Noise control in hospitals: Considerations on regulations, design and real situations

Hospitals include a variety of different spaces with different requirements and levels of sensitivity but also different activities and equipment that can cause high noise levels. Despite the regulations that usually apply to hospitals, noise control is not an easy task. In Italy, the design and construction of hospital buildings must guarantee the acoustic requirements given by the National Regulation (1995-1997), which refers to all new buildings, and by the new Decree on Minimum Environmental Criteria (2017), which applies to public buildings and refers to the Italian acoustic classification scheme (UNI 11367-2010). However, the need to create spaces suitable for the various types of use entails difficulties in identifying where and how to apply the limits set by the legislation. In addition, there are situations in which, regardless of the legislation, it would be opportune to consider more adequate acoustic comfort. In the paper, we analyse the various situations and evaluate the applicability of the legislation. From experimental measurements performed in real cases, some methodological proposals are reported both to ensure the satisfaction of the requirements imposed by the legislation and to meet the needs for more specific acoustic regulations for hospital

CXC and CC chemokines as angiogenic modulators in nonhaematological tumors.

Chemokines are a superfamily of structurally homologous heparin-binding proteins that includes potent inducers and inhibitors of angiogenesis. The imbalance between angiogenic and angiostatic chemokine activities can lead to abnormalities, such as chronic inflammation, dysplastic transformation, and even tumor development and spreading. In this review, we summarize the current literature regarding the role of chemokines as modulators of tumor angiogenesis and their potential role as therapeutic targets in patients with nonhaematological tumors

Crystals Application in the TOTEM Experiment to Increase the Acceptance of a Roman Pot

Bent crystal may enhance the physics reach of a near-beam physics detector in the CERN-LHC, by increasing the acceptance of scattered protons in low transverse momentum reactions. As an example we present simulations demonstrating the increase of the Roman Pot acceptance in the TOTEM apparatus. Starting from the MadX v6.5 collision optics, a crystal is placed at different longitudinal and transversal positions: for each scheme a gaussian beam of protons with different kinematic variables is created and tracked along the optical line with crystal. The number of protons with transversal coordinates greater than 10 s + 0:5 mm, that is inside the Roman Pot, is compared with the total number of protons. The possible gain in acceptance is around 15-20%

Liver X Receptors: Regulators of Cholesterol Metabolism, Inflammation, Autoimmunity, and Cancer

The interplay between cellular stress and immune response can be variable and sometimes contradictory. The mechanisms by which stress-activated pathways regulate the inflammatory response to a pathogen, in autoimmunity or during cancer progression remain unclear in many aspects, despite our recent knowledge of the signalling and transcriptional pathways involved in these diseases. In this context, over the last decade many studies demonstrated that cholesterol metabolism is an important checkpoint for immune homeostasis and cancer progression. Indeed, cholesterol is actively metabolized and can regulate, through its mobilization and/or production of active derivatives, many aspects of immunity and inflammation. Moreover, accumulation of cholesterol has been described in cancer cells, indicating metabolic addiction. The nuclear receptors liver-X-receptors (LXRs) are important regulators of intracellular cholesterol and lipids homeostasis. They have also key regulatory roles in immune response, as they can regulate inflammation, innate and adaptive immunity. Moreover, activation of LXRs has been reported to affect the proliferation and survival of different cancer cell types that show altered metabolic pathways and accumulation of cholesterol. In this minireview we will give an overview of the recent understandings about the mechanisms through which LXRs regulate inflammation, autoimmunity, and cancer, and the therapeutic potential for future treatment of these diseases through modulation of cholesterol metabolism

Mitochondrial proteomics: analysis of a whole mitochondrial extract with two-dimensional electrophoresis

Mitochondria are complex organelles, and their proteomics analysis requires a combination of techniques. The emphasis in this chapter is made first on mitochondria preparation from cultured mammalian cells, then on the separation of the mitochondrial proteins with two-dimensional electrophoresis (2DE), showing some adjustment over the classical techniques to improve resolution of the mitochondrial proteins. This covers both the protein solubilization, the electrophoretic part per se, and the protein detection on the gels, which makes the interface with the protein identification part relying on mass spectrometry

Preliminary tests on PEG-based thermoresponsive polymers for the production of 3D bioprinted constructs

In the last years, the growing demand for tissues and organs led to the development of novel techniques, such as 3D bioprinting. This technique proved to be promising for both patient-specific and custom-made applications when using autologous cells, and for the creation of standardized models that in the future could be used for instance for high-throughput drug screening. Within this context, the formulation of bioinks that could provide reliable, reproducible, and replicable structures with good mechanical properties and high biocompatibility is a crucial challenge. In this work, the use of a thermoresponsive PEG-based formulation was investigated as a bioink, allowing its use for 4D bioprinting applications triggered by thermal changes. First, the polymer was synthesized by reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer polymerization (RAFT), which allows for optimal control over the final properties of the polymer. Then, the printability for extrusion-based bioprinting of this formulation was assessed through in-situ imaging. Finally, the use of this polymer as bioink was tested by encapsulation of endothelial cells and evaluating cell distribution within the construct

In-situ monitoring of defects in extrusion-based bioprinting processes using visible light imaging

Tissue engineering techniques are central for the development of biomedical scaffolds, which are primarily employed in the biofabrication of various artificial human tissue and organ models. Bioprinting is a new technique of creating tissue constructs that can sustain cell proliferation. The development of printing techniques proceeds together with the development of the biomaterials to be printed, which is why studying the printability of these specific biomaterials must be explored. An appropriate hydrogel used as bioink should have numerous rheological, mechanical, and biological properties for producing appropriate tissue constructs. However, reaching the right trade-off between a desirable bioactivity and high printability is challenging, and despite numerous optimization studies for different materials, printing defects often occur during printing. Herein, methods are proposed to automatically identify these drifting processes in commonly used geometries and how they affected subsequent layers, as well as printing defects within each layer. Several structures were printed with standard commercial bioink as proof of concept. The constructs were analyzed using optical images from a coaxial camera. The images were then digitally processed to get geometrical data from which patterns of defectology to be monitored were derived. This automation should decrease the time in post-processing characterization of constructs and should provide a standardized tool to compare different bioinks

Network Analysis of World Trade using the BACI-CEPII dataset

In this paper we explore the BACI-CEPII database using Network Analysis. Starting from the visualization of the World Trade Network, we then define and describe the topology of the network, both in its binary version and in its weighted version, calculating and discussing some of the commonly used network's statistics. We finally discuss some specic topics that can be studied using Network Analysis and International Trade data, both at the aggregated and sectoral level. The analysis is done using multiple software (Stata, R, and Pajek). The scripts to replicate part of the analysis are included in the appendix, and can be used as an handson tutorial. Moreover,the World Trade Network local and global centrality measures, for the unweighted and the weighted version of the Network, calculated using the bilateral aggregate trade data for each country (178 in total) and each year (from 1995 to 2010,) can be downloaded from the CEPII webpage