A new Editorial Board of Monaldi Archives for Chest Disease

In recent years, Monaldi has reached a widespread diffusion and consolidated its reputation as a good quality scientific journal in the field of cardiopulmonary rehabilitation. Many of these achievements are due to the hard work of many pulmonary physicians, most of them, including the last two former Editors, Claudio F. Donner and Ciro Rampulla, part of the FSM and distinguished leaders of research groups in their field. Commercing in 2002, Monaldi has divided the published issues in a Cardiologic and in a Pulmonary Series, issued separately. This year, FSM decided to renew also the Editorial Board of the Pulmonary series. Beginning with the present issue we (Antonio Spanevello and Bruno Balbi) are the two new Co-Editors. We are currently Head and Scientific Secretary, respectively, of the Pulmonary Rehabilitation Department, the organization that comprises the Pulmonary Physicians working at FSM. As Editors we will work together with two Deputy Editors (Dr. Mirco Lusuardi, Head of Pulmonary Rehabilitation, Health Authority of Reggio Emilia and Dr. Maurizio Luisetti, Head of Biochemistry and Genetics in Pulmonary Medicine, University of Pavia) and two Executive Editors (Dr. Giuseppe Brunetti and Dr. Luca Bianchi, both at FSM). This \u201cunder fifty\u201d Editorial Board, is deeply committed to doing the best for our Journal and to continue and extend the precious work done by the previous Editors. We heritage a healthy and well-nourished scientific journal. It is an honor and a privilege to take over as Editors from Ciro Rampulla and we thank him for his wise and culturally rich contribution to Monaldi. As Editor in Chief of the past Editorial Board in the last 2 years Ciro worked hard and refined the editorial and administrative procedures, with the full support of the FSM. His example will be a guide for us to chair the Editorial Board of the Journal

Searching for a dipole modulation in the large-scale structure of the Universe

Several statistical anomalies in the CMB temperature anisotropies seem to defy the assumption of a homogeneous and isotropic universe. In particular, a dipole modulation has been detected both in WMAP and Planck data. We adapt the methodology proposed by Eriksen et al. (2007) on CMB data to galaxy surveys, tracing the large-scale structure. We analyse the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) data at a resolution of ~2 degrees for three different flux thresholds: 2.5, 5.0 and 10.0 mJy respectively. No evidence of a dipole modulation is found. This result suggests that the origin of the dipole asymmetry found in the CMB cannot be assigned to secondary anisotropies produced at redshifts around z = 1. However, it could still have been generated at redshifts higher or lower, such as the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect produced by the local structures. Other all-sky surveys, like the infrared WISE catalogue, could help to explore with a high sensitivity a redshift interval closer than the one probed with NVSS.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures. Some minor changes have been done from the original manuscript. This paper is accepted by MNRA

Bacterial–viral load and the immune response in stable and exacerbated COPD: Significance and therapeutic prospects

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is characterized by persistent airflow limitation and an abnormal inflammatory response of the lung. Bacteria and viruses are a major cause of COPD exacerbations and may contribute to COPD progression by perpetuating the inflammatory response in the airways. Bacterial variety diminishes with increasing COPD severity. Respiratory viruses can colonize the lower respiratory tract in stable COPD, altering the respiratory microbiome and facilitating secondary bacterial infections. In this review, we present the most updated information about the role of bacteria and viruses in stable and exacerbated COPD. In our opinion, to optimize therapeutic strategies, the dynamic events involving bacterial–viral infections and related immune response in COPD phenotypes need to be better clarified. Our paper would address these points that we consider of great importance for the clinical management of COPD

