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Background: Malnutrition-inflammation complex syndrome (MICS) is a common and usually concurrent condition occurring in patients undergoing hemodialysis (HD), with a pathogenesis linked to biological and in situ environmental traditional risk factors. Periodontitis, one of the major types of infection-driven inflammation, often co-occurs in the in the hemodialysis population and correlates with markers of malnutrition and inflammation, such as albumin, creatinine, and C-reactive protein. Aim: The present study aimed to determine whether the periodontal inflammatory status parameters correlate with the albumin, creatinine, and C-reactive protein serum concentrations in HD patients, and investigate whether periodontal treatment improves these markers of nutritional and systemic inflammation. Materials and Methods: The serum creatinine, albumin, and C-reactive Protein (CRP) levels were measured at baseline and after non-surgical periodontal treatment, at 3 months and 6 months. Results: At 3 months, a significant correlation between plaque index and C-reactive protein (p = 0.012), bleeding on probing and C-reactive protein (p &lt, 0.0019), and clinical attachment level and C-reactive protein (p = 0.022) was found. No significant correlation was found between clinical periodontal parameters and nutrition markers at each time. Conclusions: Our results confirmed the association between C-reactive protein serum concentration and periodontal inflammatory status, but further research is necessary to identify the contributing role of periodontitis on the onset and progression of MICS.

Background Following diagnosis, children with cancer suddenly find themselves in an unknown world where unfamiliar adults make all the important decisions. Children typically experience increasing levels of anxiety with repeated invasive procedures and do not adapt to the discomfort. The aim of the present study is to explore the possibility of asking children directly about their medical support preferences during invasive procedures. Procedure Each patient was offered a choice of medical support on the day of the procedure, specifically general anesthesia (GA), conscious sedation (CS), or nothing. An ad hoc assessment tool was prepared in order to measure child discomfort before, during, and after each procedure, and caregiver adequacy was measured. Both instruments were completed at each procedure by the attending psychologist. Results We monitored 247 consecutive invasive procedures in 85 children and found that children in the 4 to 7 year age group showed significantly higher distress levels. GA was chosen 66 times (26.7%), CS was chosen 97 times (39.3%), and nothing was chosen 5 times and exclusively by adolescents. The child did not choose in 79 procedures (32%). The selection of medical support differed between age groups and distress level was reduced at succeeding procedures. Conclusions Offering children the choice of medical support during invasive procedures allows for tailored support based on individual needs and is an effective modality to return active control to young patients, limiting the emotional trauma of cancer and treatment.

The problem of the dynamic behavior of masonry arches and vaults has gained increasing interest in recent years, since the key role of these structural elements in the masonry constructions, especially of historic interest. Despite this, the literature still lacks a sufficiently large number of contributions on this important subject, and this deficiency is even more marked for the case of reinforced masonry. In this context, the present paper shows and discusses some preliminary experimental results on full-scale dynamic tests on unreinforced and GFRCM-reinforced Apulian tuff masonry arches. The experiments have been performed by using a test bench appositely designed and built; the dynamic excitation consisted of a harmonic base motion with fixed amplitude and increasing frequency. The acceleration in suitable points of the arches, the base shear and the base motion have been continuously monitored during the tests.

This study analyzes microplastic ingestion by three deep-water elasmobranch species ( Galeus melastomus , Scyliorhinus canicula and Etmopterus spinax ) from the Tyrrhenian Sea, discriminating between stomach and intestine contents. The absence of significant differences in frequency and abundance of plastic items into stomachs seems to suggest that ecological diversity among the three sharks does not strongly influence the probability of plastic ingestion in the study area. On the other hand, the detected differences in the microplastic content into the intestine might be due to a different retention time of microplastics, suggesting how feeding habits could influence metabolic features, and therefore affect the recovery of ingested plastic items. This information would improve the future development of marine micro-litter monitoring systems, following the MSFD requirements. Moreover, this study shows that all the three examined elasmobranch species can give important information even with relatively small sample sizes (N ≈ 30), and they could be used as target species for monitoring micro-litter ingestion in deep-water habitats.

