Demineralizing action of EGTA in endodontics.

The demineralization of dentin obtained by treatment with a chelating agent ethylene diamminotetracetic acid (EDTA) or ethylene glycol-bis(β-aminoethyl ether)-N-tetraacetic acid (EGTA), is a dynamic process involving chelation and solubilization. The actions of the EDTA and EGTA on dentin are influenced by the pH. Increasing mM concentrations of EDTA or EGTA the equivalent pH decreases in a similar slope to 80 mM chelator concentration. Increasing the chelator concentration different data were obtained: with EGTA the pH decreases slightly while with EDTA goes back up to the initial values. After 80 mM, EDTA reduces the activity on the dentin, and EGTA continues to work at higher concentrations. We demonstrated that EGTA solubilized more of 60% of dentin while EDTA gives about 20% at the maximal of the solubility

A DRIVING SIMULATION STUDY ON THE EFFECTS OF DIFFERENT WINE TYPES ON THE PERFORMANCE OF YOUNG DRIVERS

Background. Alcohol consumption is responsible for a significant number of road fatalities. To contrast this phenomenon, a more responsible attitude to the wine consumption, especially among young, inexperienced drivers prone to risky behaviour on the road must be promoted. Method. This is a simplified single-blind, placebo-controlled experiment aimed at evaluating 44 young drivers monitored during a driving simulation following the consumption of natural and conventional wines, with a reference blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.5 g/l. Two hypotheses are tested: (1) the legal consumption of wine has no significant impact on young drivers’ performance in both ordinary and unusual road events; (2) natural and conventional wines are expected to produce negligible and acceptable impairments in young drivers the same BAC. Two reference groups (BAC = 0 g/l), one a placebo controlled group with drivers treated with a dealcoholized wine, were included. Results and Conclusions. Significant differences between the groups in terms of perception and reaction times (PRT) to visual and auditory stimuli, and to speeding were observed, with young drivers treated with conventional wine displaying more aggressive behaviours. In contrast, participants treated with natural wine showed PRT which were not significantly different from those belonging to control groups. The gaze attention levels of wine treated drivers were found to be dose dependant, with young drivers of the two control groups and those of the treated ones with BAC < 0.3 g/l able to focus on wider area ahead and, thereby, collect more information from the road environment

Association between Resistin Levels and All-Cause and Cardiovascular Mortality: A New Study and a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

CONTEXT: Studies concerning the association between circulating resistin and mortality risk have reported, so far, conflicting results. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the association between resistin and both all-cause and cardiovascular (CV) mortality risk by 1) analyzing data from the Gargano Heart Study (GHS) prospective design (n=359 patients; 81 and 58 all-cause and CV deaths, respectively); 2) performing meta-analyses of all published studies addressing the above mentioned associations. DATA SOURCE AND STUDY SELECTION: MEDLINE and Web of Science search of studies reporting hazard ratios (HR) of circulating resistin for all-cause or CV mortality. DATA EXTRACTION: Performed independently by two investigators, using a standardized data extraction sheet. DATA SYNTHESIS: In GHS, adjusted HRs per one standard deviation (SD) increment in resistin concentration were 1.28 (95% CI: 1.07-1.54) and 1.32 (95% CI: 1.06-1.64) for all-cause and CV mortality, respectively. The meta-analyses included 7 studies (n=4016; 961 events) for all-cause mortality and 6 studies (n=4,187: 412 events) for CV mortality. Pooled HRs per one SD increment in resistin levels were 1.21 (95% CI: 1.03-1.42, Q-test p for heterogeneity<0.001) and 1.05 (95% CI: 1.01-1.10, Q-test p for heterogeneity=0.199) for all-cause and CV mortality, respectively. At meta-regression analyses, study mean age explained 9.9% of all-cause mortality studies heterogeneity. After adjusting for age, HR for all-cause mortality was 1.24 (95% CI: 1.06-1.45). CONCLUSIONS: Our results provide evidence for an association between circulating resistin and mortality risk among high-risk patients as are those with diabetes and coronary artery disease

Alexithymia, impulsiveness, and psychopathology in Nonsuicidal self-injured adolescents

