Histologic evaluation of bone healing of adjacent alveolar sockets grafted with bovine- and porcine-derived bone: a comparative case report in humans

To evaluate and compare histomorphometrically the bone response to two xenografts, one bovine and the other porcine, grafted in adjacent extraction sockets in a human. In this case report, two adjacent maxillary premolars were extracted, and the sockets were filled with two different xenogeneic bone substitutes (first premolar with bovine bone, and second premolar with porcine bone) to counteract post-extraction volume loss. Following 6 months bone core specimens were harvested during the placement of implants at the regenerated sites. Histomorphometrically, for the bovine xenograft the percentage of newly formed bone (osteoid) was 26.85%, the percentage of the residual graft material was 17.2% and the percentage of connective tissue 48.73%, while for the porcine xenograft, newly formed bone (osteoid) represented 32.19%, residual graft material was 6.57% and non-mineralized connective tissue was 52.99%. Histological results indicated that both biomaterials assessed in this study as grafts for socket preservation technique are biocompatible and osteoconductive. Bovine bone derived demonstrated to be less resorbable than porcine bone derived. Both xenogenic biomaterials did not interfere with the normal bone reparative processe

Bio-Inspired Dielectric Resonator Antenna for Wideband Sub-6 GHz Range

Through the years, inspiration from nature has taken the lead for technological development and improvement. This concept firmly applies to the design of the antennas, whose performances receive a relevant boost due to the implementation of bio-inspired geometries. In particular, this idea holds in the present scenario, where antennas working in the higher frequency range (5G and mm-wave), require wide bandwidth and high gain; nonetheless, ease of fabrication and rapid production still have their importance. To this aim, polymer-based 3D antennas, such as Dielectric Resonator Antennas (DRAs) have been considered as suitable for fulfilling antenna performance and fabrication requirements. Differently from numerous works related to planar-metal-based antenna development, bio-inspired DRAs for 5G and mm-wave applications are at their beginning. In this scenario, the present paper proposes the analysis and optimization of a bio-inspired Spiral shell DRA (SsDRA) implemented by means of Gielis' superformula, with the goal of boosting the antenna bandwidth. The optimized SsDRA geometrical parameters were also determined and discussed based on its fabrication feasibility exploiting Additive Manufacturing technologies. The results proved that the SsDRA provides relevant bandwidth, about 2 GHz wide, and satisfactory gain (3.7 dBi and 5 dBi, respectively) at two different frequencies, 3.5 GHz and 5.5 GHz

3D Printed Micro-Cells for Phase Control in 5G mmWave Applications

In this work, the design, fabrication and characterization of micro-air-channel-based unit cells aimed at phase control exploitable in 5G-mmwave applications are reported. The basic unit cell consisted of rectangular dielectric blocks (RDB) placed onto a thin substrate, realized by means of a resin polymer. The RDB effective relative permittivity was changed by tuning specific design parameters and infill density percentage (ID%), that was engineered through the introduction of a number of uniformly distributed micro-air channels. The reflected phase variation was numerically quantified in terms of frequency range and ID%, thus proving that a controlled phase variation can be accomplished depending on air-channel number. The prototypes were fabricated by means of the micro-inverted Stereolithography (SLA). In order to assess the accuracy of the SLA technology on the dimensions imposed by the high aspect ratio of the structures, larger unit cells operating in the X band were first fabricated. The acquired technological know-how has been subsequently exploited to fabricate smaller unit cells operating at mmwave. Geometrical characterizations of the prototypes, performed via a visual system setup, put in evidence the technological challenges, especially faced to realize open micro-air channels. In particular, as smaller micro-channel were actually obtained for some samples, a consequent increase of the actual ID% and effective relative permittivity values was experienced by the related unit cells. Nonetheless, the experimental results performed on the fabricated prototypes in the X band and mmwave range were in good agreement with the numerical ones, confirming the phase variation vs. ID% trends of the simulated unit cell arrays

