101 research outputs found
Normality ranges of urine oxidative stress markers (8-OHdG and isoprostane) in Italian people free from respiratory diseases-Preliminary results
BACKGROUND: The study of oxidative stress (OxS) is becoming increasingly important in
respiratory disease research. To our knowledge, the reference ranges of urinary
8-hydroxy-deoxy-guanosine (8-OHdG) and 8-isoprostane (isoprostane), a DNA and a lipid oxidation product
respectively, have not yet been determined in subjects without respiratory diseases. AIM: To assess the
reference range of OxS markers in Italian people aged 20-64 free from respiratory diseases (controls).
METHODS: 8-OHdG and isoprostane were measured in spot-urine samples collected in the frame of
Gene-Environment Interactions in Respiratory Diseases (GEIRD) study, a nested multi-case control survey.
The biomarkers levels were corrected on creatinine concentration. Only controls (n=239) were considered
for the aim of this work. The possible effects of potential determinants on OxS-biomarkers were studied
before determining the normality range in selected subgroups of controls. Multiple linear regression was
fitted to data using the logarithm of 8OHdG or isoprostane as dependent variables and sex, age, season,
smoke, body mass index, as covariates. The appropriate percentiles were calculated. RESULTS: Both
8OHdG and isoprostane concentrations were significantly higher in smokers than in non smokers (p=0.025
and 0.047 respectively), while the other covariates did not influence OxS. The 95% 8OHdG normality range
in non smokers varied from 0.26 to 25.94 ng/mg. The 95% isoprostane reference interval was 0.03 -5.42
ng/mg in non smokers. CONCLUSION: Provisional 95% normality range for urinary 8OHdG and isoprostane
were determined in subjects free from respiratory diseases
Normative growth charts for Shwachman-Diamond syndrome from Italian cohort of 0-8 years old
Shwachman-Diamond syndrome (SDS) is a rare autosomal recessive disorder. Its predominant manifestations include exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, bone marrow failure and skeletal abnormalities. Patients frequently present failure to thrive and susceptibility to short stature. Average birth weight is at the 25th percentile; by the first birthday, >50% of patients drop below the third percentile for height and weight.The study aims at estimating the growth charts for patients affected by SDS in order to give a reference tool helpful for medical care and growth surveillance through the first 8 years of patient's life
Measurement of a urinary marker (8-hydroxydeoxy-guanosine, 8-OHdG) of DNA oxidative stress in epidemiological surveys: a pilot study
Background: 8-Hydroxydeoxyguanosine (8-OHdG) is a commonly used marker of DNA oxidative stress in epidemiological studies. The aim of this study was to establish whether the urinary concentration of 8-OHdG varies
during the first part of the day, when clinical tests are usually performed, and whether it can therefore be measured without bias in spot urine samples.
Material and methods: Spot urine samples were collected using a convenience sample. A linear mixed-effects
model for repeated measurements was used to analyze 8-OHdG levels.
Results: A significant increasing trend in time in the 8-OHdG concentration was found among smokers, but not in
the case of nonsmokers.
Conclusions: In epidemiological studies on oxidative stress, all participants should collect their early morning
urine specimens – before their first cigarette if they are smokers – to gather information on individual background
oxidation levels
Decoherence, wave function collapses and non-ordinary statistical mechanics
We consider a toy model of pointer interacting with a 1/2-spin system, whose
variable is \emph{measured} by the environment, according to the
prescription of decoherence theory. If the environment measuring the variable
yields ordinary statistical mechanics, the pointer sensitive to
the 1/2-spin system undergoes the same, exponential, relaxation regardless of
whether real collapses or an entanglement with the environment, mimicking the
effect of real collapses, occur. In the case of non-ordinary statistical
mechanics the occurrence of real collapses make the pointer still relax
exponentially in time, while the equivalent picture in terms of reduced density
matrix generates an inverse power law relaxation
Inequivalence of coset constructions for spacetime symmetries
Non-linear realizations of spacetime symmetries can be obtained by a
generalization of the coset construction valid for internal ones. The physical
equivalence of different representations for spacetime symmetries is not
obvious, since their relation involves not only a redefinition of the fields
but also a field-dependent change of coordinates. A simple and relevant
spacetime symmetry is obtained by the contraction of the 4D conformal group
that leads to the Galileon group. We analyze two non-linear realizations of
this group, focusing in particular on the propagation of signals around
non-trivial backgrounds. The aperture of the lightcone is in general different
in the two representations and in particular a free (luminal) massless scalar
is mapped in a Galileon theory which admits superluminal propagation. We show
that in this theory, if we consider backgrounds that vanish at infinity, there
is no asymptotic effect: the displacement of the trajectory integrates to zero,
as can be expected since the S-matrix is trivial. Regarding local measurements,
we show that the puzzle is solved taking into account that a local coupling
with fixed sources in one theory is mapped into a non-local coupling and we
show that this effect compensates the different lightcone. Therefore the two
theories have a different notion of locality. The same applies to the different
non-linear realizations of the conformal group and we study the particular case
of a cosmologically interesting background: the Galilean Genesis scenarios
Non-linear Representations of the Conformal Group and Mapping of Galileons
There are two common non-linear realizations of the 4D conformal group: in
the first, the dilaton is the conformal factor of the effective metric
\eta_{\mu\nu} e^{-2 \pi}; in the second it describes the fluctuations of a
brane in AdS_5. The two are related by a complicated field redefinition, found
by Bellucci, Ivanov and Krivonos (2002) to all orders in derivatives. We show
that this field redefinition can be understood geometrically as a change of
coordinates in AdS_5. In one gauge the brane is rigid at a fixed radial
coordinate with a conformal factor on the AdS_5 boundary, while in the other
one the brane bends in an unperturbed AdS_5. This geometrical picture
illuminates some aspects of the mapping between the two representations. We
show that the conformal Galileons in the two representations are mapped into
each other in a quite non-trivial way: the DBI action, for example, is mapped
into a complete linear combination of all the five Galileons in the other
representation. We also verify the equivalence of the dilaton S-matrix in the
two representations and point out that the aperture of the dilaton light-cone
around non-trivial backgrounds is not the same in the two representations.Comment: 16 pages. v2: typos corrected (notably eq 4.5), matches JHEP versio
Controllable Emphasis with zero data for text-to-speech
We present a scalable method to produce high quality emphasis for
text-to-speech (TTS) that does not require recordings or annotations. Many TTS
models include a phoneme duration model. A simple but effective method to
achieve emphasized speech consists in increasing the predicted duration of the
emphasised word. We show that this is significantly better than spectrogram
modification techniques improving naturalness by and correct testers'
identification of the emphasized word in a sentence by on a reference
female en-US voice. We show that this technique significantly closes the gap to
methods that require explicit recordings. The method proved to be scalable and
preferred in all four languages tested (English, Spanish, Italian, German), for
different voices and multiple speaking styles.Comment: In proceeding of 12th Speech Synthesis Workshop (SSW) 202
Patient-reported outcome measures in patients with familial cerebral cavernous malformations: results from the Treat_CCM trial
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