New insights into the genetic etiology of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias

Characterization of the genetic landscape of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementias (ADD) provides a unique opportunity for a better understanding of the associated pathophysiological processes. We performed a two-stage genome-wide association study totaling 111,326 clinically diagnosed/'proxy' AD cases and 677,663 controls. We found 75 risk loci, of which 42 were new at the time of analysis. Pathway enrichment analyses confirmed the involvement of amyloid/tau pathways and highlighted microglia implication. Gene prioritization in the new loci identified 31 genes that were suggestive of new genetically associated processes, including the tumor necrosis factor alpha pathway through the linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex. We also built a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future AD/dementia or progression from mild cognitive impairment to AD/dementia. The improvement in prediction led to a 1.6- to 1.9-fold increase in AD risk from the lowest to the highest decile, in addition to effects of age and the APOE ε4 allele

Limitations of superoscillation filters in microscopy applications

10.1364/OL.37.000903Optics Letters375903-905OPLE

Development and the implementation of high-temperature reliable heaters in plasma spray technology

Many problems have been encountered during development of reliable high-temperature heaters by means of atmospheric plasma spray and procedures commonly adopted in thermal spray technology, especialy due to poor steel substrate corrosion resistance, notably affected by grit-blasting operations, but also deriving from contamination of insulating layers, dielectric arcs, and failures due to hot spots in the heating elements. While seeking the origin of these problems, a close scrutiny of every single step of the preparation process and analyses of the coatings were carried out using laser confocal scanning microscopy, optical and electronic microscopy, fluorescence analysis, X-ray diffraction, and ancillary techniques. The electrical properties of both alumina layers and metal strips prepared with Ni, NiCr, NiAl commercial powders for the heating elements were studied and cross-related to the failures in the heaters. The article reports the main results of these investigations, delineates the innovations introduced to overcome or circumvent the problems, and underlines the distinct characteristics of new heaters, whose reliability has been proven up to now with temperatures of up to 600 °C in air