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Diagnostic Enigma: Spindle Cell Sarcoma of the Aorta Presenting as Pulmonary Embolism and Chronic Anaemia
Get PDFPrimary aortic sarcoma is a rare and aggressive malignancy with only approximately 190 cases reported in the literature. While angiosarcoma and intimal sarcomas represent an estimated 67.7% of malignant aortic tumours, spindle cell sarcomas are even more exclusive, consisting of only 0.9% of malignant aortic tumours. Differentiated from other malignant aortic tumours, spindle cell sarcomas are of mesenchymal origin and usually express vimentin and osteopontin. Clinical presentations are variable and nonspecific, ranging from back pain, abdominal pain or elevated blood pressure, misleading to differentials like pulmonary emboli or aortic aneurysms such as in our case here. In this article, we discuss the finding of an extremely rare aortic sarcoma masquerading as a pulmonary embolism. The patient underwent surgical resection; however, the course was complicated by the development of brain metastases and intracranial haemorrhage. The literature is expanding regarding the evolution of adjuvant chemotherapy and radiation therapy in the treatment of these patients. The exact pathogenesis of spindle cell sarcomas is unknown but thought to be related to the MDM2-p53 pathway. The development of spindle cell sarcomas may be related to Li-Fraumeni syndrome, which should be on the differential for these patients. This case highlights the importance of identifying aortic sarcomas in patients who present with signs and symptoms of peripheral embolization as the diagnosis can be easily misconstrued for thrombus or aortic aneurysm, leading to a delay in proper and timely management. We herein emphasize that aortic sarcomas should be included in the clinician’s working differential due to the poor prognosis and outcomes that these aggressive tumours carry
La Grotta paleolitica di Roccia San Sebastiano (Mondragone, CE). Una metodologia per l’analisi dei dati in spazi simbolici
Get PDFThe Prehistory of the Mondragone area, in the province of Caserta, emerged in its importance thanks to the results of systematic surveys carried out since 1994 by the University of Naples “Federico II” and the Museum Biagio Greco together with the Archeological Superintendence of Naples and Caserta. Since 2001, the Museum has accomplished regular excavation campaigns of the very important Upper and Middle Palaeolithic deposit in the large cave opening in the site of Roccia di San Sebastiano, which represents the only evidence of Palaeolithic frequentation systematically and stratigraphically studied in the territory included between the Northern Campania coast and the Southern Latium coast. On the basis of such evidences, the authors illustrate a project aimed to produce a detailed territorial study to understand the dynamics of the frequentation and settlement of the area during Palaeolithic (Musterian, Uluzzian, Aurignazian and Gravettian) and the cultural behaviours of last Neanderthals and first Homo sapiens groups. The latest excavation campaigns allowed to unearth Uluzzian layers in two sectors of the cave and to investigate the Mousterian levels, from which a deciduous molar of a Neanderthal child comes. Moreover they permitted to consolidate the study of symbolic activities in the cave. Digital and tridimensional documentation techniques have been adopted for the description of the excavation surfaces and to understand the symbolic activities consisting in both parietal and mobiliary art evidences. The storage and elaboration of data is realized in a 3D application in order to elaborate detailed intra-site analysis in a predictive pattern of activities. This model allows the management of digital data in a single spatial system of representation, in which the digital copies of places, excavations areas and objects coincide with the relational matrices between the archaeological data and the possible events recorded in the physical layers
Rapporto sulle attività svolte dal CNR Edizioni nel periodo 2016-2020
Get PDFL’Area Editoria (d’ora in avanti Cnr Edizioni) dell’Unità Comunicazione e Relazioni con il Pubblico, afferente alla Direzione Centrale Servizi per la Ricerca del CNR, svolge attività editoriali a supporto della rete dell’Ente curando la realizzazione, la promozione e la vendita delle opere pubblicate con il marchio Cnr Edizioni o con uno degli altri marchi editoriali del CNR.