Introduction: Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a multifaceted phenomenon and a major health issue among adolescents. A better understanding of self-injury comorbidities is crucial to improve our ability to assess, treat, and prevent NSSI. Purpose: This study aimed at analyzing some of the psychobehavioral correlates of NSSI: psychological problems, alexithymia, impulsiveness, and sociorelational aspects. Patients and methods: This was a case-control study. The clinical sample (n=33) included adolescents attending our unit for NSSI and other issues; the controls (n=79) were high-school students. Data were collected using six questionnaires: Youth Self-Report, Barratt\u2019s Impulsiveness Scale, Toronto Alexithymia Scale, Children\u2019s Depression Inventory, Symptom Checklist-90-R, and Child Behavior Checklist. Results: Cases scored significantly higher in all questionnaires. Habitual self-injurers scored higher on impulsiveness and alexithymia. The gesture\u2019s repetition seems relevant to the global clinical picture: habitual self-injurers appear more likely to seek help from the sociosanitary services. We found a difference between the self-injurers\u2019 and their parents\u2019 awareness of the disorder. Conclusion: Habitual self-injurers show signs of having difficulty with assessing the consequences of their actions (nonplanning impulsiveness) and the inability to manage their feelings. Given the significantly higher scores found for cases than for controls on all the psychopathological scales, NSSI can be seen as a cross-category psychiatric disorder, supporting the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders decision to include it as a pathological entity in its own right

Analysing omics data sets with weighted nodes networks (WNNets)

Current trends in biomedical research indicate data integration as a fundamental step towards precision medicine. In this context, network models allow representing and analysing complex biological processes. However, although effective in unveiling network properties, these models fail in considering the individual, biochemical variations occurring at molecular level. As a consequence, the analysis of these models partially loses its predictive power. To overcome these limitations, Weighted Nodes Networks (WNNets) were developed. WNNets allow to easily and effectively weigh nodes using experimental information from multiple conditions. In this study, the characteristics of WNNets were described and a proteomics data set was modelled and analysed. Results suggested that degree, an established centrality index, may offer a novel perspective about the functional role of nodes in WNNets. Indeed, degree allowed retrieving significant differences between experimental conditions, highlighting relevant proteins, and provided a novel interpretation for degree itself, opening new perspectives in experimental data modelling and analysis. Overall, WNNets may be used to model any high-throughput experimental data set requiring weighted nodes. Finally, improving the power of the analysis by using centralities such as betweenness may provide further biological insights and unveil novel, interesting characteristics of WNNets

Deriving Escape Analysis by Abstract Interpretation

Escape analysis of object-oriented languages approximates the set of objects which do not escape from a given context. If we take a method as context, the non-escaping objects can be allocated on its activation stack; if we take a thread, Java synchronisation locks on such objects are not needed. In this paper, we formalise a basic escape domain E as an abstract interpretation of concrete states, which we then refine into an abstract domain ER which is more concrete than E and, hence, leads to a more precise escape analysis than E. We provide optimality results for both E and ER, in the form of Galois insertions from the concrete to the abstract domains and of optimal abstract operations. The Galois insertion property is obtained by restricting the abstract domains to those elements which do not contain garbage, by using an abstract garbage collector. Our implementation of ER is hence an implementation of a formally correct escape analyser, able to detect the stack allocatable creation points of Java (bytecode) applications

Gaia Focused Product Release:Asteroid orbital solution. Properties and assessment

Context. We report the exploitation of a sample of Solar System observations based on data from the third Gaia Data Release (Gaia DR3) of nearly 157 000 asteroids. It extends the epoch astrometric solution over the time coverage planned for the Gaia DR4, which is not expected before the end of 2025. This data set covers more than one full orbital period for the vast majority of these asteroids. The orbital solutions are derived from the Gaia data alone over a relatively short arc compared to the observation history of many of these asteroids.Aims. The work aims to produce orbital elements for a large set of asteroids based on 66 months of accurate astrometry provided by Gaia and to assess the accuracy of these orbital solutions with a comparison to the best available orbits derived from independent observations. A second validation is performed with accurate occultation timings.Methods. We processed the raw astrometric measurements of Gaia to obtain astrometric positions of moving objects with 1D sub-mas accuracy at the bright end. For each asteroid that we matched to the data, an orbit fitting was attempted in the form of the best fit of the initial conditions at the median epoch. The force model included Newtonian and relativistic accelerations to derive the observation equations, which were solved with a linear least-squares fit.Results. Orbits are provided in the form of state vectors in the International Celestial Reference Frame for 156 764 asteroids, including near-Earth objects, main-belt asteroids, and Trojans. For the asteroids with the best observations, the (formal) relative uncertainty σa/a is better than 10−10. Results are compared to orbits available from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and MPC. Their orbits are based on much longer data arcs, but from positions of lower quality. The relative differences in semi-major axes have a mean of 5 × 10−10 and a scatter of 5 × 10−9

