335 research outputs found
Constructing âsuspectâ communities and Britishness: mapping British press coverage of Irish and Muslim communities, 1974â2007
There exist many parallels between the experiences of Irish communities in Britain in the past and those of Muslim communities today. However, although they have both been the subject of negative stereotyping, intelligence profiling, wrongful arrest and prejudice, little research has been carried out comparing how these communities are represented in the media. This article addresses this gap by mapping British press coverage of events involving Irish and Muslim communities that occurred between 1974 and 2007. The analysis shows that both sets of communities have been represented as âsuspectâ to different degrees, which the article attributes to varying perceptions within the press as to the nature of the threat Irish and Muslim communities are thought to pose to Britain. The article concludes that a central concern of the press lies with defending its own constructions of Britishness against perceived extremists, and against abuses of power and authority by the state security apparatus
Dentro la famiglia: le condizioni di vita dei bambini
On the basis of a local household survey, this paper examines the economic and social conditions of families with children under fifteen. The analysis refers to a particular area, the province of Modena, one of the richest in Italy, with high female occupation rates and a good deal of public child care services. We study child care services available outside the family and the costs afforded by parents. We also analyze some critical areas in childcare and discuss their links with the economic conditions of the families.living condition of children; poverty; local survey
Drug-resistant chronic cluster headache successfully treated with supraorbital plus occipital nerve stimulation. A rare case report
Chronic cluster headache (CCH) is a rare and extremely disabling headache syndrome with a recent clinical systematization of its clinical frame from the European Headache Federation [1]. We present a case of a young man affected by drug-resistant chronic CH (rCCH) who showed improvement after a two-time combined supraorbital and occipital nerve stimulation (S-ONS). The clinical improvement was still present at 6-month follow-up
Metodi strumentali innovativi a supporto della valutazione del paziente con emianopsia
Lâemianopsia è un deficit centrale della visione che consiste nella perdita di una porzione di campo visivo al quale si associa una disorganizzazione dei movimenti oculari. Ciò risulta in una limitazione dellâautonomia nello svolgimento nelle attivitĂ quotidiane, come il muoversi in ambienti con ostacoli, che è solitamente valutata con questionari autosomministrati. Il trattamento riabilitativo che permette un recupero funzionale è di tipo compensativo, atto a rendere piĂš efficaci le strategie oculomotorie.
Questo elaborato è uno studio esplorativo su due possibili metodiche atte a valutare lâimpatto funzionale dellâemianopsia: nella prima i partecipanti svolgono un compito che prevede movimenti saccadici e, sfruttando unâelaborazione automatica del segnale oculomotorio da eye-tracker, vengono estratti parametri dâinteresse clinico. Nel secondo esperimento si è utilizzato un set-up ecologico che prevede il cammino con aggiramento di ostacoli verticali e sono stati estratti potenziali indicatori clinici da sensori magneto-inerziali posizionati sui piedi ed in fronte. Sono stati estratti parametri dallâorientamento della testa, dalla traiettoria messa in atto e quelli spazio-temporali del passo. In entrambi gli studi hanno partecipato emianoptici e soggetti sani, tra cui si è controllato quali parametri permettevano di distinguere le due popolazioni. Inoltre, si è valutato qualitativamente se gli indicatori potessero avere ricadute cliniche con acquisizioni ripetute pre e post-trattamento.
Nel primo studio sono risultati in grado di discriminare tra i due gruppi lâaccuratezza nella risposta, nella saccade di ritorno sia quando eccessiva che quando troppo ridotta ed il numero di correzioni. Nel secondo sono risultati significativamente diversi la velocitĂ e la lunghezza del passo.
I risultati preliminari di questa ricerca mettono in luce la potenzialitĂ di questi strumenti per il loro utilizzo nella pratica clinica per la valutazione del paziente con emianopsia
Hydrides as high capacity anodes in lithium cells: an Italian âFuturo in Ricerca di Base FIRB-2010â project
Automotive and stationary energy storage are among the most recently-proposed and still
unfulfilled applications for lithium ion devices. Higher energy, power and superior safety standards,
well beyond the present state of the art, are actually required to extend the Li-ion battery market to
these challenging fields, but such a goal can only be achieved by the development of new materials
with improved performances. Focusing on the negative electrode materials, alloying and conversion
chemistries have been widely explored in the last decade to circumvent the main weakness of the
intercalation processes: the limitation in capacity to one or at most two lithium atoms per host
formula unit. Among all of the many proposed conversion chemistries, hydrides have been proposed
and investigated since 2008. In lithium cells, these materials undergo a conversion reaction that
gives metallic nanoparticles surrounded by an amorphous matrix of LiH. Among all of the reported
conversion materials, hydrides have outstanding theoretical properties and have been only marginally
explored, thus making this class of materials an interesting playground for both fundamental and
applied research. In this review, we illustrate the most relevant results achieved in the frame of the
Italian National Research Project FIRB 2010 Futuro in Ricerca âHydrides as high capacity anodes in
lithium cellsâ and possible future perspectives of research for this class of materials in electrochemical
energy storage devices
Why are pathogenic SIV and HIV infections characterized by high level immune activation when other chronic virus infection are not? Lessons from nonpathogenic SIV infection in natural host species
MiRNAs as Potential Prognostic Biomarkers for Metastasis in Thin and Thick Primary Cutaneous Melanomas.
Background/Aim: The identification of novel
prognostic biomarkers for melanoma metastasis is essential
to improve patient outcomes. To this aim, we characterized
miRNA expression profiles in relation to metastasis in
melanoma and correlated miRNAs expression with clinicalpathological factors. Materials and Methods: MiR-145-5p,
miR-150-5p, miR-182-5p, miR-203-3p, miR-205-5p and miR211-5p expression levels were analyzed in primary cutaneous
melanomas, including thin and thick melanomas, and in
melanoma metastases by quantitative Real-Time PCR.
Results: A significantly lower miR-205-5p expression was
found in metastases compared to primary melanomas.
Furthermore, a progressive down-regulation of miR-205-5p
expression was observed from loco-regional to distant
metastasis. Significantly lower miR-145-5p and miR-203-3p
expression levels were found in cases with Breslow thickness
>1 mm, high Clark level, ulceration and mitotic rate
âĽ1/mm2. Conclusion: Our findings point to miR-205-5p as
potential biomarker of distant metastases and to miR-145-5p
and miR-203-3p as markers of aggressiveness in melanoma
An Optimized Data Structure for High Throughput 3D Proteomics Data: mzRTree
As an emerging field, MS-based proteomics still requires software tools for
efficiently storing and accessing experimental data. In this work, we focus on
the management of LC-MS data, which are typically made available in standard
XML-based portable formats. The structures that are currently employed to
manage these data can be highly inefficient, especially when dealing with
high-throughput profile data. LC-MS datasets are usually accessed through 2D
range queries. Optimizing this type of operation could dramatically reduce the
complexity of data analysis. We propose a novel data structure for LC-MS
datasets, called mzRTree, which embodies a scalable index based on the R-tree
data structure. mzRTree can be efficiently created from the XML-based data
formats and it is suitable for handling very large datasets. We experimentally
show that, on all range queries, mzRTree outperforms other known structures
used for LC-MS data, even on those queries these structures are optimized for.
Besides, mzRTree is also more space efficient. As a result, mzRTree reduces
data analysis computational costs for very large profile datasets.Comment: Paper details: 10 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables. To be published in
Journal of Proteomics. Source code available at
http://www.dei.unipd.it/mzrtre
End-of-neoadjuvant treatment circulating microRNAs and HER2-positive breast cancer patient prognosis: An exploratory analysis from NeoALTTO
CĂĄncer de mama HER2 positivo; MicroARN circulante; Tratamiento neoadyuvanteCĂ ncer de mama HER2-positiu; MicroARN circulant; Tractament neoadjuvantHER2-positive breast cancer; Circulating microRNA; Neoadjuvant treatmentBackground: The absence of breast cancer cells in surgical specimens, i.e., pathological complete response (pCR), is widely recognized as a favorable prognostic factor after neoadjuvant therapy. In contrast, the presence of disease at surgery characterizes a prognostically heterogeneous group of patients. Here, we challenged circulating microRNAs (miRNAs) at the end of neoadjuvant therapy as potential prognostic biomarkers in the NeoALTTO study.
Methods: Patients treated within the trastuzumab arm (i.e., pre-operative weekly trastuzumab for 6 weeks followed by the addition of weekly paclitaxel for 12 weeks; post-operative FEC for 3 cycles followed by trastuzumab up to complete 1 year of treatment) were randomized into a training (n= 54) and testing (n= 72) set. RT-PCR-based high-throughput miRNA profile was performed on plasma samples collected at the end of neoadjuvant treatment of both sets. After normalization, circulating miRNAs associated with event free survival (EFS) were identified by univariate and multivariate Cox regression model.
Results: Starting from 23 circulating miRNAs associated with EFS in the training set, we generated a 3-circulating miRNA prognostic signature consisting of miR-185-5p, miR-146a-5p, miR-22-3p, which was confirmed in the testing set. The 3-circulating miRNA signature showed a C-statistic of 0.62 (95% confidence interval [95%CI] 0.53-0.71) in the entire study cohort. By resorting to a multivariate Cox regression model we found a statistical significant interaction between the expression values of miR-194-5p and pCR status (p.interaction =0.005) with an estimate Hazard Ratio (HR) of 1.83 (95%CI 1.14- 2.95) in patients with pCR, and 0.87 (95%CI 0.69-1.10) in those without pCR. Notably, the model including this interaction along with the abovementioned 3-circulating miRNA signature provided the highest discriminatory capability with a C-statistic of 0.67 (95%CI 0.58-0.76).
Conclusions: Circulating miRNAs are informative to identify patients with different prognosis among those with heterogeneous response after trastuzumab-based neoadjuvant treatment, and may be an exploitable tool to select candidates for salvage adjuvant therapy.The NeoALTTO study was sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline; Lapatinib is an asset of Novartis AG as of March 2, 2015. This sub-study was supported by the Italian Ministry of Health to SC. No grant number is applicable, funds were obtained through a law that allows tax-payers to allocate the 5 Ă 1000 share of their payments to research
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