Physical activity programs in older persons with Alzheimer’s disease: a need for dedicated trials

Recent works highlight the influence of different aspects of lifestyle on cognitive decline and the risk of dementia. Some data suggest that exercise could improve cognitive performance, especially executive functions and reduce the risk of cognitive decline and dementia in the elder. There is controversial data regarding the role of physical exercise on cognitive performance in older patients with dementia, which may be due to diverse study designs. Innovative interventional trials need to adapt their aims toward physical and cognitive changes in patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease (AD) in association with physical activity (PA). Future goals should include specific Adapted Physical Activity (APA) intervention programs on maintaining cognitive, emotional, and physical function in older persons with dementia at risk of rapid decline. In this commentary, we will provide novel insights on the use of potential physical activity programs in Alzheimer's Disease Day Centers

Use of noninvasive imaging in the management of skin cancer

6Purpose of review: To evaluate noninvasive imaging techniques in the management of skin cancers. Recent findings: In the last decades, a wide range of noninvasive imaging methods has been developed in the field of dermatooncology with the aim to detect and assess the several structural and molecular changes that characterize skin cancer development and progression. Summary: In this review, we discuss the current and emerging applications of noninvasive imaging approaches in skin cancer management, such as digital photography, dermoscopy, ultrasound sonography, reflectance confocal microscopy, optical coherence tomography, electrical impedance techniques, Raman spectroscopy, multispectral imaging, fluorescence imaging, and multispectral optoacustic tomography.partially_openopenGiuffrida, Roberta; Conforti, Claudio; Di Meo, Nicola; Deinlein, Teresa; Guida, Stefania; Zalaudek, IrisGiuffrida, Roberta; Conforti, Claudio; Di Meo, Nicola; Deinlein, Teresa; Guida, Stefania; Zalaudek, Iri

Coronavirus disease 2019: Facts and controversies

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Unraveling the performance of dispersion-corrected functionals for the accurate description of weakly bound natural polyphenols

Long-range non-covalent interactions play a key role in the chemistry of natural polyphenols. We have previously proposed a description of supramolecular polyphenol complexes by the B3P86 density functional coupled with some corrections for dispersion. We couple here the B3P86 functional with the D3 correction for dispersion, assessing systematically the accuracy of the new B3P86-D3 model using for that the well-known S66, HB23, NCCE31, and S12L datasets for non-covalent interactions. Furthermore, the association energies of these complexes were carefully compared to those obtained by other dispersion-corrected functionals, such as B(3)LYP-D3, BP86-D3 or B3P86-NL. Finally, this set of models were also applied to a database composed of seven non-covalent polyphenol complexes of the most interest.FDM acknowledges financial support from the Swedish Research Council (Grant No. 621-2014-4646) and SNIC (Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing) for providing computer resources. The work in Limoges (IB and PT) is supported by the “Conseil Régional du Limousin”. PT gratefully acknowledges the support by the Operational Program Research and Development Fund (project CZ.1.05/2.1.00/03.0058 of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic). IB gratefully acknowledges financial support from “Association Djerbienne en France”

Quantum ESPRESSO: a modular and open-source software project for quantum simulations of materials

Quantum ESPRESSO is an integrated suite of computer codes for electronic-structure calculations and materials modeling, based on density-functional theory, plane waves, and pseudopotentials (norm-conserving, ultrasoft, and projector-augmented wave). Quantum ESPRESSO stands for "opEn Source Package for Research in Electronic Structure, Simulation, and Optimization". It is freely available to researchers around the world under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Quantum ESPRESSO builds upon newly-restructured electronic-structure codes that have been developed and tested by some of the original authors of novel electronic-structure algorithms and applied in the last twenty years by some of the leading materials modeling groups worldwide. Innovation and efficiency are still its main focus, with special attention paid to massively-parallel architectures, and a great effort being devoted to user friendliness. Quantum ESPRESSO is evolving towards a distribution of independent and inter-operable codes in the spirit of an open-source project, where researchers active in the field of electronic-structure calculations are encouraged to participate in the project by contributing their own codes or by implementing their own ideas into existing codes.Comment: 36 pages, 5 figures, resubmitted to J.Phys.: Condens. Matte