Effect of Aminaphtone on in vitro vascular permeability and capillary–like maintenance

Aminaphtone (AMNA), a naphtohydrochinone used in the treatment of capillary disorders, may affect oedema in chronic venous insufficiency (CVI). Aim of study is to investigate the effect of AMNA on vascular endothelial permeability in vitro and its effects on three-dimensional capillary-like structures formed by Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells (HUVECs). HUVECs were treated with 50 ng/ml VEGF for 2h and AMNA for 6h. Permeability assay, VE-cadherin expression and Matrigel assay were performed. VEGF-induced permeability was significantly decreased by AMNA in a range concentration of 1-20 μg/ml. AMNA restored VE-cadherin expression. Finally, 6h pretreatment with AMNA significantly preserved capillary-like structures formed by HUVECs on Matrigel up to 48 h compared to untreated cells. AMNA significantly protects endothelium permeability and stabilises endothelial cells organised in capillary-like structures, modulating VE-cadherin expression. These data might explain the clinical benefict of AMNA on CVI

Spatial and Temporal evolution of the subsidence phenomena in the Italian Peninsula

A large number of continuous GNSS (CGNSS) stations are nowadays available in Italy, this has already allowed an accurate monitoring of the horizontal and vertical kinematic pattern in the Italian peninsula in terms of linear trends. The crustal displacements can be considered as the result of several contributions: global, regional and local tectonic processes, climatic and meteorological phenomena, but also human activities. In particular, the groundwater exploitation for agricultural and industrial purposes and the extractive activities of gas, oil and geothermal fluids can induce displacements that can be greater than the ones due to natural contributions. Human activities could induce rapid changes in the local dynamic of the Earth crust and usually have stronger impact on the vertical component. Therefore, an accurate monitoring of the vertical displacements that takes into account also the spatial heterogeneity of the human activities is a major issue. In order to monitor and study the vertical velocity field in the Italian area, the observation of more than 600 CGNSS sites have been analysed using the GAMIT software package. The interdistances between the considered sites is about 40-50 Km and should allow a fairly good definition of the vertical velocity field and to study the possible spatial evolution of the pattern. The relatively long time interval of data acquisition (2001-2018) provides an important data set that make possible to identify different time evolutions with respect to the linear trend usually adopted in the GNSS time series analysis. The present vertical velocity field in the Italian peninsula and in particular along the coastal areas and neighbour zones will be shown. Preliminary studies about the spatial and temporal evolution of the subsidence phenomena in these areas will be also discussed

Spatial and Temporal evolution of the subsidence phenomena in the Italian Peninsula

A large number of continuous GNSS (CGNSS) stations are nowadays available in Italy, this has already allowed an accurate monitoring of the horizontal and vertical kinematic pattern in the Italian peninsula in terms of linear trends. The crustal displacements can be considered as the result of several contributions: global, regional and local tectonic processes, climatic and meteorological phenomena, but also human activities. In particular, the groundwater exploitation for agricultural and industrial purposes and the extractive activities of gas, oil and geothermal fluids can induce displacements that can be greater than the ones due to natural contributions. Human activities could induce rapid changes in the local dynamic of the Earth crust and usually have stronger impact on the vertical component. Therefore, an accurate monitoring of the vertical displacements that takes into account also the spatial heterogeneity of the human activities is a major issue. In order to monitor and study the vertical velocity field in the Italian area, the observation of more than 600 CGNSS sites have been analysed using the GAMIT software package. The interdistances between the considered sites is about 40-50 Km and should allow a fairly good definition of the vertical velocity field and to study the possible spatial evolution of the pattern. The relatively long time interval of data acquisition (2001-2018) provides an important data set that make possible to identify different time evolutions with respect to the linear trend usually adopted in the GNSS time series analysis. The present vertical velocity field in the Italian peninsula and in particular along the coastal areas and neighbour zones will be shown. Preliminary studies about the spatial and temporal evolution of the subsidence phenomena in these areas will be also discussed

Ultralight vector dark matter search using data from the KAGRA O3GK run

Among the various candidates for dark matter (DM), ultralight vector DM can be probed by laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors through the measurement of oscillating length changes in the arm cavities. In this context, KAGRA has a unique feature due to differing compositions of its mirrors, enhancing the signal of vector DM in the length change in the auxiliary channels. Here we present the result of a search for U(1)B−L gauge boson DM using the KAGRA data from auxiliary length channels during the first joint observation run together with GEO600. By applying our search pipeline, which takes into account the stochastic nature of ultralight DM, upper bounds on the coupling strength between the U(1)B−L gauge boson and ordinary matter are obtained for a range of DM masses. While our constraints are less stringent than those derived from previous experiments, this study demonstrates the applicability of our method to the lower-mass vector DM search, which is made difficult in this measurement by the short observation time compared to the auto-correlation time scale of DM

Improving the global analysis of mechanical systems via parallel computation of basins of attraction

Numerical integrations represent a time-consuming element in the long-term dynamics analysis of mechanical systems. This limits the resolution of the computations and the dimension of the system to be investigated numerically. In fact, even pushing memory resources to their thresholds, only few tools can deal with higher-dimensional systems. This work illustrates, in a preliminary manner, the results that can be obtained reducing the aforementioned constraints thanks to the implementation of algorithms based on a parallel computing approach. In particular, by focusing on basins of attraction, four applications are discussed. i) The full domain of attraction for a four-dimensional (4D) system describing a linear oscillator coupled with a nonlinear absorber is calculated. ii) The variation of a safe basin with respect to the system dimension is then analyzed. It is highlighted how 4D and 3D analyses provide more confident results with respect to 2D analyses. iii) The parametric variation of a 2D system with a reduced step is performed by building a 3D representation which allows to highlight a smooth transition between the states. iv) A convergence study of a basin of attraction resolution is carried out. The integrity factor is used as a comparison measure.</p