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Background: The role of the nasal epithelium in the induction of a proper cytokine response in normal subjects and subjects with allergic rhinitis is still not completely elucidated. Methodology: We aimed to compare nasal epithelial immune responses in allergic rhinitis patients of different ages compared to healthy volunteers. Primary nasal epithelial cells from 47 subjects (33 normal and 17 with allergic rhinitis) were collected and cultured. Their unstimulated supernatants were analysed for 21 cytokines and chemokines. Statistical analysis was performed with the R statistical software and the RStudio interface. Results: Differences of the spontaneous release of epithelial cytokines and chemokines were noticed between the two study groups. The levels of GMCSF, MIP1A, MIP1B, IL28A, TNFA, CCL5 were significantly lower in the allergic rhinitis group compared to healthy volunteers’ group, independent of age. Most differences were noticed in the younger allergic rhinitis group (0-12 years old). Conclusions: Despite the cross-sectional nature of the study and the limited number of subjects, allergic rhinitis appears to be associated with dysfunction of cytokine and chemokine spontaneous release from nasal epithelial cells which may represent an abnormal innate immunity maturation pattern.

Abstract. The research aimed to study the morphological characteristics of kidneys after intraperitoneal administration of biologically active compositions (BACs) in rats with infravesical obstruction (IVO). Methods. IVO was reproduced by surgical ligation. BACs were injected intraperitoneally for 10 days. The morphometric parameters of the kidneys were determined by examining their structure (the areas of renal corpuscle, glomerulus, the cavity of the glomerular capsule, outer and inner diameters of the tubules, the tubular index, the outer diameter and area of the vascular lumen). The experimental animals were divided into the following groups: Group 1 was saved as an intact control group, Group 2 received “Cortexin”, Group 3 was given CMCNMG, Group 4 received BCM, and Group 5 was not treated (U). Results. BACs obtained from a culture of native mantle gliocytes (MG) and BCM were involved in the remodeling of the kidneys’ structure being changed during IVO. The renal corpuscle area was found to be increased in groups 2, 4, and 5 by 42.3%, 193.9%, and 72.3%, respectively, compared with the control group. At the same time, the extent of renal corpuscle hypertrophy in group 3 was minimal and approached the control values. The glomerulus area expanded by 35.4%, 181.1%, and 34% in animals of groups 3, 4, and 5, respectively, compared with the control group. However, the difference in the index between group 5 and BAC-treated animals was not significant, except for group 4. The Bowman's capsule area increased by 117.6%, 235.8%, and 186%, in groups 2, 4 and 5, respectively, compared with the control group. Interestingly, the values in groups 1 and 3 were in agreement but differed from group 5. The lowest values of outer and inner diameters of renal tubules were determined in group 3, which were close to those in the control group but significantly different from those of other groups. An increased tubular index (by 1.35 and 1.4 times) was revealed in groups 3 and 4, compared with other groups. The lowest values were found in groups 2 and 5. The maximum values of the average diameter and area of the vessel lumen were determined in groups 3 and 4, and the minimum values were obtained in group 5. It is noteworthy that the indices of these groups were significantly different from those of group 5. Conclusions. The research results suggest that the phenomena of glomerulosclerosis, tubular atrophy, and renal interstitial fibrosis in rats can be alleviated, as well as the morphological structure of rat kidneys can be partially restored against the background of IVO after administration of CMCNMG and, to a lesser extent, BCM due to the multidirectional action of neurotrophic factors.

