Through Predictive Personalized Medicine

Neuroblastoma (NBM) is a deadly form of solid tumor mostly observed in the pediatric age. Although survival rates largely differ depending on host factors and tumor-related features, treatment for clinically aggressive forms of NBM remains challenging. Scientific advances are paving the way to improved and safer therapeutic protocols, and immunotherapy is quickly rising as a promising treatment that is potentially safer and complementary to traditionally adopted surgical procedures, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Improving therapeutic outcomes requires new approaches to be explored and validated. In-silico predictive models based on analysis of a plethora of data have been proposed by Lombardo et al. as an innovative tool for more efficacious immunotherapy against NBM. In particular, knowledge gained on intracellular signaling pathways linked to the development of NBM was used to predict how the different phenotypes could be modulated to respond to anti-programmed cell death-ligand-1 (PD-L1)/programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) immunotherapy. Prediction or forecasting are important targets of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Hopefully, similar systems could provide a reliable opportunity for a more targeted approach in the near future

Using the transit of Venus to probe the upper planetary atmosphere

The atmosphere of a transiting planet shields the stellar radiation providing us with a powerful method to estimate its size and density. In particular, because of their high ionization energy, atoms with high atomic number (Z) absorb short-wavelength radiation in the upper atmosphere, undetectable with observations in visible light. One implication is that the planet should appear larger during a primary transit observed in high energy bands than in the optical band. The last Venus transit in 2012 offered a unique opportunity to study this effect. The transit has been monitored by solar space observations from Hinode and Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). We measure the radius of Venus during the transit in three different bands with subpixel accuracy: optical (4500A), UV (1600A, 1700A), Extreme UltraViolet (EUV, 171-335A) and soft X-rays (about 10A). We find that, while the Venus optical radius is about 80 km larger than the solid body radius (the expected opacity mainly due to clouds and haze), the radius increases further by more than 70 km in the EUV and soft X-rays. These measurements mark the densest ion layers of Venus' ionosphere, providing information about the column density of CO2 and CO. They are useful for planning missions in situ to estimate the dynamical pressure from the environment, and can be employed as a benchmark case for observations with future missions, such as the ESA Athena, which will be sensitive enough to detect transits of exoplanets in high-energy bands.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures; published in Nature Communications; the full and copy-edited version is open access at http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150623/ncomms8563/full/ncomms8563.htm

Antonio De Bellis : Le (molto incerte) vicende biografiche e qualche considerazione

The Neapolitan 17th century was characterized by such great cultural and artistic ferment that it was labelled as the Golden Age. A myriad of architects, sculptors, painters and craftsmen created works of great value that changed the face of the Viceroyalty capital forever. Among the most appreciated painters at the time, as shown by the many works that are now part of his catalogue, but for a long time fallen into oblivion, also for the almost total absence of documents, there is certainly Antonio De Bellis: an artist who has aroused the interest of scholars since the 1970s, also becoming part of the group of painters involved in the vexata quaestio on the identity of the Maestro degli Annunci ai pastori. Often mistaken for Bernardo Cavallino, as proof of his works’ quality his artistic path has its roots in Caravaggesque naturalism as interpreted by Battistello, Filippo Vitale and Jusepe de Ribera. Following in this latter’s footsteps, like so many others, he participates in the coloristic revolution coming on the one hand, from Rome, with the rediscovery of the 16th century Venetian Masters by a group of French artists, first of all Poussin, and, on the other hand, from Van Dyck’s works, full of Mediterranean light. Antonio De Bellis’ attempt to maintain the link with his formative painting style while adhering to these new instances, however, does not last long and so his final two canvases lack the mordant of his previous production.Il Seicento napoletano fu caratterizzato da un così grande fermento culturale e artistico da meritarsi l’appellativo di Secolo d’Oro. Una miriade di architetti, scultori, pittori e artigiani diedero vita a opere di grande pregio che cambiarono per sempre il volto della capitale del Viceregno. Tra i pittori ai tempi più apprezzati, come dimostrano le tante opere che oramai fanno parte del suo catalogo, ma per tanto tempo caduti nell’oblio, anche per la quasi totale assenza di dati documentari, c’è sicuramente Antonio De Bellis: un artista che dagli anni ’70 del Novecento ha stuzzicato l’interesse degli studiosi entrando anche a far parte della rosa di pittori coinvolti nella vexata quaestio sull’identità del Maestro degli Annunci ai pastori. Spesso confuso con il Cavallino, a riprova della qualità di molte sue opere, dal quale si discosta per un certo arcaismo persistente in tutta la sua opera, il suo percorso artistico affonda le radici nel Naturalismo di matrice caravaggesca, ‘napoletanizzato’ da Battistello, Filippo Vitale e dal deus ex machina della pittura di quel periodo nella città partenopea, Jusepe de Ribera. E seguendo le orme di quest’ultimo, come tanti altri partecipa a quella rivoluzione coloristica che arriva da un lato da Roma, tramite la riscoperta dei Maestri veneti del ‘500 da parte di un gruppo di pittori francesi, primo fra tutti Poussin, e dall’altro dalle tele piene di luce ‘mediterranea’ del Van Dyck. Il tentativo di Antonio di mantenere il legame con i modi della sua formazione, pur aderendo a queste nuove istanze, non regge però a lungo e quelle che al momento sono ritenute le sue ultime due tele, non hanno quel mordente che aveva caratterizzato invece la sua produzione precedente

