Frontostriatal deficit in Motor Neuron Disease/Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (MND/ALS)

So far, cognitive derangements in MND/ALS have not been widely studied. Nevertheless, it seems that in subgroups of patients cognitive functions are impaired in different degree, so that often at least two sub-types of the syndrome are reported: Motor Neuron Disease/Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis/Dementia Syndrome (MND/ALS/DS) and Motor Neuron Disease/Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis/ Aphasia Syndrome (MND/ALS/AS. A third subtype showing both symptoms of cognitive impairment may be identified in subgroups of patients and denominated Motor Neuron Disease/Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis/Dementia-Aphasia Syndrome (MND/ALS/DAS). Frontostriatal system is reported as a network heavily damaged in MND/ALS/DS, MND/ALS/AS, MND/ALS/DAS. The system is plausibly responsible of motor skills and verbs production, hence to become aware of a possible frontostriatal deficit in subgroup of MND/ALS patients might consent us to link at the brain level (motor) action and verbs and possibly ideomotor praxia and verbs. We have used Goal-Oriented Perception Task (GOPT) and Action Fluency Task (AFT) in order to detect with some accuracy impairments related to gestaltic analysis directed toward a goal, and verb retrieval deficits possibly underlying executive system dysfunction that destabilizes the ability to mentally coordinate the information associated with a verb. These tests should consent to detect possible frontostriatal derangements. We have tested 10 MND/ALS patients and 10 healthy subjects matched fore age, sex and laterality. AFT showed that 3 out of 6 patients are heavily impaired in this test (6.3 (mean) verbs generated vs 13.3 of the control group). GOPT detected a remarkable impairment in all patients: p=0.0021 (grammatical side), p=0.0002 (perceptual side). Reported frontostriatal deficit in MND/ALS seems confirmed by this study, and probably it is more easily detected by GOPT than by AFT

Evaluation of the liquid channel influence on heat transfer performance in a plate-fin heat exchanger by means of three-dimensional CFD simulations

Paper presented to the 10th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Florida, 14-16 July 2014.Compact Heat Exchangers (CHEs) play an important role in a wide range of applications, e.g. in windmill gear units, machine tools, mobile hydraulic systems and so on. For each field, specific requirements are needed (i.e. heat transfer rate, mass, size and pressure drop), which are achieved also through different types of configuration for the fin geometry in both the oil and the air channel. By means of CFD simulations of a small part of the CHE core, it is possible to know how a certain coupling of air and oil channels performs. However, when the number of configurations to be analysed is consistent, it is preferable to choose the smallest meaningful computational domain, in order to reduce computational resources while keeping all important physical phenomena. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that, despite oil flow can lead to convective heat transfer coefficient several times higher with respect to air flow, a change in the fin geometry affects significantly the “conjugate heat transfer” and the CHE performance. Besides, it is presented a simplified model for the heat exchanger element where the oil channel conductive and convective heat exchange are modelled by using a fixed temperature boundary condition and an effective thermal resistance. 3-D simulations were carried out considering a fixed fin geometry for the air channel and five different fin geometries for the oil channel. Two cases of operative conditions were taken into account. Furthermore, for each coupling of channels, the simplified model was applied. Results demonstrate that a change in the fin geometry for the oil channel affects the overall heat transfer, and this influence is greater or smaller depending on the operative conditions. Secondly, the reduced model is shown to yield results with a reduction in accuracy that can not be neglected.dc201

The Out-of-Equilibrium Time-Dependent Gutzwiller Approximation

We review the recently proposed extension of the Gutzwiller approximation, M. Schiro' and M. Fabrizio, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 076401 (2010), designed to describe the out-of-equilibrium time-evolution of a Gutzwiller-type variational wave function for correlated electrons. The method, which is strictly variational in the limit of infinite lattice-coordination, is quite general and flexible, and it is applicable to generic non-equilibrium conditions, even far beyond the linear response regime. As an application, we discuss the quench dynamics of a single-band Hubbard model at half-filling, where the method predicts a dynamical phase transition above a critical quench that resembles the sharp crossover observed by time-dependent dynamical mean field theory. We next show that one can actually define in some cases a multi-configurational wave function combination of a whole set of mutually orthogonal Gutzwiller wave functions. The Hamiltonian projected in that subspace can be exactly evaluated and is equivalent to a model of auxiliary spins coupled to non-interacting electrons, closely related to the slave-spin theories for correlated electron models. The Gutzwiller approximation turns out to be nothing but the mean-field approximation applied to that spin-fermion model, which displays, for any number of bands and integer fillings, a spontaneous $Z_2$ symmetry breaking that can be identified as the Mott insulator-to-metal transition.Comment: 25 pages. Proceedings of the Hvar 2011 Workshop on 'New materials for thermoelectric applications: theory and experiment

The production function methodology for calculating potential growth rates and output gaps

