Imaging of central nervous system manifestations of tuberous sclerosis: a current pictorial review for an “old” disease

Tuberous Sclerosis is a genetic multisystemic disease that mainly affects the central nervous system (CNS) of patients at any age. This study illustrates the neuroimaging findings that are included in the clinical diagnostic criteria in a group of patients with tuberous sclerosis (TS) of two tertiary university hospitals. The neuroimaging findings, in order of frequency, are cortical tubers, subependymal nodules, white matter abnormalities and subependymal giant cells astrocytomas. All these lesions represent disorganized neurons and glial cells. Cerebellar and hippocampal abnormalities have also been described in TS.  Neuroimaging, particularly magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), has a crucial role in the evaluation and diagnosis of tuberous sclerosis, especially in atypical clinical presentations or in cases of inadequate therapeutic response

Imaging of central nervous system manifestations of Tuberous Sclerosis: a current pictorial review for an “old” disease

Tuberous Sclerosis is a genetic multisystemic disease that mainly affects the central nervous system (CNS) of patients at any age. This study illustrates the neuroimaging findings that are included in the clinical diagnostic criteria in a group of patients with tuberous sclerosis (TS) of two tertiary university hospitals. The neuroimaging findings, in order of frequency, are cortical tubers, subependymal nodules, white matter abnormalities and subependymal giant cells astrocytomas. All these lesions represent disorganized neurons and glial cells. Cerebellar and hippocampal abnormalities have also been described in TS.  Neuroimaging, particularly magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), has a crucial role in the evaluation and diagnosis of tuberous sclerosis, especially in atypical clinical presentations or in cases of inadequate therapeutic response

Different media and supplements modulate the clonogenic and expansion properties of rabbit bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background -</p> <p>Rabbits provide an excellent model for many animal and human diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, for the development of new vaccines in wound healing management and in the field of tissue engineering of tendon, cartilage, bone and skin.</p> <p>The study presented herein aims to investigate the biological properties of bone marrow rabbit MSCs cultured in different conditions, in order to provide a basis for their clinical applications in veterinary medicine.</p> <p>Findings -</p> <p>MSCs were isolated from 5 New Zealand rabbits. Fold increase, CFU number, doubling time, differentiation ability and immunophenotype were analyzed.</p> <p>With the plating density of 10 cells/cm²the fold increase was significantly lower with DMEM-20%FCS and MSCs growth was significantly higher with αMEM-hEGF. The highest clonogenic ability was found at 100 cell/cm²with MSCBM and at 10 cell/cm²with M199. Both at 10 and 100 cells/cm², in αMEM medium, the highest CFU increase was obtained by adding bFGF. Supplementing culture media with 10%FCS-10%HS determined a significant increase of CFU.</p> <p>Conclusion -</p> <p>Our data suggest that different progenitor cells with differential sensitivity to media, sera and growth factors exist and the choice of culture conditions has to be carefully considered for MSC management.</p

Engineering Reconnaissance Following the October 2016 Central Italy Earthquakes - Version 2

Between August and November 2016, three major earthquake events occurred in Central Italy. The first event, with M6.1, took place on 24 August 2016, the second (M5.9) on 26 October, and the third (M6.5) on 30 October 2016. Each event was followed by numerous aftershocks. As shown in Figure 1.1, this earthquake sequence occurred in a gap between two earlier damaging events, the 1997 M6.1 Umbria-Marche earthquake to the north-west and the 2009 M6.1 L’Aquila earthquake to the south-east. This gap had been previously recognized as a zone of elevated risk (GdL INGV sul terremoto di Amatrice, 2016). These events occurred along the spine of the Apennine Mountain range on normal faults and had rake angles ranging from -80 to -100 deg, which corresponds to normal faulting. Each of these events produced substantial damage to local towns and villages. The 24 August event caused massive damages to the following villages: Arquata del Tronto, Accumoli, Amatrice, and Pescara del Tronto. In total, there were 299 fatalities (www.ilgiornale.it), generally from collapses of unreinforced masonry dwellings. The October events caused significant new damage in the villages of Visso, Ussita, and Norcia, although they did not produce fatalities, since the area had largely been evacuated. The NSF-funded Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) association, with co-funding from the B. John Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences at UCLA and the NSF I/UCRC Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-UAS) at BYU, mobilized a US-based team to the area in two main phases: (1) following the 24 August event, from early September to early October 2016, and (2) following the October events, between the end of November and the beginning of December 2016. The US team worked in close collaboration with Italian researchers organized under the auspices of the Italian Geotechnical Society, the Italian Center for Seismic Microzonation and its Applications, the Consortium ReLUIS, Centre of Competence of Department of Civil Protection and the DIsaster RECovery Team of Politecnico di Torino. The objective of the Italy-US GEER team was to collect and document perishable data that is essential to advance knowledge of earthquake effects, which ultimately leads to improved procedures for characterization and mitigation of seismic risk. The Italy-US GEER team was multi-disciplinary, with expertise in geology, seismology, geomatics, geotechnical engineering, and structural engineering. The composition of the team was largely the same for the two mobilizations, particularly on the Italian side. Our approach was to combine traditional reconnaissance activities of on-ground recording and mapping of field conditions, with advanced imaging and damage detection routines enabled by state-of-the-art geomatics technology. GEER coordinated its reconnaissance activities with those of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), although the EERI mobilization to the October events was delayed and remains pending as of this writing (April 2017). For the August event reconnaissance, EERI focused on emergency response and recovery, in combination with documenting the effectiveness of public policies related to seismic retrofit. As such, GEER had responsibility for documenting structural damage patterns in addition to geotechnical effects. This report is focused on the reconnaissance activities performed following the October 2016 events. More information about the GEER reconnaissance activities and main findings following the 24 August 2016 event, can be found in GEER (2016). The objective of this document is to provide a summary of our findings, with an emphasis of documentation of data. In general, we do not seek to interpret data, but rather to present it as thoroughly as practical. Moreover, we minimize the presentation of background information already given in GEER (2016), so that the focus is on the effects of the October events. As such, this report and GEER (2016) are inseparable companion documents. Similar to reconnaissance activities following the 24 August 2016 event, the GEER team investigated earthquake effects on slopes, villages, and major infrastructure. Figure 1.2 shows the most strongly affected region and locations described subsequently pertaining to: 1. Surface fault rupture; 2. Recorded ground motions; 3. Landslides and rockfalls; 4. Mud volcanoes; 5. Investigated bridge structures; 6. Villages and hamlets for which mapping of building performance was performed

