Sand bag barriers for coastal protection along the Emilia Romagna littoral, Northern Adriatic Sea, Italy

Beach nourishments protected by submerged sand bag barriers have been largely used in Emilia Romagna (Italy), whose low and sandy coast faces the relatively mild Northern Adriatic Sea. The paper, after a brief description of the eight projects of this type realised in the last 25 years along the Emilia Romagna littoral, details the case study of Riccione Southern beach. The performance of the defence is described by means of cross-shore profiles, bathymetries, collection of sediment samples, underwater pictures, monitoring of environmental conditions and performed maintenance. The combined analysis of the available data suggests that the sand bag barrier may stabilise the position of the natural sandy bar and ultimately the beach profile

Overview of the benefitsand potential issues of the nonavalent HPV vaccine

HPV-related diseases affect anogenital and oropharyngeal regions, heavily affecting the psychosexual dimension of both male and female individuals. HPV vaccination programs based on a bivalent or quadrivalent vaccine have opened broad perspectives for primary prevention. A nonavalent HPV vaccine (9vHPV), covering nine genotypes (HPV6, HPV11, HPV16, HPV18, HPV31, HPV33, HPV45, HPV52, and HPV58), might provide further improvement in terms of direct protection. In the present report, efficacy and safety data from 9vHPV vaccine development programs are examined. Efficacy data come from a pivotal trial, which was conducted among women aged 16–26 years randomly assigned to receive either the 9vHPV or the quadrivalent HPV (4vHPV) vaccine. The 9vHPV vaccine was shown to have potential benefits as compared with 4vHPV, increasing the overall estimated rate of prevention to 90% for cervical cancer and up to 80% for precancerous cervical lesions. For all other HPV-related pre-invasive and invasive lesions, 9vHPV showed potentially greater disease reduction, depending on the anatomic region examined. Thus, the 9vHPV vaccine shows clinical potential for the prevention of HPV-related diseases in both sexes. Future adoption of 9vHPV will depend on factors including market price, cost-effectiveness data, use of a two-dose schedule, and safety and efficacy monitoring in real-life programs

Coalescing binary systems of compact objects: Dynamics of angular momenta

The end state of a coalescing binary of compact objects depends strongly on the final total mass M and angular momentum J. Since gravitational radiation emission causes a slow evolution of the binary system through quasi-circular orbits down to the innermost stable one, in this paper we examine the corresponding behavior of the ratio J/M^2 which must be less than 1(G/c) or about 0.7(G/c) for the formation of a black hole or a neutron star respectively. The results show cases for which, at the end of the inspiral phase, the conditions for black hole or neutron star formation are not satisfied. The inclusion of spin effects leads us to a study of precession equations valid also for the calculation of gravitational waveforms.Comment: 22 pages, AASTeX and 13 figures in PostScrip

Perineural invasion in vulvar squamous-cell carcinoma is an independent risk factor for cancer-specific survival, but not for locoregional recurrence: results from a single tertiary referral center

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Vulvar squamous cell carcinoma is a rare tumor but represents a serious health issue, especially due to the increasing incidence over the past decades. Many efforts have been made to identify new prognostic and therapeutic factors and, in this context, growing evidence concerning a pivotal role of perineural invasion. With this study, we investigated the role of perineural invasion in a large cohort of FIGO stage Ib-IIIc vulvar squamous cell carcinomas and found that perineural invasion-positive tumors have more aggressive biological behaviors and showed reduced cancer-specific survival as compared to perineural invasion-negative tumors, while this feature does not appear to be related to a greater risk to develop loco-regional recurrence. Further evaluations are warranted to confirm the prognostic role of perineural invasion and its potential use to tailor adjuvant treatment. ABSTRACT: The aims of this study were to assess the prevalence of perineural invasion (PNI) in vulvar squamous cell carcinoma (VSCC) and its prognostic role in locoregional recurrence (LRR) and cancer-specific survival (CSS). We performed a retrospective analysis of 223 consecutive stage IB–IIIC surgically treated VSCCs at S. Anna Hospital, University of Turin, from 2000 to 2019. We identified 133/223 (59.6%) patients with PNI-positive VSCCs. PNI was associated with aggressive biological features (i.e., advanced FIGO stage, larger tumor diameter, greater depth of invasion, a higher number of metastatic lymph nodes, and lymphovascular invasion) and shorter 5-year CSS (78% vs. 90%, log-rank p = 0.02) compared with PNI-negative VSCCs. Multivariate analysis showed that PNI (HR 2.99 CI 95% 1.17–7.63; p = 0.02) and the presence of tumor cells on pathological surgical margins (HR 3.13 CI 95% 1.37–7.13; p = 0.007) are independent prognostic factors for CSS. PNI does not appear to be related to LRR, but is an independent prognostic factor for worse survival outcomes. Future studies are necessary to explore the possible value of PNI in tailoring the choice of adjuvant treatment

Non-perturbative renormalisation and improvement of non-singlet tensor currents in Nf=3N_\mathrm{f}=3 QCD

Hadronic matrix elements involving tensor currents play an important r\^ole in decays that allow to probe the consistency of the Standard Model via precision lattice QCD calculations. The non-singlet tensor current is a scale-dependent (anomalous) quantity. We fully resolve its renormalisation group (RG) running in the continuum by carrying out a recursive finite-size scaling technique. In this way ambiguities due to a perturbative RG running and matching to lattice data at low energies are eliminated. We provide the total renormalisation factor at a hadronic scale of 233 MeV, which converts the bare current into its RG-invariant form. Our calculation features three flavours of O(a) improved Wilson fermions and tree-level Symanzik-improved gauge action. We employ the (massless) Schr\"odinger functional renormalisation scheme throughout and present the first non-perturbative determination of the Symanzik counterterm $c_\mathrm{T}$ derived from an axial Ward identity. We elaborate on various details of our calculations, including two different renormalisation conditions.Comment: 39 pages, 10 figures, 11 tables