L’attività, già in essere dal 2011, è stata svolta nel periodo 2016-2020 secondo delle linee guida (descritte
di seguito) che sono scaturite da un continuo e proficuo confronto con la rete scientifica dell’Ente e in risposta alle sue esigenze.
Nel presente rapporto viene altresì riportata la descrizione dello staff (ruolo e attività) che nel periodo indicato è stato impegnato in tali attività, il flusso del lavoro strutturato per punti, i risultati raggiunti e, in chiusura, un elenco di attività programmate e in parte già avviate e in attesa di compimento.
Il documento si chiude con una SWOT analysis che mostra una visione d’insieme dei punti di forza e di debolezza, delle opportunità e delle minacce di Cnr Edizioni e consente di impostare una pianificazione strategica delle sue attività per il miglior raggiungimento degli obiettivi futuri
Tullio De Mauro e il Lessico intellettuale europeo
Get PDFIl testo approfondisce alcuni aspetti della collaborazione tra Tullio
Gregory e Tullio De Mauro nei primi anni del progetto del “lessico
intellettuale europeo”. Purtroppo finora non sono emersi, dagli archivi
privati dei due studiosi, documenti che aiutino a ricostruirne le fasi. È
tuttavia lecito risalire lungo le biografie di De Mauro e Gregory e
cercare nella loro formazione scientifica, nei lavori di ricerca
concretamente svolti, gli spunti che a un certo punto poterono maturare
nella forma di un progetto di così grandi ambizioni e, per l’epoca, non
solo metodologicamente, ma anche tecnologicamente innovativo. La
preistoria del concetto di “vocabolario intellettuale” in alcuni pensatorichiave della tradizione europea fa da sfondo all’indagine di cui qui si
presentano i risultati
Progress reports on the MEDAMI 2019 and CTR research at the DMIL in i3M
Get PDFThis contribution reports on the recently held MEDAMI 2019 workshop in Valencia (15–17th May 2019). This workshop is about advanced molecular imaging and the main topic of this last edition was Imaging in Immunotherapy. Around 70 attenders met together during three days. This meeting made it possible to join medical doctors and instrumentalists. In MEDAMI 2019 it was exposed the new immunotherapies from a clinical and research point of view. It was shown the already observed improvements when using these therapies. At the same time, we heard about the difficulties and limitations of current molecular imaging in this particular field. It was clear that improvements in system sensitivity and resolution are demanded. Timing information can be utilized in different ways to improve the image quality in PET systems. Precise Coincidence Time Resolution (CTR) improves the signal-to-noise ratio and, therefore, the image contrast, allowing for instance to distinguish low uptake tumors, multicentric lesions, or tumor heterogeneity, to name but a few. Both high time resolution and angular coverage in a
PET system can improve the effective sensitivity. An example of a system benchmarking the timing resolution is the Siemens Biograph Vision with 214 ps FWHM, enhancing the detectability. The Explorer total-body PET from UC Davis improves the system sensitivity by having a 2 meters long PET scanner. Deep investigations, from different research groups, are being carried out to further push the limits of timing resolution. This work also describes some of the projects on high timing performance that are being carried out at the Detector for Molecular Imaging Lab
(DMIL) at the Institute for Instrumentation in Molecular Imaging (i3M) in Valencia. The DMIL group has extensively worked on detectors and implementation of PET systems enabling the use of accurate timing information. In this progress report we describe the results obtained at the DMIL regarding timing determination in gamma-ray detectors both based on monolithic and pixelated crystals. Although with 15 mm thick LYSO blocks it was tough to obtain values of CTR below 500 ps when using analog SiPMs and ASIC-based readout, this was improved down to 250 ps if small 3 mm size and 6 mm height pixels under the one-to-one coupling
approach were enabled. This type of approach, the one-to-one coupling, seems to benefit from the light collection in a single photosensor element and, therefore, to improve the timing properties. Monolithic blocks offer, on the contrary, advantages such as photon depth of interaction. In order to separate Compton and photoelectric events we have thought of a detector block design with a high aspect ratio, using LYSO crystals of 51 mm size vs. 3 mm thickness, read-out by the four lateral sides. We have demonstrated the possibility to reach below 2 mm FWHM spatial resolution with an energy resolution of 12%
