related inside the genus aiming for the necessity of more work to address this issue

Sul ritrovamento di un carteggio scientifico di Emanuele Fergola

In questa nota si dà notizia del ritrovamento di circa 150 lettere, facenti parte della corrispondenza di Emanuele Fergola, conservate da Francesco Luccio suo discendente, e di cui si fornisce l'inventario completo. Le lettere completano la già ampia raccolta di epistole custodita presso l'Archivio Storico dell'Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte, di cui Fergola fu direttore dal 1889 al 1909

Emanuele Fergola. Carteggi (1855-1907)

Emanuele Fergola, matematico e astronomo napoletano, fu tra i più apprezzati scienziati del suo tempo. Direttore dell'Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte tra il 1889 e il 1909, fu autore di un progetto mai prima attuato in campo astronomico e attinente alla questione internazionale della variazione delle latitudini che Fergola sosteneva fosse intrinseca e non dovuta a cause accidentali e locali. Nel 1883 Fergola presentò al Congresso dell'Associazione Geodetica Internazionale, a Roma, un progetto per monitorare le variazioni di latitudine che avrebbe dovuto coinvolgere coppie di osservatori astronomici situati a grandi differenze di longitudine ma posti sullo stesso parallelo. La sua proposta poté concretizzarsi solo nel 1892 con osservazioni simultanee tra l'Osservatorio di Napoli e quello di New York. Le corrispondenze di Fergola, pubblicate nel volume, sono una preziosa testimonianza della sua attività scientifica e dell'attuazione del suddetto programma. Le lettere con gli astronomi americani, J.K. Rees, H. Jacoby e H.S. Davis sono una vera e propria cronaca delle fasi in cui si articolò il progetto e grazie al quale l'ipotesi di Fergola risultò pienamente verificata

Hagfish Hemoglobins STRUCTURE, FUNCTION, AND OXYGEN-LINKED ASSOCIATION

Cyclostomes, hagfishes and lampreys, contain hemoglobins that are monomeric when oxygenated and polymerize to dimers or tetramers when deoxygenated. The three major hemoglobin components (HbI, HbII, and HbIII) from the hagfish Myxine glutinosa have been characterized and compared with lamprey Petromyzon marinus HbV, whose x-ray crystal structure has been solved in the deoxygenated, dimeric state (Heaslet, H. A., and Royer, W. E., Jr. (1999) Structure 7, 517-526). Of these three, HbII bears the highest sequence similarity to P. marinus HbV. In HbI and HbIII the distal histidine is substituted by a glutamine residue and additional substitutions occur in residues located at the deoxy dimer interface of P. marinus HbV. Infrared spectroscopy of the CO derivatives, used to probe the distal pocket fine structure, brings out a correlation between the CO stretching frequencies and the rates of CO combination. Ultracentrifugation studies show that HbI and HbIII are monomeric in both the oxygenated and deoxygenated states under all conditions studied, whereas deoxy HbII forms dimers at acidic pH values, like P. marinus HbV. Accordingly, the oxygen affinities of HbI and HbIII are independent of pH, whereas HbII displays a Bohr effect below pH 7.2. HbII also forms heterodimers with HbIII and heterotetramers with HbI. The functional counterparts of heteropolymer formation are cooperativity in oxygen binding and the oxygen-linked binding of protons and bicarbonate. The observed effects are explained on the basis of the x-ray structure of P. marinus HbV and the association behavior of site-specific mutants (Qiu, Y., Maillett, D. H., Knapp, J., Olson, J. S., and Riggs, A. F. (2000) J. Biol. Chem. 275, 13517-13528)

Severe combined immunodeficiency-an update

Severe combined immunodeficiencies (SCIDs) are a group of inherited disorders responsible for severe dysfunctions of the immune system. These diseases are life-threatening when the diagnosis is made too late; they are the most severe forms of primary immunodeficiency. SCID patients often die during the first two years of life if appropriate treatments to reconstitute their immune system are not undertaken. Conventionally, SCIDs are classified according either to the main pathway affected by the molecular defect or on the basis of the specific immunologic phenotype that reflects the stage where the blockage occurs during the differentiation process. However, during the last few years many new causative gene alterations have been associated with unusual clinical and immunological phenotypes. Many of these novel forms of SCID also show extra-hematopoietic alterations, leading to complex phenotypes characterized by a functional impairment of several organs, which may lead to a considerable delay in the diagnosis. Here we review the biological and clinical features of SCIDs paying particular attention to the most recently identified forms and to their unusual or extra-immunological clinical features