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Lisa Taruffi,1,* Lorenzo Muccioli,1,* Micaela Mitolo,2,3 Lorenzo Ferri,1 Carlo Descovich,4 Stefania Mazzoni,2 Roberto Michelucci,2 Raffaele Lodi,1,2 Rocco Liguori,1,2 Pietro Cortelli,1,2 Caterina Tonon,1,2 Francesca Bisulli1,2 1Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy; 2IRCCS Istituto delle Scienze Neurologiche di Bologna, Bologna, Italy; 3Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialty Medicine, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy; 4Clinical Governance, Research, Education and Quality Improvement Unit, AUSL Bologna, Bologna, Italy*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Francesca Bisulli, IRCCS Istituto delle Scienze Neurologiche di Bologna, Bologna, Italy, Tel +39 0514966937, Fax +39 05149669993, Email francesca.bisulli@unibo.itPurpose: We report our single-center experience on the neurological manifestations of long COVID.Patients and Methods: This is a retrospective observational study. All consecutive patients referred to the neurological long COVID outpatient clinic of our institute from January 21 2021 to December 9 2021 underwent a general neurological objective examination. Treatments and investigations (brain MRI, neuropsychological evaluation, or others) were prescribed on an individual basis as per standard clinical practice. A follow-up visit was performed when appropriate. Descriptive statistics were presented as absolute and relative frequencies for categorical variables and as means, median, and ranges for continuous variables.Results: One hundred and three patients were visited (mean age 50.5 ± 36 years, 62 females). The average time from acute COVID-19 infection to the first visit to our outpatient clinic was 243 days. Most patients presented with a mild form of acute COVID-19, with only 24 cases requiring hospitalization. The neurological symptoms mostly (n=70/103, 68%) started during the acute phase (before a negative swab for SARS-CoV-2). The most frequent acute manifestations reported, which lately became persistent, were fatigue (n=58/103, 56%), olfactory/taste dysfunction (n=58/103, 56%), headache (n=47/103, 46%), cognitive disorders (n=46/103, 45%), sleep disorders (n=30/103, 29%), sensitivity alterations (n=29/103, 28%), and dizziness (n=7/103, 7%). Tremor was also reported (n=8/103, 7%). Neuropsychological evaluation was performed in 30 patients and revealed alterations in executive functions (n=6/30, 20%), memory (n=11/30, 37%), with pathological depressive (n=9/30, 30%) and anxiety (n=8/30, 27%) scores. Brain MRIs have been performed in 41 cases, revealing nonspecific abnormal findings only in 4 cases. Thirty-six patients underwent a follow-up, where a general improvement was observed but rarely (n=2/36) a complete recovery.Conclusion: The majority of patients presenting persistent neurological symptoms (most frequently fatigue, cognitive disorders, and olfactory dysfunctions) developed a previous mild form of COVID-19. Further studies are required to develop therapeutic strategies.Keywords: COVID 19, neuroCOVID, follow-up, cognitive disorders, neuropsychology, hypo/anosmia

In this article, we briefly summarize the experiments performed during the first run of the Advanced Wakefield Experiment, AWAKE, at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). The final goal of AWAKE Run 1 (2013-2018) was to demonstrate that 10-20 MeV electrons can be accelerated to GeV energies in a plasma wakefield driven by a highly relativistic self-modulated proton bunch. We describe the experiment, outline the measurement concept and present first results. Last, we outline our plans for the future. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Directions in particle beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration'.

