High Levels of Circulating Type II Collagen Degradation Marker (CTx-II) Are Associated with Specific VDR Polymorphisms in Patients with Adult Vertebral Osteochondrosis

Both vitamin D and collagen have roles in osteocartilaginous homeostasis. We evaluated the association between the circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) type I and II collagen degradation products (CTx-I, and CTx-II), and four vitamin D receptor gene (VDR) polymorphisms, in Italian males affected by low back pain (LBP) due to herniation/discopathy and/or vertebral osteochondrosis. FokI, BsmI, ApaI, and TaqI VDR-polymorphisms were detected through PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP), and circulating 25(OH)D, CTx-I and CTx-II were measured by immunoassays in 79 patients (of which 26 had osteochondrosis) and 79 age-, sex- and body mass index (BMI)-matched healthy controls. Among all 158 subjects, carriers of FF and Ff genotypes showed lower 25(OH)D than ff, which suggested a higher depletion of vitamin D in F allele carriers. Higher CTx-I concentrations were observed in TT versus Tt among controls, and Tt versus tt among LBP cases, which suggested a higher bone-cartilaginous catabolism in subjects bearing the T allele. Higher CTx-II concentrations were observed in patients with osteochondrosis bearing FF, bb, TT, or Aa genotypes in comparison with hernia/discopathy patients and healthy controls. Vertebral osteochondrosis shows peculiar genotypic and biochemical features related to vitamin D and the osteocartilaginous metabolism. Vitamin D has roles in the pathophysiology of osteochondrosis

Platelets and Hepatocellular Cancer: Bridging the Bench to the Clinics

Growing interest is recently being focused on the role played by the platelets in favoring hepatocellular cancer (HCC) growth and dissemination. The present review reports in detail both the experimental and clinical evidence published on this topic. Several growth factors and angiogenic molecules specifically secreted by platelets are directly connected with tumor progression and neo-angiogenesis. Among them, we can list the platelet-derived growth factor, the vascular endothelial growth factor, the endothelial growth factor, and serotonin. Platelets are also involved in tumor spread, favoring endothelium permeabilization and tumor cells\u2019 extravasation and survival in the bloodstream. From the bench to the clinics, all of these aspects were also investigated in clinical series, showing an evident correlation between platelet count and size of HCC, tumor biological behavior, metastatic spread, and overall survival rates. Moreover, a better understanding of the mechanisms involved in the platelet\u2013tumor axis represents a paramount aspect for optimizing both current tumor treatment and development of new therapeutic strategies against HCC

Last man standing: Static, decremental and dynamic resiliency via controller synthesis

The workflow satisfiability problem is the problem of finding an assignment of users to tasks (i.e., a plan) so that all authorization constraints are satisfied. The workflow resiliency problem is a dynamic workflow satisfiability problem coping with the absence of users. If a workflow is resilient, it is of course satisfiable, but the vice versa does not hold. There are three levels of resiliency: in static resiliency, up to k users might be absent before the execution starts and never become available for that execution; in decremental resiliency, up to k users might be absent before or during execution and, again, they never become available for that execution; in dynamic resiliency, up to k users might be absent before executing any task and they may in general turn absent and available continuously, before or during the execution. Much work has been carried out to address static resiliency, little for decremental resiliency and, to the best of our knowledge, for dynamic resiliency no exact approach that returns a dynamic execution plan if and only if a workflow is resilient has been provided so far. In this paper, we tackle workflow resiliency via extended game automata. We provide three encodings (having polynomial-time complexity) from workflows to extended game automata to model each kind of resiliency as an instantaneous game and we use Uppaal-TIGA to synthesize a winning strategy (i.e., a controller) for such a game. If a controller exists, then the workflow is resilient (as the controller\u2019s strategy corresponds to a dynamic plan). If it doesn\u2019t, then the workflow is breakable. The approach that we propose is correct because it corresponds to a reachability problem for extended game automata (TCTL model checking). Moreover, we have developed Erre, the first tool for workflow resiliency that relies on a controller synthesis approach for the three kinds of resiliency. Thanks to Erre, our approach is thus also fully-automated from analysis to simulation

