Pros and Cons of the SeHCAT Test in Bile Acid Diarrhea: A More Appropriate Use of an Old Nuclear Medicine Technique

Bile acid malabsorption (BAM) causing chronic diarrhea may be due to organic as well as functional disorders, and some of them were included under the general label of diarrheic-type irritable bowel syndrome (IBS-D). The 75-selenium homocholic acid taurine (SeHCAT) test is a nuclear medicine investigation considered to be the gold standard for the diagnosis of bile acid malabsorption (BAM). Many studies demonstrate that it could be effective in the clinical workout of chronic diarrhea due to different conditions. The SeHCAT test provides a quantitative assessment to estimate the severity of BAM and the possible response to therapy with bile acid sequestrants (BASs). However, there is no general agreement regarding its cutoff value and the test is not widely available. The aim of this review is to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the SeHCAT test in clinical practice

GPU-based Real-time Triggering in the NA62 Experiment

Over the last few years the GPGPU (General-Purpose computing on Graphics Processing Units) paradigm represented a remarkable development in the world of computing. Computing for High-Energy Physics is no exception: several works have demonstrated the effectiveness of the integration of GPU-based systems in high level trigger of different experiments. On the other hand the use of GPUs in the low level trigger systems, characterized by stringent real-time constraints, such as tight time budget and high throughput, poses several challenges. In this paper we focus on the low level trigger in the CERN NA62 experiment, investigating the use of real-time computing on GPUs in this synchronous system. Our approach aimed at harvesting the GPU computing power to build in real-time refined physics-related trigger primitives for the RICH detector, as the the knowledge of Cerenkov rings parameters allows to build stringent conditions for data selection at trigger level. Latencies of all components of the trigger chain have been analyzed, pointing out that networking is the most critical one. To keep the latency of data transfer task under control, we devised NaNet, an FPGA-based PCIe Network Interface Card (NIC) with GPUDirect capabilities. For the processing task, we developed specific multiple ring trigger algorithms to leverage the parallel architecture of GPUs and increase the processing throughput to keep up with the high event rate. Results obtained during the first months of 2016 NA62 run are presented and discussed

Externalities and the nucleolus

In most economic applications, externalities prevail: the worth of a coalition depends on how the other players are organized. We show that there is a unique natural way of extending the nucleolus from (coalitional) games without externalities to games with externalities. This is in contrast to the Shapley value and the core for which many different extensions have been proposed

Analisi quantitativa nella 18F-FDG PET/TC: un'esperienza di correzione dell'effetto volume parziale per la valutazione dei sottotipi recettoriali del carcinoma della mammella.

La PET/TC con 18F-FDG è ad oggi utilizzata come fattore prognostico in oncologia per diversi tipi di neoplasia. Fino a oggi le misurazioni effettuate sulle immagini PET sono gravate da una limitata risoluzione spaziale e da un rapporto segnale/rumore non ottimale. L'effetto volume parziale (PVE) è uno dei principali fattori che degradano la risoluzione spaziale. Lo scopo di questo lavoro è quello di eseguire un'analisi quantitativa dei sottotipi recettoriali del carcinoma della mammella impiegando un approccio radiomico su dati corretti per il PVE. Sono state arruolate 58 pazienti di sesso femminile, di età compresa tra 34 e 79 aa, con esame PET eseguito in fase di stadiazione prima di sottoporsi a terapia per carcinoma mammario. Tutte le neoplasie sono state classificate in “luminal categories” utilizzano i marcatori immunoistochimici ER, PR, HER2 e Ki-67 per attribuire i vari sottotipi molecolari. Alcuni classificatori basati sul valore di SUV corretto per il PVE sono stati valutati quali possibili differenti caratteristiche radiomiche tra le varie categorie

On the Mechanism of Drug Release from Polysaccharide Hydrogels Cross-Linked with Magnetite Nanoparticles by Applying Alternating Magnetic Fields: the Case of DOXO Delivery

The chemical, biological and physical properties of carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) hydrogels with silanized magnetite (Fe3O4) nanoparticles (NPs) as cross-linker were investigated and compared with the analogous hydrogel obtained by using 1,3-diaminopropane (DAP) as cross-linker. The magnetic hydrogel was characterized from the chemical point of view by FT-IR, whereas the morphology of the hydrogel was investigated by FESEM and STEM. The water uptake and rheological measurements reveal how much the swelling and mechanical properties change when CMC is cross-linked with silanized magnetite NPs instead of with DAP. As far as the biological properties, the hybrid hydrogel neither exerts any adverse effect nor any alteration on the cells. The magnetic hydrogels show magnetic hysteresis at 2.5 K as well as at 300 K. Magnetic measurements show that the saturation magnetization, remanent magnetization and coercive field of the NPs are not influenced significantly by the silanization treatment. The magnetic hydrogel was tested as controlled drug delivery system. The release of DOXO from the hydrogel is significantly enhanced by exposing it to an alternating magnetic field. Under our experimental conditions (2 mT and 40 kHz), no temperature increase of the hydrogel was measured, testifying that the mechanism for the enhancement of drug release under the AMF involves the twisting of the polymeric chains. A static magnetic field (0.5 T) does not influence the drug release from the hydrogel, compared with that without magnetic field

Templating Effect of Diammonium Cations on Structural and Optical Properties of Lead Bromide Perovskites

The role of templating the formation of 2D metal halide perovskites has been investigated by considering the 1,3-phenylenediammonium (1,3-PDA), 1,3-xylylenediamimonium (1,3-XDA), 1,4-phenylenediammonium (1,4-PDA), and 1,4-xylylenediamimonium (1,4-XDA) cations in lead bromide systems. Single-crystal x-ray diffraction confirms the formation 2D Dion-Jacobons (DJ) perovskites for all the cations except for the 1,3-XDA cation leading to a so-called 0D perovskitoid. Analysis of the structural data showed a higher distortion degree for the systems containing the shorter cation, namely 1,4-PDA. A detailed spectroscopic investigation, with both static and time resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy, revealed a broadband emissive component at room temperature with hundreds of nanometers of bandwidth when 1,3-PDA and 1,4-PDA cations are present, while a narrow peak is found for the longer cation, i.e. 1,4-XDA. A broadband emission arises in this last sample as well by decreasing temperature. Such broad emission, as indicated by the analysis of the power and temperature dependence of the PL, can be attributed to trap-mediated excitonic recombination or STEs, and the trend in emissive properties can be correlated to the different level of octahedral distortions. The novel systems reported in this work enlarge the family of broadband emitters and add further clues to develop efficient perovskite-based broadband and white light emitters