Archivio Istituzionale della Ricerca- Università del Salento
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Measuring gut microbiome as a colorectal cancer screening tool: potential and challenges
No full textIntroduction: Colorectal cancer (CRC) represents a global public health challenge, ranking as the third most prevalent cancer globally. Population-based screening programs for average-risk populations have proven effective in reducing incidence and mortality of CRC through early detection of cancer. The fecal immunochemical test (FIT), the standard diagnostic method in many nations, still falls short in diagnostic effectiveness, resulting in undetected adenomas and, more significantly, unnecessary colonoscopies. Areas covered: One of the primary research focuses in the field of CRC is the discovery of new, noninvasive biomarkers. Recent studies, including metagenomic meta-analyses, have discovered common microbial signatures able to reproducibly discriminate between patients with CRC and healthy controls. Based on this evidence, international guidelines have recently recommended the use of microbiome-based biomarkers for CRC screening in clinical settings, although such studies have yet to be conducted. Expert opinion: This field of research needs considerable multidisciplinary efforts, including large and geographically different meta-cohorts, and the application of state-of-the-art computational approaches, to identify reproducible signatures able to predict early lesions. Such diagnostic tool would revolutionize CRC screening. More widely, it would provide a mind-set shift in the clinical and scientific community promoting the exploitation of diagnostic and therapeutic microbiome tools in clinical practice
Search for single-production of vector-like quarks decaying into Wb in the fully hadronic final state in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector
No full textA search for T and Y vector-like quarks (VLQs) produced in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV and decaying into Wb in the fully hadronic final state is presented. The search uses 139 fb-1 of data collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC from 2015 to 2018. The final state is characterised by a hadronically decaying W boson with large Lorentz boost and a b-tagged jet, which are used to reconstruct the invariant mass of the vector-like quark candidate. The main background is QCD multijet production, which is estimated using a data-driven method. Upon finding no significant excess in data, mass limits at 95% confidence level are obtained as a function of the global coupling parameter, κ. The observed lower limits on the masses of Y quarks with κ=0.5 and κ=0.7 are 2.0 TeV and 2.4 TeV, respectively. For T quarks, the observed mass limits are 1.4 TeV for κ=0.5 and 1.9 TeV for κ=0.7
Ecological Education and Digital Technologies: Pedagogical Convergences for Sustainable Citizenship
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Targeting Mitochondrial Function in Plasmodium falciparum: Insight into Antimalarial Drugs and the Emerging Role of Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a Model System
No full textMalaria remains a major global health threat, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, where children under five and pregnant women are most vulnerable. Despite notable progress in reducing malaria-related morbidity and mortality, the rise of drug-resistant Plasmodium falciparum strains continues to undermine eradication efforts. In this context, the parasite’s mitochondrion has emerged as a promising target for novel antimalarial therapies due to its essential role in parasite viability throughout all life cycle stages and its marked structural and biochemical differences from the human counterpart. This review highlights recent advances in the development of compounds targeting mitochondrial function in P. falciparum and discusses the utility of Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a powerful model organism for antimalarial drug discovery. Owing to its shared eukaryotic features, genetic tractability, and capacity for heterologous expression of parasite mitochondrial proteins, S. cerevisiae offers a cost-effective and experimentally accessible platform for elucidating drug mechanisms and accelerating therapeutic development
On the indeterminacy of orthotropic material identification through natural frequencies
No full textThis article aims to address open questions in inverse problems where natural frequencies are used to characterize unknown anisotropic materials. The analysis presented illustrates both how the characterization of the material of a thin plate, through the use of natural frequencies, can suffer from an intrinsic indeterminacy and how this indeterminacy can be challenged by using unconventional geometries of the plate itself. Such unconventional geometries are analyzed to formulate inverse problems aimed at finding a unique material characterization of plates. However, these geometries demand specific analytical approaches, such as the adoption of unconventional functional bases like two-dimensional global piecewise-smooth functions (2D-GPSFs). The use of 2D-GPSFs, in analyzing the dynamics of the mentioned 2D-geometries, even constitutes an added value; in this respect, the efficiency of these function series is also compared to previous methods proposed for the analysis of the dynamics of vibrating plates with unconventional geometries. The analyses discussed are addressed through a numerical case study that demonstrates how the use of plates with a thin L-shaped geometry allows overcoming the indeterminacy issues; furthermore, it also shown how geometric complications can be implemented by employing 2D-GPSFs as a functional basis, thus extending the possibility to identify the properties of planar specimens of different geometries
Manico di specchio da Muro Leccese. Una nota
No full textThis paper identifies and highlights the discovery of a figured mirror handle at Muro Leccese. The context of the find is reconstructed, and a stylistic study of known parallels is conducted. Issues related to the fragmentary state of the object, such as its possible thesaurisation, integration into a sacred context, or even recycling, are discussed. Finally, attention is drawn to its likely origin in Locri Epizefiri, which represents an anomaly in the typical distribution of this type of mirror and oπers important evidence of the interactions involving the Messapian city of Muro Leccese
