Asthma Control Test and Bronchial Challenge with Exercise in Pediatric Asthma

Background: Poor asthma control can lead to exercise-induced bronchoconstriction (EIB), but the relationship between subjective disease control and EIB is unclear. No studies have compared asthma control test (ACT) scores of children with those of their parents regarding EIB. We assessed whether ACT scores predict the occurrence of EIB in two age groups. We also evaluated ACT scores and objective measures as explanatory variables for airway response to exercise. Methods: Patients (71 aged <12 years, 93 aged 6512 years) and their parents completed an ACT questionnaire separately. Current therapy, skin prick testing and spirometry at baseline and after exercise were assessed. EIB was defined as a fall in FEV1 of at least 12% from baseline. Sensitivity and specificity for cut-off values of ACT scores predictive of EIB were plotted, and the Area Under Curve (AUC) was described. Results: Atopy and current therapy were similarly frequent. EIB was observed in 23.9% of children aged <12 years and in 33.3% aged 6512 years. EIB occurrence in subjects previously scored as having full control (25), partial control (20\u201024) and no control (<20) varied according to the age group and responder. Percentages of EIB cases increased as ACT scores decreased in children aged 6512 years alone (child ACT scores, 25: 21.9%, 20-24: 31.1%, <20: 62.5%, p=0.017). Plots for ACT scores as predictors of EIB yielded low non\u2010significant AUC values in children aged <12 years; by contrast, moderate AUC values emerged in children aged 6512 years (child: 0.67, p=0.007; parent: 0.69, p=0.002). Sensitivity of ACT scores below 20 as a predictor of EIB was low in older children (child: 32.3%, parent: 22.6%), whereas specificity was high (child: 90.3%, parent: 93.5%). Multiple regression analysis with percent fall in FEV1 as dependent variable included FEV1/FVC%, ACT child score and gender in the prediction model ( r=0.42, p=0.000). Conclusion: ACT scores are a more effective means of excluding than confirming EIB in asthmatic patients aged 6512 years; their predictive value decreases in younger patients. ACT scores together with lung function may help to predict airway response to exercise. New tools for pediatric asthma assessment may optimize this association

Involvement of GTA protein NC2β in Neuroblastoma pathogenesis suggests that it physiologically participates in the regulation of cell proliferation

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The General Transcription Apparatus (GTA) comprises more than one hundred proteins, including RNA Polymerases, GTFs, TAFs, Mediator, and cofactors such as heterodimeric NC2. This complexity contrasts with the simple mechanical role that these proteins are believed to perform and suggests a still uncharacterized participation to important biological functions, such as the control of cell proliferation.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>To verify our hypothesis, we analyzed the involvement in Neuroblastoma (NB) pathogenesis of GTA genes localized at 1p, one of NB critical regions: through RT-PCR of fifty eight NB biopsies, we demonstrated the statistically significant reduction of the mRNA for NC2β (localized at 1p22.1) in 74% of samples (p = 0.0039). Transcripts from TAF13 and TAF12 (mapping at 1p13.3 and 1p35.3, respectively) were also reduced, whereas we didn't detect any quantitative alteration of the mRNAs from GTF2B and NC2α (localized at 1p22-p21 and 11q13.3, respectively). We confirmed these data by comparing tumour and constitutional DNA: most NB samples with diminished levels of NC2β mRNA had also genomic deletions at the corresponding locus.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our data show that NC2β is specifically involved in NB pathogenesis and may be considered a new NB biomarker: accordingly, we suggest that NC2β, and possibly other GTA members, are physiologically involved in the control of cell proliferation. Finally, our studies unearth complex selective mechanisms within NB cells.</p

Planning the integration and test of a space telescope with a 1 m aluminum primary mirror: the Ariel mission case

