The Import in the EU of Human Reproductive Materials and Emergency Situations

La circulación internacional de gametos humanos aporta incuestionables beneficios a una sociedad en claro declino demográfico y se encuentra en continua expansión. Las Directivas en materia de células reproductoras sos- tienen el objetivo de aplicar la disciplina de manera uniforme en toda la Un- ión Europea (UE) para poder garantizar el mayor nivel posible de protección de la salud con una calidad y una seguridad comparables entre los estados miembros. Estos requisitos se refuerzan ulteriormente para el caso de la im- portación de países extra UE. La transposición en España e Italia ha supues- to la incursión de la materia en dos contextos completamente distintos. Al mismo tiempo, no se pueden descuidar los acontecimientos internacionales actuales que requieren una atención específica.The internacional exchange of human gametes brings incuestionables ben- efits to a society in a clear demographic decline and in a constant extention. The reproductive cells Directives support the objective of applying the dis- cipline uniformly throughout the European Union (EU) in order to guarantee the highest possible level of health protection with comparable quality and safety among member states. These requirements are further reinforced in the case of importation from non-EU countries. The transposition in Spain and Italy has meant the incursion of the matter in two completely different contexts. At the same time, current international events that require specific attention an may not be neglected

Signal transduction in the Sertoli cell: serum modulation of the response to FSH

Immature Sertoli cells of the testicular seminiferous tubule maintain the expression of their differentiated phenotype when cultured in unsupplemented medium. In preliminary experiments we observed that foetal bovine serum (FBS) stimulates polyphosphoinositides (PI) hydrolysis in Sertoli cells. We then evaluated the effect of serum on the function of the immature Sertoli cell in culture, in terms of cAMP and estrogen production. Treatment of Sertoli cells for 30 min with 1–10% FBS had no effect on basal cAMP accumulation but abolished the response to FSH. The serum concentration producing half-maximal inhibition of the FSH-dependent cAMP accumulation was 0.5–1%. Comparison of the FSH-dose-response in the absence or presence of serum showed a decreased maximal response when serum was present. Sertoli cells exposed to serum were also less responsive to the β-adrenergic agonist isoproterenol, to cholera toxin, and to forskolin. The serum inhibition was rapidly reversed upon removal of serum or incubating the cells with the phosphodiesterase inhibitor MIX (methyl-isobutyl-xanthine). Similarly to what observed with cAMP, serum affected androgen aromatization stimulated by FSH, isoproterenol, cholera toxin, forskolin and dibutyryl cAMP. These data indicate that factors present in serum can act as modulators of the Sertoli cell function in vitro by rapidly and reversibly inhibiting the cAMP and steroidogenic response of the Sertoli cell to FSH

SPH Modeling of Solid Boundaries Through a Semi-Analytic Approach

Abstract:This paper presents a general semi-analytic approach for modeling solid boundaries in the SPH method: boundaries are here considered as a material continuum with a suitable distribution of velocity and pressure; their contributions to each term of the SPH mass and momentum equations can be expressed in terms of a suitable integral extended to the part of the sphere of influence of the particle delimited by the boundary surface. Analytical details with reference to a slightly compressible viscous Newtonian fluid in three dimensions are given. The validity of the method is checked by comparing the obtained numerical results with available experimental data in a benchmark flow case

Ensemble using different Planetary Boundary Layer schemes in WRF model for wind speed and direction prediction over Apulia region

Abstract. The Weather Research and Forecasting mesoscale model (WRF) was used to simulate hourly 10 m wind speed and direction over the city of Taranto, Apulia region (south-eastern Italy). This area is characterized by a large industrial complex including the largest European steel plant and is subject to a Regional Air Quality Recovery Plan. This plan constrains industries in the area to reduce by 10 % the mean daily emissions by diffuse and point sources during specific meteorological conditions named wind days. According to the Recovery Plan, the Regional Environmental Agency ARPA-PUGLIA is responsible for forecasting these specific meteorological conditions with 72 h in advance and possibly issue the early warning. In particular, an accurate wind simulation is required. Unfortunately, numerical weather prediction models suffer from errors, especially for what concerns near-surface fields. These errors depend primarily on uncertainties in the initial and boundary conditions provided by global models and secondly on the model formulation, in particular the physical parametrizations used to represent processes such as turbulence, radiation exchange, cumulus and microphysics. In our work, we tried to compensate for the latter limitation by using different Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) parameterization schemes. Five combinations of PBL and Surface Layer (SL) schemes were considered. Simulations are implemented in a real-time configuration since our intention is to analyze the same configuration implemented by ARPA-PUGLIA for operational runs; the validation is focused over a time range extending from 49 to 72 h with hourly time resolution. The assessment of the performance was computed by comparing the WRF model output with ground data measured at a weather monitoring station in Taranto, near the steel plant. After the analysis of the simulations performed with different PBL schemes, both simple (e.g. average) and more complex post-processing methods (e.g. weighted average, linear and nonlinear regression, and artificial neural network) are adopted to improve the performances with respect to the output of each single setup. The neural network approach comes out as the most promising method

Giant endobronchial hamartoma resected by fiberoptic bronchoscopy electrosurgical snaring

Less than 1% of lung neoplasms are represented by benign tumors. Among these, hamartomas are the most common with an incidence between 0.025% and 0.32%. In relation to the localization, hamartomas are divided into intraparenchymal and endobronchial