Designing Effective User Onboarding Experiences for Mobile Applications

User onboarding is the process of increasing the likelihood that new users become successful when adopting your product, by providing them with the right tools to understand how a product works and what benefits it provides. The number of apps we daily manage on our mobile devices increases day by day, thus requiring a hard work by designers to create the best user onboarding experience ever. Since it represents the first interactive, direct experience that every user has of an app, every aspect of the funnel represents a significant opportunity for activation and retention of customers in the short- and long-term. In the wide landscape of mobile apps, brain training apps need to have an additional closer look at the onboarding experience they provide. For this type of apps, onboarding does not only encompass more common activities such as user registration and free trial activation, but also the possibility to develop an accurately personalized game experience, tailored to the user’s current cognitive skills and training objectives. Elevate is a successful brain training app available on iOS and Android devices. Recent monitoring of users’ retention and churn rates have shown a huge loss of customers during the onboarding process, thus generating the need to investigate on how to restructure the flow in a way that could help keeping more customers in the loop. The analysis of quantitative and qualitative data with respect to Elevate’s key success metrics has led to a redesign of the welcome pitch, the user registration process, and the post-registration up-sell screen. It has also brought changes to the immediate post-onboarding experience of the first training session, and to the re-onboarding of churned users. A/B tests have been carried out to analyze the behavior of different variants and choose the optimal new onboarding flow. First results show expansion of the onboarding funnel, strengthening of the benefit appeal, and acceleration in user motivation, all factors leading to a higher customer activation and retention

LOX Gene Transcript Accumulation in Olive (Olea europaea L.) Fruits at Different Stages of Maturation: Relationship between Volatile Compounds, Environmental Factors, and Technological Treatments for Oil Extraction

The quality of olive oil is influenced by genetic and environmental factors and by the maturation state of drupes, but it is equally affected by technological treatments of the process. This work investigates the possible correlation between olive LOX gene transcript accumulation, evaluated in fruits collected at different stages of maturation, and chemical biomarkers of its activity. During olive fruit ripening, the same genotype harvested from two different farms shows a positive linear trend between LOX relative transcript accumulation and the content of volatile compounds present in the olive oil aroma. Interestingly, a negative linear trend was observed between LOX relative transcript accumulation and the content of volatile compounds present in the olive pastes obtained from olive fruits with and without malaxation. The changes in the olive LOX transcript accumulation reveal its environmental regulation and suggest differential physiological functions for the LOXs

Whole-exome analysis in osteosarcoma to identify a personalized therapy

Osteosarcoma is the most common pediatric primary non-hematopoietic bone tumor. Survival of these young patients is related to the response to chemotherapy and development of metastases. Despite many advances in cancer research, chemotherapy regimens for osteosarcoma are still based on non-selective cytotoxic drugs. It is essential to investigate new specific molecular therapies for osteosarcoma to increase the survival rate of these patients. We performed exomic sequence analyses of 8 diagnostic biopsies of patients with conventional high grade osteosarcoma to advance our understanding of their genetic underpinnings and to correlate the genetic alteration with the clinical and pathological features of each patient to identify a personalized therapy. We identified 18,275 somatic variations in 8,247 genes and we found three mutated genes in 7/8 (87%) samples (KIF1B, NEB and KMT2C). KMT2C showed the highest number of variations; it is an important component of a histone H3 lysine 4 methyltransferase complex and it is one of the histone modifiers previously implicated in carcinogenesis, never studied in osteosarcoma. Moreover, we found a group of 15 genes that showed variations only in patients that did not respond to therapy and developed metastasis and some of these genes are involved in carcinogenesis and tumor progression in other tumors. These data could offer the opportunity to get a key molecular target to identify possible new strategies for early diagnosis and new therapeutic approaches for osteosarcoma and to provide a tailored treatment for each patient based on their genetic profile

SICOB-endorsed national Delphi consensus on obesity treatment optimization: focus on diagnosis, pre-operative management, and weight regain/insufficient weight loss approach

