Conflicting or complementary role of computed tomography (CT) and positron emission tomography (PET)/CT in the assessment of thymic cancer and thymoma: Our experience and literature review

Background: To evaluate the role of computed tomography (CT) and positron emission tomography (PET)/CT in patients with thymic cancer and thymoma at initial staging. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed CT and PET/CT scans of 26 patients with a thymic cancer (n = 9) or thymoma (n = 17). Chest CT findings documented were qualitative and quantitative. Both qualitative and semiquantitative data were recovered by PET/CT. The comparisons among histological entities, outcome, and qualitative data from CT and PET/CT were made by non-parametric analysis. Results: PET/CT resulted positive in 15/17 patients with thymoma. CT was available in 5/9 (56%) patients with thymic cancer and in 3/17 with thymoma. All quantitative CT parameters were significantly higher in patients with thymic cancer than thymoma (maximum axial diameter: 45 vs. 20 mm, maximum longitudinal diameter: 69 vs. 21 mm and volume: 77.91 vs. 4.52 mL; all P < 0.05). Conversely, only metabolic tumor volume (MTV) and total lesion glycolysis were significantly different in patients with thymic cancer than thymoma (126.53 vs. 6.03 cm3 and 246.05 vs. 20.32, respectively; both P < 0.05). After a median follow-up time of 17.45 months, four recurrences of disease occurred: three in patients with thymic cancer and one with a type B2 thymoma. CT volume in patients with recurrent disease was 102.19 mL versus a median value of 62.5 mL in six disease-free patients. MTV was higher in the recurrent than disease-free patient subset (143.3 vs. 81.13 cm3), although not statistically significant (P = 0.075). Conclusion: Our preliminary results demonstrated that both morphological and metabolic volume could be useful from a diagnostic and prognostic point of view in thymic cancer and thymoma patients. A large multi-center clinical trial experience for confirming the findings of this study seems mandatory

La cooperazione degli Stati con la Corte Penale Internazionale: il caso Al-Bashir

Questo elaborato si propone di analizzare il caso del Presidente sudanese Omar Al-Bashir, alla luce della mancata esecuzione da parte degli Stati dei mandati d’arresto emessi dalla Corte Penale Internazionale nel 2009 e nel 2010. Dopo un breve capitolo in cui viene delineata l’essenzialità dei caratteri strumentali e organizzativi della Corte Penale Internazionale, segue un excursus storico su quanto accaduto nella regione del Darfur e le conseguenti responsabilità del Presidente Al-Bashir, accusato di crimini contro l’umanità, crimini di guerra e genocidio. Nel terzo capitolo viene affrontata l’effettiva presa di coscienza del problema da parte del Consiglio di Sicurezza delle Nazioni Unite, il quale decide di riferire l’intera questione alla Corte con la Risoluzione 1593 del 2005. Nonostante vi siano due mandati d’arresto pendenti su Al-Bashir, nessuno degli Stati aderenti allo Statuto di Roma ha mai dato esecuzione alle richieste della Corte Penale Internazionale. Infine, il quarto e ultimo capitolo si occupa in particolare del mancato adempimento ai propri obblighi internazionali di Malawi, Chad, Repubblica Democratica del Congo e Sudafrica. Le motivazioni alla base di questa non-cooperazione con la Corte sembrano girare intorno al complesso rapporto degli articoli 27 e 98 dello Statuto ICC, relativo al riconoscimento o meno delle immunità internazionali ad Al-Bashir in quanto Capo di Stato in carica di uno Stato terzo. Tuttavia, dietro ai vari tentativi di interpretazione dei due articoli alla luce della Risoluzione 1593, sembra nascondersi un “timore” più di natura politica piuttosto che giurisdizionale, da parte degli Stati africani nel procedere all’arresto del Presidente del Sudan

MATERIALITY ANALYSIS IN SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING: A TOOL FOR DIRECTING CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY TOWARDS EMERGING ECONOMIC, ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL OPPORTUNITIES