Resource Controllability of Business Processes Under Conditional Uncertainty

A current research problem in the area of business process management deals with the specification and checking of constraints on resources (e.g., users, agents, autonomous systems, etc.) allowed to be committed for the execution of specific tasks. Indeed, in many real-world situations, role assignments are not enough to assign tasks to the suitable resources. It could be the case that further requirements need to be specified and satisfied. As an example, one would like to avoid that employees that are relatives are assigned to a set of critical tasks in the same process in order to prevent fraud. The formal specification of a business process and its related access control constraints is obtained through a decoration of a classic business process with roles, users, and constraints on their commitment. As a result, such a process specifies a set of tasks that need to be executed by authorized users with respect to some partial order in a way that all authorization constraints are satisfied. Controllability refers in this case to the capability of executing the process satisfying all these constraints, even when some process components, e.g., gateway conditions, can only be observed, but not decided, by the process engine responsible of the execution. In this paper, we propose conditional constraint networks with decisions (CCNDs) as a model to encode business processes that involve access control and conditional branches that may be both controllable and uncontrollable. We define weak, strong, and dynamic controllability of CCNDs as two-player games, classify their computational complexity, and discuss strategy synthesis algorithms. We provide an encoding from the business processes we consider here into CCNDs to exploit off-the- shelf their strategy synthesis algorithms. We introduce Zeta, a tool for checking controllability of CCNDs, synthesizing execution strategies, and executing controllable CCNDs, by also supporting user interactivity. We use Zeta to compare with the previous research, provide a new experimental evaluation for CCNDs, and discuss limitations

Automated analysis of RBAC policies with temporal constraints and static role hierarchies

Temporal role based access control models support the specification and enforcement of several temporal constraints on role enabling, role activation, and temporal role hierarchies among others. In this paper, we define three mappings that preserve the solutions to a class of policy problems (they map security analysis problems in presence of static temporal role hierarchies to problems without them) and we show how they can be used to extend the capabilities of a tool for the analysis of administrative temporal role-based access control policies to reason in presence of temporal role hierarchies. An experimental evaluation with a prototype implementation shows the better behavior of one of the proposed mappings over the other two. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first tool capable of reasoning with (static) temporal role hierarchies

Behind the bedroom door: criminal law's relationship with sexual intercourse

This paper defines the \u201cultimate\u201d formal semantics for Alice and Bob notation, i.e., what actions the honest agents have to perform, in the presence of an arbitrary set of cryptographic operators and their algebraic theory. Despite its generality, this semantics is mathematically simpler than any previous attempt. For practical applicability, we introduce the language SPS and an automatic translation to robust real-world implementations and corresponding formal models, and we prove this translation correct with respect to the semantics

Recurrence of hepatocellular carcinoma after direct acting antiviral treatment for hepatitis C virus infection: Literature review and risk analysis

Although studies suggest decreased incident hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) after treatment with direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, data are conflicting regarding risk and aggressiveness of recurrence in patients who have a history of treated HCC. This review analyses data available in literature in order to elucidate the impact of DAAs on the risk of HCC recurrence after successful treatment of the tumor. Overall 24 papers were identified. The available data cannot be considered definitive, but the initial alarmist data indicating an increased risk of recurrence have not been confirmed by most subsequent studies. The suggested aggressive pattern (rapid growth and vascular invasion) of tumor recurrence after DAAs still remains to be confirmed. Several limitations of the available studies were highlighted, and should drive future researches. The time-to-recurrence should be computed since the last HCC treatment and results stratified for cirrhosis and sustained viral response. Any comparison with historical series is of limited interest because of a number of biases affecting these studies and differences between enrolled patients. Prospective intention-to-treat analyses will be probably the best contribution to drive clinical practice, provided that a randomized trial can be difficult to design