Purpose: Overweight and obesity affects 60% of adults causing more than 1.2 million deaths across world every year. Fight against involved different specialist figures and multiple are the approved weapons. Aim of the present survey endorsed by the Italian Society of Bariatric Surgery (SICOB) is to reach a national consensus on obesity treatment optimization through a Delphi process. Methods: Eleven key opinion leaders (KOLs) identified 22 statements with a major need of clarification and debate. The explored pathways were: (1) Management of patient candidate to bariatric/metabolic surgery (BMS); (2) Management of patient not eligible for BMS; (3) Management of patient with short-term (2 years) weight regain (WR) or insufficient weight loss (IWL); (4) Management of the patient with medium-term (5 years) WR; and (5) Association between drugs and BMS as WR prevention. The questionnaire was distributed to 65 national experts via an online platform with anonymized results. Results: 54 out of 65 invited panelists (83%) respond. Positive consensus was reached for 18/22 statements (82%); while, negative consensus (s20.4; s21.5) and no consensus (s11.5, s17) were reached for 2 statements, respectively (9%). Conclusion: The Delphi results underline the importance of first-line interdisciplinary management, with large pre-treatment examination, and establish a common opinion on how to properly manage post-operative IWL/WR. Level of evidence v: Report of expert committees

Vascularized head and neck tumors and growth factors: immunohistochemical and rt-pcr profile in pediatric age

Brain tumors account approximately for 20% of all childhood cancers and are characterized by a large diversity of morphological entities. The formation of abnormal, dysfunctional tumor vasculature and glioblastoma stem-like cells (GSCs) are believed to be the major components of the difficulty to treat these tumors effectively. Massive formation of blood vessels is one of the most important histological elements to determine the progression and histological grading of tumors. We hypothesized that an increased expression of TGF-β1 in tumor cells stimulates tumor neo-vascularization by mediating the secretion of relevant angiogenic factors via an autocrine mechanism. Expression of TGF-β in relation to VEGF and VEGF-receptors involved in angiogenesis and inflammation pathways was evaluated in pediatric patients with brain tumors and compared with normal tissues. Our results demonstrated that TGF-β1, VEGF-A and VEGF-RII were significantly related to the development and to the growth of glioblastoma. We can speculate that TGF-β1 and VEGF are involved in the cascade of the malignant progression of glioblastoma. These factors promote tumorigenesis and malignant progression of glioblastoma by a mechanism determining anti-apoptotic, angiogenetic and invasive behaviour of the tumor cells. Basing on our experimental data, we propose that VEGF may be the double promoter responsible not only for the tumor vessels, but also for the tumor stem cells [1]. Our data demonstrate that GSCs in association with high levels of VEGF-A and TGF-β play a key role in the development of the tumor vascularization acting on endothelial cells differentiation

Revisional Surgery After One Anastomosis/Minigastric Bypass: an Italian Multi-institutional Survey

Background: Efficacy and safety of OAGB/MGB (one anastomosis/mini gastric bypass) have been well documented both as primary and as revisional procedures. However, even after OAGB/MGB, revisional surgery is unavoidable in patients with surgical complications or insufficient weight loss. Methods: A questionnaire asking for the total number and demographics of primary and revisional OAGB/MGBs performed between January 2006 and July 2020 was e-mailed to all S.I.C. OB centres of excellence (annual caseload > 100; 5-year follow-up > 50%). Each bariatric centre was asked to provide gender, age, preoperative body mass index (BMI) and obesity-related comorbidities, previous history of abdominal or bariatric surgery, indication for surgical revision of OAGB/MGB, type of revisional procedure, pre- and post-revisional BMI, peri- and post-operative complications, last follow-up (FU). Results: Twenty-three bariatric centres (54.8%) responded to our survey reporting a total number of 8676 primary OAGB/MGBS and a follow-up of 62.42 ± 52.22 months. A total of 181 (2.08%) patients underwent revisional surgery: 82 (0.94%) were suffering from intractable DGER (duodeno-gastric-esophageal reflux), 42 (0.48%) were reoperated for weight regain, 16 (0.18%) had excessive weight loss and malnutrition, 12 (0.13%) had a marginal ulcer perforation, 10 (0.11%) had a gastro-gastric fistula, 20 (0.23%) had other causes of revision. Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) was the most performed revisional procedure (109; 54%), followed by bilio-pancreatic limb elongation (19; 9.4%) and normal anatomy restoration (19; 9.4%). Conclusions: Our findings demonstrate that there is acceptable revisional rate after OAGB/MGB and conversion to RYGB represents the most frequent choice

