Pharmacovigilance in juvenile idiopathic arthritis patients (pharmachild) treated with biologic agents and/or methotrexate. A Pediatric Rheumatology International Trials Organisation (PRINTO)/Pediatric Rheumatology European Society (PRES) registry

Introduction: Pharmacovigilance in Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis Patients Treated with Biologic Agents and/or Methotrexate (Pharmachild) is an international registry involving 86 centres in 32 countries from the Paediatric Rheumatology INternational Trials Organisation (PRINTO)/ Paediatric Rheumatology European Society (PReS). The registry was set up in 2011 to evaluate long term safety and efficacy profile of immunosuppressive treatments in children with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA). Objectives: To present data coming from the Pharmachild/PRINTO registry and analyze infections, with a main focus on opportunistic, also evaluating the relationship between infections and biologic and synthetic Disease-Modifying Anti-Rheumatic Drugs (DMARDs) in children affected by JIA. Methods: We provided descriptive statistics for demographic, clinical data, drug exposure, adverse events (AE) and events of special interest (ESI). Data from Pharmachild were combined with those coming from two national registries: BiKeR from Germany and the Swedish registry. The analysis was then focused on infections. A panel of specialists in infectious and rheumatologic diseases, identified as Safety Adjudication Committee (SAC), elaborated and approved by consensus, through three Delphi steps, a list of opportunistic pathogens for use in immunosuppressed children. Primary objective of the SAC was to adjudicate the infectious events encountered by the patients in Pharmachild with particular attention on opportunistic infections (OI). Results: Data from 8,274 patients were reported from the Pharmachild registry, and combined with those from 3,990 and 3,020 patients from the Germany and the Swedish registries, respectively, for a total of 15,284 patients. The main differences between Pharmachild and the other two registries were found in the age of onset, in the distribution of the different categories of AIG and in the use of biological drugs. The most frequently reported AE in Pharmachild resulted to be infections, adjudicated by the SAC mostly as common (88.4%). A high percentage (17.4%) of OI was reported. Among all infectious events, herpes zoster and mycobacterial infections were the most frequent. A list of OI in pediatrics was identified for subjects with JIA. Conclusions: Registries represent a powerful tool to address important issues on safety in children with JIA treated with immunosuppressive therapy. Their value can be increased by combining individual patient data from different national and international registries. The analysis of the AE in JIA patients has showed that infections are the most frequent event. However they are usually common and not life-threatening

Side-channel attacks and countermeasures in the design of secure IC's devices for cryptographic applications

Abstract--- A lot of devices which are daily used have to guarantee the retention of sensible data. Sensible data are ciphered by a secure key by which only the key holder can get the data. For this reason, to protect the cipher key against possible attacks becomes a main issue. The research activities in hardware cryptography are involved in finding new countermeasures against various attack scenarios and, in the same time, in studying new attack methodologies. During the PhD, three different logic families to counteract Power Analysis were presented and a novel class of attacks was studied. Moreover, two different activities related to Random Numbers Generators have been addressed

10/08/1996 - EIU Homecoming Features Movie Theme.pdf

During the high cycle fatigue of aluminium alloys, an energy dissipation occurs. This dissipation is hard to be estimated because of the high diffusivity of such alloys and the importance of the thermoelasticity effects in comparison with others standard metallic materials (e.g., steels). Nevertheless the study of the energy balance gives valuable information about the nature of deformation mechanisms facilitating the construction of constitutive models associated with the microplasticity and damage of the aluminium alloy. In this work, the different energies involved in the energy balance were deduced from two complementary imaging techniques. The dissipation and thermoelastic sources were derived from an infrared thermography system, while the deformation energy was estimated from a digital image correlation system. Three tests with various loading blocks were carried out and a comparison between deformation and dissipation energies was systematically performed. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

ProCAVIAR: Hybrid Data-Driven and Probabilistic Knowledge-Based Activity Recognition

