11,788,233 research outputs found
80. Carpanese L, Pizzi G, Golfieri R, Fiore F, Gasparini D (2006). A Phase II Clinical trial on hepatic intra-arterial injection of Yttrium-90 Microspheres in unresectable colorectal liver metastases refractory to standard i.v. chemotherapy. Preliminary results. Abstract First World Conference on Interventional Oncology (WCIO). Cernobbio, June 12-16, 2006
No full textSEISMIC RISK ASSESSMENT AT A TERRITORIAL SCALE BASED ON MACHINE LEARNING
No full textLa valutazione del rischio sismico rappresenta una sfida in Paesi con una significativa pericolosità sismica e un patrimonio edilizio vulnerabile come l'Italia. Soprattutto quando il rischio deve essere analizzato su larga scala, la sua stima può comportare analisi costose in termini economici e di tempo, a causa della necessità di definire numerose variabili che possono influenzare l'esposizione e la vulnerabilità.
In questo lavoro è stato sviluppato un modello di fragilità su base meccanica per gli edifici residenziali italiani in muratura. Il modello si basa sulla classificazione del patrimonio edilizio in macro-tipologie, simulando inoltre la possibile presenza di interventi anti-sismici.
Anche l'esposizione deve essere correttamente valutata: tecniche di intelligenza artificiale possono rivelarsi utili per effettuare stime in modo rapido ed efficiente. In particolare, le immagini satellitari possono essere utilizzate per raccogliere automaticamente i dati degli edifici, per poi estrarre foto street view per ogni edificio e allenare reti neurali convoluzionali a riconoscere specifiche caratteristiche di interesse dalle immagini, in particolare le stesse su cui si basa il modello di vulnerabilità.
La fase successiva di questo lavoro consiste nel combinare la vulnerabilità e l'esposizione con la pericolosità sismica all'interno di una piattaforma di calcolo in grado di valutare il rischio sismico, espresso come costo di riparazione, numero di edifici inutilizzabili, vittime e sfollati.
Queste informazioni sono fondamentali per condurre indagini mirate e stabilire criteri di priorità per le misure di adeguamento sismico. Gli strumenti proposti possono essere utilizzati per gestire risorse nelle fasi pre e post-terremoto e per elaborare piani di recupero efficaci.Seismic risk assessment is a major challenge in countries with a significant seismic hazard and a highly vulnerable built heritage, such as Italy. Especially when the risk needs to be analyzed at a large scale, the assessment can entail very time-consuming and costly studies, since it is necessary to define numerous variables that can influence seismic exposure and vulnerability.
In this thesis, a mechanically based seismic fragility model has been developed for Italian masonry residential buildings. This model is based on the classification of the building stock into macro-typologies, also considering possible seismic retrofit measures.
Also exposure needs to be properly assessed: artificial intelligence techniques can be helpful to evaluate it in a quick and efficient way. Specifically, satellite images are used to automatically collect building data, street view photos are extracted for each building and Convolutional Neural Networks are trained to recognize specific features of interest from pictures, particularly the same ones on which the vulnerability model is based.
The following step of this work consists in combining vulnerability and exposure with the seismic hazard within a seismic risk calculation platform that can evaluate seismic damage and risk, expressed as repair or reconstruction costs, number of unusable buildings, casualties, and displaced people.
This information can be important for carrying out targeted investigations and establishing priority criteria for seismic retrofit measures. These seismic risk prevention and mitigation tools can be used by emergency authorities to manage resources in the pre- and post-earthquake phases, as well as to select effective emergency response and recovery plans
A natural polymer (NPX) as a new adjuvant for breast cancer vaccination strategies
No full textThe use of proteins or peptides as immunogens is attractive for the development of vaccines, especially cancer vaccines, but requires efficient and safe adjuvant formulations to overcome their intrinsic weak immunogenicity. Although dozens of different adjuvants have been shown to be effective in preclinical and clinical studies, alum remains the only one approved for human use in the USA and the most employed worldwide, but it turned out to be inefficient in cancer vaccine formulations. Indeed, the prerequisites for an ideal cancer adjuvant differ from conventional adjuvants. Since cancer vaccines target self-antigens, the ideal cancer adjuvant must be extremely potent to circumvent immune tolerance, but it must also be safe to avoid autoimmune reactions. Of note, recent studies indicate that effective therapeutic and preventive cancer vaccines require the induction of a more balanced T helper 1 (Th1)/Th2 immune response, characterized by the presence of a strong cytotoxic CD8+ T lymphocyte (CTL) activity, and the production of IgG subclasses with specific effector functions. For example, efficient tumor prevention in mice is associated with high levels of IgG2a and IgG2b subclasses, which are considered the most potent inducers of complement-dependent cytotoxicity (CDC) and antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC) in rodents. To solve all these problems, new generation vaccines often incorporate toll-like receptors (TLRs) agonists. Among them, natural polymers (NPs) that can act as damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) or pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs), are emerging as a new efficient class of vaccine adjuvants due to their ability to orchestrate the cross-talk between innate and adaptive immunity. In particular, NPs induce the maturation of dendritic cells (DCs) and finely regulate the balance between Th1 and Th2 responses, thus inducing potent and long-lasting humoral and cellular responses. Moreover, they are biocompatible, biodegradable, non-toxic, non-immunogenic, and non-inflammatory.
This project aimed at validating our NP, called NPX for patent constraints, as a new TLR agonist and carrier of immunogens for the design of more efficient and safer cancer vaccines, and comparing its adjuvanticity with alum. To this aim, NPX was chemically linked to the extracellular domain (ECD) of the rat form of the epidermal growth factor receptor (rHER2/neu), or to short peptide sequences derived from the ECD of rHER2/neu, and the resulting bioconjugates were used for immunization of both BALB/c and BALB-neuT transgenic mice.