The Iowa caucuses are the inaugural event of the American presidential nomination process. When the state Democratic Party failed to report the 2020 caucus results in a timely manner and manage the consequences, the crisis situation threatened the legitimacy of the party and the integrity of the results. This research presents an in-depth case of the Iowa Democratic Party’s public communication response regarding an event described by the Des Moines Register as “hell” and a “results catastrophe.” Specifically, we were interested in how the Iowa Democratic Party responded to the crisis event and the extent to which the party organization was successful in disseminating favorable messaging about the caucus process to the local press. Drawing on organizational crisis management and echoing press perspectives, this analysis uses network and qualitative analytic approaches to assess message development, dissemination, and ultimately adoption. A local event with national implications presents a critical case in investigating how a political party, due to its institutional role in American elections and unique organizational structure, struggled to respond to the crisis.

The aim of this paper is to describe the most important aspects of the so called "Bilateral Convergent Strabismus with Exophthalmos (BCSE)", the most common aspect of strabismus in cattle. The disease has been known since the end of the XIX century, but no definitive conclusion has been found in respect to the pathogenesis and the etiology. BCSE may affect all major breeds and is known worldwide. It is characterised by a progressive bilateral symmetric anterior-medial rotation of the bulbi associated with a slight to severe protrusion of the eyeball (exophthalmos). The onset of the defect is around the first year of age. It usually ends up with severe visual deficit that might modify the behavior of the affected animal. Although there is few literature, defects in the lateral rectus muscle and the retractor bulbi muscle of the eye and in their appendant nerves (CN III and CN VI, respectively) were suspected to be the cause of BCSE. The presence of "red ragged fibers" in the lateral and median rectus muscles were also found in affected animals. It is common to note changes of character, probably related to insecurity resulting from visual difficulties: the affected animals become scary, move with difficulty, struggling to enter the milking stations, over-react to the routine operations that are carried out in the barn. As to the authors' knowledge, there are no useful therapies to cure or even improve the disease. The majority of the authors consider the BCSE as an inherited defect. However, the exact mode of inheritance has not been found yet. Recent studies carried out on German Brown cattle affected by BCSE showed a significant SNPs association with the disease within two candidate genes located on BTA5 (PLXNC1) and BTA18 (RDH13). Although the role of these genes could not be definitively confirmed, it is most likely that these candidate genes or nearby located structural mutations may be responsible for BCSE in German Brown cows.

Drawing from a “mix of attributes” approach, this study analyzes whether interactive online news quizzes engage site visitors and help individuals acquire news knowledge. Results of a nationwide experiment (n = 456) indicate that online quizzes, whether using a multiple-choice or slider format, help citizens acquire public affairs knowledge and lead them to spend more time with public affairs information relative to presenting information without a quiz. Two field tests show that news site visitors engage with slider and multiple-choice quizzes at similar rates, and engage more and for longer amounts of time if two different interactive quiz formats are available on a Web page.

Employers’ use of online information increases the communicative demands and complexity of employability. For employers, gathering online information for personnel selection—a process called cybervetting—supplements or augments existing information acquisition processes. For workers, cybervetting’s extractive processes require considering potential and possible career stories employers might construct. Workers increasingly need to engage in prospective and retrospective storying to communicate and maintain employability and employment. Drawing on exemplars from employers’ reports, this essay highlights: (a) how employers report assembling and making sense of workers’ information during personnel selection; (b) the limitations of existing employability strategies; as well as (c) the increased and unequally distributed uncertainty and risk; and (d) the associated and different work expected of workers as the primary site and authorship of career stories shift.

Drawing from the stereotype content model, we examine how people respond to likeminded and counter-attitudinal political comments appearing after a news article. We experimentally test how citizens behave when they are able to click on one of three different buttons posted next to others’ comments—“Like,” “Recommend,” or “Respect.” In the experiment, political attitudes predicted button clicking, but the button label affected the strength of the relationship. In some instances, people clicked on fewer buttons associated with likeminded comments and more buttons associated with counter-attitudinal comments when the button was labeled with “Respect” as opposed to “Like” or “Recommend.” The pattern of results for the “Recommend” button differed across two issues. The results suggest that political comments can trigger stereotypical reactions. Although the “Like” button is well known, news organizations interested in promoting less partisan behaviors should consider using a “Respect” button rather than the “Like” or “Recommend” button in comment sections.

An automatic full 3D mesh generator for the non-linear 3D homogenized discrete FE analysis of masonry double curvature structures is presented. The method can reproduce the main features exhibited by masonry, preserving the orthotropy and accounting for the influence of membrane loads on the flexural behavior. Previous homogenization procedures allow reducing the number of variables, leading to non-linear analyses with a low computational burden. In the approach proposed, masonry is modeled through an assemblage of elastic cells joined by non-linear interfaces with finite thickness. The latter are modeled as brick elements with softening replicated by a damage constitutive relationship (known in Abaqus - the commercial FE code used - as Concrete Damage Plasticity). The discrete mesh is obtained automatically by means of an ad-hoc routine which transforms a standard 2D homogeneous FE mesh into a 3D orthotropic elastic model with non-linear interfaces connecting contiguous elastic elements (cells). The proposed method is applied to a hemispherical dome and a cloister vault, with abundant experimental and numerical data available in the literature to compare with. Sensitivity analyses are conducted in order to have an insight into the reliability of the method, which proved excellent predictivity capabilities, as far as both the peak load and the activated failure mechanism are concerned., (undefined)

A new discretized homogenization approach is proposed in this study in order to predict the behavior of unre-inforced and FRCM reinforced masonry structures. The proposed approach allows overcoming the common disadvantages of the existing homogenization approaches: (a) being difficult to implement and (b) not allowing to couple the in-plane and out-of-plane actions. Reference experimental results and detailed numerical modeling are used for validation of the proposed modeling strategy. In the proposed model, the elastic cells are linked by homogenized interfaces. The mechanical properties coming from the homogenization procedures are lumped at the interfaces by means of the generic Concrete Damage Plasticity model, allowing easy implementation and avoiding computational issues peculiar to other approaches available in the literature. The new approach shows accurate results in predicting the global behavior and the damage pattern for both unreinforced and FRCM strengthened masonry walls. The results are promising also with a view to be applied for more complex reinforced applications as double curvature masonry structures., (undefined)

Made available in DSpace on 2018-12-11T17:23:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2018-04-01 Objectives: The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of mate tea (MT) [Ilex paraguariensis] on alveolar socket healing after tooth extraction. Materials and methods: Sixteen male rats were divided into MT and control groups. MT was administered by intragastric gavage at a dose of 20 mg/kg/day for 28 days before and 28 days after right maxillary incisor extraction. The control group received an equal volume of water. Histopathological and histometric analysis of the neoformed bone area and osteocyte density were performed, as well as immunohistochemical analysis of osteocalcin (OCN), receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa-B ligand (RANKL), osteoprotegerin (OPG), tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase (TRAP), and manganese superoxide dismutase (MnSOD) in the alveolar socket. Calcium, phosphorus, alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity, total antioxidant capacity (TAC), and malondialdehyde (MDA) were measured in plasma, whereas TRAP activity was determined in serum. Results: Histometry evidenced an increase in bone area (P

Objectives Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is the most common epithelial malignant neoplasm affecting the oral cavity. OSCC can mimic oral lesions of inflammatory origin with benign features, often leading to delay in diagnosis and treatment. Early detection is important to greatly increase the chances of a successful treatment. The present study reports a proteomic analysis of a gingival oral squamous cell carcinoma (G-OSCC) and an epulis. Materials and methods Normal mucosae tissue, G-OSCC tissue, and epulis tissue as a comparative sample of benign nature were collected and immediately frozen in liquid nitrogen. Tissue-extracted proteins were separated by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis and subjected to image analysis. Proteins that showed a significant difference in the expression level in the G-OSCC tissue were identified by the nano-ESI-HPLC-MS/MS experiment and database searchi. Results and conclusion The proteomic analysis of G-OSCC tissue enabled the identification of proteins that are potentially related to the disease; these proteins can be considered as signature molecules for diagnostic and prognostic tumor markers.

This document contains further description of some of the methods used in this study, supporting figures and tables containing the results of all models.