Toward a sustainable mobility: A solar vehicle for a new quality of life

The vehicular mobility causes 15% of greenhouse gases emission: one million tons of carbon anhydrite per hour. In addition, it produces CO, NOx, fine powders, carcinogenic and mutagenic elements: These substances will disappear in the presence of solar vehicles. And solar mobility would also mitigate indirect effects: fuel used to transport fuel, energy for the distillation of hydrocarbons, gas leaks, even fracking, explosions, rivers and oceans. In contrast, electric and hybrid vehicles do not allow this improvement in the quality of life. In almost all modern countries, the energy mix is strongly unbalanced towards fossil fuels: massive electrification would not make mobility sustainable, but rather risks worsening its effect on the environment by shifting the problem of emissions from cities to power plants. The Sun, indeed, can guarantee long-Term sustainable mobility: for every circulating solar vehicle CO2 production is really zero. From July to today, our solar racing car has travelled 3000 km, avoiding to emit half a ton of CO2: reporting these data to a conventional use, each solar vehicle would avoid the release of 1.5 tons of CO2 per year: like planting 10 large trees for each month in our garden. This study describes how to transform a solar super-car into an ordinary vehicle for urban and everyday mobility

INNOVATION IN SOLAR VEHICLES: FROM THE IDEA TO THE PROTOTYPE IN LESS THAN 24 MONTHS

The article aims to describe the integrated path used for the conceptual, functional and constructive design of an exclusive solar vehicle. The project was based on the massive implementation of concurrent engineering and quality tools, rarely used in such an integrated way. New and attractive design, 3D CAD modelling, details design, structural and fluid dynamic validations, in-scale rapid prototyping, functional tests, multi-objective optimization, parts manufacturing and assembly. Thanks to this approach, the solar prototype presents high technological contents, especially in terms of materials, structures and processes, together with their optimizations. Furthermore, large CNC-machined multi-material molds, hybrid manufacturing solutions: everything was used to speed up phases permitting to move from the initial idea to the final prototype in 24 months. Since June 2018, the solar vehicle is on the road, transporting 4 people, weighing less than 300kg, reaching speeds of 120km/h and able to run hundreds of km without fuel

Novel Biological Therapies for Severe Asthma Endotypes

Severe asthma comprises several heterogeneous phenotypes, underpinned by complex pathomechanisms known as endotypes. The latter are driven by intercellular networks mediated by molecular components which can be targeted by specific monoclonal antibodies. With regard to the biological treatments of either allergic or non-allergic eosinophilic type 2 asthma, currently available antibodies are directed against immunoglobulins E (IgE), interleukin-5 (IL-5) and its receptor, the receptors of interleukins-4 (IL-4) and 13 (IL-13), as well as thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) and other alarmins. Among these therapeutic strategies, the best choice should be made according to the phenotypic/endotypic features of each patient with severe asthma, who can thus respond with significant clinical and functional improvements. Conversely, very poor options so far characterize the experimental pipelines referring to the perspective biological management of non-type 2 severe asthma, which thereby needs to be the focus of future thorough research

Lack of effect of apolipoprotein C3 polymorphisms on indices of liver steatosis, lipid profile and insulin resistance in obese Southern Europeans.

RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are.BACKGROUND: Apolipoprotein C3 (APOC3) is a component of triglyceride-rich lipoproteins, and APOC3 rs2854116 and rs2854117 polymorphisms have been associated with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, hypertriglyceridaemia, and insulin-resistance. OBJECTIVE: To determine if the APOC3 variants alter the susceptibility of obese subjects to develop liver damage, hypertrigliceridaemia, and insulin-resistance. METHODS: The study was carried out on 585 unrelated obese Italians (median body mass index BMI = 41 kg/m2) who were genotyped for the rs2854116 and rs2854117 variants. All participants underwent oral glucose tolerance tests (OGTT), with measurement of glucose, insulin, lipid parameters. Indices of insulin-resistance (HOMA and ISI) were calculated. Alanine transaminase (ALT) and aspartate transaminase (AST) were used as markers of liver injury. RESULTS: The study subjects were divided into two groups: those homozygous for the wild-type alleles at both SNPs (-482C and -455T alleles) and those who were carriers of at least one variant allele or both (-482T, -455C or both). Also each SNP was analysed independently. No significant differences were found in ALT and AST levels and in the lipid profile between the two groups. Insulin concentrations, glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity were similar in the two groups. CONCLUSION: We did not identify any significant association between APOC3 polymorphisms and fatty liver disease, lipids, and insulin-resistance in obese subjects, thus not confirming the suggested role of these APOC3 gene sequence variants