Materiality analysis is a multi-purpose tool for prioritising sustainability issues from the double perspective of companies and stakeholders, meaning that both parties contribute to identifying the present and emerging social and environmental risks and opportunities. The current study proposes a practical and structured approach for performing materiality analysis, integrating the well-known Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) materiality matrix and a new "adequacy matrix". The purpose of the GRI materiality matrix is to prioritize sustainability issues in terms of relevance to both companies and stakeholders. The adequacy matrix supports evaluation of the transparency and effectiveness of corporate sustainability (CS) communication. Particularly, the paper aims to give indications to companies that want to prepare a sustainability report according to the GRI guidelines by planning the allocation of resources to reporting activities: the comparison between the positioning of GRI sustainability aspects in the two matrices serves in identifying the most critical issues for improving accountability. The proposed method includes a consistency test, to overcome the subjectivity, uncertainty and vagueness affecting judgements. The results provide managers with useful information for aligning CS strategic decision-making, sustainability reporting, and accountability to stakeholders. An illustrative application to a small and medium-sized (SME) company completes the paper

The impact of gender, education and age on employee attitudes towards corporate social responsibility

Engaging employees can have a positive effect on turnover reduction, client satisfaction, company profitability, innovation and growth. Engaging employees in corporate social responsibility (CSR) can also generate positive impactson environment and society. To do this, companies need to understand their employees' CSR attitudes. In this regard, many studies show that individual characteristics can influence CSR attitudes. This research aims to identify the influence of three sociodemographic characteristics such as gender, educational level and age on three employee CSR attitudes, such as CSR demandingness, CSR trust and CSR satisfaction. This analysis is carried out by examining eleven banks operating in the Italian banking sector. Employees' CSR attitudes are measured comparing banks' CSR disclosure with employees' CSR perceptions and CSR expectations. The findings of this research suggest that bank employees are generally very demanding in terms of CSR efforts andthat, although they are trustful in CSR performance, they are not completely satisfied with it. In particular, employee gender has a significant influence on CSR trust and CSR satisfaction, with male employees generally more trustful andsatisfied than female colleagues. Educational level differences also have a significant influence on CSR trust and CSR satisfaction, with graduated employees generally more trustful and satisfied than not graduated colleagues. However, employee gender and education do not influence CSR demandingness, and employee age does not have a significant effect on any CSR attitude.This research indicates that the banks under study need to improve the effectiveness of their internal CSR communication, especially with women and not graduated employees, who show the lowest levels of CSR trust andsatisfaction.This study is therefore to provide a novel method for assisting CSR researchers and practitioners in better understanding employees' CSR attitudes, and, consequently, achieving a greater effectiveness and efficiency of CSR strategies

Methylation-dependent PAD2 upregulation in multiple sclerosis peripheral blood

Background: Peptidylarginine deiminase 2 (PAD2) and peptidylarginine deiminase 4 (PAD4) are two members of PAD family which are over-expressed in the multiple sclerosis (MS) brain. Through its enzymatic activity PAD2 converts myelin basic protein (MBP) arginines into citrullines - an event that may favour autoimmunity - while peptidylarginine deiminase 4 (PAD4) is involved in chromatin remodelling. Objectives: Our aim was to verify whether an altered epigenetic control of PAD2, as already shown in the MS brain, can be observed in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of patients with MS since some of these cells also synthesize MBP. Methods: The expression of most suitable reference genes and of PAD2 and PAD4 was assessed by qPCR. Analysis of DNA methylation was performed by bisulfite method. Results: The comparison of PAD2 expression level in PBMCs from patients with MS vs. healthy donors showed that, as well as in the white matter of MS patients, the enzyme is significantly upregulated in affected subjects. Methylation pattern analysis of a CpG island located in the PAD2 promoter showed that over-expression is associated with promoter demethylation. Conclusion: Defective regulation of PAD2 in the periphery, without the immunological shelter of the blood-brain barrier, may contribute to the development of the autoimmune responses in MS

Poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation is involved in the epigenetic control of TET1 gene transcription

