Ultrasound Guidance in Paravertebral Injections of Oxygen-Ozone: Treatment of Low Back Pain

Background: Paravertebral injection of ozone is an established clinical practice for the treatment of Low Back Pain (LBP). The role of Ultrasound Guidance (USG) in mini invasive procedures has become important in many clinical practice thanks to the greater precision this technique can add. As matter of fact, a large volume of ozone in a single administration may have some adverse or side effects. In this study we wanted to verify if the use of USG in Oxygen/ Ozone (O2/O3) infiltrations could allow the administration of a smaller volume of gas mixture, increasing the safety and the comfort of the procedure itself, obtaining however similar or better results in pain decrease. Methods: We compared two groups of 25 patients affected by LBP, undergoing 10 infiltrations of O2/O3, by using USG (group U) or only anatomical landmarks (group AL). Pain intensity, by calculating Visual Analogical Scale (VAS) difference before and after the treatment, and the discomfort were evaluated in both groups. Results: The mean of the VAS before the treatment was 6.44 in group U and 6.48 in group AL. The mean of the VAS after the treatment was 2.22 in group U and 3.04 in group AL. The mean of discomfort rate was 2.84 in group U and 5.44 in group AL. The number of patients with unbearable discomfort was 0 in group U and 7 in group AL. Conclusions: As many other treatment, also paravertebral injections of O2/O3 benefits of the advantages of the US device which makes this treatment safer and more accurate

The Accelerated Kepler Problem

The accelerated Kepler problem is obtained by adding a constant acceleration to the classical two-body Kepler problem. This setting models the dynamics of a jet-sustaining accretion disk and its content of forming planets as the disk loses linear momentum through the asymmetric jet-counterjet system it powers. The dynamics of the accelerated Kepler problem is analyzed using physical as well as parabolic coordinates. The latter naturally separate the problem's Hamiltonian into two unidimensional Hamiltonians. In particular, we identify the origin of the secular resonance in the accelerated Kepler problem and determine analytically the radius of stability boundary of initially circular orbits that are of particular interest to the problem of radial migration in binary systems as well as to the truncation of accretion disks through stellar jet acceleration.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, in press at Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronom

Impact of phenylpropanoid compounds on heat stress tolerance in carrot cell cultures

The phenylpropanoid and flavonoid families include thousands of specialized metabolites that influence a wide range of processes in plants, including seed dispersal, auxin transport, photoprotection, mechanical support and protection against insect herbivory. Such metabolites play a key role in the protection of plants against abiotic stress, in many cases through their well-known ability to inhibit the formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). However, the precise role of specific phenylpropanoid and flavonoid molecules is unclear. We therefore investigated the role of specific anthocyanins (ACs) and other phenylpropanoids that accumulate in carrot cells cultivated in vitro, focusing on their supposed ability to protect cells from heat stress. First we characterized the effects of heat stress to identify quantifiable morphological traits as markers of heat stress susceptibility. We then fed the cultures with precursors to induce the targeted accumulation of specific compounds, and compared the impact of heat stress in these cultures and unfed controls. Data modeling based on Projection to Latent Structures (PLS) regression revealed that metabolites containing coumaric or caffeic acid, including ACs, correlate with less heat damage. Further experiments suggested that one of the cellular targets damaged by heat stress and protected by these metabolites is the actin microfilament cytoskeleton

Measuring cosmological bulk flows via the kinematic Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect in the upcoming cosmic microwave background maps

We propose a new method to measure the possible large-scale bulk flows in the Universe from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps from the upcoming missions, MAP and Planck. This can be done by studying the statistical properties of the CMB temperature field at many X-ray cluster positions. At each cluster position, the CMB temperature fluctuation will be a combination of the Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) kinematic and thermal components, the cosmological fluctuations and the instrument noise term. When averaged over many such clusters the last three will integrate down, whereas the first one will be dominated by a possible bulk flow component. In particular, we propose to use all-sky X-ray cluster catalogs that should (or could) be available soon from X-ray satellites, and then to evaluate the dipole component of the CMB field at the cluster positions. We show that for the MAP and Planck mission parameters the dominant contributions to the dipole will be from the terms due to the SZ kinematic effect produced by the bulk flow (the signal we seek) and the instrument noise (the noise in our signal). Computing then the expected signal-to-noise ratio for such measurement, we get that at the 95 % confidence level the bulk flows on scales >100h^{-1} Mpc can be probed down to the amplitude of $< 200$ km/sec with the MAP data and down to only 30 km/sec with the Planck mission.Comment: Astrophysical Journal Letters, in pres

Big Data in Critical Infrastructures Security Monitoring: Challenges and Opportunities

Critical Infrastructures (CIs), such as smart power grids, transport systems, and financial infrastructures, are more and more vulnerable to cyber threats, due to the adoption of commodity computing facilities. Despite the use of several monitoring tools, recent attacks have proven that current defensive mechanisms for CIs are not effective enough against most advanced threats. In this paper we explore the idea of a framework leveraging multiple data sources to improve protection capabilities of CIs. Challenges and opportunities are discussed along three main research directions: i) use of distinct and heterogeneous data sources, ii) monitoring with adaptive granularity, and iii) attack modeling and runtime combination of multiple data analysis techniques.Comment: EDCC-2014, BIG4CIP-201

Metodologia de georreferenciamento do Cadastro Vitícola.

bitstream/CNPUV/8154/1/doc050.pd

The VIMOS-VLT Deep Survey: Dependence of galaxy clustering on stellar mass

We have investigated the dependence of galaxy clustering on their stellar mass at z~1, using the data from the VIMOS-VLT Deep Survey (VVDS). We have measured the projected two-point correlation function of galaxies, wp(rp) for a set of stellar mass selected samples at an effective redshift =0.85. We have control and quantify all effects on galaxy clustering due to the incompleteness of our low mass samples. We find that more massive galaxies are more clustered. When compared to similar results at z~0.1 in the SDSS, we observed no evolution of the projected correlation function for massive galaxies. These objects present a stronger linear bias at z~1 with respect to low mass galaxies. As expected, massive objects at high redshift are found in the highest pics of the dark matter density field.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, 43rd Rencontres de Moriond - March 15-22, 2008 - La Thuile (Val d'Aosta, Italy

Energy localization on q-tori, long term stability and the interpretation of FPU recurrences

We focus on two approaches that have been proposed in recent years for the explanation of the so-called FPU paradox, i.e. the persistence of energy localization in the `low-q' Fourier modes of Fermi-Pasta-Ulam nonlinear lattices, preventing equipartition among all modes at low energies. In the first approach, a low-frequency fraction of the spectrum is initially excited leading to the formation of `natural packets' exhibiting exponential stability, while in the second, emphasis is placed on the existence of `q-breathers', i.e periodic continuations of the linear modes of the lattice, which are exponentially localized in Fourier space. Following ideas of the latter, we introduce in this paper the concept of `q-tori' representing exponentially localized solutions on low-dimensional tori and use their stability properties to reconcile these two approaches and provide a more complete explanation of the FPU paradox.Comment: 38 pages, 7 figure

Augmenting photometric redshift estimates using spectroscopic nearest neighbours

As a consequence of galaxy clustering, close galaxies observed on the plane of the sky should be spatially correlated with a probability that is inversely proportional to their angular separation. In principle, this information can be used to improve photometric redshift estimates when spectroscopic redshifts are available for some of the neighbouring objects. Depending on the depth of the survey, however, this angular correlation is reduced by chance projections. In this work, we implement a deep-learning model to distinguish between apparent and real angular neighbours by solving a classification task. We adopted a graph neural network architecture to tie together photometry, spectroscopy, and the spatial information between neighbouring galaxies. We trained and validated the algorithm on the data of the VIPERS galaxy survey, for which photometric redshifts based on spectral energy distribution are also available. The model yields a confidence level for a pair of galaxies to be real angular neighbours, enabling us to disentangle chance superpositions in a probabilistic way. When objects for which no physical companion can be identified are excluded, all photometric redshift quality metrics improve significantly, confirming that their estimates were of lower quality. For our typical test configuration, the algorithm identifies a subset containing ~75% high-quality photometric redshifts, for which the dispersion is reduced by as much as 50% (from 0.08 to 0.04), while the fraction of outliers reduces from 3% to 0.8%. Moreover, we show that the spectroscopic redshift of the angular neighbour with the highest detection probability provides an excellent estimate of the redshift of the target galaxy, comparable to or even better than the corresponding template-fitting estimate.Comment: 9 pages, 12 figures, matching the accepted version. NezNet is available at https://github.com/tos-1/NezNe

Genome-Wide Transcriptional Changes and Lipid Profile Modifications Induced by Medicago truncatula N5 Overexpression at an Early Stage of the Symbiotic Interaction with Sinorhizobium meliloti.

Plant lipid-transfer proteins (LTPs) are small basic secreted proteins, which are characterized by lipid-binding capacity and are putatively involved in lipid trafficking. LTPs play a role in several biological processes, including the root nodule symbiosis. The Medicago truncatula nodulin 5 (MtN5) LTP has been proved to positively regulate the nodulation capacity, controlling rhizobial infection and nodule primordia invasion. To better define the lipid transfer protein MtN5 function during the symbiosis, we produced MtN5-downregulated and -overexpressing plants, and we analysed the transcriptomic changes occurring in the roots at an early stage of Sinorhizobium meliloti infection. We also carried out the lipid profile analysis of wild type (WT) and MtN5-overexpressing roots after rhizobia infection. The downregulation of MtN5 increased the root hair curling, an early event of rhizobia infection, and concomitantly induced changes in the expression of defence-related genes. On the other hand, MtN5 overexpression favoured the invasion of the nodules by rhizobia and determined in the roots the modulation of genes that are involved in lipid transport and metabolism as well as an increased content of lipids, especially galactolipids that characterize the symbiosome membranes. Our findings suggest the potential participation of LTPs in the synthesis and rearrangement of membranes occurring during the formation of the infection threads and the symbiosome membrane