Abstract Neutrinoless double-beta decay is a key process in particle physics. Its experimental investigation is the only viable method that can establish the Majorana nature of neutrinos, providing at the same time a sensitive inclusive test of lepton number violation. CROSS (Cryogenic Rare-event Observatory with Surface Sensitivity) aims at developing and testing a new bolometric technology to be applied to future large-scale experiments searching for neutrinoless double-beta decay of the promising nuclei 100Mo and 130Te. The limiting factor in large-scale bolometric searches for this rare process is the background induced by surface radioactive contamination, as shown by the results of the CUORE experiment. The basic concept of CROSS consists of rejecting this challenging background component by pulse-shape discrimination, assisted by a proper coating of the faces of the crystal containing the isotope of interest and serving as energy absorber of the bolometric detector. In this paper, we demonstrate that ultra-pure superconductive Al films deposited on the crystal surfaces act successfully as pulse-shape modifiers, both with fast and slow phonon sensors. Rejection factors higher than 99.9% of α surface radioactivity have been demonstrated in a series of prototypes based on crystals of Li2MoO4 and TeO2. We have also shown that point-like energy depositions can be identified up to a distance of ∼ 1 mm from the coated surface. The present program envisions an intermediate experiment to be installed underground in the Canfranc laboratory (Spain) in a CROSS-dedicated facility. This experiment, comprising ∼ 3×1025 nuclei of 100Mo, will be a general test of the CROSS technology as well as a worldwide competitive search for neutrinoless double-beta decay, with sensitivity to the effective Majorana mass down to 70 meV in the most favorable conditions.

Utilizaram-se 13 cabras gestantes da raça Saanen, para estudo das características da gestação a partir do 60º dia, segundo as técnicas de fetometria e avaliação morfológica fetal, utilizando-se ultra-sonografia em modo-B. Analisaram-se: diâmetro orbital (DO), diâmetro interorbital (DIO), diâmetro biorbital (DBO), diâmetro biparietal (DBP), comprimento do fêmur (CF), comprimento da tíbia (CT), comprimento do rádio (CR), diâmetro do tórax (DT), diâmetro abdominal transversal (DAT), diâmetro abdominal anteroposterior (DAP), diâmetro occípito-frontal (DOF), diâmetro transversal renal (RIMT), diâmetro longitudinal renal (RIML), comprimento da escápula (ESC), comprimento do metacarpo (MEC), medida da pelve (COX) e comprimento do úmero (CU). As médias dos valores achados foram correlacionadas com a idade fetal. As equações de regressão inversa foram criadas para cada parâmetro, sendo que DBP (R²=0,93), CF (R²=0,95), CU (R²=0,96), DO (R²= 0,84) e DAT (R²= 0,91) foram as variáveis de melhor correlação estatística, cuja equação pode ser representada pela fórmula: idade fetal = 34,5 + 4,8DBP + 9,9 CF - 7,5 CU - 2,3 DO + 6,1 DAT.Fetal morphology analysis and real-time ultrasound techniques were used on 13 pregnant Saanen goats for studying the gestational characteristics. Analysis began on the 60th day of pregnancy and the parameters observed were: orbital diameter (OD), inter-orbiall diameter (IOD), bi-orbital diameter (BOD), bi-parietal diameter (BPD), femoral length (FL), tibial length (LT), radius length (RL), thoracic diameter (TD), transversal abdominal diameter (TAD), anteroposterior abdominal diameter (APAD), occipital-frontal diameter (OFD), transversal renal diameter (TRD), longitudinal renal diameter (LRD), scapular length (SL), metacarpal length (ML), pelvic length (PL) and humeral length (HL). Mean values were correlated to fetal age and inverse regression equations were created for each parameter. Results obtained showed BPD (R²=0.93), FL (R²=0.95), HL (R²=0.96), OD (R²= 0.84) and TAD (R²= 0.91) as the parameters with better statistical correlation to fetal age using the equation: Fetal age = 34.5 + 4.8BPD + 9.9 FL - 7.5 HL - 2.3 OD + 6.1 TAD.

RESUMO Os tumores do sistema digestório não são comuns na medicina veterinária e as neoplasias de estômago representam menos de 1% de todos os tumores malignos. O leiomiossarcoma é o segundo tumor que mais acomete o trato gastrointestinal de cães, com predisposição para as regiões de jejuno e ceco, mas qualquer porção pode ser afetada, desde o esôfago até o reto. O presente trabalho relata um caso em um canino da raça Shar-pei, macho, com 13 anos de idade e histórico de episódios eméticos pós- prandiais e emagrecimento progressivo havia oito meses. Após avaliação radiográfica e endoscópica, foi indicada intervenção cirúrgica e observada tumoração gástrica associada a hérnia de hiato. O diagnóstico de leiomiossarcoma gástrico foi estabelecido por meio de análise histopatológica. O paciente apresentou pouco tempo de sobrevida, entretanto destaca-se a raridade desse tipo de neoplasia gástrica e da associação desse tipo tumoral com hérnias de hiato, assim como a importância da análise histopatológica para o correto diagnóstico desse tipo de patologia.

