Cooling with fermionic reservoir

Recently, much emphasis has been given to genuinely quantum reservoirs generically called fermionic reservoirs. These reservoirs are characterized by having finite levels, as opposed to bosonic reservoirs, which have infinite levels that can be populated via an increase in temperature. Given this, some studies are being carried out to explore the advantages of using quantum reservoirs, in particular in the operation of heat machines. In this work, we make a comparative study of a thermal refrigerator operating in the presence of either a bosonic or a fermionic reservoir, and we show that fermionic reservoirs have advantages over bosonic ones. We propose an explanation for the origin of these advantages by analyzing both the asymptotic behavior of the states of the qubits and the exchange rates between these qubits and their respective reservoirs.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

EVALITA Evaluation of NLP and Speech Tools for Italian - December 17th, 2020

Welcome to EVALITA 2020! EVALITA is the evaluation campaign of Natural Language Processing and Speech Tools for Italian. EVALITA is an initiative of the Italian Association for Computational Linguistics (AILC, http://www.ai-lc.it) and it is endorsed by the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AIxIA, http://www.aixia.it) and the Italian Association for Speech Sciences (AISV, http://www.aisv.it)

Para-infectious brain injury in COVID-19 persists at follow-up despite attenuated cytokine and autoantibody responses

To understand neurological complications of COVID-19 better both acutely and for recovery, we measured markers of brain injury, inflammatory mediators, and autoantibodies in 203 hospitalised participants; 111 with acute sera (1–11 days post-admission) and 92 convalescent sera (56 with COVID-19-associated neurological diagnoses). Here we show that compared to 60 uninfected controls, tTau, GFAP, NfL, and UCH-L1 are increased with COVID-19 infection at acute timepoints and NfL and GFAP are significantly higher in participants with neurological complications. Inflammatory mediators (IL-6, IL-12p40, HGF, M-CSF, CCL2, and IL-1RA) are associated with both altered consciousness and markers of brain injury. Autoantibodies are more common in COVID-19 than controls and some (including against MYL7, UCH-L1, and GRIN3B) are more frequent with altered consciousness. Additionally, convalescent participants with neurological complications show elevated GFAP and NfL, unrelated to attenuated systemic inflammatory mediators and to autoantibody responses. Overall, neurological complications of COVID-19 are associated with evidence of neuroglial injury in both acute and late disease and these correlate with dysregulated innate and adaptive immune responses acutely

Presence of soluble tetrameric (blood) and membrane‐bound dimeric forms of cholinesterase in the mollusk Murex brandaris (Gastropoda: Neogastropoda)

International audienceAbstract In the marine snail Murex brandaris about 80% of cholinesterase (ChE) activity lies in the blood. It can be recovered as a fully soluble (FS) form by mincing the whole animal. Two more ChE forms, detergent (DS) and high‐salt soluble (HSS) (18 and 2% of total ChE activity, respectively), can then be sequentially extracted from the other tissues. FS and DS ChEs were purified to homogeneity by affinity chromatography on procainamide‐or edrophonium‐Sepharose respectively. The small amount of HSS prevented a similar purification and an extensive characterization. According to density gradient centrifugation, gel‐filtration chromatography, and SDS‐PAGE, FS ChE is likely a globular tetramer of a 66 kDa subunit (10.8 sedimentation constant [S], 270 kDa). Moreover, it is an amphiphilic form including a hydrophobic domain. DS ChE appears to be a globular dimer of a 66 kDa subunit (5.6 S, 137 kDa). The amphiphilicity of this enzyme is likely due to a phosphatidylinositol on the catalytic subunits, also responsible for detergent interaction as well as cell membrane insertion. Both FS and DS forms hydrolyze propionylthiocholine faster than other choline thioester substrates. They also show high catalytic efficiency with other choline esters as substrates, likely due to a wide and relatively unspecialized conformation of the active site. Immunological cross‐reactivity showed wide structural affinity between FS and DS forms. Antibody‐enzyme bond gave partial inactivation. On the whole, the results suggest that both FS and DS forms likely originate from only one gene. Differences in quaternary structure and solubility could reflect posttranslational modifications or alternative splicing. © 1994 Wiley‐Liss, Inc

Scoring systems for the evaluation of adnexal masses nature: current knowledge and clinical applications

Adnexal masses are a common finding in women, with 20% of them developing at least one pelvic mass during their lifetime. There are more than 30 different subtypes of adnexal tumours, with multiple different subcategories, and the correct characterisation of the pelvic masses is of paramount importance to guide the correct management. On that basis, different algorithms and scoring systems have been developed to guide the clinical assessment. The first scoring system implemented into the clinical practice was the Risk of Malignancy Index, which combines ultrasound evaluation, menopausal status, and serum CA-125 levels. Today, current guidelines regarding female patients with adnexal masses include the application of International Ovarian Tumours Analysis simple rules, logistic regression model 1 (LR1) and LR2, OVERA, cancer ovarii non-invasive assessment of treating strategy, and assessment of Different Neoplasias in the adnexa. In this scenario, the choice of the scoring system for the discrimination between benign and malignant ovarian tumours can be complex when approaching patients with adnexal masses. This review aims to summarise the available evidence regarding the different scoring systems to provide a complete overview of the topic

A phase II trial of erlotinib in combination with bevacizumab in patients with metastatic breast cancer.

PURPOSE: To evaluate the efficacy and toxicity of erlotinib plus bevacizumab in patients with metastatic breast cancer (MBC), targeting the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR/HER1) and the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) pathway. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: Thirty-eight patients with MBC were enrolled and treated at two institutions with erlotinib, a small molecule EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor (150 mg p.o. daily) plus bevacizumab, an anti-VEGF antibody (15 mg/kg i.v. every 3 weeks). Patients had one to two prior chemotherapy regimens for metastatic disease. The primary end point was response rate by Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors criteria using a Simon 2-stage design. Secondary end points included toxicity, time to progression, response duration, and stabilization of disease of > or = 26 weeks. Correlative studies were done on tumor tissue, including EGFR expression and mutation analysis. RESULTS: One patient achieved a partial response for 52+ months. Fifteen patients had stable disease at first evaluation at 9 weeks; 4 of these patients had stable disease beyond 26 weeks. Median time to progression was 11 weeks (95% confidence interval, 8-18 weeks). Diarrhea of any grade was observed in 84% of patients (grade 3 in 3%); 76% experienced grade 1 or 2 skin rash, and 18% developed hypertension (grade 3 in 11%). The level of EGFR expression was not predictive of response to therapy. CONCLUSIONS: The combination of erlotinib and bevacizumab was well-tolerated but had limited activity in unselected patients with previously treated MBC. Biomarkers are needed to identify those MBC patients likely to respond to anti-EGFR/HER1 plus anti-VEGF therapy