Obesity Paradox in the Clinical Significance of Effective Prosthetic Orifice Area after Aortic Valve Replacement.

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The instrument control unit of the PLATO payload: design consolidation following the preliminary design review by ESA

PLATO is an M-class mission (M3) of the European Space Agency (ESA) whose launch is scheduled in 2026. The main aim of the mission is the detection and characterization of terrestrial exoplanets orbiting around bright solar-type star. The payload consists of 26 small telescopes: 24 "normal" cameras and 2 "fast" cameras. The huge amount of data produced by the PLATO telescopes is acquired and processed on-board by the Data Processing System (DPS) made up by various processing electronic units. The DPS of the PLATO instrument comprises the Normal and Fast DPUs (Data Processing Units) and a single ICU (Instrument Control Unit), are data routed through a SpaceWire network. The topic of this paper is the description of the architecture of the ICU and its role within the DPS, the status of the Avionic Validation Model (AVM) testing at the end of the Unit Preliminary Design Review (UPDR) performed by ESA and the results of the test of the first engineering model

ECMO for COVID-19 patients in Europe and Israel

Since March 15th, 2020, 177 centres from Europe and Israel have joined the study, routinely reporting on the ECMO support they provide to COVID-19 patients. The mean annual number of cases treated with ECMO in the participating centres before the pandemic (2019) was 55. The number of COVID-19 patients has increased rapidly each week reaching 1531 treated patients as of September 14th. The greatest number of cases has been reported from France (n = 385), UK (n = 193), Germany (n = 176), Spain (n = 166), and Italy (n = 136) .The mean age of treated patients was 52.6 years (range 16–80), 79% were male. The ECMO configuration used was VV in 91% of cases, VA in 5% and other in 4%. The mean PaO2 before ECMO implantation was 65 mmHg. The mean duration of ECMO support thus far has been 18 days and the mean ICU length of stay of these patients was 33 days. As of the 14th September, overall 841 patients have been weaned from ECMO support, 601 died during ECMO support, 71 died after withdrawal of ECMO, 79 are still receiving ECMO support and for 10 patients status n.a. . Our preliminary data suggest that patients placed on ECMO with severe refractory respiratory or cardiac failure secondary to COVID-19 have a reasonable (55%) chance of survival. Further extensive data analysis is expected to provide invaluable information on the demographics, severity of illness, indications and different ECMO management strategies in these patients

An original phylogenetic approach identified mitochondrial haplogroup T1a1 as inversely associated with breast cancer risk in BRCA2 mutation carriers

Introduction: Individuals carrying pathogenic mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes have a high lifetime risk of breast cancer. BRCA1 and BRCA2 are involved in DNA double-strand break repair, DNA alterations that can be caused by exposure to reactive oxygen species, a main source of which are mitochondria. Mitochondrial genome variations affect electron transport chain efficiency and reactive oxygen species production. Individuals with different mitochondrial haplogroups differ in their metabolism and sensitivity to oxidative stress. Variability in mitochondrial genetic background can alter reactive oxygen species production, leading to cancer risk. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that mitochondrial haplogroups modify breast cancer risk in BRCA1/2 mutation carriers. Methods: We genotyped 22,214 (11,421 affected, 10,793 unaffected) mutation carriers belonging to the Consortium of Investigators of Modifiers of BRCA1/2 for 129 mitochondrial polymorphisms using the iCOGS array. Haplogroup inference and association detection were performed using a phylogenetic approach. ALTree was applied to explore the reference mitochondrial evolutionary tree and detect subclades enriched in affected or unaffected individuals. Results: We discovered that subclade T1a1 was depleted in affected BRCA2 mutation carriers compared with the rest of clade T (hazard ratio (HR) = 0.55; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.34 to 0.88; P = 0.01). Compared with the most frequent haplogroup in the general population (that is, H and T clades), the T1a1 haplogroup has a HR of 0.62 (95% CI, 0.40 to 0.95; P = 0.03). We also identified three potential susceptibility loci, including G13708A/rs28359178, which has demonstrated an inverse association with familial breast cancer risk. Conclusions: This study illustrates how original approaches such as the phylogeny-based method we used can empower classical molecular epidemiological studies aimed at identifying association or risk modification effects.Peer reviewe

AN ARCHITECTURE FOR HUMANOID ROBOT EXPRESSING EMOTIONS AND PERSONALITY

In this presentation we illustrate the cognitive architecture of a humanoid robot based on the proposed paradigm of Latent Semantic Behavior (LSB). LSB is based on the Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) approach that allow the creation and the use of a data driven high-dimensional conceptual space. This paradigm is a step towards the simulation of an emotional behavior of a robot interacting with humans. The Architecture is organized in three main areas: Sub-Conceptual, Emotional and Behavioral. The first area processes perceptual data coming from the sensors. The second area is the "conceptual space of emotional states" which constitutes the sub-symbolic representation of emotions. The last area activates a latent semantic behavior (LSB) related to the humanoid emotional state. The robot generates its overall behavior also taking into account its "personality". To validate the system, we implemented the system on a Aldebaran NAO humanoid robot

Knowledge Representation in Empathic Robots-Rappresentazione della conoscenza in robot empatici

In questo articolo si illustra l'architettura cognitiva di un robot umanoide basato sul paradigma della Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA). L'approccio LSA consente la creazione e l'utilizzo di un spazio concettuale multi-dimensionale e data driven. Questo paradigma è un passo verso la simulazione di un comportamento emotivo di un robot che interagisce con gli umani. L'architettura è organizzata in tre aree principali: Subconcettuale, emotivo e comportamentale. La prima area elabora i dati percettivi provenienti dai sensori. La seconda area è lo "spazio concettuale di stati emotivi" che costituisce la rappresentazione sub-simbolica di emozioni. L'ultima area attiva un comportamento semantico latente legato allo stato emozionale umanoide. Il robot genera il suo comportamento complessivo tenendo conto della sua "personalità". Per validare il sistema, abbiamo implementato il sistema su un robot umanoide NAO della Aldebaran