TET enzymes are the epigenetic factors involved in the formation of the Sixth DNA base 5-hydroxymethylcytosine, whose deregulation has been associated with tumorigenesis. In particular, TET1 acts as tumor suppressor preventing cell proliferation and tumor metastasis and it has frequently been found down-regulated in cancer. Thus, considering the importance of a tight control of TET1 expression, the epigenetic mechanisms involved in the transcriptional regulation of TET1 gene are here investigated. The involvement of poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation in the control of DNA and histone methylation on TET1 gene was examined. PARP activity is able to positively regulate TET1 expression maintaining a permissive chromatin state characterized by DNA hypomethylation of TET1 CpG island as well as high levels of H3K4 trimethylation. These epigenetic modifications were affected by PAR depletion causing TET1 downregulation and in turn reduced recruitment of TET1 protein on HOXA9 target gene. In conclusion, this work shows that PARP activity is a transcriptional regulator of TET1 gene through the control of epigenetic events and it suggests that deregulation of these mechanisms could account for TET1 repression in cancer

Validation of suitable internal control genes for expression studies in aging.

Quantitative data from experiments of gene expression are often normalized through levels of housekeeping genes transcription by assuming that expression of these genes is highly uniform. This practice is being questioned as it becomes increasingly clear that the level of housekeeping genes expression may vary considerably in certain biological samples. To date, the validation of reference genes in aging has received little attention and suitable reference genes have not yet been defined. Our aim was to evaluate the expression stability of frequently used reference genes in human peripheral blood mononuclear cells with respect to aging. Using quantitative RT-PCR, we carried out an extensive evaluation of five housekeeping genes, i.e. 18s rRNA, ACTB, GAPDH, HPRT1 and GUSB, for stability of expression in samples from donors in the age range 35-74 years. The consistency in the expression stability was quantified on the basis of the coefficient of variation and two algorithms termed geNorm and NormFinder. Our results indicated GUSB be the most suitable transcript and 18s the least for accurate normalization in PBMCs. We also demonstrated that aging is a confounding factor with respect to stability of 18s, HPRT1 and ACTB expression, which were particularly prone to variability in aged donors

Competiveness and Innovation in High-tech Companies: an Application to the Italian Biotech and Aerospace Industries

Innovation activities are a critical factor in national and regional development. The innovative behaviour of companies is one of the main sources of competitiveness, business survival, economic growth and employment in a territory. It is therefore important to identify and understand the factors that determine innovation behaviour among enterprises. In line with this, the aim of this study is to analyse the relations between innovation‐related variables and the impact that they have on company performance. The research model proposed is applied to two high‐tech sectors of the Italian region of Lazio to verify its validity. The examination concerns the aerospace and biotech sectors, which are characterized by strong innovative activity

A New Approach for Assessing Dealership Performance: An Application for the Automotive Industry

The competitive nature of the contemporary business scenario requires productivity‐driven organizations to be aware of the efficiency level of their dealers. The recent economic and financial crisis has highlighted the need for effective evaluation methods going beyond the limits of traditional performance assessment methodologies in the retail industry. The automotive industry is no exception to this logic. In this sector, traditional methods are often based only on market share performances, ignoring the key role of input‐output ratios on the overall productivity of the parent company. Following this lead, in this paper we propose a method to evaluate the performance of dealerships taking into account both their market share performances and their efficiency. In order to assess dealership efficiency we use the DEA technique, and apply the proposed methodology to a multinational automotive company considering its Italian dealer network

Limits on light primordial black holes from high-scale leptogenesis

We investigate the role that the evaporation of light primordial black holes may have played in the production of the baryon asymmetry of the Universe through the high-scale leptogenesis. In particular, for mass of primordial black hole in the range [$10^6$-$10^9$] g, we find a dilution of thermally generated lepton asymmetry via entropy injection in the primordial plasma after the sphaleron freeze-out. As a consequence, we can put strong constraints on the primordial black hole parameters, showing the mutual exclusion limits between primordial black holes and high-scale leptogenesis. Remarkably, we point out an interplay between the upper bound on the initial abundance of primordial black holes and the active neutrino mass scale.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure