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Cerebral Venous Sinus Thrombosis as a Presentation of COVID-19
Get PDFCoronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). We describe the case of a 59-year-old man who presented with headache, hypertension and a single episode of fever with no other symptoms. He subsequently developed unilateral weakness. Computer tomography identified a cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST). A subsequent test for COVID-19 was positive. This is the first report of CVST as a presenting symptom of COVID-19 infection
Bilateral Isolated Phrenic Neuropathy: a Rare Cause of Dyspnoea
Get PDFBilateral diaphragm paralysis due to bilateral isolated phrenic neuropathy (BIPN) is a very rare cause of unexplained respiratory failure.
We present a 65-year-old patient with no relevant previous medical history who presented in the Pulmonology Clinic with mMRC1 dyspnoea and orthopnoea. After the medical work-up, diaphragmatic paresis was diagnosed. Inspiratory muscle training resulted in mild symptomatic improvement and treatment with noninvasive mechanical ventilation (NIV) was initiated.
This condition is generally chronic and has a poorer prognosis, compared to other cases of phrenic nerve involvement. In this case, NIV restored near-normal daily function
Sweet’s Syndrome Induced by Aromatase Inhibitor in the Treatment of Early Breast Cancer
Get PDFBackground: Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women, mainly at an early stage, allowing treatment with curative intent. Aromatase inhibitors are widely used in the adjuvant treatment of oestrogen receptor-positive breast cancer, mainly in postmenopausal women. The most frequent adverse events associated with these therapies are musculoskeletal symptoms and an increased risk of bone fractures. Cutaneous adverse events have been rarely described. Sweet’s syndrome can present as an idiopathic disorder in addition to being malignancy-associated or drug-induced.
Case presentation: We report the case of a 69-year old woman, diagnosed with early stage breast cancer, who underwent breast-conserving surgery, followed by adjuvant radio and endocrine treatment with letrozole 2.5 mg daily, for a foreseeable duration of 5 years. Three months after starting letrozole, she presented with sudden fever and exuberant and painful erythematous skin papules and plaques on her upper body. After a full work-up and exclusion of other potential causes, a skin biopsy confirmed the presence of dermal oedema and a diffuse neutrophilic infiltrate, suggesting Sweet’s syndrome. After discontinuation of letrozole and treatment with corticosteroids, the patient fully recovered. She resumed adjuvant treatment with tamoxifen, without symptom recurrence.
Conclusions: Sweet’s syndrome is a rare condition and an association with aromatase inhibitors has not been previously reported. Although its occurrence has already been observed in the onset of malignancies such as breast cancer, aromatase inhibitors must be added to the list of potential causes of drug-induced Sweet’s syndrome
Capienza delle forme vascolari, da un metodo open source all’uso di modelli regressivi: il caso dell’insediamento protostorico del Monte Cimino
Get PDFThe volume of ceramic vessels provides several information about their use. However, due to the fragmentation of pottery coming from settlement sites, data concerning the volume are rarely published. The first goal of this paper is presenting a new method to calculate the volume starting from the archaeological drawings. The dataset could be extended with a predictive regression analysis. The sample analyzed involves cups and bowls found on the top of Monte Cimino (Viterbo-Italy), a settlement and cult site dated to the Final Bronze Age (ca. 1150-950/925 BC)
Archeologia preventiva e ricerca nella valle del Nevola (Marche, Italia). La scoperta “programmata” di una necropoli a Corinaldo
Get PDFThe paper discusses the recent results achieved by the ArcheoNevola project, carried out by the University of Bologna within an agreement with several institutions aimed at the accomplishment of an operation of development-led archaeology in Corinaldo, in the middle Valley of the Nevola torrent (northern Marche, Ancona). The programme of activities reserved large space to the employment of non-invasive techniques, besides to the analysis of the historical documents and cartography and trial archaeological digs. The accurate process of evaluation has led to the important discovery of a Picene necropolis with circular funerary monuments and an extraordinary princely tomb with a survived rich grave-goods, marginally occupied by later Roman burials. Within this finding geophysics played a crucial role, as for the preventative understanding of the archaeological potential of the site as well as for the needs connected to the planning project underway on the area
Fast electronics for particle Time-Of-Flight measurement, with focus on the SAMPIC ASIC
Get PDFMeasuring the Time Of Flight (TOF) of particles with picosecond (ps) precision opens new fields for particle physics and medical instrumentation. It indeed permits the localization of particle production with a few mm precision which is of direct use for PET scanners, but also permits associating particles coming from a common primary interaction in the case of high background in physics experiments. The progress in ultra-fast digitizing electronics (including high-end oscilloscopes) demonstrated that ps timing accuracy can be reached simply by directly sampling the detector signal at high rates and extracting time information by interpolation of the samples located in and around the leading edge of the signal. But when one has to deal with high integration levels, large number of channels, or high counting rates, a compact solution is mandatory and the new concept of
Waveform Time to Digital Converter (WTDC) permits facing all these constraints in a very compact and powerful way. This paper will summarize the requirements for high-precision time measurements, explain the concept of WTDC, then focus on the SAMPIC ASIC and its associated boards and modules. The main characteristics will be described as well as the performances obtained on test benches and when
coupling the modules to fast detectors
A strategy for the detection of CNO solar neutrinos with the Borexino experiment
No full textBorexino is a large liquid scintillator detector with unprecedented intrinsic radiopurity levels, located at the LNGS laboratory in Italy. Its primary goal is to perform a real-time solar neutrinos spectroscopy, and the most recent result consists in the simultaneous measurement of the fluxes of neutrinos from the pp, 7Be and pep reactions, from the pp chain. The current goal of the Borexino Collaboration consists in the detection of the solar neutrinos from the CNO cycle reactions: a general strategy to pursue this measurement will be outlined in the following
Semileptonic B decays at LHCb
No full textIn the Standard Model of particle physics, the coupling of the gauge bosons to leptons is independent of their flavour. This property is called lepton flavour universality and it has been well tested. Any violation of lepton flavour universality would be a clear sign of physics beyond the Standard Model. Semileptonic decays of b hadrons to final states with a charmed meson and a charmed lepton are copiously produced at the LHC and provide a powerful tool to search for New Physics particles which preferentially couple to the 2nd and 3rd generations of leptons. In these proceedings, an overview of the recent searches of lepton flavour universality violation in b → clν transitions at the LHCb experiment will be given. The results here presented are based on an integrated luminosity of 3 fb−1 collected in proton-proton collision at centre-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV by the LHCb experiment
The LHCb RICH detectors between present and future
No full textDuring Run1 and Run2 the two RICH detectors operated continuosly at the luminosity of ∼ 4 × 1032 cm−2s −1 and provided an excellent particle identification information (PID) for final-state charged hadrons. In order to be able
to operate at the luminosity of ∼ 2 × 1033 cm−2s−1 from the start of Run3 in 2021 the two RICH detectors must be upgraded; the former HPD (Hybrid Photon Detectors) will be replaced by commercial MaPMTs, the optics of the upstream RICH will be modified and the electronics will be upgraded to cope with the challenges of the 40 MHz readout rate. In this paper the current status of the upgrade will be presented. The start of the HL-LHC phase in 2027 provides an opportunity to increase the luminosity up to ∼ 1034 cm−2s−1. To be able to operate the RICH detectors in this much harsher environment a further upgrade will be mandatory; in this paper possible photodetector candidates will be discussed along with new ideas to improve the PID efficiency using time information