Testing a phantom eye under various signal-to-noise ratio conditions using eleven different OCT devices

We compared eleven OCT devices in their ability to quantify retinal layer thicknesses under different signal-strength conditions, using a commercially available phantom eye. We analyzed a medium-intensity 50 µm layer in an identical manner for all devices, using the provided log-scale images and a reconstructed linear-scale tissue reflectivity metric. Thickness measurements were highly comparable when the data were analyzed in an identical manner. With optimal signal strength, the thickness of the 50 µm layer was overestimated by a mean of 4.3 µm in the log-scale images and of 2.7 µm in the linear-scale images

Endothelial diaphragmed fenestrae: in vitro modulation by phorbol myristate acetate

Cultured microvascular endothelial cells isolated from fenestrated capillaries have been shown to express many properties of their in vivo differentiated phenotype, yet they contain very few diaphragmed fenestrae. We show here that treatment of capillary endothelial cells with the tumor promoter, 4 beta-phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate, induces more than a fivefold increase in the frequency of fenestrae per micron 2 of cell surface, as determined from a quantitative evaluation on freeze-fracture replicas. In quick-frozen, deep-etched preparations, the endothelial fenestrae appeared to be bridged by a diaphragm composed of radial fibers interweaving in a central mesh, as previously observed in vivo. These results indicate that diaphragmed fenestrae are inducible structures, and provide an opportunity to study them in vitro

Cognitive conflicts in major depression : Between desired change and personal coherence

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposesThe notion of intrapsychic conflict has been present in psychopathology for more than a century within different theoretical orientations. However, internal conflicts have not received enough empirical attention, nor has their importance in depression been fully elaborated. This study is based on the notion of cognitive conflict, understood as implicative dilemma (ID), and on a new way of identifying these conflicts by means of the Repertory Grid Technique. Our aim was to explore the relevance of cognitive conflicts among depressive patientsPeer reviewedFinal Published versio

Phytoestrogens and inhibition of angiogenesis

Peer reviewe

Perspectives for the detection and measurement of Supersymmetry in the focus point region of mSUGRA models with the ATLAS detector at LHC

This paper discusses the ATLAS potential to study Supersymmetry for the "Focus-Point" region of the parameter space of mSUGRA models. The potential to discovery a deviation from Standard Model expectations with the first few ${fb}^{-1}$ of LHC data was studied using the parametrized simulation of the ATLAS detector. Several signatures were considered, involving hard jets, large missing energy, and either $b$-tagged jets, opposite-sign isolated electron or muon pairs, or top quarks reconstructed exploiting their fully hadronic decays. With only 1 ${fb}^{-1}$ of data each of these signatures may allow to observe an excess of events over Standard Model expectation with a statistical significance exceeding 5 standard deviations. An analytical expression was derived for the shape of the distribution of the dilepton invariant mass arising from the three-body leptonic decay of the neutralinos under the hypothesis of heavy scalars, which is appropriate for the focus-point scenario. The resulting function was used to fit the distribution of the dilepton invariant mass obtained with simulated LHC data, and to extract the value of two kinematic endpoints measuring the $\tilde \chi^0_2 - \tilde \chi^0_1$ and the $\tilde \chi^0_3 - \tilde \chi^0_1$ mass differences. This information was used to constrain the MSSM parameter space compatible with the data

The legacy of the COVID-19 pandemics for thyroid cancer patients: towards the application of clinical practice recommendations

The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has acted as a significant stress test for healthcare systems worldwide, due to the need for hospitalization of an increasing number of infected patients. The shift of massive resources to the acute needs of the pandemic led to an upheaval of the usual diagnostic and therapeutic pathways of chronic diseases, including thyroid cancer disease. The motto was to reduce crowding at clinics and to maintain essential health services. However, thyroid cancer clinical practice recommendations already encouraged physicians to reduce “low-value” care: in particular, to avoid screening of general population, to reduce the number of unnecessary biopsies, and to adopt a conservative approach to indeterminate thyroid nodules and low-risk thyroid cancer