Giuseppe Jona, un clinico anatomopatologo veneziano del primo Novecento

Giuseppe Jona, Venetian doctor born in 1866, was a patho-logist first at the University of Padua and then at the Second Medical Division of the Civil Hospital of Venice. He intro-duced and increased the practice of autopsies according to the tradition always present in the Serenissima, which as-sumed an important didactic role with the establishment of a pathological Museum. He later taught in the course of To-pographical and Pathological Anatomy in the Practical School of Medicine and Surgery of Venice, always follo-wing a specially practical anatomo-clinical approach. He was a member of the “Istituto Veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti”, of which he became president. In 1936 he retired, ne-ver forgetting the poor and needy, being called “the doctor of the poor”. The racial laws of the 1938 first and the can-cellation from the Board of Medicine in 1940 which pre-vented him from any professional activity. However, his social commitment did not fail and he assumed the position of President of the Board of Directors of the Jewish Com-munity of Venice. After the armistice of September 8, 1943, Venice was occupied by German troops. To avoid collaborating with the Germans in order to provide the na-mes of the members of the Jewish community destined for extermination, Jona decided to commit suicide on Septem-ber 16, 1943. His last thought was for “faith in a day of justice”, that justice that had constantly inspired his life as a man and as a doctorGiuseppe Jona, medico veneziano nato nel 1866, fu anatomopatologo prima presso l’Università di Padova e successivamente presso la Seconda divisione medica dell’Ospedale Civile di Venezia, dove introdusse e ampliò la pratica autoptica secondo la tradizione già presente nella Serenissima, che assunse importante ruolo didattico con la costituzione di un Museo anatomopatologico. Insegnò nel corso di anatomia topografica e patologica nella Scuola pratica di medicina e chirurgia veneziana, sempre seguendo un approccio anatomo-clinico di tipo pratico. Fu socio dell’Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti; fu inoltre presidente dell’Ateneo veneto dal 1921 al 1925. Nel 1936 si ritirò in pensione, senza mai dimenticare i bisognosi, fedele alla qualifica guadagnata sul campo di “medico dei poveri”. Le leggi razziali del 1938 prima e la cancellazione dall’Albo dei medici nel 1940 poi gli impedirono qualsiasi attività professionale. Il suo impegno sociale tuttavia non venne meno e assunse l’incarico di Presidente del Consiglio di amministrazione della comunità ebraica di Venezia. Dopo l’armistizio dell’8 settembre 1943 Venezia venne occupata dalle truppe tedesche. Per evitare di dover collaborare e fornire i nominativi dei componenti della comunità ebraica destinati allo sterminio, Jona decise di togliersi la vita il 16 settembre 1943. Il suo ultimo pensiero fu per “la fede in un giorno di giustizia”, quella giustizia che aveva costantemente ispirato la sua vita di uomo e di medico

A myeloma paraprotein with specificity for platelet glycoprotein IIIa in a patient with a fatal bleeding

Abstract Impaired platelet aggregation, normal shape change, and agglutination and normal ATP secretion and thromboxane synthesis in response to high concentrations of thrombin or arachidonic acid were found in a patient with multiple myeloma and hemorrhagic tendency. The purified IgG1 kappa or its F(ab'}2 fragments induced similar changes when added in vitro to plateletrich plasma from normal subjects. In addition, the paraprotein inhibited adhesion to glass microbeads, fibrin clot retraction, and binding of radiolabeled fibrinogen or von Willebrand factor to platelets exposed to thrombin or arachidonic acid without affecting intraplatelet levels of cAMP. The radiolabeled paraprotein bound to an average of 35,000 sites on normal platelets but it bound to <2,000 sites on the platelets from a patient with Glanzmann's thrombasthenia. Immunoprecipitation studies showed that the platelet antigen identified by the paraprotein was the glycoprotein IlIa. Furthermore, binding of radiolabeled prostaglandin El (PGEI) to resting platelets as well as binding of von Willebrand factor to platelets stimulated with ristocetin were entirely normal in the presence of patient's inhibitor. These studies indicate that bleeding occurring in dysproteinemia may be the result of a specific interaction of monoclonal paraproteins with platelets. In addition, our data support the concept that the interaction of fibrinogen and/or von Willebrand factor with the platelet glycoprotein Ilb-IIla complex is essential for effective hemostasis

Role of axillary sentinel lymph node biopsy in patients with pure ductal carcinoma in situ of the breast

BACKGROUND: Sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsy is an effective tool for axillary staging in patients with invasive breast cancer. This procedure has been recently proposed as part of the treatment for patients with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), because cases of undetected invasive foci and nodal metastases occasionally occur. However, the indications for SLN biopsy in DCIS patients are controversial. The aim of the present study was therefore to assess the incidence of SLN metastases in a series of patients with a diagnosis of pure DCIS. METHODS: A retrospective evaluation was made of a series of 102 patients who underwent SLN biopsy, and had a final histologic diagnosis of pure DCIS. Patients with microinvasion were excluded from the analysis. The patients were operated on in five Institutions between 1999 and 2004. Subdermal or subareolar injection of 30–50 MBq of 99 m-Tc colloidal albumin was used for SLN identification. All sentinel nodes were evaluated with serial sectioning, haematoxylin and eosin staining, and immunohistochemical analysis for cytocheratin. RESULTS: Only one patient (0.98%) was SLN positive. The primary tumour was a small micropapillary intermediate-grade DCIS and the SLN harboured a micrometastasis. At pathologic revision of the specimen, no detectable focus of microinvasion was found. CONCLUSION: Our findings indicate that SLN metastases in pure DCIS are a very rare occurrence. SLN biopsy should not therefore be routinely performed in patients who undergo resection for DCIS. SLN mapping can be performed, as a second operation, in cases in which an invasive component is identified in the specimen. Only DCIS patients who require a mastectomy should have SLN biopsy performed at the time of breast operation, since in these cases subsequent node mapping is not feasible

Roadmap for Optical Tweezers 2023

Optical tweezers are tools made of light that enable contactless pushing, trapping, and manipulation of objects ranging from atoms to space light sails. Since the pioneering work by Arthur Ashkin in the 1970s, optical tweezers have evolved into sophisticated instruments and have been employed in a broad range of applications in life sciences, physics, and engineering. These include accurate force and torque measurement at the femtonewton level, microrheology of complex fluids, single micro- and nanoparticle spectroscopy, single-cell analysis, and statistical-physics experiments. This roadmap provides insights into current investigations involving optical forces and optical tweezers from their theoretical foundations to designs and setups. It also offers perspectives for applications to a wide range of research fields, from biophysics to space exploration

XIPE: the x-ray imaging polarimetry explorer

XIPE, the X-ray Imaging Polarimetry Explorer, is a mission dedicated to X-ray Astronomy. At the time of writing XIPE is in a competitive phase A as fourth medium size mission of ESA (M4). It promises to reopen the polarimetry window in high energy Astrophysics after more than 4 decades thanks to a detector that efficiently exploits the photoelectric effect and to X-ray optics with large effective area. XIPE uniqueness is time-spectrally-spatially- resolved X-ray polarimetry as a breakthrough in high energy astrophysics and fundamental physics. Indeed the payload consists of three Gas Pixel Detectors at the focus of three X-ray optics with a total effective area larger than one XMM mirror but with a low weight. The payload is compatible with the fairing of the Vega launcher. XIPE is designed as an observatory for X-ray astronomers with 75 % of the time dedicated to a Guest Observer competitive program and it is organized as a consortium across Europe with main contributions from Italy, Germany, Spain, United Kingdom, Poland, Sweden