An Atypical Case of Taravana Syndrome in a Breath-Hold Underwater Fishing Champion: A Case Report

Dysbaric accidents are usually referred to compressed air-supplied diving. Nonetheless, some cases of decompression illness are known to have occurred among breath-hold (BH) divers also, and they are reported in the medical literature. A male BH diver ((à years old), underwater *shing champion, presented neurological disorders as dizziness, sensory numbness, blurred vision, and le+ frontoparietal pain a+er many dives to a $à–$( meters sea water depth with short surface intervals. Symptoms spontaneously regressed and the patient came back home. )e following morning, pain and neurological impairment occurred again and the diver went by himself to the hospital where he had a generalized tonic-clonic seizure and lost consciousness. A magnetic resonance imaging of the brain disclofsed a cortical T -weighted hypointense area in the temporal region corresponding to infarction with partial hemorrhage. An early hyperbaric oxygen therapy led to prompt resolution of neurological *ndings. All clinical and imaging characteristics were referable to the Taravana diving syndrome, induced by repetitive prolonged deep BH dives. )e reappearance of neurological signs a+er an uncommon ! -hour symptom-free interval may suggest an atypical case of Taravana syndrome

Extrusion Additive Manufacturing of PEI Pellets

The simplest, most cost-efficient, and most widespread Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology is Extrusion Additive Manufacturing (EAM). Usually, EAM is performed with filament feedstock, but using pellets instead of filaments yields many benefits, including significantly lower cost and a wider choice of materials. High-performance polymers offer high strength even when produced with AM technique, allowing to produce near-net-shape functional parts. The production of these materials in filament form is still limited and expensive; therefore, in this paper, the possibility of producing AM components with engineering polymers from pellets will be thoroughly investigated. In this work, the effectiveness of a specially designed AM machine for printing high-performance materials in pellet form was tested. The material chosen for the investigation is PEI 1000 which offers outstanding mechanical and thermal properties, giving the possibility to produce with EAM functional components. Sensitivity analyses have been carried out to define a process window in terms of thermal process parameters by observing different response variables. Using the process parameters in the specified range, the additive manufactured material has been mechanically tested, and its microstructure has been investigated, both in dried and undried conditions. Finally, a rapid tool for sheet metal forming has been produced

Project "Biodiversity MARE Tricase": a biodiversity inventory of the coastal area of Tricase (Ionian Sea, Italy) – Mollusca: Heterobranchia

The marine biodiversity of the Tricase coastal area (Ionian Sea, Italy) was investigated at the MARE Outpost (Avamposto MARE) between 2016 and 2017, with the help of citizen scientists and trained taxonomists. Among the most interesting groups encountered, heterobranch molluscs deserve a special mention. Altogether, 268 specimens were ascribed to this group and referred to 49 taxa. Notwithstanding the extensive literature on Mediterranean heterobranchs, two species proved to be new to the Italian coasts, the records of eight species represented their easternmost sightings in the Mediterranean Sea, and 13 taxa represented new records for the Ionian Sea. In addition, several feeding habits and phenological events were new to science. Although the European Union's Marine Strategy Framework Directive lists "Biodiversity is maintained" as the first descriptor in achieving "Good Environmental Status", our results highlighted the presence of conspicuous gaps in the knowledge of species distribution, taxonomy and ecology of heterobranch molluscs, indicating the necessity of even small-scale species checklists to understand biodiversity changes in worldwide biota

Exciton binding energies in carbon nanotubes from two-photon photoluminescence

One- and two-photon luminescence excitation spectroscopy showed a series of distinct excitonic states in single-walled carbon nanotubes. The energy splitting between one- and two-photon-active exciton states of different wavefunction symmetry is the fingerprint of excitonic interactions in carbon nanotubes. We determine exciton binding energies of 0.3-0.4 eV for different nanotubes with diameters between 0.7 and 0.9 nm. Our results, which are supported by ab-initio calculations of the linear and non-linear optical spectra, prove that the elementary optical excitations of carbon nanotubes are strongly Coulomb-correlated, quasi-one dimensionally confined electron-hole pairs, stable even at room temperature. This alters our microscopic understanding of both the electronic structure and the Coulomb interactions in carbon nanotubes, and has direct impact on the optical and transport properties of novel nanotube devices.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Extraordinary sensitivity of the electronic structure and properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes to molecular charge-transfer

Interaction of single-walled carbon nanotubes with electron donor and acceptor molecules causes significant changes in the electronic and Raman spectra, the relative proportion of the metallic species increasing on electron donation through molecular charge transfer, as also verified by electrical resistivity measurements.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figurre

Targeting a phospho-STAT3-miRNAs pathway improves vesicular hepatic steatosis in an in vitro and in vivo model

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a leading cause of chronic liver disease. Although genetic predisposition and epigenetic factors contribute to the development of NAFLD, our understanding of the molecular mechanism involved in the pathogenesis of the disease is still emerging. Here we investigated a possible role of a microRNAs-STAT3 pathway in the induction of hepatic steatosis. Differentiated HepaRG cells treated with the fatty acid sodium oleate (fatty dHepaRG) recapitulated features of liver vesicular steatosis and activated a cell-autonomous inflammatory response, inducing STAT3-Tyrosine-phosphorylation. With a genome-wide approach (Chromatin Immunoprecipitation Sequencing), many phospho-STAT3 binding sites were identified in fatty dHepaRG cells and several STAT3 and/or NAFLD-regulated microRNAs showed increased expression levels, including miR-21. Innovative CARS (Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering) microscopy revealed that chemical inhibition of STAT3 activity decreased lipid accumulation and deregulated STAT3-responsive microRNAs, including miR-21, in lipid overloaded dHepaRG cells. We were able to show in vivo that reducing phospho-STAT3-miR-21 levels in C57/BL6 mice liver, by long-term treatment with metformin, protected mice from aging-dependent hepatic vesicular steatosis. Our results identified a microRNAs-phosphoSTAT3 pathway involved in the development of hepatic steatosis, which may represent a molecular marker for both diagnosis and therapeutic targeting

Tumour necrosis factor induces increased production of extracellular amyloid-β- and α-synuclein-containing aggregates by human Alzheimer's disease neurons

In addition to increased aberrant protein aggregation, inflammation has been proposed as a key element in the pathogenesis and progression of Alzheimer’s disease. How inflammation interacts with other disease pathways and how protein aggregation increases during disease are not clear. We used single-molecule imaging approaches and membrane permeabilization assays to determine the effect of chronic exposure to tumour necrosis factor, a master proinflammatory cytokine, on protein aggregation in human-induced pluripotent stem cell-derived neurons harbouring monogenic Alzheimer’s disease mutations. We report that exposure of Alzheimer’s disease neurons, but not control neurons, to tumour necrosis factor induces substantial production of extracellular protein aggregates. Aggregates from Alzheimer’s disease neurons are composed of amyloid-β and α-synuclein and induce significant permeabilization of lipid membranes in an assay of pathogenicity. These findings provide support for a causal relationship between two crucial processes in Alzheimer’s disease pathogenesis and suggest that targeting inflammation, particularly tumour necrosis factor, may have beneficial downstream effects on ameliorating aberrant protein aggregation and accumulation

ZnO based thermopower wave sources

Exothermic chemical reactions of nitrocellulose are coupled onto thermoelectric zinc oxide (ZnO) layers to generate self-propagating thermopower waves resulting in highly oscillatory voltage output of the order of 500 mV. The peak specific power obtained from ZnO based sources is approximately 0.5 kW kg-1