Towards a muon collider

A muon collider would enable the big jump ahead in energy reach that is needed for a fruitful exploration of fundamental interactions. The challenges of producing muon collisions at high luminosity and 10 TeV centre of mass energy are being investigated by the recently-formed International Muon Collider Collaboration. This Review summarises the status and the recent advances on muon colliders design, physics and detector studies. The aim is to provide a global perspective of the field and to outline directions for future work

Towards a Muon Collider

A muon collider would enable the big jump ahead in energy reach that is needed for a fruitful exploration of fundamental interactions. The challenges of producing muon collisions at high luminosity and 10 TeV centre of mass energy are being investigated by the recently-formed International Muon Collider Collaboration. This Review summarises the status and the recent advances on muon colliders design, physics and detector studies. The aim is to provide a global perspective of the field and to outline directions for future work.Comment: 118 pages, 103 figure

Erratum:Towards a muon collider

LPT

Description and performance of track and primary-vertex reconstruction with the CMS tracker

A description is provided of the software algorithms developed for the CMS tracker both for reconstructing charged-particle trajectories in proton-proton interactions and for using the resulting tracks to estimate the positions of the LHC luminous region and individual primary-interaction vertices. Despite the very hostile environment at the LHC, the performance obtained with these algorithms is found to be excellent. For tbar t events under typical 2011 pileup conditions, the average track-reconstruction efficiency for promptly-produced charged particles with transverse momenta of pT > 0.9GeV is 94% for pseudorapidities of |η| < 0.9 and 85% for 0.9 < |η| < 2.5. The inefficiency is caused mainly by hadrons that undergo nuclear interactions in the tracker material. For isolated muons, the corresponding efficiencies are essentially 100%. For isolated muons of pT = 100GeV emitted at |η| < 1.4, the resolutions are approximately 2.8% in pT, and respectively, 10μm and 30μm in the transverse and longitudinal impact parameters. The position resolution achieved for reconstructed primary vertices that correspond to interesting pp collisions is 10–12μm in each of the three spatial dimensions. The tracking and vertexing software is fast and flexible, and easily adaptable to other functions, such as fast tracking for the trigger, or dedicated tracking for electrons that takes into account bremsstrahlung

Erratum: Towards a muon collider

The original online version of this article was revised: The additional reference [139] has been added. Tao Han’s ORICD ID has been incorrectly assigned to Chengcheng Han and Chengcheng Han’s ORCID ID to Tao Han. Yang Ma’s ORCID ID has been incorrectly assigned to Lianliang Ma, and Lianliang Ma’s ORCID ID to Yang Ma. The original article has been corrected

Towards a muon collider

A muon collider would enable the big jump ahead in energy reach that is needed for a fruitful exploration of fundamental interactions. The challenges of producing muon collisions at high luminosity and 10 TeV centre of mass energy are being investigated by the recently-formed International Muon Collider Collaboration. This Review summarises the status and the recent advances on muon colliders design, physics and detector studies. The aim is to provide a global perspective of the field and to outline directions for future work