Ariel (Atmospheric Remote-Sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large Survey) is ESA’s M4 mission of the “Cosmic Vision” program, with launch scheduled for 2029. Its purpose is to conduct a survey of the atmospheres of known exoplanets through transit spectroscopy. Ariel is based on a 1 m class telescope optimized for spectroscopy in the waveband between 1.95 and 7.8 µm, operating at cryogenic temperatures in the range 40–50 K. The Ariel Telescope is an off-axis, unobscured Cassegrain design, with a parabolic recollimating tertiary mirror and a flat folding mirror directing the output beam parallel to the optical bench. The secondary mirror is mounted on a roto-translating stage for adjustments during the mission. The mirrors and supporting structures are all realized in an aerospace-grade aluminum alloy T6061 for ease of manufacturing and thermalization. The low stiffness of the material, however, poses unique challenges to integration and alignment. Care must be therefore employed when designing and planning the assembly and alignment procedures, necessarily performed at room temperature and with gravity, and the optical performance tests at cryogenic temperatures. This paper provides a high-level description of the Assembly, Integration and Test (AIT) plan for the Ariel telescope and gives an overview of the analyses and reasoning that led to the specific choices and solutions adopted

The instrument control unit of the ARIEL payload: design evolution following the unit and payload subsystems SRR (system requirements review)

ARIEL (Atmospheric Remote-sensing InfraRed Large-survey) is a medium-class mission of the European Space Agency, part of the Cosmic Vision program, whose launch is foreseen by early 2029. ARIEL aims to study the composition of exoplanet atmospheres, their formation and evolution. The ARIEL’s target will be a sample of about 1000 planets observed with one or more of the following methods: transit, eclipse and phase-curve spectroscopy, at both visible and infrared wavelengths simultaneously. The scientific payload is composed by a reflective telescope having a 1m-class elliptical primary mirror, built in solid Aluminium, and two focal-plane instruments: FGS and AIRS. FGS (Fine Guidance System)1 has the double purpose, as suggested by its name, of performing photometry (0.50-0.55 µm) and low resolution spectrometry over three bands (from 0.8 to 1.95 µm) and, simultaneously, to provide data to the spacecraft AOCS (Attitude and Orbit Control System) with a cadence of 10 Hz and contributing to reach a 0.02 arcsec pointing accuracy for bright targets. AIRS (ARIEL InfraRed Spectrometer) instrument will perform IR spectrometry in two wavelength ranges: between 1.95 and 3.9 µm (with a spectral resolution R > 100) and between 3.9 and 7.8 µm with a spectral resolution R > 30. This paper provides the status of the ICU (Instrument Control Unit), an electronic box whose purpose is to command and supply power to AIRS (as well as acquire science data from its two channels) and to command and control the TCU (Telescope Control Unit)

Protected silver coating for Ariel telescope mirrors: study of ageing effects

The Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey (Ariel), selected as ESA’s fourth mediumclass mission in the Cosmic Vision program, is set to launch in 2029. The objective of the study is to conduct spectroscopic observations of approximately one thousand exoplanetary atmospheres for better understanding the planetary system formation and evolution and identifying a clear link between the characteristics of an exoplanet and those of its parent star. The realization of the Ariel’s telescope is a challenging task that is still ongoing. It is an off-axis Cassegrain telescope (M1 parabola, M2 hyperbola) followed by a re-collimating off-axis parabola (M3) and a plane fold mirror (M4). It is made of Al 6061 and designed to operate at visible and infrared wavelengths. The mirrors of the telescope will be coated with protected silver, qualified to operate at cryogenic temperatures. The qualification of the coating was performed according to the ECSS Q-ST-70-17C standard, on a set of samples that have been stored in ISO 6 cleanroom conditions and are subjected to periodic inspection and reflectance measurements to detect any potential performance degradation. The samples consist of a set of Aluminum alloy Al 6061-T651 disks coated with protected silver. This paper presents the results of the morphological characterization of the samples based on Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and the reflectivity measurement in the infrared by Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy

Clinical features and outcomes of elderly hospitalised patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart failure or both

