PERCUTANEOUS TIBIAL NERVE STIMULATION FOR TREATMENT OF ANAL INCONTINENCE

Faecal incontinence (FI) is a not common symptom in the general population (0.4–2.2% in population-based studies), which 342 Tech Coloproctol (2009) 13:341–368 123 affects predominantly the elderly people, with a female prevalence. FI has a notable public health impact. It is psychologically and physically debilitating and can lead the patient to isolation and progressive loss of all social activities. Patient selection is decisive to opt for an effective intervention. A conservative approach is required to treat mild to moderate FI; it is based on nutritional, medical and rehabilitative therapy, with a success rate of5%. In no-responsive cases, other several different semi-conservative procedures, such as bulking agents, injection or sacral neuromodulator implant can be proposed prior to resorting to surgery. One of the least invasive forms of neuromodulation is the tibial nerve percutaneous stimulation (PTNS), currently used for a wide variety of urologic conditions.PTNS seems to be a safe and effective therapeutic option and it could represent a valid approach to mild to moderate FI. Tolerableness, affordability and mininvasivity of this simple procedure compel to further studie

Post-graduate medical education in public health: The case of Italy and a call for action

Public health technical expertise is of crucial importance to inform decision makers\u2019 action in the field of health and its broader determinants. Improving education and training of public health professionals for both practice and research is the starting point to strengthen the role of public health so that current health challenges can be efficiently tackled. At the Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region (ASPHER) Deans\u2019 & Directors\u2019 2017 Annual Retreat, we presented the structure and management of public health training system in Italy, and we reported recent data on Italian public health specialists\u2019 educational experience, employment opportunities and job satisfaction. Public health training in Italy is implemented in the context of the post-graduate medical education residency programme in Hygiene and Preventive Medicine, delivered by 34 University-based Schools of Public Health. We report relatively high employment rates across the county and wide spectrum of career opportunities for young public health specialists. However, job security is low and training expectations only partially met. We call upon other Schools of Public Health to scale up the survey within the broad ASPHER community in a shared and coordinated action of systematically collecting useful data that can inform the development of public health education and training models, their implementation and fruitful interaction with population health, health systems and services

Neutron irradiation of RPCs for the CMS experiment

All the CMS muon stations will be equipped with Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs). They will be exposed to high neutron background environment during the LHC running. In order to verify the safe operation of these detectors, an irradiation test has been carried out with two RPCs at high neutron flux (about ), integrating values of dose and fluence equivalent to 10 LHC-years. Before and after the irradiation, the performance of the detectors was studied with cosmic muons, showing no relevant aging effects. Moreover, no indication of damage or chemical changes were observed on the electrode surfaces

The RPC system for the CMS experiment at the LHC

The CMS detector at the LHC has a redundant muon system. Two independent muon systems are used in the L1 trigger. One of them is based on wire chambers, the other on RPC detectors. Properly combining the answers of the two systems results in a highly efficient L1 trigger with high flexibility from the point of view of rate control. Simulation results show, however, that the RPC system suffers from false triggers caused by coincidence of spurious hits. System improvements, which could avoid oiling the chambers, are possible. RPCs have also proved to be very useful for muon track reconstruction

Experimental results on RPC neutron sensitivity

Abstract RPC neutron sensitivity has been studied during two tests done with different neutrons energies. In the first test, neutrons from spontaneous fission events of 252 Cf were used (average energy 2 MeV ); while in the second test neutrons were produced using a 50 MeV deuteron beam on a 1 cm thick beryllium target (average energy 20 MeV ). Preliminary results show that the neutron sensitivity in double gap mode is (0.52±0.03)×10−3 at about 2 MeV and (5.3±0.5)×10−3 at about 20 MeV

Multiplicities of charged pions and unidentified charged hadrons from deep-inelastic scattering of muons off an isoscalar target

Multiplicities of charged pions and unidentified hadrons produced in deep-inelastic scattering were measured in bins of the Bjorken scaling variable $x$, the relative virtual-photon energy $y$ and the relative hadron energy $z$. Data were obtained by the COMPASS Collaboration using a 160 GeV muon beam and an isoscalar target ($^6$LiD). They cover the kinematic domain in the photon virtuality $Q^2$ > 1(GeV/c$)^2$, $0.004 < x < 0.4$, $0.2 < z < 0.85$ and $0.1 < y < 0.7$. In addition, a leading-order pQCD analysis was performed using the pion multiplicity results to extract quark fragmentation functions

Increased expression of urokinase plasminogen activator and its cognate receptor in human seminomas