Non-Gaussian bubbles in the sky

We point out a possible generation mechanism of non-Gaussian bubbles in the sky due to bubble nucleation in the early universe. We consider a curvaton scenario for inflation and assume that the curvaton field phi, whose energy density is subdominant during inflation but which is responsible for the curvature perturbation of the universe, is coupled to another field sigma which undergoes false vacuum decay through quantum tunneling. For this model, we compute the skewness of the curvaton fluctuations due to its interaction with sigma during tunneling, that is, on the background of an instanton solution that describes false vacuum decay. We find that the resulting skewness of the curvaton can become large in the spacetime region inside the bubble. We then compute the corresponding skewness in the statistical distribution of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature fluctuations. We find a non-vanishing skewness in a bubble-shaped region in the sky. It can be large enough to be detected in the near future, and if detected it will bring us invaluable information about the physics in the early universe.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure

Apparent Clustering of Intermediate-redshift Galaxies as a Probe of Dark Energy

We show the apparent redshift-space clustering of galaxies in redshift range of 0.2--0.4 provides surprisingly useful constraints on dark energy component in the universe, because of the right balance between the density of objects and the survey depth. We apply Fisher matrix analysis to the the Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), as a concrete example. Possible degeneracies in the evolution of the equation of state (EOS) and the other cosmological parameters are clarified.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, Phys.Rev.Lett., replaced with the accepted versio

Cosmic string induced sheet like baryon inhomogeneities at quark-hadron transition

Cosmic strings moving through matter produce wakes where density is higher than the background density. We investigate the effects of such wakes occurring at the time of a first order quark-hadron transition in the early universe and show that they can lead to separation of quark-gluon plasma phase in the wake region, while the region outside the wake converts to the hadronic phase. Moving interfaces then trap large baryon densities in sheet like regions which can extend across the entire horizon. Typical separation between such sheets, at formation, is of the order of a km. Regions of baryon inhomogeneity of this nature, i.e. having a planar geometry, and separated by such large distance scales, appear to be well suited for the recent models of inhomogeneous nucleosynthesis to reconcile with the large baryon to photon ratio implied by the recent measurements of the cosmic microwave background power spectrum.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

High resolution computed tomography quantitation of emphysema is correlated with selected lung function values in stable COPD.

BACKGROUND: The literature shows conflicting results when high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) scores of emphysema were correlated with different indices of airflow obstruction. OBJECTIVES: We correlated HRCT scores of emphysema with different indices of airflow obstruction. METHODS: We performed HRCT of the chest in 59 patients, all smokers or ex-smokers, with stable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease of different severity [GOLD stages I-IV; mean age \ub1 SD 67.8 \ub1 7.3 years; pack/years 51.0 \ub1 34.6; percent predicted forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV(1)% predicted) 52.3 \ub1 17.6; post-bronchodilator FEV(1)% predicted 56.5 \ub1 19.1; FEV(1)/forced vital capacity (FVC) ratio 50.8 \ub1 10.2; post-bronchodilator FEV(1)/FVC ratio 51.6 \ub1 11.0; percent diffusion lung capacity for carbon monoxide (DLCO%) 59.2 \ub1 21.1; DLCO/percent alveolar volume (VA%) 54.5 \ub1 18.2; percent residual volume 163.0 \ub1 35.6; percent total lung capacity (TLC%) 113.2 \ub1 15; residual volume/TLC 1.44 \ub1 0.2]. All patients were in stable phase. RESULTS: The mean \ub1 SD visual emphysema score in all patients was 25.6 \ub1 25.4%. There was a weak but significant correlation between the percentage of pulmonary emphysema and numbers of pack/years (R = +0.31, p = 0.024). The percentage of emphysema was inversely correlated with the FEV(1)/FVC ratio before and after bronchodilator use (R = -0.44, p = 0.002, and R = -0.39, p = 0.005), DLCO% (R = -0.64, p = 0.0003) and DLCO/VA% (R = -0.68, p < 0.0001). A weak positive correlation was also found with TLC% (R = +0.28, p = 0.048). When patients with documented emphysema were considered separately, the best significant correlation observed was between DLCO/VA% and HRCT scan score (p = 0.007). CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that in patients with stable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease of varying severity, the presence of pulmonary emphysema is best represented by the impaired gas exchange capability of the respiratory system