Background and objective: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and heart failure (HF) mutually increase the risk of being present in the same patient, especially if older. Whether or not this coexistence may be associated with a worse prognosis is debated. Therefore, employing data derived from the REPOSI register, we evaluated the clinical features and outcomes in a population of elderly patients admitted to internal medicine wards and having COPD, HF or COPD + HF. Methods: We measured socio-demographic and anthropometric characteristics, severity and prevalence of comorbidities, clinical and laboratory features during hospitalization, mood disorders, functional independence, drug prescriptions and discharge destination. The primary study outcome was the risk of death. Results: We considered 2,343 elderly hospitalized patients (median age 81&nbsp;years), of whom 1,154 (49%) had COPD, 813 (35%) HF, and 376 (16%) COPD + HF. Patients with COPD + HF had different characteristics than those with COPD or HF, such as a higher prevalence of previous hospitalizations, comorbidities (especially chronic kidney disease), higher respiratory rate at admission and number of prescribed drugs. Patients with COPD + HF (hazard ratio HR 1.74, 95% confidence intervals CI 1.16-2.61) and patients with dementia (HR 1.75, 95% CI 1.06-2.90) had a higher risk of death at one year. The Kaplan-Meier curves showed a higher mortality risk in the group of patients with COPD + HF for all causes (p = 0.010), respiratory causes (p = 0.006), cardiovascular causes (p = 0.046) and respiratory plus cardiovascular causes (p = 0.009). Conclusion: In this real-life cohort of hospitalized elderly patients, the coexistence of COPD and HF significantly worsened prognosis at one year. This finding may help to better define the care needs of this population

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

X-ray emission from the Sombrero galaxy: discrete sources

We present a study of discrete X-ray sources in and around the bulge-dominated, massive Sa galaxy, Sombrero (M104), based on new and archival Chandra observations with a total exposure of ~200 ks. With a detection limit of L_X = 1E37 erg/s and a field of view covering a galactocentric radius of ~30 kpc (11.5 arcminute), 383 sources are detected. Cross-correlation with Spitler et al.'s catalogue of Sombrero globular clusters (GCs) identified from HST/ACS observations reveals 41 X-rays sources in GCs, presumably low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). We quantify the differential luminosity functions (LFs) for both the detected GC and field LMXBs, whose power-low indices (~1.1 for the GC-LF and ~1.6 for field-LF) are consistent with previous studies for elliptical galaxies. With precise sky positions of the GCs without a detected X-ray source, we further quantify, through a fluctuation analysis, the GC LF at fainter luminosities down to 1E35 erg/s. The derived index rules out a faint-end slope flatter than 1.1 at a 2 sigma significance, contrary to recent findings in several elliptical galaxies and the bulge of M31. On the other hand, the 2-6 keV unresolved emission places a tight constraint on the field LF, implying a flattened index of ~1.0 below 1E37 erg/s. We also detect 101 sources in the halo of Sombrero. The presence of these sources cannot be interpreted as galactic LMXBs whose spatial distribution empirically follows the starlight. Their number is also higher than the expected number of cosmic AGNs (52+/-11 [1 sigma]) whose surface density is constrained by deep X-ray surveys. We suggest that either the cosmic X-ray background is unusually high in the direction of Sombrero, or a distinct population of X-ray sources is present in the halo of Sombrero.Comment: 11 figures, 5 tables, ApJ in pres

Azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles at high transverse momenta in PbPb collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV

The azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles in PbPb collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV is measured with the CMS detector at the LHC over an extended transverse momentum (pt) range up to approximately 60 GeV. The data cover both the low-pt region associated with hydrodynamic flow phenomena and the high-pt region where the anisotropies may reflect the path-length dependence of parton energy loss in the created medium. The anisotropy parameter (v2) of the particles is extracted by correlating charged tracks with respect to the event-plane reconstructed by using the energy deposited in forward-angle calorimeters. For the six bins of collision centrality studied, spanning the range of 0-60% most-central events, the observed v2 values are found to first increase with pt, reaching a maximum around pt = 3 GeV, and then to gradually decrease to almost zero, with the decline persisting up to at least pt = 40 GeV over the full centrality range measured.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO