Suitability of miRNA assessment in postmortem interval estimation

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this review was to explore recent pieces of evidence focused on the use of miRNAs for PMI estimation both in humans and animal experiments, with particular interest on the best miRNAs to use as reference/target markers in different tissues or biological fluids. MiRNAs are innovative biomarkers used in clinical and research field: they appear very attractive, being introduced in forensic research scenarios even for PMI estimation.MATERIALS AND METHODS: Data from PubMed and Scopus were analyzed from January 2013 to August 2020. Based on inclusion/exclusion criteria, high-quality articles have been selected to become the subject of this review.RESULTS: A total of 737 papers were found but, after titles/abstracts screening for inclusion criteria and a full-text careful selection, 33 papers were deeply studied. After the exclusion of 19 papers, 15 articles remained. Eight papers dealt with animals (mice/rats), two both with animals and humans (for method validation previously built), while 5 exclusively with humans. Myocardium (6/15) and brain (6/15) were the most studied tissues. respectively in mice/rats and humans. PMI considered was up to 7.5 days in mouse studies and less than 3 days in human models.CONCLUSIONS: Because of their significant stability in both early and long PMI, miRNAs are the cleverest reference markers to be used. Temperature and environmental conditions influence mostly mRNA, while miRNAs are less susceptible to them. The best miRNA to choose depends on its tissue specificity, i.e., miR-9 and miR-125 in brain or miR-1 and miR-133 in skeletal muscle/heart

OGS NODC Meta-data standardization, discovery and reporting from a relational database

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Human thymoma-associated mutation of the GTF2I transcription factor impairs thymic epithelial progenitor differentiation in mice

Few human tumours present with a recurrent pathognomonic mutation in a transcription factor. Thymomas are an exception, with the majority of some subtypes exhibiting a distinct somatically acquired missense mutation in the general transcription factor GTF2I. Co-dominant expression of wild-type and mutated forms of Gtf2i in the mouse thymic epithelium is associated with aberrant thymic architecture and reduced thymopoietic activity. Phenotypic and molecular characterization of the mutant epithelium indicates that medullary differentiation is particularly affected as a result of impaired differentiation of bi-potent epithelial progenitors. The resulting gene expression signature is dominated by that of immature cortex-like thymic epithelial cells. TCR repertoire analysis of the cytopenic T cell compartment indicates efficient intrathymic selection; hence, despite marked homeostatic proliferation of T cell clones, autoimmunity is not observed. Thus, our transgenic mouse model recapitulates some aspects of the pathophysiology of a genetically defined type of human thymoma

Exact analysis of weighted centroid localization

Source localization of primary users (PUs) is a geolocation spectrum awareness feature that can be very useful in enhancing the functionality of cognitive radios (CRs). When the cooperating CRs have limited information about the PU, weighted centroid localization (WCL) based on received signal strength (RSS) measurements represents an attractive low-complexity solution. In this paper, we propose a new analytical framework to calculate the exact performance of WCL in the presence of shadowing, based on results of the ratio of two quadratic forms in normal variables. In particular, we derive an exact expression for the root mean square error (RMSE) of the two-dimensional location estimate. Numerical results confirm that the derived framework is able to predict the performance of WCL capturing all the essential aspects of propagation as well as CR network spatial topology

Infinite index extensions of local nets and defects

Subfactor theory provides a tool to analyze and construct extensions of Quantum Field Theories, once the latter are formulated as local nets of von Neumann algebras. We generalize some of the results of [LR95] to the case of extensions with infinite Jones index. This case naturally arises in physics, the canonical examples are given by global gauge theories with respect to a compact (non-finite) group of internal symmetries. Building on the works of Izumi, Longo, Popa [ILP98] and Fidaleo, Isola [FI99], we consider generalized Q-systems (of intertwiners) for a semidiscrete inclusion of properly infinite von Neumann algebras, which generalize ordinary Q-systems introduced by Longo [Lon94] to the infinite index case. We characterize inclusions which admit generalized Q-systems of intertwiners and define a braided product among the latter, hence we construct examples of QFTs with defects (phase boundaries) of infinite index, extending the family of boundaries in the grasp of [BKLR16].Comment: 50 page

Demonstration of dynamic restoration in segment routing multi-layer SDN networks

Dynamic traffic recovery is designed and validated in a multi-layer network exploiting an SDN-based implementation of Segment Routing. Traffic recovery is locally performed from the node detecting the failure up to the destination node without involving the SDN controller. Experimental results demonstrate recovery time within 50 ms

ONOS-Controlled Disaggregated Optical Networks

State-of-art, potentials and limitations of the ONOS controller applied to disaggregated optical networks are reported. Focus is on the on-going ODTN project. Results of experimental demonstrations are reported to prove the feasibility of proposed approach