Breve storia del paesaggio

Il paesaggio e l\u2019ecologia sono i temi trainanti del xxi secolo. Presentano valenze e questioni diverse che sono, tuttavia, connesse da intersezioni e interferenze numerose e complesse: l\u2019ecologia fornisce gli strumenti e le regole per attuare le trasformazioni; il paesaggio quelli per rappresentare, previamente, i luoghi trasformati secondo le nuove regole e per confrontarne gli esiti con le configurazioni precedenti; e, ancora, per rilevare eventuali incongruenze originate dalle predizioni e indicare possibili soluzioni alternative. Questo volume origina da tali considerazioni; per sostenere l\u2019idea che il paesaggio non \ue8 solo una questione che riguarda i paesaggisti; per cercare di captare l\u2019attenzione di un pubblico pi\uf9 ampio, sebbene si rivolga soprattutto agli studenti delle facolt\ue0 di Architettura, affinch\ue9 possano dotarsi di uno strumento in pi\uf9 nella redazione dei loro progetti. La storia del paesaggio - breve, come dice il titolo, e fatta in gran parte per immagini - divide il libro con una sezione dedicata al mare, argomento naturale per chi scrive vive e lavora in un\u2019isola, al centro di un mare antico e mitico, temibile e fascinoso e, tuttavia, sconosciuto e, talvolta, non sufficientemente amato

Large-Scale CRISPRi and Transcriptomics of Staphylococcus epidermidis Identify Genetic Factors Implicated in Lifestyle Versatility.

Staphylococcus epidermidis is a ubiquitous human commensal skin bacterium that is also one of the most prevalent nosocomial pathogens. The genetic factors underlying this remarkable lifestyle plasticity are incompletely understood, mainly due to the difficulties of genetic manipulation, precluding high-throughput functional profiling of this species. To probe the versatility of S. epidermidis to survive across a diversity of environmental conditions, we developed a large-scale CRISPR interference (CRISPRi) screen complemented by transcriptional profiling (RNA sequencing) across 24 diverse conditions and piloted a droplet-based CRISPRi approach to enhance throughput and sensitivity. We identified putative essential genes, importantly revealing amino acid metabolism as crucial to survival across diverse environments, and demonstrated the importance of trace metal uptake for survival under multiple stress conditions. We identified pathways significantly enriched and repressed across our range of stress and nutrient-limited conditions, demonstrating the considerable plasticity of S. epidermidis in responding to environmental stressors. Additionally, we postulate a mechanism by which nitrogen metabolism is linked to lifestyle versatility in response to hyperosmotic challenges, such as those encountered on human skin. Finally, we examined the survival of S. epidermidis under acid stress and hypothesize a role for cell wall modification as a vital component of the survival response under acidic conditions. Taken together, this study integrates large-scale CRISPRi and transcriptomics data across multiple environments to provide insights into a keystone member of the human skin microbiome. Our results additionally provide a valuable benchmarking analysis for CRISPRi screens and are a rich resource for other staphylococcal researchers

Effect of chemical treatments on respiratory process and physical parameters of melon minimally processed

Neste trabalho avaliou-se o efeito da aplicação de tratamentos químicos na atividade respiratória e no impacto sobre os parâmetros físicos de melões Amarelo minimamente processados. Frutos selecionados, lavados e sanificados foram minimamente processados em forma de cubos, divididos em quatro lotes que constaram de testemunha, cubos tratados com soluções de cloreto de cálcio (1%), ácido ascórbico (1%) e revestidos com alginato de sódio (1%); os quais foram acondicionados em bandejas com tampa, de tereftalato de polietileno (PET) e armazenados a 5±1ºC e 73±5% UR, por 12 dias. Os produtos foram avaliados quanto à taxa respiratória, produção de etileno, perda de massa fresca, coloração, textura e teor de umidade. Verificou-se que, durante o período de armazenamento, independente do tratamento, houve redução da respiração e não se detectou produção de etileno pelos frutos. A perda de massa, a textura e o teor de umidade não foram influenciados pelos tratamentos químicos, porém o uso de película à base de alginato de sódio resultou em melões de coloração mais escura da polpa, em decorrência da cor da solução filmogênica.The effect of the application of chemical treatments was evaluated on the respiratory activity and the impact on the physical parameters of fresh cut melons. Selected fruits were washed and sanitized and minimally processed in cubes, divided in four lots which consisted of: control, treated with calcium chloride (1%), with ascorbic acid (1%) and coated with sodium alginate (1%). The cubes were packed in trays with cover of polyethylene terephtalate (PET) and stored at 5±1ºC and 73±5% HR, during 12 days. The cubes were evaluated on their respiratory rate, ethylene production, loss of fresh mass, coloration, texture and humidity content. During the period of storage, independent of the treatment, a reduction of the respiratory rate occurred; ethylene production was not detected in fruits. Chemical treatments had no influence on loss of fresh mass, texture and humidity content; however the film of sodium alginate resulted in darker coloration of melon pulp due to the film solution color.Cnp