Brown Fat Expresses Adiponectin in Humans

The presence of brown adipose tissue (BAT) in humans is unclear. Pheochromocytomas (PHEO) are rare tumors of neuroectodermal origin which occur in 0.1-0.2% of patients with hypertension. We sought to evaluate the presence and activity of BAT surrounding adrenal PHEO in a well-studied sample of 11 patients who were diagnosed with PHEO and then underwent adrenalectomy. Areas of white fat (WAT) and BAT surrounding PHEO were obtained by Laser Capture Microdissection for analysis of uncoupling protein (UCP)-1 and adiponectin mRNA expression. Adiponectin and UCP-1 mRNA levels were significantly higher in BAT than in WAT (0.62 versus 0.15 and 362.4 versus 22.1, resp., for both). Adiponectin mRNA levels significantly correlated with urinary metanephrines (, ), vanilly mandelic acid (VMA) (, ), and serum adiponectin levels (, ). Serum adiponectin levels significantly decreased ( μg/mL versus  μg/mL, ) after adrenalectomy in PHEO subjects. This study provides the following findings: (1) BAT surrounding PHEO expresses adiponectin and UCP-1 mRNA, (2) expression of adiponectin mRNA is significantly higher in BAT than in WAT surrounding PHEO, and (3) catecholamines and serum adiponectin levels significantly correlate with BAT UCP-1 and adiponectin mRNA

Fruit volatilome profiling through GC × GC-ToF-MS and gene expression analyses reveal differences amongst peach cultivars in their response to cold storage

Peaches have a short shelf life and require chilling during storage and transport. Peach aroma is important for consumer preference and determined by underlying metabolic pathways and gene expression. Differences in aroma (profiles of volatile organic compounds, VOCs) have been widely reported across cultivars and in response to cold storage. However, few studies used intact peaches, or used equilibrium sampling methods subject to saturation. We analysed VOC profiles using TD‑GC × GC‑ToF‑MS and expression of 12 key VOC pathway genes of intact fruit from six cultivars (three peaches, three nectarines) before and after storage at 1 °C for 7 days including 36 h shelf life storage at 20 °C. Two dimensional GC (GC × GC) significantly enhances discrimination of thermal desorption gas chromatography time‑of‑flight mass spectrometry (TD‑GC‑ToF‑MS) and detected a total of 115 VOCs. A subset of 15 VOCs from analysis with Random Forest discriminated between cultivars. Another 16 VOCs correlated strongly with expression profiles of eleven key genes in the lipoxygenase pathway, and both expression profiles and VOCs discriminated amongst cultivars, peach versus nectarines and between treatments. The cultivar‑specific response to cold storage underlines the need to understand more fully the genetic basis for VOC changes across cultivars

PATZ1 acts as a tumor suppressor in thyroid cancer via targeting p53-dependent genes involved in EMT and cell migration

PATZ1, a POZ-Zinc finger protein, is emerging as an important regulator of development and cancer, but its cancer-related function as oncogene or tumor-suppressor is still debated. Here, we investigated its possible role in thyroid carcinogenesis. We demonstrated PATZ1 is down-regulated in thyroid carcinomas compared to normal thyroid tissues, with an inverse correlation to the degree of cell differentiation. In fact, PATZ1 expression was significantly further down-regulated in poorly differentiated and anaplastic thyroid cancers compared to the papillary histotype, and it resulted increasingly delocalized from the nucleus to the cytoplasm proceeding from differentiated to undifferentiated thyroid carcinomas. Restoration of PATZ1 expression in three thyroid cancer-derived cell lines, all characterized by fully dedifferentiated cells, significantly inhibited their malignant behaviors, including in vitro proliferation, anchorage-independent growth, migration and invasion, as well as in vivo tumor growth. Consistent with recent studies showing a role for PATZ1 in the p53 pathway, we showed that ectopic expression of PATZ1 in thyroid cancer cells activates p53-dependent pathways opposing epithelial-mesenchymal transition and cell migration to prevent invasiveness. These results provide insights into a potential tumor-suppressor role of PATZ1 in thyroid cancer progression, and thus may have potential clinical relevance for the prognosis and therapy of thyroid cancer

Fruitomics: The importance of combining sensory and chemical analyses in assessing cold storage responses of six peach (Prunus persica L. Batsch) cultivars

Cold storage is used to extend peach commercial life, but can affect quality. Quality changes are assessed through the content of nutritionally relevant compounds, aroma, physical characters and/or sensorially. Here, six peach and nectarine cultivars were sampled at commercial harvest and after 7 days of 1 °C storage. A trained panel was used to evaluate sensorial characters, while carotenoids, phenolics, vitamin C, total sugars, and qualitative traits including firmness, titrable acidity and soluble solid content were integrated with volatile organic compound (VOC) analysis previously reported. The different analyses reveal interesting patterns of correlation, and the six cultivars responded differently to cold storage. Sensory parameters were correlated with 64 VOCs and seven intrinsic characters. Acidity, firmness, and 10 VOCs were strongly negatively correlated with harmony and sweetness, but positively correlated with bitterness, astringency, and crunchiness. In contrast, Brix, b-carotene, and six VOCs were positively correlated with harmony and sweetness