Assessment of seawater intrusion and groundwater quality in the anthropized reclamation area of Arborea (w Sardinia)

Coastal aquifers, Arborea Pain, Sardinia, nitrate GALDIT Vulnerability index

ANN-based approach for the estimation aquifer pollutant source behaviour

The problem of identifying an unknown pollution source in polluted aquifers, based on known contaminant concentrations measurement, is part of the broader group of issues, called inverse problems. This paper investigates the feasibility of solving the groundwater pollution inverse problem by using artificial neural networks (ANNs). The approach consists first in training an ANN to solve the direct problem, where the pollutant concentration in a set of monitoring wells is calculated for a known pollutant source. Successively, the trained ANN is frozen and it is used to solve the inverse problem, where the pollutant source is calculated which corresponds to a set of concentrations in the monitoring wells. The approach has been applied for a real case which deals with the contamination of the Rhine aquifer by carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) due to a tanker accident. The obtained results are compared with the solution obtained with a different approach retrieved from literature. The results show the suitability of ANNs-based methods for solving inverse non-linear problems

ANN BASED APPROACH TO SOLVE GROUNDWATER POLLUTION INVERSE PROBLEM

International audienc

Serum mesothelin and other biomarkers: What have we learned in the last decade?

In the last decade there is been much interest in noninvasive, economic and well-accepted diagnostic tests for screening of subjects exposed to asbestos, and in patients with malignant pleuric mesothelioma (MPM) for diagnosis or monitoring response to treatment. Several biomarkers have been suggested as tools for screening and early diagnosis of MPM. Currently, in patients with MPM, have been reported high levels of soluble mesothelin-related peptides (SMRP), plasmatic osteopontin (pOPN), vimentin, fibulin-3 and many others as promising marker for diagnosis, even their use in prevention monitoring is still discussed. In this type of disease, a key role could be played by miRNAs, which expression has been investigated in a large series of MPM to examine new pathways useful in diagnosis, prognosis and therapy. An altered expression of some proteins has been reported, useful as biomarkers, in comparative proteomic analysis of malignant pleural mesothelioma. New promising markers are nowadays under study and alone or better in combination, they'll be very helpful in diagnosing, monitoring mesothelioma patients or for screening of risk groups

Biomarkers in the prevention and follow-up of workers exposed to asbestos

Although in most developed countries the use of asbestos is banned, there is still a consistent portion of the world where asbestos extraction, trading and manufacturing of asbestos-made products is largely diffuse. Worldwide, hundreds of millions of people are at risk of developing an asbestos caused disease because of occupational, environmental or domestic exposure. The WHO estimates that asbestos is responsible for more than 100,000 deaths yearly. This scenario has prompted the research on biomarkers potentially useful for early diagnosis, prognosis and preventive programs on exposed population as well. Here we reviewed the up-to-date literature on this field of research highlighting that along with mesothelin and osteopontin (OPN), some more recently investigated molecules, such as high mobility group box 1 (HMGB1) protein, fibulin-3 and some miRNAs showed very promising. Most of the carried-out studies showed an interesting diagnostic and prognostic performance of some biomarkers, but since they usually lack adequate either specificity or sensitivity, their use in screening or in preventive programs is still not recommended on a routine basis. However, this review suggests the need for more reliable experimental design involving larger population and preferring longitudinal screening of asbestos exposed individuals rather than a single baseline assessment investigation. In addition, given their better diagnostic accuracy, the use of panels including several biomarkers is highly recommended

Modeling RACH Arrivals and Collisions for Human-Type Communication

This letter proposes an analytical model to evaluate the collision probability on the Random-Access CHannel (RACH) in Long-Term Evolution systems as a function of the number of user equipment, the number of available preambles, and the Inter-arrival times of the RACH Requests (IRRs) of the average user. The model for the IRR of the average user is obtained from real traffic data captured at the eNodeB of a mobile operator, and is derived by emulating the radio resource control (RRC) state machine for different RRCs Inactivity timer (RRCIT) settings. The results of this letter suggest that when RRCIT is set to a few seconds, a mixture model is more accurate than the Poisson hypothesis both in modeling the IRR and in estimating the RACH performance