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The urokinase plasminogen activating system (uPAS) is implicated in neoplastic progression and high tissue levels of uPAS components correlate with a poor prognosis in different human cancers. Despite that, relative few studies are available on the expression and function of the uPAS components in human seminomas. In the present study we characterized the expression of the urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA), its cognate receptor (uPAR) and the uPA inhibitors PAI-1 and PAI-2 in normal human testis and seminomas.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The expression of the above genes was evaluated by means of quantitative RT-PCR, western blot, zymographic analysis and immunohistochemistry.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Quantitative RT-PCR analysis of 14 seminomas demonstrated that uPA and uPAR mRNAs were, with respect to control tissues, increased in tumor tissues by 3.80 ± 0.74 (p < 0.01) and 6.25 ± 1.18 (p < 0.01) fold, respectively. On the other hand, PAI-1 mRNA level was unchanged (1.02 ± 0.24 fold), while that of PAI-2 was significantly reduced to 0.34 ± 0.18 (p < 0.01) fold. Western blot experiments performed with protein extracts of three seminomas and normal tissues from the same patients showed that uPA protein levels were low or undetectable in normal tissues and induced in tumor tissues. On the same samples, zymographic analysis demonstrated increased uPA activity in tumor tissue extracts. Western blot experiments showed that also the uPAR protein was increased in tumor tissues by 1.83 ± 0.15 fold (p < 0.01). The increased expression of uPA and uPAR was further confirmed by immunohistochemical staining performed in 10 seminomas and autologous uninvolved peritumoral tissues. Finally, variation in the mRNA level of PAI-1 significantly correlated with tumor size.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We demonstrated the increased expression of uPA and uPAR in human seminomas with respect to normal testis tissues, which may be relevant in testicular cancer progression.</p

Molecular evolution of a gene cluster of serine proteases expressed in the Anopheles gambiae female reproductive tract

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Genes involved in post-mating processes of multiple mating organisms are known to evolve rapidly due to coevolution driven by sexual conflict among male-female interacting proteins. In the malaria mosquito <it>Anopheles gambiae </it>- a monandrous species in which sexual conflict is expected to be absent or minimal - recent data strongly suggest that proteolytic enzymes specifically expressed in the female lower reproductive tissues are involved in the processing of male products transferred to females during mating. In order to better understand the role of selective forces underlying the evolution of proteins involved in post-mating responses, we analysed a cluster of genes encoding for three serine proteases that are down-regulated after mating, two of which specifically expressed in the atrium and one in the spermatheca of <it>A. gambiae </it>females.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The analysis of polymorphisms and divergence of these female-expressed proteases in closely related species of the <it>A. gambiae </it>complex revealed a high level of replacement polymorphisms consistent with relaxed evolutionary constraints of duplicated genes, allowing to rapidly fix novel replacements to perform new or more specific functions. Adaptive evolution was detected in several codons of the 3 genes and hints of episodic selection were also found. In addition, the structural modelling of these proteases highlighted some important differences in their substrate specificity, and provided evidence that a number of sites evolving under selective pressures lie relatively close to the catalytic triad and/or on the edge of the specificity pocket, known to be involved in substrate recognition or binding. The observed patterns suggest that these proteases may interact with factors transferred by males during mating (e.g. substrates, inhibitors or pathogens) and that they may have differently evolved in independent <it>A. gambiae </it>lineages.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our results - also examined in light of constraints in the application of selection-inference methods to the closely related species of the <it>A. gambiae </it>complex - reveal an unexpectedly intricate evolutionary scenario. Further experimental analyses are needed to investigate the biological functions of these genes in order to better interpret their molecular evolution and to assess whether they represent possible targets for limiting the fertility of <it>Anopheles </it>mosquitoes in malaria vector control strategies.</p

Epigenetic loss of RNA‑methyltransferase NSUN5 in glioma targets ribosomes to drive stress adaptive translational program

Tumors have aberrant proteomes that often do not match their corresponding transcriptome profiles. One possible cause of this discrepancy is the existence of aberrant RNA modification landscapes in the so-called epitranscriptome. Here, we report that human glioma cells undergo DNA methylation-associated epigenetic silencing of NSUN5, a candidate RNA methyltransferase for 5-methylcytosine. In this setting, NSUN5 exhibits tumor-suppressor characteristics in vivo glioma models. We also found that NSUN5 loss generates an unmethylated status at the C3782 position of 28S rRNA that drives an overall depletion of protein synthesis, and leads to the emergence of an adaptive translational program for survival under conditions of cellular stress. Interestingly, NSUN5 epigenetic inactivation also renders these gliomas sensitive to bioactivatable substrates of the stress-related enzyme NQO1. Most importantly, NSUN5 epigenetic inactivation is a hallmark of glioma patients with long-term survival for this otherwise devastating disease

The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment

The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in operation since July 2014. This paper describes the second data release from this phase, and the fourteenth from SDSS overall (making this, Data Release Fourteen or DR14). This release makes public data taken by SDSS-IV in its first two years of operation (July 2014-2016). Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14 is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14 is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS); the first data from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2), including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data driven machine learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of the publicly available data from SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS website (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release, and provides links to data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020, and will be followed by SDSS-V.Comment: SDSS-IV collaboration alphabetical author data release paper. DR14 happened on 31st July 2017. 19 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by ApJS on 28th Nov 2017 (this is the "post-print" and "post-proofs" version; minor corrections only from v1, and most of errors found in proofs corrected