873 research outputs found
Evolutionary plasticity of developmental gene regulatory network architecture
Sea stars and sea urchins evolved from a last common ancestor that lived at the end of the Cambrian, approximately half a billion years ago. In a previous comparative study of the gene regulatory networks (GRNs) that embody the genomic program for embryogenesis in these animals, we discovered an almost perfectly conserved five-gene network subcircuit required for endoderm specification. We show here that the GRN structure upstream and downstream of the conserved network kernel has, by contrast, diverged extensively. Mesoderm specification is accomplished quite differently; the Delta–Notch signaling system is used in radically distinct ways; and various regulatory genes have been coopted to different functions. The conservation of the conserved kernel is thus the more remarkable. The results indicate types of network linkage subject to evolutionary change. An emergent theme is that subcircuit design may be preserved even while the identity of genes performing given roles changes because of alteration in their cis-regulatory control systems
Glycosylated copper(II) ionophores as prodrugs for â-glucosidase activation in targeted cancer therapy.
Impact of perceived stress and immune status on decision-making abilities during COVID-19 pandemic lockdown
The ability to make risky decisions in stressful contexts has been largely investigated in experimental settings. We examined this ability during the first months of COVID-19 pandemic, when in Italy people were exposed to a prolonged stress condition, mainly caused by a rigid lockdown. Participants among the general population completed two cognitive tasks, an Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), which measures individual risk/reward decision-making tendencies, and a Go/No-Go task (GNG), to test impulsivity, together with two questionnaires, the Perceived Stress Scale and the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scales. The Immune Status Questionnaire was additionally administered to explore the impact of the individual health status on decision making. The effect of the questionnaires scores on task performance was examined. The results showed that higher levels of perceived stress and a more self-reported vulnerable immune status were associated, separately, with less risky/more advantageous choices in the IGT in young male participants but with more risky/less advantageous choices in older male participants. These effects were not found in female participants. Impulsivity errors in the GNG were associated with more anxiety symptoms. These findings bring attention to the necessity of taking into account decision-making processes during stressful conditions, especially in the older and more physically vulnerable male population
Pediatric sinonasal neuroendocrine carcinoma following treatment for retinoblastoma. Human Pathology, 2009; 40:750-755.
Grip Force Reveals the Context Sensitivity of Language-Induced Motor Activity during “Action Words
Studies demonstrating the involvement of motor brain structures in language processing typically focus on \ud
time windows beyond the latencies of lexical-semantic access. Consequently, such studies remain inconclusive regarding whether motor brain structures are recruited directly in language processing or through post-linguistic conceptual imagery. In the present study, we introduce a grip-force sensor that allows online measurements of language-induced motor activity during sentence listening. We use this tool to investigate whether language-induced motor activity remains constant or is modulated in negative, as opposed to affirmative, linguistic contexts. Our findings demonstrate that this simple experimental paradigm can be used to study the online crosstalk between language and the motor systems in an ecological and economical manner. Our data further confirm that the motor brain structures that can be called upon during action word processing are not mandatorily involved; the crosstalk is asymmetrically\ud
governed by the linguistic context and not vice versa
Perceived utility of an integrated psychological intervention for gynaecological cancer patients admitted for surgery: Preliminary data
Objective: To investigate patients' satisfaction and perceived utility for psychological consultations delivered by clinical psychologists in a sample of gynaecological cancer patients hospitalised for surgery.
Methods: A total of 51 gynaecological cancer patients who scored higher than four on the distress thermometer (DT) were proposed and received a psychological consultation during hospitalisation for surgery. After six months from discharge, patients were asked, during a telephone interview, to rate their level of distress post-treatment, their perceived satisfaction, and usefulness of the psychological intervention received.
Results: At the time of the telephone interview, the distress levels stated by patients tended to be lower than those at hospital admission, and around 61% of the patients expressed maximum satisfaction with psychological intervention. Among these, 60.8% rated the psychological consultation useful for dealing with the hospitalisation itself, 45.1% useful for dealing with personal issues and 58.8% for dealing with issues related to returning home. People who were at their first diagnosis and those who had no other reason to be distressed beyond their cancer found psychological support significantly more useful for facing up to personal issues.
Conclusions: Patients are highly satisfied with integrative psychological interventions delivered by clinical psychologists in a medical setting such as that of gynaecological cancer surgery and from the six-month follow-up, it emerged that such interventions help in promoting patients' adjustment to the phase of hospitalisation and post-hospital discharge
Analytical description of stationary ideal MHD flows with constant total pressure
Incompressible stationary flows of ideal plasma are observed. By introduction
of curvilinear system of coordinates in which streamlines and magnetic force
lines form a family of coordinate surfaces, MHD equations are partially
integrated and brought to a certain convenient form. It is demonstrated that
the admissible group of Bogoyavlenskij's symmetry transformations performs as a
scaling transformation for the curvilinear coordinates. Analytic description of
stationary flows with constant total pressure is given. It is shown, that
contact magnetic surfaces of such flows are translational surfaces, i.e. are
swept out by translating one curve rigidly along another curve. Explicit
examples of solutions with constant total pressure possessing a significant
functional arbitrariness are given
Diamond Detectors for the TOTEM Timing Upgrade
This paper describes the design and the performance of the timing detector
developed by the TOTEM Collaboration for the Roman Pots (RPs) to measure the
Time-Of-Flight (TOF) of the protons produced in central diffractive
interactions at the LHC. The measurement of the TOF of the protons allows the
determination of the longitudinal position of the proton interaction vertex and
its association with one of the vertices reconstructed by the CMS detectors.
The TOF detector is based on single crystal Chemical Vapor Deposition (scCVD)
diamond plates and is designed to measure the protons TOF with about 50 ps time
precision. This upgrade to the TOTEM apparatus will be used in the LHC run 2
and will tag the central diffractive events up to an interaction pileup of
about 1. A dedicated fast and low noise electronics for the signal
amplification has been developed. The digitization of the diamond signal is
performed by sampling the waveform. After introducing the physics studies that
will most profit from the addition of these new detectors, we discuss in detail
the optimization and the performance of the first TOF detector installed in the
LHC in November 2015.Comment: 26 pages, 18 figures, 2 tables, submitted for publication to JINS
LHC Optics Measurement with Proton Tracks Detected by the Roman Pots of the TOTEM Experiment
Precise knowledge of the beam optics at the LHC is crucial to fulfil the
physics goals of the TOTEM experiment, where the kinematics of the scattered
protons is reconstructed with the near-beam telescopes -- so-called Roman Pots
(RP). Before being detected, the protons' trajectories are influenced by the
magnetic fields of the accelerator lattice. Thus precise understanding of the
proton transport is of key importance for the experiment. A novel method of
optics evaluation is proposed which exploits kinematical distributions of
elastically scattered protons observed in the RPs. Theoretical predictions, as
well as Monte Carlo studies, show that the residual uncertainty of this optics
estimation method is smaller than 0.25 percent.Comment: 20 pages, 11 figures, 5 figures, to be submitted to New J. Phy
Evidence for non-exponential elastic proton-proton differential cross-section at low |t| and sqrt(s) = 8 TeV by TOTEM
The TOTEM experiment has made a precise measurement of the elastic
proton-proton differential cross-section at the centre-of-mass energy sqrt(s) =
8 TeV based on a high-statistics data sample obtained with the beta* = 90
optics. Both the statistical and systematic uncertainties remain below 1%,
except for the t-independent contribution from the overall normalisation. This
unprecedented precision allows to exclude a purely exponential differential
cross-section in the range of four-momentum transfer squared 0.027 < |t| < 0.2
GeV^2 with a significance greater than 7 sigma. Two extended parametrisations,
with quadratic and cubic polynomials in the exponent, are shown to be well
compatible with the data. Using them for the differential cross-section
extrapolation to t = 0, and further applying the optical theorem, yields total
cross-section estimates of (101.5 +- 2.1) mb and (101.9 +- 2.1) mb,
respectively, in agreement with previous TOTEM measurements.Comment: Final version published in Nuclear Physics
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