Volcanic Risk Management: the Case of Mt. Etna 2006 Eruption

Mt. Etna volcano is located in a very populated area of eastern Sicily (Italy). Its permanent degassing activity from summit craters and frequent eruptions impact significantly on town habitations and cultivated areas. In the latest years Etna has produced copious ash emission causing great losses to local economy and causing serious hazards to national and international air traffic over Mediterranean area and the often closure of Catania airport. In July 2006 eruptive vents opened on the East and South flanks of the summit craters showing irregular explosive and effusive activity lasting 6 months. This eruption represented the opportunity to perform the pre-operative test of FP6 Eurorisk-Preview (Prevention, Information and Early Warning) project aimed to develop tools for monitoring volcanoes. The test was performed during two temporal phases: the first one of early-warning was aimed to measure ground deformation and the second one during the crisis to survey volcanic ash produced during the explosions. The ground deformations were measured through the elaboration of SAR data. Beside the geophysical objectives, the test was also important to check data availability and efficiency of European Space Agency procedures. The pre-operative test has been peculiar to understand and quantify the delivering time of the final satellite products expected from the Volcanological Observatory in operative case. The analysis of July 2005 - July 2006 SAR data showed a pre-eruptive inflation trend in agreement with the ground network of GPS data. The magmatic source, that produced the September - October activity, has been located about 2.7 km below the summit craters. During the crisis phase characterized by paroxysmal activity, the Italian Civil Protection (DPC) in charge of airport closure in case of volcanic hazard, requested the satellite volcanic ash product retrieved from the NASA-MODIS data. An agreement between the industry Telespazio as direct broadcast of satellite data at Matera station and INGV was signed in order to elaborate the data in near-real time. The volcanic ash product provided information about: the presence of volcanic ash in the air; the affected area; the volcanic plume dispersal direction, dimensions and altitude and the volcanic ash loading. The satellite products and the observations report have been successively inserted in a web-interface. At the same time the observations report has been linked to the DPC dedicated Web-GIS interface that allows in a short time the availability of volcanic ash information to DPC in support to their decisions.Published77-811.10. TTC - Telerilevamentoope

Association between red cell distribution width and response to methotrexate in rheumatoid arthritis

Red cell distribution width (RDW) is an unconventional biomarker of inflammation. We aimed to explore its role as a predictor of treatment response in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Eighty-two RA patients (55 females), median age [interquartile range] 63 years [52-69], were selected by scanning the medical records of a rheumatology clinic, to analyze the associations between baseline RDW, disease activity scores and inflammatory markers, as well as the relationship between RDW changes following methotrexate (MTX) and treatment response. The lower the median baseline RDW, the greater were the chances of a positive EULAR response at three months, 13.5% [13.0-14.4] being among those with good response, vs 14.0% [13.2-14.7] and 14.2% [13.5- 16.0] (p=0.009) among those with moderate and poor response, respectively. MTX treatment was followed by a significant RDW increase (p<0.0001). The increase of RDW was greater among patients with good EULAR response, becoming progressively smaller in cases with moderate and poor response (1.0% [0.4-1.4] vs. 0.7 [0.1-2.0] vs. 0.3 [-0.1-0.8]; p=0.03). RDW is a strong predictor of early response to MTX in RA. RDW significantly increases after MTX initiation in parallel to treatment response, suggesting a role as a marker of MTX effectiveness

Volcanic Risk Management: the Case of Mt. Etna 2006 Eruption

Mt. Etna volcano is located in a very populated area of eastern Sicily (Italy). Its permanent degassing activity from summit craters and frequent eruptions impact significantly on town habitations and cultivated areas. In the latest years Etna has produced copious ash emission causing great losses to local economy and causing serious hazards to national and international air traffic over Mediterranean area and the often closure of Catania airport. In July 2006 eruptive vents opened on the East and South flanks of the summit craters showing irregular explosive and effusive activity lasting 6 months. This eruption represented the opportunity to perform the pre-operative test of FP6 Eurorisk-Preview (Prevention, Information and Early Warning) project aimed to develop tools for monitoring volcanoes. The test was performed during two temporal phases: the first one of early-warning was aimed to measure ground deformation and the second one during the crisis to survey volcanic ash produced during the explosions. The ground deformations were measured through the elaboration of SAR data. Beside the geophysical objectives, the test was also important to check data availability and efficiency of European Space Agency procedures. The pre-operative test has been peculiar to understand and quantify the delivering time of the final satellite products expected from the Volcanological Observatory in operative case. The analysis of July 2005 - July 2006 SAR data showed a pre-eruptive inflation trend in agreement with the ground network of GPS data. The magmatic source, that produced the September - October activity, has been located about 2.7 km below the summit craters. During the crisis phase characterized by paroxysmal activity, the Italian Civil Protection (DPC) in charge of airport closure in case of volcanic hazard, requested the satellite volcanic ash product retrieved from the NASA-MODIS data. An agreement between the industry Telespazio as direct broadcast of satellite data at Matera station and INGV was signed in order to elaborate the data in near-real time. The volcanic ash product provided information about: the presence of volcanic ash in the air; the affected area; the volcanic plume dispersal direction, dimensions and altitude and the volcanic ash loading. The satellite products and the observations report have been successively inserted in a web-interface. At the same time the observations report has been linked to the DPC dedicated Web-GIS interface that allows in a short time the availability of volcanic ash information to DPC in support to their decisions