Purpose: This study assessed (a) the impact of a technology-aided programme on the leisure and communication engagement of persons with advanced amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and (b) the opinion of rehabilitation and care personnel regarding the programme., Method: The programme's impact was assessed with four participants who were allowed to activate leisure and communication options through basic responses (e.g. knee, finger or lip movements) and microswitches. Forty-two care and health professionals rated the programme after watching video clips of persons with ALS (three of the four involved in this study and three involved in previous studies) during and outside of the programme., Results: The programme was effective with all participants. Their mean percentages of session time with independently initiated leisure and communication engagements were zero during baseline and increased to between nearly 70 and 80 during the intervention. The care and health professionals rated the technology-aided programme as beneficial for the participants' positive engagement and social image, fairly practical for daily contexts and interesting from a personal standpoint., Conclusions: The programme might be viewed as a viable resource for persons with advanced ALS. Implications for Rehabilitation A programme characterised by versatility, simplicity and relatively low cost could be considered practically relevant for persons with ALS and their contexts. A programme that is effective in fostering participants' independent leisure and communication engagement and is positively rated by care and rehabilitation personnel is more likely to be accepted and used with consistency. Any programme directed at persons affected by ALS needs to be adapted to the persons' progressive deterioration, starting from the response and microswitch used for accessing the programme's options.

The celebrated KAM and Nekhoroshev theorems provide essential informations about the long term dynamics of quasi-integrable Hamiltonian systems. In particular, long-term instability of the action variables can be observed only in the so-called Arnold web, which is the complement in the phase-space of all KAM invariant tori, and only on the very long times which depend exponentially on an inverse power of the perturbation parameter. Though the structure of the Arnold's web was clearly explained already on Arnold's 1963 article, its numerical detection with a precision sufficient to reveal exponentially slow diffusion of the actions through the web itself has become possible only in the last decade with the extensive computation of dynamical indicators. In this paper, we first review the detection method that allowed us to compute the Arnold web, and then we discuss its use to study the long-term diffusion through the web itself. We also show that the Arnold web of a quasi-integrable Hamiltonian system is useful to track the diffusion of orbits of weakly dissipative perturbations of the same Hamiltonian system.

We investigate numerically a conjecture by N. N. Nekhoroshev about the influence of a geometric property, called steepness, on the long term stability of quasi-integrable systems. In a Nekhoroshev's 1977 paper, it is conjectured that, among the steep systems with the same number ν of frequencies, the convex ones are the most stable, and it is suggested to investigate numerically the problem. Following this suggestion, we numerically study and compare the diffusion of the actions in quasi-integrable systems with different steepness properties in a large range of variation of the perturbation parameter ɛ and different dimensions of phase space corresponding to ν = 3 and ν = 4 (ν ≤ 2 is not significant for the conjecture). For six dimensional maps (ν = 4), our numerical experiments perfectly agree with the Nekhoroshev conjecture: for both convex and non convex cases, the numerically computed diffusion coefficient D of the actions is compatible with an exponential fit, and the convex case is definitely more stable than the steep one. For four dimensional maps (ν = 3), since we find that in the steep case D(ɛ) has large oscillations around an exponential behaviour, the agreement of our numerical experiments with the conjecture is not sharp, and it is found by considering a sup over different initial conditions.

We represent graphically the evolution of the set of resonances of a quasi-integrable dynamical system, the so-called Arnold web, whose structure is crucial for the stability properties of the system. The basis of our representation is the use of an original numerical method, whose definition is directly related to the dynamics of orbits, and the careful choice of a model system. We also show the transition from the Nekhoroshev stability regime to the Chirikov diffusive one, which is a generic nontrivial phenomenon occurring in many physical processes, such as slow chaotic transport in the asteroid belt and beam-beam interaction.