Investigating Social Exclusion in Late Prehistoric Italy: Preliminary Results of the ‘‘IN or OUT’’ Project (PHASE 1)

This report presents the preliminary results of the ‘‘IN or OUT’’ Project, a collaborative, interdisciplinary effort which aims to investigate social exclusion, marginality and the adoption of anomalous funerary rites in late prehistoric Italy. In particular, this contribution explores the incidence and meaning of practices of ritual marginalisation and funerary deviancy in the region of Veneto between the Bronze Age and the early Iron Age period

A Coloring Problem for Infinite Words

In this paper we consider the following question in the spirit of Ramsey theory: Given $x\in A^\omega,$ where $A$ is a finite non-empty set, does there exist a finite coloring of the non-empty factors of $x$ with the property that no factorization of $x$ is monochromatic? We prove that this question has a positive answer using two colors for almost all words relative to the standard Bernoulli measure on $A^\omega.$ We also show that it has a positive answer for various classes of uniformly recurrent words, including all aperiodic balanced words, and all words $x\in A^\omega$ satisfying $\lambda_x(n+1)-\lambda_x(n)=1$ for all $n$ sufficiently large, where $\lambda_x(n)$ denotes the number of distinct factors of $x$ of length $n.$Comment: arXiv admin note: incorporates 1301.526

Superluminal X-shaped beams propagating without distortion along a coaxial guide

In a previous paper [Phys. Rev. E64 (2001) 066603; e-print physics/0001039], we showed that localized Superluminal solutions to the Maxwell equations exist, which propagate down (non-evanescence) regions of a metallic cylindrical waveguide. In this paper we construct analogous non-dispersive waves propagating along coaxial cables. Such new solutions, in general, consist in trains of (undistorted) Superluminal "X-shaped" pulses. Particular attention is paid to the construction of finite total energy solutions. Any results of this kind may find application in the other fields in which an essential role is played by a wave-equation (like acoustics, geophysics, etc.). [PACS nos.: 03.50.De; 41.20;Jb; 83.50.Vr; 62.30.+d; 43.60.+d; 91.30.Fn; 04.30.Nk; 42.25.Bs; 46.40.Cd; 52.35.Lv. Keywords: Wave equations; Wave propagation; Localized beams; Superluminal waves; Coaxial cables; Bidirectional decomposition; Bessel beams; X-shaped waves; Maxwell equations; Microwaves; Optics; Special relativity; Coaxial metallic waveguides; Acoustics; Seismology; Mechanical waves; Elastic waves; Guided gravitational waves.]Comment: plain LaTeX file (22 pages), plus 15 figures; in press in Phys. Rev.

A Method for Generation of Bone Marrow-Derived Macrophages from Cryopreserved Mouse Bone Marrow Cells

The broad use of transgenic and gene-targeted mice has established bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMDM) as important mammalian host cells for investigation of the macrophages biology. Over the last decade, extensive research has been done to determine how to freeze and store viable hematopoietic human cells; however, there is no information regarding generation of BMDM from frozen murine bone marrow (BM) cells. Here, we establish a highly efficient protocol to freeze murine BM cells and further generate BMDM. Cryopreserved murine BM cells maintain their potential for BMDM differentiation for more than 6 years. We compared BMDM obtained from fresh and frozen BM cells and found that both are similarly able to trigger the expression of CD80 and CD86 in response to LPS or infection with the intracellular bacteria Legionella pneumophila. Additionally, BMDM obtained from fresh or frozen BM cells equally restrict or support the intracellular multiplication of pathogens such as L. pneumophila and the protozoan parasite Leishmania (L.) amazonensis. Although further investigation are required to support the use of the method for generation of dendritic cells, preliminary experiments indicate that bone marrow-derived dendritic cells can also be generated from cryopreserved BM cells. Overall, the method described and validated herein represents a technical advance as it allows ready and easy generation of BMDM from a stock of frozen BM cells

Extraction, chemical composition, use in induced protection and cross-reactive antigens between exopolisaccharides from Tremella fuciformis Berk and Xanthomonas campestris pv. citri (Hasse) Dye

