Survey of Italian pediatricians on awareness, experiences and beliefs regarding direct-to-consumer genetic testing in minors

Background: Our study wanted to assess Italian pediatricians’ awareness, experience and beliefs regarding directto- consumer (DTC) genetic tests (GT) in minors, with a focus on those for predisposition to complex disease, lyfestyle, athletic ability and other inborn talents. Methods: A 28-item questionnaire was administered through the SurveyMonkey® web platform to the 9,086 members of the Italian Society of Pediatrics for which a valid email address was available. The survey was opened from April through November 2017. Statistical analyses were performed using the Graphpad software package. Results: 36.2% of the 442 respondents were aware of DTC-GT, but only 23.1% of them felt adequately prepared to meet families’ information needs. The first three sources of knowledge were the Internet (20.98%), magazines/ newspapers (16.78%) and TV/Radio (14.33%), while companies’ direct marketing activity influenced knowledge only in 2.45% of the cases. Only 16.4% of the aware respondents had been already approached for advice. More than 95% of the pediatricians who were aware would not advise DTC-GT for lifestyle, athletic performance or other inborn skills. 69.2% was unfavourable to susceptibility tests for complex diseases. Most of them expressed an interest in learning more and indicated as preferred sources of information public policies issued by professional societies. Conclusion: The low awareness and experience and the vendors’ tiny contribution to knowledge suggest a still limited penetration of DTC-GT companies in Italy. A great interest in learning more was found. Scientific societies are best positioned to support health professionals in this educational goal thanks to their role of trusted sources of information and guidance

INTEGRAL high energy behaviour of 4U 1812-12

The low mass X-ray binary system 4U 1812-12 was monitored with the INTEGRAL observatory in the period 2003-2004 and with BeppoSAX on April 20, 2000. We report here on the spectral and temporal analysis of both persistent and burst emission. The full data set confirms the persistent nature of this burster, and reveals the presence of emission up to 200 keV. The persistent spectrum is well described by a comptonization (CompTT) model plus a soft blackbody component. The source was observed in a hard spectral state with a 1-200 keV luminosity of 2*10^(36) ergs/s and L/LEdd~1% and no meaningful flux variation has been revealed, as also confirmed by a 2004 RXTE observation. We have also detected 4 bursts showing double peaked profiles and blackbody spectra with temperatures ranging from 1.9 to 3.1 keV.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication by A&

Coherent Manipulation of Spin Correlations in the Hubbard Model

We coherently manipulate spin correlations in a two-component atomic Fermi gas loaded into an optical lattice using spatially and time-resolved Ramsey spectroscopy combined with high-resolution \textit{in situ} imaging. This novel technique allows us not only to imprint spin patterns but also to probe the static magnetic structure factor at arbitrary wave vector, in particular the staggered structure factor. From a measurement along the diagonal of the $1^\mathrm{st}$ Brillouin zone of the optical lattice, we determine the magnetic correlation length and the individual spatial spin correlators. At half filling, the staggered magnetic structure factor serves as a sensitive thermometer for the spin temperature, which we employ to study the thermalization of spin and density degrees of freedom during a slow quench of the lattice depth