High-energy particle accelerators have been crucial in providing a deeper understanding of fundamental particles and the forces that govern their interactions. To increase the energy of the particles or to reduce the size of the accelerator, new acceleration schemes need to be developed. Plasma wakefield acceleration1-5, in which the electrons in a plasma are excited, leading to strong electric fields (so called 'wakefields'), is one such promising acceleration technique. Experiments have shown that an intense laser pulse6-9 or electron bunch10,11 traversing a plasma can drive electric fields of tens of gigavolts per metre and above-well beyond those achieved in conventional radio-frequency accelerators (about 0.1 gigavolt per metre). However, the low stored energy of laser pulses and electron bunches means that multiple acceleration stages are needed to reach very high particle energies5,12. The use of proton bunches is compelling because they have the potential to drive wakefields and to accelerate electrons to high energy in a single acceleration stage13. Long, thin proton bunches can be used because they undergo a process called self-modulation14-16, a particle-plasma interaction that splits the bunch longitudinally into a series of high-density microbunches, which then act resonantly to create large wakefields. The Advanced Wakefield (AWAKE) experiment at CERN17-19 uses high-intensity proton bunches-in which each proton has an energy of 400 gigaelectronvolts, resulting in a total bunch energy of 19 kilojoules-to drive a wakefield in a ten-metre-long plasma. Electron bunches are then injected into this wakefield. Here we present measurements of electrons accelerated up to two gigaelectronvolts at the AWAKE experiment, in a demonstration of proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration. Measurements were conducted under various plasma conditions and the acceleration was found to be consistent and reliable. The potential for this scheme to produce very high-energy electron bunches in a single accelerating stage20 means that our results are an important step towards the development of future high-energy particle accelerators21,22.

This paper summarizes a ground-motion database developed for the NGA-Sub Project. The database consists of two- A nd three-component ground-motion recordings from selected earthquakes in subduction zones. The database also includes the supporting data such as source, path, and site metadata. The earthquakes are located in Japan, Taiwan, the Pacific Northwest region of North America, Alaska, Mexico, Central and South America, and New Zealand. The events in the database are classified as interface, intraslab, or outer-rise, and have magnitudes ranging from 4 to 9. The database includes more than 71,000 three-component recordings, most of which are from digital accelerograms. The database includes PGA, PGV, pseudo-spectral acceleration for eleven damping values between 0.5% and 30%, Fourier amplitude spectra for frequencies from 0.1 to 100 Hz, and significant-shaking durations based on Arias Intensity. These data are analyzed in the project to model various ground-motion properties.

FOCUS (Fast Monte CarlO approach to Coherence of Undulator Sources) is a new GPU-based simulation code to compute the transverse coherence of undulator radiation from ultra-relativistic electrons. The core structure of the code, which is written in the language C++ accelerated with CUDA, combines an analytical description of the emitted electric fields and massively parallel computations on GPUs. The combination is rigorously justified by a statistical description of synchrotron radiation based on a Fourier optics approach. FOCUS is validated by direct comparison with multi-electron Synchrotron Radiation Workshop (SRW) simulations, evidencing a reduction in computation times by up to five orders of magnitude on a consumer laptop. FOCUS is then applied to systematically study the transverse coherence in typical third- and fourth-generation facilities, highlighting peculiar features of undulator sources close to the diffraction limit. FOCUS is aimed at fast evaluation of the transverse coherence of undulator radiation as a function of the electron beam parameters, to support and help prepare more advanced and detailed numerical simulations with traditional codes like SRW. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Military medical information and data from civil registers of death and marriage have been used to study the role of physical characteristics and health conditions in explaining access to marriage for the male population of Alghero, a small city located in Sardinia Island (Italy), at the turn of 19th century. Literature data about contemporary populations have already demonstrated the influence of somatic traits in the mate choice. The results presented here show that men with low height and poor health status at the age of 20 were negatively selected for marriage. This holds true also in a society where families often arranged marriages for their children. This pattern of male selection on marriage was found to be particularly marked among the richest and wealthiest SES groups. Our hypothesis is that this social group carefully selected for marriage those individuals who were apparently healthier and therefore more likely to guarantee good health status and better life conditions to offspring. In evolutionary terms, the mate choice component of sexual selection suggests that the height of prospective partners could be claimed as one of the determinants, along with other environmental causes, of the observed higher stature of men belonging to the wealthiest social strata of the Alghero population. KEY WORDS mate choice; sexual selection; military registers; Sardinia DOI 10.1002/ajpa.21150