Exopolysaccharides (PS) are the major components on the surface of bacteria and also produced by fungi. These molecules are important in human health, in order to control diabetes as well as protect plants against attacks of foliage diseases. The objective of the present work was to study the partial chemical structure of the carbohydrate, use in control disease in plants and cross-serological relationship (cross-reactive antigens between isolates from fungi (Tremella fuciformis (Tf) and bacteria (Xanthomonas campestris pv. citri (Xcc)). Tf was developed in culture medium containing sorghum seeds during 20 days, and Xcc in the PDA (potato dextrose agar) medium for an 8 days period. The polysaccharide was removed from the culture medium, precipitated with ethanol, and quantified total sugar. By TLC was observed that 2 isolates presented galactose, glucose, mannose, arabinose and xylose in different proportions. Fucose and ribose was not found in the PS from Xcc but present in Tf. In ELISA, antiserum to Xcc revealed an antigenic homologous reaction with the same bacteria and heterologous with Tf. Barley plants pretreated with PS from Tf and later challenged with conidia from B.sorokiniana, demonstrated protection against the pathogen. Results suggested that PS from Tf presented induction of protection. Both PS (antigens) present an identical epitope demonstrated by reaction in Elisa test. The antibody against Xcc was specific for an epitope and bounded to another antigen due to having similar chemical properties

Klotho pathways, myelination disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, and epigenetic drugs

In this review we outline a rationale for identifying neuroprotectants aimed at inducing endogenous Klotho activity and expression, which is epigenetic action, by definition. Such an approach should promote remyelination and/or stimulate myelin repair by acting on mitochondrial function, thereby heralding a life-saving path forward for patients suffering from neuroinflammatory diseases. Disorders of myelin in the nervous system damage the transmission of signals, resulting in loss of vision, motion, sensation, and other functions depending on the affected nerves, currently with no effective treatment. Klotho genes and their single-pass transmembrane Klotho proteins are powerful governors of the threads of life and death, true to the origin of their name, Fates, in Greek mythology. Among its many important functions, Klotho is an obligatory co-receptor that binds, activates, and/or potentiates critical fibroblast growth factor activity. Since the discovery of Klotho a little over two decades ago, it has become ever more apparent that when Klotho pathways go awry, oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction take over, and age-related chronic disorders are likely to follow. The physiological consequences can be wide ranging, potentially wreaking havoc on the brain, eye, kidney, muscle, and more. Central nervous system disorders, neurodegenerative in nature, and especially those affecting the myelin sheath, represent worthy targets for advancing therapies that act upon Klotho pathways. Current drugs for these diseases, even therapeutics that are disease modifying rather than treating only the symptoms, leave much room for improvement. It is thus no wonder that this topic has caught the attention of biomedical researchers around the world.https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/biores.2020.0004Published versio

Modelling the distribution of white matter hyperintensities due to ageing on MRI images using Bayesian inference

White matter hyperintensities (WMH), also known as white matter lesions, are localised white matter areas that appear hyperintense on MRI scans. WMH commonly occur in the ageing population, and are often associated with several factors such as cognitive disorders, cardiovascular risk factors, cerebrovascular and neurodegenerative diseases. Despite the fact that some links between lesion location and parametric factors such as age have already been established, the relationship between voxel-wise spatial distribution of lesions and these factors is not yet well understood. Hence, it would be of clinical importance to model the distribution of lesions at the population-level and quantitatively analyse the effect of various factors on the lesion distribution model. In this work we compare various methods, including our proposed method, to generate voxel-wise distributions of WMH within a population with respect to various factors. Our proposed Bayesian spline method models the spatio-temporal distribution of WMH with respect to a parametric factor of interest, in this case age, within a population. Our probabilistic model takes as input the lesion segmentation binary maps of subjects belonging to various age groups and provides a population-level parametric lesion probability map as output. We used a spline representation to ensure a degree of smoothness in space and the dimension associated with the parameter, and formulated our model using a Bayesian framework. We tested our algorithm output on simulated data and compared our results with those obtained using various existing methods with different levels of algorithmic and computational complexity. We then compared the better performing methods on a real dataset, consisting of 1000 subjects of the UK Biobank, divided in two groups based on hypertension diagnosis. Finally, we applied our method on a clinical dataset of patients with vascular disease. On simulated dataset, the results from our algorithm showed a mean square error (MSE) value of , which was lower than the MSE value reported in the literature, with the advantage of being robust and computationally efficient. In the UK Biobank data, we found that the lesion probabilities are higher for the hypertension group compared to the non-hypertension group and further verified this finding using a statistical t-test. Finally, when applying our method on patients with vascular disease, we observed that the overall probability of lesions is significantly higher in later age groups, which is in line with the current literature