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Experimental evaluation of a new type of dacron graft, pretreated with mod ified mammalian gelatin, has been performed on the beagle dog. After grafting of the infrarenal aorta, dogs were monitored from three days to three months. Pretreatment with gelatin effectively avoided the need for preclotting and did not affect the normal healing of the prosthesis as compared with similarly tex tured not pretreated grafts. This graft, when applied in man as an abdominal aortic substitute, has yielded uniformly gratifying results (within a follow-up range of twenty to twenty-seven months).

From 1950 through 1984, 48 cases of primary tumors of the small bowel were treated at the First Surgical Clinic of the University, La Sapienza, of Rome. Forty-three were malignant and five were benign tumors: 13 in the duodenum, 16 in the jejunum and 19 in the ileum. Abdominal pain, weight loss and obstruction were the most common complaints at admission. Radiographic studies of the gastrointestinal tract were diagnostic in 48% of patients. Four benign tumors were leiomyoma of the jejunum or ileum, the other benign tumor was a Brunner's adenomatosis of the duodenal bulb. The tumors were adenocarcinomatous in 29% of the cases and 50% of them were located in the duodenum. The five-year survival of patients with adenocarcinoma was 11%. The fourteen lymphomas were distributed evenly throughout the small bowel: 40% of the patients with lymphoma were alive after five years. Malignant smooth muscle tumors were found in the jejunum and ileum, in these cases the five-year survival rate was 50%. All the carcinoid tumors were in the ileum. The best five-year survival rate, 66%, was seen in patients with this type of tumor. In the malignant group, the five-year survival rate after curative resections was 25% in patients with positive nodes and 75% in those without nodal involvement.

Real-time B-mode ultrasonography was used to study in vivo the behavior of bifurcated aortic grafts (Dacron knitted) implanted over a period of 1 to 88 months previously in 67 patients, 28 of whom (42 per cent) were hypertensive. Most grafts showed an increase in size, when compared with the original one, which appeared to be closely related to arterial pressure (P less than 0.05). This increase was not dependent on the time elapsed from implant.

Some fluoroacylderivatives at the side chain NH2 of D-cycloserine were synthesized and evaluated in vitro for antimicrobial activity against bacteria and tubercular or non-tubercular mycobacteria. Against the used Gram-positive and Gram-negative strains only trifluoroacetamide 1 exhibited comparable MIC values and lower MBC values than those of parent antibiotic. Other fluoroacycloserines, inactive at all on these bacteria, were found to inhibit the growth of mycobacteria when tested in liquid media. The in vitro anti-Herpex Simplex virus type-2 (HSV-2) activity was also investigated on HEp-2 and Vero cells. The obtained results demonstrated an antiviral activity of the compounds 1 and 3 when tested on Vero cell-lines, whereas the same cycloserine is inactive.

Base genetica di alcuni casi di bassa statura disarmonica, l’aploinsufficienza del gene SHOX (SHOX-D) causa differente espressione fenotipica anche in pazienti con eguale genotipo, con verosimile influenza di fattori epigenetici in grado di condizionare anche la risposta alla terapia con GH e la statura definitiva.Descriviamo il caso di un nucleo familiare (due sorelle e la madre) con SHOX-D. la statura target è 146.8 cm (-2.6SDS); madre: 146.5 cm; padre: 160 cm).ZM è stata studiata all’età di 6,8 aa per bassa statura disarmonica: statura: 103.5 cm (-3SDS); SPAN: 99 cm; (BA: 6 aa). E’ stata documentata la mutazione missenso del gene SHOX (c414G>C: p.Glu138Asp dell’esone 3) ed iniziata terapia con GH. La stessa mutazione è stata dimostrata nella madre e poi nella sorella ZS, la cui statura- alla prima valutazione clinica- non era < a -2SDS. Le bambine presentavano una secrezione di GH nella norma con normali valori di IGF-1. La terapia con GH è stata iniziata per ZS all’età di 6,8 aa (BA: 6.1 aa), quando ha presentato una riduzione della velocità di crescita staturale con una rapida maturazione ossea: statura: 113cm (-1.38SDS); SPAN: 112.5cm. Durante il follow-up, le sorelle hanno mostrato un incremento della velocità di crescita staturale, dello sviluppo puberale, un aumento significativo di BA, con un precoce raggiungimento della statura definitiva di ZM a 13,7 aa: statura: 143.1cm (-2SDS), SPAN 138,5cm, BMI 18 kg/mq; p.c.: 37.5kg (-2SDS); BA: 18 aa.; per ZS a 14,4 aa: statura: 150.8cm (- 1.8SDS), SPAN: 155cm; BMI 22 kg/mq; p.c.: 50kg (-1SDS).Questo nucleo familiare dimostra una differente espressione fenotipica di SHOX-D, con una statura definitiva della madre, senza terapia con GH, di 146,5 cm.