Diagnosis of pulmonary embolism in patients with acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: a cross-sectional study

Introduction: Pulmonary embolism (PE) remains a frequent complication in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). It is unclear that the extent to which the traditional risk stratifying scores for PE are accurate in this population. Methods: Cross-sectional study of adult patients with COPD and suspected PE included in an Institutional Registry of Thromboembolic Disease at a tertiary teaching hospital in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. We estimated the area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AU-ROC), sensitivity and specificity of the Wells and Geneva scores using a positive computed tomography angiography as the gold standard for PE. We also estimated the sensitivity and specificity for the presence of isolated worsening of dyspnea at presentation, without other cardinal symptoms of acute exacerbation of COPD. Results: A total of 168 patients were included, of which 22% had confirmed PE. The AUC was 0.66 (95% CI 0.56-0.76) and 0.56 (95% CI 0.45-0.67) for the Wells and Geneva, respectively. Considering the most widely used cutoff points, the sensitivity and specificity were 24% and 90% for the Wells and 59% and 43% for the Geneva score, respectively. Isolated worsening of dyspnea on presentation had a sensitivity of 92% and specificity of 37%. Conclusions: Both Wells and Geneva scores exhibit poor diagnostic accuracy for the diagnosis of PE in patients with COPD. The presence of isolated worsening of dyspnea on presentation could be an easy to identify criteria for the initial triage in this population. Further validation of our findings remains warranted.Fil: Maritano Furcada, Joaquín. Hospital Italiano; ArgentinaFil: Castro, Horacio Matías. Hospital Italiano; ArgentinaFil: de Vito, Eduardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Instituto de Investigaciones Médicas; ArgentinaFil: Grande Ratti, María Florencia. Hospital Italiano; ArgentinaFil: Posadas Martinez, Maria Lourdes. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Hospital Italiano; ArgentinaFil: Giunta, Diego Hernan. Hospital Italiano; ArgentinaFil: Vazquez, Fernando Javier. Hospital Italiano; ArgentinaFil: Ferreyro, Bruno Leonel. Hospital Italiano; Argentina. University of Toronto; Canad

Design and Manufacturing of Super-Shaped Dielectric Resonator Antennas for 5G Applications Using Stereolithography

In this work, the inverted micro-Stereolithography (SLA) is used to show the potential of such additive manufacturing (AM) technology at prototyping super-shaped dielectric resonator antennas (S-DRAs) rapidly and accurately. The S-DRAs, which exhibit 3D complex geometries, were designed to operate at 3.5 GHz, suitable for the assessment of 5G communications in the mid band. Initially, a cross-starred-shaped S-DRA was designed and manufactured via the inverted micro-SLA by means of a photopolymer resin as material. As no information about the used material was available from literature and supplier, the dielectric properties of the photopolymer resin were characterized. Moreover, in the view of challenging further the SLA capability, several prototypes, based on the cross star shaped geometry but exhibiting a twist of variable angles along the longitudinal axis, were fabricated and tested. In order to compare the antennas performance in relation to the material volume and sizes, rectangular and cylindrical DRAs were also realized using same material and technology. Scattering parameter S11, gain, bandwidth (BW), efficiency and co- and cross-polarization of all antennas were measured. The experimental results showed that twisted S-DRAs exhibit same performance of the basic cross-starred-shaped antenna, due to the invariance to symmetry of the basic Gielis geometry. The measured gain is about 2.5 dB over a range of 1 GHz in the frequency range of interest; the BW measured for all S-DRAs is about 10%, whereas the efficiency is about 80% at 3.5 GHz. Finally, better performance in terms of bandwidth is shown by the S-DRAs, considering their dramatic volume reduction (~85%) compared to classic rectangular and cylindrical DRAs and other DRA examples already reported in the state of the art

Is Computed-Tomography-Based Body Composition a Reliable Predictor of Chemotherapy-Related Toxicity in Pancreatic Cancer Patients?