The concepts of potential growth and the output gap form a crucial part of the toolkit for assessing the cyclical position of the economy and its productive capacity. These concepts have become an essential ingredient of the fiscal surveillance process emanating from the Stability and Growth Pact. Estimating the output gap is difficult since potential growth is not directly observable whilst actual GDP is subject to significant historical / forecast revisions. Given the large uncertainty surrounding output gap estimates, due care must be taken in interpreting their size and evolution. Whilst mindful of these uncertainties, the potential growth and output gap forecasts produced by the ECOFIN Council approved production function (PF) methodology have been providing essential information to policy makers since their initial release in 2002. This information has been used by policy makers for their ongoing discussions regarding the appropriate mix of macroeconomic and structural policies in the various EU economies, with the former geared to eliminating cyclical slack and the latter being used to raise the output potential of their respective economies. Given the importance of this work, the EU's Economic Policy Committee has a dedicated working group (i.e. the "Output Gap Working Group" - OGWG) which meets regularly to discuss the operational effectiveness & relevance of the existing PF methodology. Periodically, the Commission services produce a paper which tries to succinctly summarise the work of the OGWG over a specific period of time, with the present paper updating the last published paper on this topic which appeared in 2006JRC.G.3-Econometrics and applied statistic

Drug resistance in B and non-B subtypes amongst subjects recently diagnosed as primary/recent or chronic HIV-infected over the period 2013–2016: Impact on susceptibility to first-line strategies including integrase strand-transfer inhibitors

Objectives To characterize the prevalence of transmitted drug resistance mutations (TDRMs) by plasma analysis of 750 patients at the time of HIV diagnosis from January 1, 2013 to November 16, 2016 in the Veneto region (Italy), where all drugs included in the recommended first line therapies were prescribed, included integrase strand transfer inhibitors (InNSTI). Methods TDRMs were defined according to the Stanford HIV database algorithm. Results Subtype B was the most prevalent HIV clade (67.3%). A total of 92 patients (12.3%) were expected to be resistant to one drug at least, most with a single class mutation (60/68–88.2% in subtype B infected subjectsand 23/24–95.8% in non-B subjects) and affecting mainly NNRTIs. No significant differences were observed between the prevalence rates of TDRMs involving one or more drugs, except for the presence of E138A quite only in patients with B subtype and other NNRTI in subjects with non-B infection. The diagnosis of primary/recent infection was made in 73 patients (9.7%): they had almost only TDRMs involving a single class. Resistance to InSTI was studied in 484 subjects (53 with primary-recent infection), one patient had 143C in 2016, a total of thirteen 157Q mutations were detected (only one in primary/recent infection). Conclusions Only one major InSTI-TDRM was identified but monitoring of TDRMs should continue in the light of continuing presence of NNRTI-related mutation amongst newly diagnosed subjects, sometime impacting also to modern NNRTI drugs recommended in first-line therapy

Chromosome analysis in Saccodon wagneri (Characiformes) and insights into the karyotype evolution of Parodontidae

Parodontidae is a relatively small group of Neotropical characiform fishes consisting of three genera (Apareiodon, Parodon, and Saccodon) with 32 valid species. A vast cytogenetic literature is available on Apareiodon and Parodon, but to date, there is no cytogenetic data about Saccodon, a genus that contains only three species with a trans-Andean distribution. In the present study the karyotype of S. wagneri was described, based on both conventional (Giemsa staining, Ag- NOR, C-bands) and molecular (repetitive DNA mapping by fluorescent in situ hybridization) methods. A diploid chromosome number of 2n = 54 was observed in both sexes, and the presence of heteromorphic sex chromosomes of the ZZ/ ZW type was detected. The W chromosome has a terminal heterochromatin band that occupies approximately half of the long arm, being this band approximately half the size of the Z chromosome. The FISH assay showed a synteny of the 18S-rDNA and 5S-rDNA genes in the chromosome pair 14, and the absence of interstitial telomeric sites. Our data reinforce the hypothesis of a conservative karyotype structure in Parodontidae and suggest an ancient origin of the sex chromosomes in the fishes of this family

Interleukin-21 sustains inflammatory signals that contribute to sporadic colon tumorigenesis

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.This work received support from the “Fondazione Umberto di Mario ONLUS”, Rome, and AIRC (MFAG-12108 to CS and IG-13049 to GM)

Detection of human MCP-4/CCL13 isoforms by SELDI immunoaffinity capture

Monocyte Chemoattractant Proteins 4 (MCP-4/CCL13) is a member of a distinct, structurally-related subclass of CC chemokines mainly involved in recruitment of eosinphils to inflammatory sites. Recent evidence demonstrates that serum level of this protein strongly increases following high dose IL-2 immunotherapy. The physiological form of human MCP-4/CCL13 has yet to be purified. Therefore, the primary structure of the biologically relevant (mature) form has not been established. By using SELDI immunoaffinity capture technology we describe two mature isoforms both present in serum before and after high-dose IL-2 immunotherapy