Imaging is believing: The future of human total-body molecular imaging starts now
Get PDFExplorer brings revolution to medical imaging. The wealth of molecular/functional information provided by a single scan is overwhelming. Beyond the obvious issues of how to store and analyze this vast amount of data, and how to
fuse the PET images from the almost 200 cm long total-body PET imager with MRI images, the imaging scientists work on improving spatiotemporal resolution of the scanner. But how can we obtain better spatial and time (time of flight) resolutions at the same time? Efforts to push timing resolution down to 50 ps and potentially even down to 10 ps were initiated. While attaining ∼ 1 mm resolution in the totalbody Explorer imager is not immediately practically possible or even justifiable, due to other limiting factors such as large amount of recorded coincident events (“statistics”) necessary to produce good quality ∼ 1 mm resolution images in the human body and not just as before in the small animal body, one of the high-resolution scenarios is to imagine and start planning magnifying attachments-inserts to the Explorer scanner and a dedicated very high-performing (∼ 1 mm resolution, 100 ps or better TOF resolution and ∼30% efficiency) compact brain imager. This (Explorer + Brain) Tandem PET scanner may be closer to the ideal optimal human PET imager, if there is small interference between the two imager components to image body and brain, respectively. Other options such as 100 cm long extended Torso Explorer plus Brain Imager are also being discussed
First evidence of double-parton scattering in same-sign WW production at CMS
No full textThe search for the same-sign WW production via double-parton
scattering is presented, based on study of proton-proton collision data collected at √s = 13 TeV, using dimuon and electron-muon final states with the CMS experiment. First evidence for WW production via double-parton scattering, with a significance of 3.9 standard deviations, is presented. The measured inclusive crosssection is 1.41 ± 0.28 (stat)±0.28 (syst) pb
The MUonE experiment: A measurement of the hadronic contribution to the muon g − 2 via μ-e elastic scattering
No full textWe present the MUonE experimental proposal, which aims to determine the leading-order hadronic contribution to the muon g − 2 using a novel approach, based on the measurement of the hadronic contribution to the running of the electromagnetic coupling constant in the space-like region
Characterization of plastic scintillators equipped with SiPM for the next generation of satellites for the study of cosmic radiation
No full textThe next generation of satellite experiments for the studies of cosmic radiation will be equipped with plastic scintillators read-out by Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs), to be used as anti-coincidence detectors for gamma rays or for the identification of charged nuclei. For these applications, a high detection efficiency is required in order to ensure a high background rejection for the gamma-ray identification. The read-out design based on SiPM and the segmented geometry is one of the main aspects that can be optimized to reach this goal. During 2018 we performed a beam test campaign at the CERN PS and SPS to study the performance of a prototype of plastic scintillator tile equipped with a set of SiPMs with a beam of electrons and pions
Molecular diffusion and perfusion of biological water quantified by MRI for the diagnosis of pathological human placentas
No full textThe study aimed to find biomarkers to characterize and differentiate healthy and pathological placentas using the nuclear magnetic resonance diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) technique. Fetal and maternal placentas tissues are characterized by a different diffusion behavior. Diffusion and perfusion can be quantified using intravoxel-incoherent-motion (IVIM) model of DWI signal acquired using a specific acquisition sequence. The dataset is divided into two groups: 33 healthy subjects and 15 pathological subjects classified as Fetal Growth Restriction (FGR) by an ultrasound investigation. The perfusion fraction f has a significant difference between fetal and maternal side which is connected to the role of the villi involved in the exchange of nutrients between fetal and maternal blood. It also discriminates healthy and FGR placentas. In conclusion, diffusion and perfusion of water quantified by DWI is a powerful non-invasive, radiation-free tool for prenatal diagnosis