BACKGROUND Malnutrition, loss of weight and of skeletal muscle mass are frequent in pancreatic cancer patients, a majority of which will undergo chemotherapy over the course of their disease. Available data suggest a negative prognostic role of these changes in body composition on disease outcomes; however, it is unclear whether tolerance to chemotherapeutic treatment is similarly and/or negatively affected. We aimed to explore this association by retrospectively assessing changes in body composition and chemotherapy-related toxicity in a cohort of advanced pancreatic cancer patients. METHODS Body composition was evaluated through clinical parameters and through radiological assessment of muscle mass, skeletal muscle area, skeletal muscle index and skeletal muscle density; and an assessment of fat distribution by subcutaneous adipose tissue and visceral adipose tissue. We performed descriptive statistics, pre/post chemotherapy comparisons and uni- and multivariate analyses to assess the relation between changes in body composition and toxicity. RESULTS Toxicity risk increased with an increase of skeletal muscle index (OR: 1.03) and body mass index (OR: 1.07), whereas it decreased with an increase in skeletal muscle density (OR: 0.96). Multivariate analyses confirmed a reduction in the risk of toxicity only with an increase in skeletal muscle density (OR: 0.96). CONCLUSIONS This study suggests that the retrospective analysis of changes in body composition is unlikely to be useful to predict toxicity to gemcitabine-nab-paclitaxel

Enabling FAIR research in Earth Science through research objects

Data-intensive science communities are progressively adopting FAIR practices that enhance the visibility of scientific breakthroughs and enable reuse. At the core of this movement, research objects contain and describe scientific information and resources in a way compliant with the FAIR principles and sustain the development of key infrastructure and tools. This paper provides an account of the challenges, experiences and solutions involved in the adoption of FAIR around research objects over several Earth Science disciplines. During this journey, our work has been comprehensive, with outcomes including: an extended research object model adapted to the needs of earth scientists; the provisioning of digital object identifiers (DOI) to enable persistent identification and to give due credit to authors; the generation of content-based, semantically rich, research object metadata through natural language processing, enhancing visibility and reuse through recommendation systems and third-party search engines; and various types of checklists that provide a compact representation of research object quality as a key enabler of scientific reuse. All these results have been integrated in ROHub, a platform that provides research object management functionality to a wealth of applications and interfaces across different scientific communities. To monitor and quantify the community uptake of research objects, we have defined indicators and obtained measures via ROHub that are also discussed herein.Published550-5645IT. Osservazioni satellitariJCR Journa

A highly conserved SOX6 double binding site mediates SOX6 gene downregulation in erythroid cells

The Sox6 transcription factor plays critical roles in various cell types, including erythroid cells. Sox6-deficient mice are anemic due to impaired red cell maturation and show inappropriate globin gene expression in definitive erythrocytes. To identify new Sox6 target genes in erythroid cells, we used the known repressive double Sox6 consensus within the εy-globin promoter to perform a bioinformatic genome-wide search for similar, evolutionarily conserved motifs located within genes whose expression changes during erythropoiesis. We found a highly conserved Sox6 consensus within the Sox6 human gene promoter itself. This sequence is bound by Sox6 in vitro and in vivo, and mediates transcriptional repression in transient transfections in human erythroleukemic K562 cells and in primary erythroblasts. The binding of a lentiviral transduced Sox6FLAG protein to the endogenous Sox6 promoter is accompanied, in erythroid cells, by strong downregulation of the endogenous Sox6 transcript and by decreased in vivo chromatin accessibility of this region to the PstI restriction enzyme. These observations suggest that the negative Sox6 autoregulation, mediated by the double Sox6 binding site within its own promoter, may be relevant to control the Sox6 transcriptional downregulation that we observe in human erythroid cultures and in mouse bone marrow cells in late erythroid maturation