In vitro-deranged intestinal immune response to gliadin in type 1 diabetes.

Dietary gluten has been associated with an increased risk of type 1 diabetes. We have evaluated inflammation and the mucosal immune response to gliadin in the jejunum of patients with type 1 diabetes. Small intestinal biopsies from 17 children with type 1 diabetes without serological markers of celiac disease and from 50 age-matched control subjects were examined by immunohistochemistry. In addition, biopsies from 12 type 1 diabetic patients and 8 control subjects were cultured with gliadin or ovalbumin peptic-tryptic digest and examined for epithelial infiltration and lamina propria T-cell activation. The density of intraepithelial CD3(+) and gammadelta(+) cells and of lamina propria CD25(+) mononuclear cells was higher in jejunal biopsies from type 1 diabetic patients versus control subjects. In the patients' biopsies cultured with peptic-tryptic gliadin, there was epithelial infiltration by CD3(+) cells, a significant increase in lamina propria CD25(+) and CD80(+) cells and enhanced expression of lamina propria CD54 and crypt HLA-DR. No such phenomena were observed in control subjects, even those with celiac disease-associated HLA haplotypes. In conclusion, signs of mucosal inflammation were present in jejunal biopsies from type 1 diabetic patients, and organ culture studies indicate a deranged mucosal immune response to gliadin

Data-Driven Understanding of Smart Service Systems Through Text Mining

Smart service systems are everywhere, in homes and in the transportation, energy, and healthcare sectors. However, such systems have yet to be fully understood in the literature. Given the widespread applications of and research on smart service systems, we used text mining to develop a unified understanding of such systems in a data-driven way. Specifically, we used a combination of metrics and machine learning algorithms to preprocess and analyze text data related to smart service systems, including text from the scientific literature and news articles. By analyzing 5,378 scientific articles and 1,234 news articles, we identify important keywords, 16 research topics, 4 technology factors, and 13 application areas. We define ???smart service system??? based on the analytics results. Furthermore, we discuss the theoretical and methodological implications of our work, such as the 5Cs (connection, collection, computation, and communications for co-creation) of smart service systems and the text mining approach to understand service research topics. We believe this work, which aims to establish common ground for understanding these systems across multiple disciplinary perspectives, will encourage further research and development of modern service systems

predicting her2 status in esophagogastric cancer development and validation of an easy to use nomogram

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A multi-center, real-life experience on liquid biopsy practice for EGFR testing in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients

Background: circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) is a source of tumor genetic material for EGFR testing in NSCLC. Real-word data about liquid biopsy (LB) clinical practice are lacking. The aim of the study was to describe the LB practice for EGFR detection in North Eastern Italy. Methods: we conducted a multi-regional survey on ctDNA testing practices in lung cancer patients. Results: Median time from blood collection to plasma separation was 50 min (20\u2013120 min), median time from plasma extraction to ctDNA analysis was 24 h (30 min\u20135 days) and median turnaround time was 24 h (6 h\u20135 days). Four hundred and seventy five patients and 654 samples were tested. One hundred and ninety-two patients were tested at diagnosis, with 16% EGFR mutation rate. Among the 283 patients tested at disease progression, 35% were T790M+. Main differences in LB results between 2017 and 2018 were the number of LBs performed for each patient at disease progression (2.88 vs. 1.2, respectively) and the percentage of T790M+ patients (61% vs. 26%)