Vaccination programmes against invasive disease in Italy, with particular regard to Valle d?Aosta

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A CP-safe solution of the μ/Bμ problem of gauge mediation

AbstractWe construct a model that naturally generates μ and B of the same order without producing large CP violating phases. This is easily accomplished once one permits these mass scales to be determined independently of the ordinary gauge-mediated soft masses. The alignment of phases is shown to emerge dynamically upon coupling to supergravity and is not unique to the model presented here

Interactions between sympathetic nervous system and endogenous endothelin in patients with essential hypertension

Experimental evidence indicates that endothelin 1 stimulates the sympathetic nervous system by activation of the subtype A receptor. The aim of the present study was to assess whether this mechanism is active in humans and to investigate its potential role in the pathogenesis of essential hypertension. In 15 hypertensive patients and 12 normotensive subjects, blood pressure, heart rate, and muscle sympathetic nerve activity were evaluated during intravenous 20-minute infusion of BQ123 (0.1 mg/kg per hour), an endothelin A receptor antagonist, and sodium nitroprusside (SNP; 0.4 μg/kg per minute). In hypertensive patients, blood pressure was reduced similarly by BQ123 and SNP. In contrast, the increase in muscle sympathetic nerve activity induced by BQ123 (from 52.0±4.9 to 56.8±5.5 bursts per 100 heartbeats; P<0.05 versus baseline) was significantly lower (P<0.05) than that induced by SNP (from 50.6±4.9 to 61.1±5.1 bursts per 100 heartbeats; P<0.05 versus baseline). In normotensive subjects, SNP reduced blood pressure and increased muscle sympathetic activity, whereas BQ123 was ineffective. Thus, in a subgroup (n=9) of normotensive subjects, we administered BQ123 at a higher dose (0.2 mg/kg per hour), representing an equidepressor dose of SNP, inducing a blunted increase in sympathetic activity (from 44.1±2.4 to 50.1±6.4 bursts per 100 heartbeats; P<0.05 versus baseline). Finally, administration of a different vasodilator (papaverine, 0.5 mg/kg per hour) exerted results superimposable to SNP. Endogenous endothelin 1 appears to have a sympathoexcitatory effect both in normotensive and hypertensive subjects through endothelin A receptors, contributing to basal sympathetic vasomotor tone. Moreover, essential hypertension shows an increased susceptibility to the sympathoexcitatory effect of endogenous endothelin 1

Guerrilha e gambiarra como estética metodológica

O presente trabalho busca apresentar os conceitos de guerrilha e gambiarra em contextos de criação para a cena a partir de uma retomada histórica do teatro e da iluminação ocidental a fim de contextualizar as características das produções no contexto do Brasil e mostrar como estão presentes as guerrilhas e gambiarras na cena teatral. Apresenta 3 espetáculos brasileiros, O Livro de Jó, Entrepartidas e Aquário e os analisa sob o viés dos conceitos apresentados e também como ilustrações práticas da aplicação dos mesmos, a partir da circunstância espacial e das dimensões de abordagem e inventividade-improviso. Ainda, busca propor uma estética metodológica da guerrilha-gambiarra.The present work aims to introduce the concepts of guerrilla and gambiarra (quick-fix) in the context of artistic creation for the stage in retrospect of western theatre and lighting design, in order to give context to the characteristics of productions set in Brazil, and to show how guerrilla and gambiarra are present in the theatre. It presents 3 Brazilian productions, O Livro de Jó, Entrepartidas and Aquário, and it analyses them from the perspective of the concepts presented, as well as their application as practical illustrations, from the spatial circumstance to the dimension of approach and inventiveness-improvisation. Furthermore, it seeks to propose an aesthetic methodology of the guerrilla-gambiarra

Acute effect of nitroglycerin on cyclosporine-induced hypertension after cardiac transplantation