In this work, we demonstrated that NPX has an extremely satisfactory safety profile, as no local side effects were observed in vaccinated mice. Moreover, NPX induced strong antigen-specific immune reactions very efficiently. In fact, even though both alum- and NPX-adjuvanted formulations induced high humoral immune responses against rHER2/neu, NPX-vaccinated BALB/c mice disclosed IgG titers that were about two-fold higher than those calculated for alum. Of note, only conjugation with NPX induced a detectable humoral response against rHER2/neu-derived peptides. Both adjuvants induced high production of different IgG subclasses, but despite similar IgG1 titers NPX-vaccinated mice disclosed also higher IgG2a and IgG2b levels. The strong elicitation of the three IgG subclasses and the production of both Th1 and Th2-type cytokines such as IL-12p70, IFN-γ, IL-2, IL-6, and IL-10, confirmed the ability of NPX to induce a balanced Th1/Th2 response. Moreover, the different quality and quantity of IgG subclasses, and their superior ability to recognize rHER2/neu in its native conformation likely reflected on the better functionality of NPX-induced antibodies in triggering complement-mediated specific lysis of rHER2/neu-positive cells. Interestingly, NPX not only induced humoral responses that persisted over time, but also selected mature B cell clones secreting antibodies with an improved ability to bind rHER2/neu in its native conformation and to mediate effector functions. The robust immune responses induced by NPX proved to be effective in both the prophylactic and therapeutic settings; indeed, NPX-adjuvanted vaccine formulation prevented and significantly delayed tumor growth in tumor challenged mice. Interestingly, antitumor responses seemed in part to be mediated by NPX ability to induce also CTL responses, which were detected only in NPX-vaccinated groups. Finally, while both alum- and NPX-adjuvanted vaccines proved to be successful in breaking tolerance against rHER2/neu in BALB-neuT transgenic mice, NPX-vaccinated mice displayed IgG titers that were two-fold higher than those observed with alum. Interestingly, in transgenic mice NPX vaccination resulted in a better Th1/Th2 balance than in BALB/c mice. However, only NPX-induced antibodies were able to recognize rHER2/neu in its native conformation. This likely explains the capacity of NPX-based vaccination to protect from or delay the growth of spontaneous tumors in BALB-neuT mice, whereas alum completely failed to induce any protective response.
Taken together, our data show that NPX is a safe and powerful adjuvant that could be exploited for the development of new HER2/neu vaccination strategies. In fact, NPX is effective in enhancing the magnitude, breadth, quality, and longevity of specific humoral and cellular immune responses to antigens, without causing toxicity. Importantly, these effects can be achieved even with a strongly reduced antigen dose
Anastomosi ureterali nella neovescica ileale: Tecniche a confronto.
No full textAnastomosi ureterali nella neovescica ileale: Tecniche a confronto
A Phase II Clinical Trial on Hepatic Intra-arterial injection of Yttrium-90 microspheres in Unresectable Colorectal Liver Metastases Refractory to standard i.v. Chemotherapy: Preliminary experience and clinical results
No full textTargeting prostate cancer with the anti-PSMA scFvD2B: a theranostic promise for nuclear medicine
No full textAnalysis of prior procedures on outcomes following radioembolization for unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma.
No full textA.R.C.A. Project. Un prototipo software per l'archiviazione, la ricerca e la comunicazione del dato archeologico.
No full textARCA Project (acronym of Archiving, Research, and Communication in Archaeology) is a multidisciplinary Ph.D research project. The aim is to create a software package for the online publication of archaeological research. Before the development of the application, we conducted a series of bibliographic studies on the openness of online publications and Cultural Heritage data, as well as the current state-of-the-art of “cultural web”. In the preliminary phase and in the final phases of development, two user studies had been made. During the first year an anonymous questionnaire was created and disseminated, with the aim of collecting opinions about functional feedback and user needs. One hundred people have been invited to take part in this evaluation process. Usability tests, instead, were performed at the end of the application development, and were aimed at detecting any potential difficulties and identifying any gaps or needed changes. The correct functioning of the software has been tested by inserting data from an archaeological excavation conducted by the University of Padua: Ca’ Tron, a multidisciplinary project, already closed and not yet published. The end result is a product that is intuitive for most users, aimed to ease the publication of media related to archaeological sites and the sharing of this very specific knowledge at different levels with experts or with a wider audienc
A double-blind comparative study of the safety and efficacy of iomeprol in renal intra-arterial digital subtraction angiography
No full textThis randomised, double-blind, parallel group study was to compare the safety, tolerance and diagnostic efficacy of iomeprol and iopamidol, both at an iodine concentration of 150 mgI/ml, in 40 patients with arterial hypertension who required renal intraarterial digital subtraction angiography (IA-DSA) for suspected renovascular stenosis. All patients underwent extensive pre- and post-contrast clinical, instrumental and laboratory controls for safety assessments. The tolerance to the test contrast media was evaluated in terms of discomfort associated with the injection of the test compounds. Image quality was prospectively graded by two independent readers according to a five-point scale as follows: 1, insufficient; 2, sufficient; 3, good; 4, excellent; E, excessive. The quality of vascular opacification in the region of interest was rated as diagnostic in 87.8% of radiographs obtained in the iomeprol group and in 84.5% in the iopamidol group, without significant differences between the two study groups. The results of angiography were always useful for subsequent patient management. The procedure was always well tolerated. There were no clinically significant changes in vital signs, ECG and laboratory parameters during the study in both groups. The results of our study show that iomeprol 150 mgI/ml, and iopamidol 150 mgI/ml are equally effective, well tolerated and safe contrast agents when used for IA-DSA
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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