This investigation aims to contribute novel theoretical and practical insights to the on-going debate about advertising products outside the home country of their brand. Specifically, our focus is on the way brand identity can be communicated. We leave in the background the vexed question of whether, for the foreign market, it is economically more effective to adapt advertisements created for the home country to the new market, or to use the same message. The goal of our study is to re-cast the whole issue by reconsidering the role of brand identity within the text of audio-visual commercials. Our contrastive analysis of four Italian and four American commercials will provide hints about the linguistic and, more generally, semiotic composition of the advertising message that can be exploited by practitioners, experts and academics who deal with international marketing. More specifically, with our interdisciplinary theoretical framework we: a. provide a sociolinguistic model that suggests that certain processes, such as accommodation and code switching and mixing, are useful tools to account for art directors’ and copywriters’ choices in the adaptation of the advertising message. Through the multi-modal analytical protocol in the methodology section and the results of our analysis we are able to:b. demonstrate how the theoretical framework is a resourceful tool to analyse TV commercials; c. supply a set of tested variables that can be used by experts and professionals to drive the creative process of multi-modal advertising texts. Our analysis ultimately shows that the interaction of four marketing features, brand identity, brand image , brandscape and image of user is crucial in the construction of a product’s status at home and abroad. This study focuses on four Italian brands. Four commercials for the Italian market have been directly compared with the parallel commercials broadcast in the United States. In the commercials that we have analysed, the “adaptation” for the American market is not limited just to the translation of verbal items (in our case from Italian to English), ostensive components (replacing typical Italian concrete visible objects with common American ones), or cultural values from the Italian context to the American one (De Mooij, 2004, 2010; Hofstede, 2001). Our hypothesis was that each brand presented itself with dissociated, or at least different, identities within the text of their commercials for the Italian market and for the American one. In Denis McQuail’s words, “theory [of mass communication studies] has been perennially preoccupied with the question of the ‘location’ of meaning” (2010, 360) by referring to the sender’s intention, the linguistic system, or the receiver’s interpretation. Our methodology is preoccupied instead with constructing a paradigm of possible expressive options. Therefore, it is not directly the “meaning” of advertisements that we are looking for; rather, we are interested in possible oppositions of choices and in what channel of the multi-modal message they are realized. The analysis of the commercials is both quantitative and qualitative, and based on the study by Di Ferrante (2003, 2005) where the methodological protocol of analysis was first devised and tested. The discussion highlights those variables that have played a major role in designing the TV commercials for the international market. We conclude that, whether consciously or unconsciously realized by the advertising creative teams, the dissociated identities characterizing parallel commercials are the result of several cognitive, pragma-linguistic and socio-cultural constraints at work in the generation and the mise en scene of the commercial contents.

SCOPO DEL LAVORO: Lo scopo di questo lavoro è documentare un caso di meningocele sacrale anteriore (Anterior Sacral Meningocele, ASM) rara forma di disrafismo spinale, diagnosticato in una giovane di 13 anni con riscontro ecografico di formazione cistica di verosimile pertinenza annessiale dopo visita Specialistica Ginecologica. La paziente si presenta con una clinica caratterizzata da: dolore pelvico, costipazione e cistiti ricorrenti. Sarà inoltre fatto un breve excursus sulle possibili diagnosi differenziali con altre masse pelviche a sviluppo presacrale. MATERIALI E METODI: A seguito di consulenza ginecologica, la paziente è stata sottoposta ad una ecografia transaddominale, che ha evidenziato la presenza in sede pelvica di una formazione anecogena, a margini regolari, del diametro massimo di 6 cm circa. Il caratteristico aspetto ecografico ha fatto porre l'ipotesi diagnostica di espanso cistico di pertinenza annessiale. La paziente, tuttavia, per una migliore caratterizzazione del reperto ecografico, ha effettuato esame RM con apparecchiatura da 1,5T (GE Signa HDxt), mediante sequenze TSE T1 e T2 pesate, nei piani assiale, coronale e sagittale. RISULTATI: Lo studio RM ha evidenziato, in sede pelvica mediana-paramediana destra, una formazione irregolarmente ovalare, extraperitoneale, con segnale simil liquorale in tutte le sequenze. Tale espanso risultava in continuità con il sacco midollare, attraverso un difetto osseo del profilo anteriore dei metameri sacrali del tratto S3-S4, ed era responsabile di netta dislocazione del retto e dell'utero. CONCLUSIONI: La RM rappresenta certamente la metodica di scelta per un'ottimale caratterizzazione delle masse pelviche di n.d.d. L'ASM può, specie con metodiche di I livello, essere misdiagnosticato come una massa di pertinenza annessiale. La RM, grazie all'elevata risoluzione di contrasto e alla multiplanarietà, ha inoltre elevata accuratezza nella diagnosi differenziale delle altre formazioni a possibile sviluppo presacrale (cisti di Tarlov, tumori della linea germinale, cordomi sacrococcigei, liposarcomi, schwannomi pelvici).