Kaluza-Klein Structure Associated With Fat Brane

It is known that the imposition of orbifold boundary conditions on background scalar field can give rise to a non-trivial vacuum expectation value (VEV) along extra dimensions, which in turn generates fat branes and associated unconventional Kaluza-Klein (KK) towers of fermions. We study the structure of these KK towers in the limit of one large extra dimension and show that normalizable (bound) states of massless and massive fermions can exist at both orbifold fixed points. Closer look however indicates that orbifold boundary conditions act to suppress at least half of bound KK modes, while periodic boundary conditions tend to drive the high-lying modes to the conventional structure. By investigating the scattering of fermions on branes, we analytically compute masses and wavefunctions of KK spectra in the presence of these boundary conditions up to one-loop level. Implication of KK-number non-conservation couplings on the Coulomb potential is also examined.Comment: RevTex4, 29 pages, 7 ps figures, new references adde

neuroimaging changes in menkes disease part 1

SUMMARY: Menkes disease is a rare multisystem X-linked disorder of copper metabolism. Despite an early, severe, and progressive neurologic involvement, our knowledge of brain involvement remains unsatisfactory. The first part of this retrospective and review MR imaging study aims to define the frequency rate, timing, imaging features, and evolution of intracranial vascular and white matter changes. According to our analysis, striking but also poorly evolutive vascular abnormalities characterize the very early phases of disease. After the first months, myelination delay becomes evident, often in association with protean focal white matter lesions, some of which reveal an age-specific brain vulnerability. In later phases of the disease, concomitant progressive neurodegeneration might hinder the myelination progression. The currently enriched knowledge of neuroradiologic finding evolution provides valuable clues for early diagnosis, identifies possible MR imaging biomarkers of new treatment efficacy, and improves our comprehension of possible mechanisms of brain injury in Menkes disease

Prognostic impact of KMT2A-AFF1-positivity in 926 BCR-ABL1-negative B-lineage acute lymphoblastic leukemia patients treated in GIMEMA clinical trials since 1996

The impact of KMT2A-AFF1 rearrangement in pediatric-like, minimal residual disease (MRD)-based clinical trials and the effect of transplant in KMT2A-AFF1 ALL are still debated

HIPK2 and extrachromosomal histone H2B are separately recruited by Aurora-B for cytokinesis

Cytokinesis, the final phase of cell division, is necessary to form two distinct daughter cells with correct distribution of genomic and cytoplasmic materials. Its failure provokes genetically unstable states, such as tetraploidization and polyploidization, which can contribute to tumorigenesis. Aurora-B kinase controls multiple cytokinetic events, from chromosome condensation to abscission when the midbody is severed. We have previously shown that HIPK2, a kinase involved in DNA damage response and development, localizes at the midbody and contributes to abscission by phosphorylating extrachromosomal histone H2B at Ser14. Of relevance, HIPK2-defective cells do not phosphorylate H2B and do not successfully complete cytokinesis leading to accumulation of binucleated cells, chromosomal instability, and increased tumorigenicity. However, how HIPK2 and H2B are recruited to the midbody during cytokinesis is still unknown. Here, we show that regardless of their direct (H2B) and indirect (HIPK2) binding of chromosomal DNA, both H2B and HIPK2 localize at the midbody independently of nucleic acids. Instead, by using mitotic kinase-specific inhibitors in a spatio-temporal regulated manner, we found that Aurora-B kinase activity is required to recruit both HIPK2 and H2B to the midbody. Molecular characterization showed that Aurora-B directly binds and phosphorylates H2B at Ser32 while indirectly recruits HIPK2 through the central spindle components MgcRacGAP and PRC1. Thus, among different cytokinetic functions, Aurora-B separately recruits HIPK2 and H2B to the midbody and these activities contribute to faithful cytokinesis