A minimally invasive transverse beam profile monitor based on supersonic gas curtain technology and beam-induced fluorescence has been developed and demonstrated. The concept presented can be used to measure both the profile of the proton beam in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the concentricity of the electron and the proton beams in the LHC hollow electron lens. In this Letter, the performance of such a monitor for a low energy electron beam is discussed, which paves the way for its wider implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the study which examined the impacts of abandoned children in the population genetics in Iggio, Parma and Tiola, Bologna in Italy. Also cited are the study of the polymorphisms of the Y-chromosome, the vital role played by hospices in caring for abandoned newborns or foundlings in the area, and the marriages of the foundlings with local residents.

Abstract Background Infertility represents a major challenge to the emotional balance and sexual life of couples, with long-lasting and gender-specific effects. The objective of this study is to explore personality features of infertile patients and detect possible sexual disorders in couples undergoing infertility treatment. Materials and methods In this prospective study 60 infertile couples and 52 fertile control couples were asked to complete standardized and validated questionnaires: the Adjective Check List (ACL) to enquire about personality features and the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) or the International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF) to assess sexual functioning of female and male partners. The study population was divided into 3 groups: Group A (N = 30, recently diagnosed infertile couples) Group B (N = 30, infertile couples already undergoing Intrauterine Insemination) and Group C (N = 52, fertile control group). Results Infertile patients did not display any distinguishing personality features. Regarding sexual function, men of all the three groups scored higher in both questionnaires (sexual satisfaction, desire and orgasm) than their female partners. Comparing results between groups, Group A male partners obtained lower scores in all the subscales. Women belonging to Group A and Group B showed an impairment of sexual arousal, satisfaction, lubrification and orgasm when compared to fertile controls. Conclusions Even if at the very first stages of infertility treatment no personality disturbances can be detected, the couples’ sexual life is already impaired with different sexual disorders according to gender.

By combining static and dynamic structure factor measurements under microgravity conditions, we obtain for the first time direct insight into the internal structure of colloidal aggregates formed over a wide range of particle attractions under ideal diffusion-limited conditions. By means of near-field scattering we measure the time-dependent density-density correlation function as the aggregation process evolves, and we determine the ratio of the hydrodynamic and gyration radius to elucidate the aggregate's internal structure as a function of its fractal dimension. Surprisingly, we find that despite the large variation of particle interactions, the mass is always evenly distributed in all objects with fractal dimension ranging from 2.55 for shallow potentials to 1.78 for deep ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A test of the accuracy in transferring the virtual data into the surgical environment was carried out. Differences between the virtually planned and the actual position during surgery of the rapid prototyped guides and the bone plates were investigated. The accuracy of the method was evaluated in terms of the precision of cuts in the mandible, the final positions of the rami and condyles, and the sectioning precision of the fibula. The guide position presented a mean value dislocation of 0.6 mm in the right side and of 4.1 mm in the left side; the cut line of the mandible presented an angular deviation of 2.9° (right) and of 17.5° (left). The right condyle was positioned 2.5±0.05 mm more medial than native position, and the left condyle 5.2±0.05 mm medial. The total length was 0.3±0.05 mm short of the virtually projected length at the inferior margin of the mandible and 1.9±0.05 mm longer than projected at the superior margin. The Prosthetically Guided Maxillofacial Surgery (PGMS) is a viable way to improve the precision of mandibular reconstruction using a fibula free flap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microgravity research in space is a complex activity where the often scarce resources available for the launch, accommodation, and operation of instrumentation call for a careful experiment planning and instrument development. In this paper we describe a module of the Selectable Optical Diagnostic Instrument, that has been designed as a compact optical diagnostic instrument for colloidal physics experiments. The peculiarity of the instrument is the combination of a novel light scattering technique known as near field scattering and standard microscopy with a low-coherence laser light source. We describe its main design features, as well as measurement results on colloidal aggregation taken on the International Space Station. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]