The recognition of physical activities using sensors on mobile devices has been mainly addressed with supervised and semi-supervised learning. The state-of-the-art methods are mainly based on the analysis of the user\u2019s movement patterns that emerge from inertial sensors data. While the literature on this topic is quite mature, existing approaches are still not adequate to discriminate activities characterized by similar physical movements. The context that surrounds the user (e.g., semantic location) could be used as additional information to significantly extend the set of recognizable activities. Since collecting a comprehensive training set with activities performed in every possible context condition is too costly, if possible at all, existing works proposed knowledge-based reasoning over ontological representation of context data to refine the predictions obtained from machine learning. A problem with this approach is the rigidity of the underlying logic formalism that cannot capture the intrinsic uncertainty of the relationships between activities and context. In this work, we propose a novel activity recognition method that combines semisupervised learning and probabilistic ontological reasoning. We model the relationships between activities and context as a combination of soft and hard ontological axioms. For each activity, we use a probabilistic ontology to compute its compatibility with the current context conditions. The output of probabilistic semantic reasoning is combined with the output of a machine learning classifier based on inertial sensor data to obtain the most likely activity performed by the user. The evaluation of our system on a dataset with 13 types of activities performed by 26 subjects shows that our probabilistic framework outperforms both a pure machine learning approach and previous hybrid approaches based on classic ontological reasoning

Hierarchical Self-Assembly of Halogen-Bonded Block Copolymer Complexes into Upright Cylindrical Domains

Self-assembly of block copolymers into well-defined, ordered arrangements of chemically distinct domains is a reliable strategy for preparing tailored nanostructures. Microphase separation results from the system, minimizing repulsive interactions between dissimilar blocks and maximizing attractive interactions between similar blocks. Supramolecular methods have also achieved this separation by introducing small-molecule additives binding specifically to one block by noncovalent interactions. Here, we use halogen bonding as a supramolecular tool that directs the hierarchical self-assembly of low-molecular-weight perfluorinated molecules and diblock copolymers. Microphase separation results in a lamellar-within-cylindrical arrangement and promotes upright cylindrical alignment in films upon rapid casting and without further annealing. Such cylindrical domains with internal lamellar self-assemblies can be cleaved by solvent treatment of bulk films, resulting in separated and segmented cylindrical micelles stabilized by halogen-bond-based supramolecular crosslinks. These features, alongside the reversible nature of halogen bonding, provide a robust modular approach for nanofabricatio

Sub-nanomolar detection of biogenic amines by SERS effect induced by hairy Janus silver nanoparticles

Surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is largely used as a transduction method for analytes detection in liquid and vapor phase. In particular, SERS effect was promoted by a plethora of different metal and semiconducting nanoparticles (NPs) and silver and gold nanoparticles appear particularly suitable for this application. Nevertheless, silver nanoparticles intrinsic propensity to aggregate in large clusters reduces the possibility to use naked nanoparticles in SERS applications, for this reason they are usually functionalized with organic molecules. This approach inhibits the aggregation process but, on the other hand, reduces the surficial area of the NPs able to interact with the analyte molecules. In the present work, we propose a simple method to obtain surficial anisotropic Janus silver nanoparticles: octadecylamine was used to stabilize the nanoparticles and to promote the deposition of the silver nanoparticles on a solid substrate. The AgNPs/octadecylamine nanostructures showed the typical “hairy” Janus morphology and a strong SERS effect was observed when two biogenic amines, i. e. 2-phenylethylamine and tyramine, were fluxed on the solid film. SERS phenomenon was studied as a function both of the chemical structure of the fluxed amine and of the distance between the aromatic moiety and the nanoparticle allowing to propose the AgNPs/octadecylamine Janus nanoparticles as an active layer for the detection of phenylethylamine and tyramine in picomolar concentration

Photoresponsive multilayer films by assembling cationic amphiphilic cyclodextrins and anionic porphyrins at the air/water interface

Densely packed hybrid monolayers of amphiphilic cyclodextrins incorporating hydrophilic porphyrins are formed at the air/water interface through electrostatic interaction and can be transferred onto quartz substrates by Langmuir–Scha¨fer deposition. The resulting multilayers exhibit a good response to light excitation as proven by fluorescence emission, triplet– triplet absorption and singlet oxygen photogeneration

Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis: Diagnosis and Treatment

Juvenile idiopathic arthritis is a broad term that describes a clinically heterogeneous group of arthritides of unknown cause, which begin before 16 years of age. This term encompasses several disease categories, each of which has distinct presentation, clinical manifestations, and, presumably, genetic background and etiopathogenesis. Although none of the available drugs has curative potential, prognosis has greatly improved as a result of substantial progresses in disease management. The most important new development has been the introduction of the biologic medications, which constitute a valuable treatment option for patients who are resistant to conventional antirheumatic agents. Further insights into the disease pathogenesis and treatment will be provided by the continuous advances in understanding of the mechanisms related to the immune response and inflammatory process, and by the development of new drugs that are capable of selectively inhibiting single molecules or pathways