Scratches Removal in Digitised Aerial Photos Concerning Sicilian Territory

In this paper we propose a fast and effective method to detect and restore scratches in aerial photos from a photographic archive concerning Sicilian territory. Scratch removal is a typical problem for old movie films but similar defects can be seen in still images. Our solution is based on a semiautomatic detection process and an unsupervised restoration algorithm. Results are comparable with those obtained with commercial restoration tools

Two-loop heavy top effects on the MZ-MW interdependence

The O(alpha^2 mt^2/mw^2) correction to the relation between G_\mu and the vector boson masses is computed in the MSbar scheme, and the results are used to investigate the magnitude of the effect on the theoretical prediction of mw and sin^2\theta_\msbar(mz) from alpha, G_\mu, and mz.Comment: 11 pages, LaTeX, includes 1 LaTeX figure, uses equations.sty and cite.sty, one minor comment and interpolation function for variable mtop added, no change in the result

CHILab @ HaSpeeDe 2: Enhancing Hate Speech Detection with Part-of-Speech Tagging

The present paper describes two neural network systems used for Hate Speech Detection tasks that make use not only of the pre-processed text but also of its Part-of-Speech (PoS) tag. The first system uses a Transformer Encoder block, a relatively novel neural network architecture that arises as a substitute for recurrent neural networks. The second system uses a Depth-wise Separable Convolutional Neural Network, a new type of CNN that has become known in the field of image processing thanks to its computational efficiency. These systems have been used for the participation to the HaSpeeDe 2 task of the EVALITA 2020 workshop with CHILab as the team name, where our best system, the one that uses Transformer, ranked first in two out of four tasks and ranked third in the other two tasks. The systems have also been tested on English, Spanish and German languages

Neuronal nitric oxide synthase is involved in CB/TRPV1 signalling: Focus on control of hippocampal hyperexcitability

Cannabinoids (CB), transient receptors potential vanilloid type 1 (TRPV1) and nitric oxide (NO) were found to be interlinked in regulating some neuronal functions such as membrane excitability and synaptic transmission. TRPV1 play a fundamental role since it represents a synaptic target for CB that triggers several downstream cellular pathways. In this regard, recent evidence report that TRPV1 could influence NO production by modulating neuronal NO synthase (nNOS) activity. In the present research, we pointed to manipulate nNOS function to assess its role on TRPV1 signalling in hyperexcitability conditions elicited in the dentate gyrus of hippocampal formation. The activation of TRPV1 receptors is achieved by administering capsaicin (CAP), the main TRPV1 agonist exerting a widely reported proepileptic effects. In order to focus on nNOS activity, we used 7-nitroindazole (7NI), nNOS inhibitor, or L-Arginine (ARG), NO precursor, before CAP. Then, the effects of each of these co-administration protocols were tested in presence of WIN 55,212, a CB agonist. The study was conducted in rats using an electrically-induced acute model of temporal lobe hyperexcitability, the Maximal Dentate Activation (MDA), considering different indicators of paroxysmal activity such as: percentage of responses to electrical stimulation, MDA discharge parameters and threshold current intensity for MDA. Data showed that the excitatory effects of CAP were reduced by 7NI and enhanced by ARG pretreatments, respectively. In addition, the co-treatment with WIN counteracted CAP effect, substantially resulting in an inhibitory effect. Finally, the CAP-WIN functional interaction appeared to be modulated by interfering with NO signalling since 7NI increased the inhibitory effect induced by the co-treatment with CAP and WIN, whereas ARG reduced it. These findings suggest that nNOS function could be involved in the CB/TRPV1 signalling and shed light on a new putative cannabinoid-related control of neuronal hyperexcitability in the hippocampu

Ultrafast flow of interacting organic polaritons

The strong-coupling of an excitonic transition with an electromagnetic mode results in composite quasi-particles called exciton-polaritons, which have been shown to combine the best properties of their bare components in semiconductor microcavities. However, the physics and applications of polariton flows in organic materials and at room temperature are still unexplored because of the poor photon confinement in such structures. Here we demonstrate that polaritons formed by the hybridization of organic excitons with a Bloch Surface Wave are able to propagate for hundreds of microns showing remarkable third-order nonlinear interactions upon high injection density. These findings pave the way for the studies of organic nonlinear light-matter fluxes and for a technological promising route of dissipation-less on-chip polariton devices working at room temperature.Comment: Improved version with polariton-polariton interactions. 13 pages, 4 figures, supporting 6 pages, 6 figure

Precise calculation of MW, sin^2 theta_MSbar, and sin^2 theta_eff

The two-loop O(g^4 mt^2/mw^2) corrections are incorporated in the theoretical calculation of MW, sin^2 theta_MSbar(MZ), and sin^2 theta_eff, as functions of MH. The analysis is carried out in a previously proposed MSbar formulation and two novel on-shell resummation schemes. It is found that the inclusion of the new effects sharply decreases the scheme and residual scale dependence of the calculations. QCD corrections are incorporated in two different approaches. Comparison with the world average of sin^2 theta_eff leads to MH= 127 +143 -71 GeV and MW= 80.367 +/- 0.048 GeV, with small variations among the six calculations.Comment: 10 pages, Latex, 3 table