BACKGROUND: Cyclosporine represents a milestone in immunosuppression following organ transplantation. Its use, however, comes at the cost of significant side effects, such as arterial hypertension which is rarely controllable by currently available anti-hypertensive drugs. The aim was to investigate the effect of acute administration of nitroglycerin in heart-transplanted patients with cyclosporine-induced hypertension. METHODS: The sample included 18 cyclosporine-induced hypertensive patients (HTX group) scheduled for elective cardiac catheterization following heart transplantation, as well as 6-matched essential hypertensive patients (HT group). The blood pressure (BP) in the aorta and pulmonary artery, before and after administration of nitroglycerin, was measured simultaneously. RESULTS: After injection of 50 microg and 100 microg nitroglycerin, BP significantly decreased both in HTX (systolic (s) BP p = 0.0001; diastolic (d) BP p = 0.0001) and in controls (sBP p = 0.006; dBP p = 0.05). This reduction was more pronounced in HTX (sBP p = 0.022; dBP p = 0.018 for group-comparison). Following analysis of the data in relation to its individual baseline, a significantly higher reduction of the BP induced by 100 microg nitroglycerin was observed in the HTX group compared to the HT group (p = 0.02 for sBP and p = 0.03 for dBP). 8 +/- 3 minutes after the last nitrate infusion, BP remained significantly reduced compared to baseline in HTX (p <0.001), whereas it came back to baseline in controls. The reduction in sBP was correlated to cyclosporine A levels (p = 0.04 after 50microg nitroglycerin; p = 0.05 after 100 microg nitroglycerin). CONCLUSION: After application of nitroglycerin, sBP is reduced immediately in HTX with uncontrolled cyclosporine-induced hypertension. Further studies are needed to evaluate the long-term effect of nitrates in these patients

Spontanous periodic breathing is associated with sympathetic hyperreactivity and baroreceptor dysfunction in hypertension

OBJECTIVES: Intermittent periods of hypoxemia such as during periodic breathing are associated with hypertension and increased sympathetic activity. In patients with sleep apnea syndrome, hypertension is common. Treating apnea improves hypertension and reduces sympathetic outflow. The aim of the present study was to investigate the phenomenon and mechanisms of spontaneous periodic breathing in patients with hypertension. METHOD: We examined 43 hypertensive patients with untreated hypertension without left-ventricular dysfunction, heart failure or sleep apnea syndrome. Muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSA), heart rate (HR), blood pressure (BP) and respiration were continuously recorded at rest and during cold-pressor testing. Oxygen and a CO2-enriched gas were used to test central and peripheral chemoreceptors, respectively. Baroreceptor gain was measured using the alpha method. RESULTS: Seven out of 43 patients showed spontaneous periodic breathing while awake. No difference in MSA, HR and BP was seen between patients with and without periodic breathing at rest except the breathing pattern. However, the cold-pressor test caused a larger increase of MSA in patients with periodic breathing (203 +/- 62 vs. 62 +/- 8%, P < 0.0001 by ANOVA), as well as systolic (46 +/- 6 vs. 25 +/- 3 mmHg, P = 0.002) and diastolic BP (26 +/- 5 vs. 12 +/- 1 mmHg, P = 0.004, ANOVA). Baroreceptor gain was markedly higher in patients with periodic breathing. Chemoreceptor sensitivity was comparable. CONCLUSION: Spontaneous periodic breathing is relatively common in patients with hypertension and is associated with greatly enhanced responses to cold-pressor testing. We suggest increased baroreceptor gain and sympathetic outflow as a cause for the oscillatory respiration pattern via barorespiratory coupling

Higgs Messengers

We explore the consequences of the Higgs fields acting as messengers of supersymmetry breaking. The hidden-sector paradigm in the gauge mediation framework is relaxed by allowing two types of gauge-invariant, renormalizable operators that are typically discarded: direct coupling between the Higgses and supersymmetry breaking singlets, and Higgs-messenger mixing terms. The most important phenomenological consequence is a flavor-dependent shift in sfermion masses. This is from a one-loop contribution, which we compute for a general set of weak doublet messengers. We also study a couple of explicit models in detail, finding that precision electroweak constraints can be satisfied with a spectrum significantly different from that of gauge mediation.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figure

Testing the Nambu-Goldstone Hypothesis for Quarks and Leptons at the LHC

The hierarchy of the Yukawa couplings is an outstanding problem of the standard model. We present a class of models in which the first and second generation fermions are SUSY partners of pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons that parameterize a non-compact Kahler manifold, explaining the small values of these fermion masses relative to those of the third generation. We also provide an example of such a model. We find that various regions of the parameter space in this scenario can give the correct dark matter abundance, and that nearly all of these regions evade other phenomenological constraints. We show that for gluino mass ~700 GeV, model points from these regions can be easily distinguished from other mSUGRA points at the LHC with only 7 fb^(-1) of integrated luminosity at 14 TeV. The most striking signatures are a dearth of b- and tau-jets, a great number of multi-lepton events, and either an "inverted" slepton mass hierarchy, narrowed slepton mass hierarchy, or characteristic small-mu spectrum.Comment: Corresponds to published versio