Il benessere degli ovini e dei caprini: una speciale attenzione da parte della Regione Sardegna

Negli ovini e nei caprini, analogamente ai bovini, la lattazione rappresenta la fase fisiologica preponderante del ciclo produttivo, durante la quale un insufficiente livello di benessere si ripercuote sulla produzione quanti-qualitativa di latte. In questa fase il controllo dello stato sanitario della mammella, con mezzi diretti e/o indiretti, rappresenta un valido strumento per migliorare la gestione del processo stesso e, in ultima analisi, il benessere degli animali. Tenuto conto che le politiche comunitarie sono sempre più stringenti in materia di benessere animale, è importante che gli operatori del settori non percepiscano queste come imposizione ma come un’occasione di crescita professionale volta alla salvaguardia delle produzioni di qualità. E’ in quest’ottica che la Regione Sardegna ha strutturato un piano per il miglioramento del benessere dei piccoli ruminanti, premiando con un contributo in denaro gli allevatori che nei prossimi cinque anni si impegneranno ad adottare opportune tecniche di allevamento finalizzate alla riduzione del contenuto in cellule somatiche del latte, in quanto sono una diretta espressione dello stato sanitario della mammella. Assieme a queste azioni dirette la Regione Sardegna ha previsto un piano di formazione degli addetti al settore in modo tale da ridurre gli effetti negativi del fattore umano sul benessere animale

Vanadium pentoxide induces the secretion of CXCL9 and CXCL10 chemokines in thyroid cells

Vanadium is a grey metal, existing in different states of oxidation, whose most common form in commercial products is vanadium pentoxide (V2O5). All vanadium compounds have been considered toxic. A carcinogenic role of vanadium on the thyroid has recently been proposed. However no in vivo or in vitro studies have evaluated thyroid disruption in humans and/or animals after exposure to vanadium. In the present study we evaluate the effect of V2O5on proliferation, and chemokine secretion in normal thyrocytes. Our study demonstrated that V2O5has no effect on thyroid follicular cell viability or proliferation, but it is able to induce the secretion of T-helper (Th)1 chemokines into the thyroid, synergistically increasing the effect of important Th1 cytokines such as interferon (IFN)γ and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)α. Through this process, V2O5promotes the induction and perpetuation of an inflammatory reaction in the thyroid. Further studies are necessary to evaluate thyroid function, and nodules, in subjects occupationally exposed, or living in polluted areas

Investigating APOE, APP-Aβ metabolism genes and Alzheimer’s disease GWAS hits in brain small vessel ischemic disease

Alzheimer’s disease and small vessel ischemic disease frequently co-exist in the aging brain. However, pathogenic links between these 2 disorders are yet to be identified. Therefore we used Taqman genotyping, exome and RNA sequencing to investigate Alzheimer’s disease known pathogenic variants and pathways: APOE ε4 allele, APP-Aβ metabolism and late-onset Alzheimer’s disease main genome-wide association loci (APOE, BIN1, CD33, MS4A6A, CD2AP, PICALM, CLU, CR1, EPHA1, ABCA7) in 96 early-onset small vessel ischemic disease Caucasian patients and 368 elderly neuropathologically proven controls (HEX database) and in a mouse model of cerebral hypoperfusion. Only a minority of patients (29%) carried APOE ε4 allele. We did not detect any pathogenic mutation in APP, PSEN1 and PSEN2 and report a burden of truncating mutations in APP-Aß degradation genes. The single-variant association test identified 3 common variants with a likely protective effect on small vessel ischemic disease (0.54>OR > 0.32, adj. p-value  1, adj. p-val<0.05) together with Apoe, Ms4a cluster and Cd33 during brain hypoperfusion and their overexpression correlated with the ischemic lesion size. Finally, the detection of Aβ oligomers in the hypoperfused hippocampus supported the link between brain ischemia and Alzheimer’s disease pathology