6 research outputs found
Gender role attitudes in Italy: 1988-2008 - a path-dependency story of traditionalism
No full textConsidering gender role attitudes as part of a broader cultural change related to the modernization process, this study adopts a path-dependency approach to analyze the support for the role of women in the public sphere in Italy since 1988. Modernization processes varied across Italian regions and the paper explores how different gender patterns developed accordingly. Using pooled data from European Values Survey, World Values Survey, and International Social Survey Program, the author assesses if this specific change is part of the postmaterialist shift and investigates the mechanisms of change carrying out cohort decomposition methods. The results address a reinforcement of traditionalism mainly due to the period effect that shows regional differences given by history
Simulation and Design Considerations of a Dual Layer Plastic Scintillator Intra-Operative Probe for Radiolabelled Tumours
No full text<p>Source code and data for the simulation of a Direction Charged Particle Detector using GATE. There is one example for the simulation of the probe taking into account only the positron physics and another with the optical photons.</p>
Assessment of a Silicon-Photomultiplier-Based Platform for the Measurement of Intracellular Calcium Dynamics with Targeted Aequorin
No full textCa2+ is among the most important intracellular second messengers participating in a plethora of biological processes, and the measurement of Ca2+ fluctuations is significant in the phenomenology of the underlying processes. Aequorin-based Ca2+ probes represent an invaluable tool for reliable measurement of Ca2+ concentrations and dynamics in different subcellular compartments. However, their use is limited due to the lack on the market of ready-to-use, cost-effective, and portable devices for the detection and readout of the low-intensity bioluminescence signal produced by these probes. Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) are rapidly evolving solid-state sensors for low light detection, with single photon sensitivity and photon number resolving capability, featuring low cost, low voltage, and compact format. Thus, they may represent the sensors of choice for the development of such devices and, more in general, of a new generation of multipurpose bioluminescence detectors suitable for cell biology studies. Ideally, a detector customized for these purposes must combine high dynamic range with high fidelity in reconstructing the light intensity signal temporal profile. In this article, the ability to perform aequorin-based intracellular Ca2+ measurements using a multipurpose, low-cost setup exploiting SiPMs as the sensors is demonstrated. SiPMs turn out to assure performances comparable to those exhibited by a custom-designed photomultiplier tube-based aequorinometer. Moreover, the flexibility of SiPM-based devices might pave the way toward routinely and wide scale application of innovative biophysical protocols
Characterization of scintillating materials in use for brachytherapy fiber based dosimeters
No full textAbstract:
This paper reports the characterization of two scintillating materials in powder form, Gadox and YVO embedded in a light-activated resin, used in a probe developed for oncological brachytherapy in-vivo dosimetry. The materials were characterized in terms of internal absorption, scintillation decay time, and light yield. The measurement of the optical characteristics highlighted a significant internal absorption at the scintillation light wavelength, with values of 6.5 dB/mm for Gadox and 14.1 dB/mm for YVO. Measurements of the characteristics scintillation time and of the light yield were performed with a novel method based on single photon counting, profiting from the long decay time of the materials under study. Measurements have been complemented by a two-step simulation with Geant4 to study the energy deposition followed by a ZEMAX OpticStudio® ray tracing to estimate the light collection efficiency. The decay time for scintillating materials were measured to be τGadox = (458 ± 3 ± 3) μs and τYVO = (451 ± 8 ± 3) μs and the estimated values of the light yield are (7.1 ± 0.5) × 10⁴ photon/MeV for Gadox and (4.8 ± 0.5) × 10⁴ photon/MeV for YVO
Corrigendum to "Impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the care of patients with acute and chronic aortic conditions" (European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery (2021) 59 (1096-1102) DOI: 10.1093/ejcts/ezaa452)
No full textIn the original version of this article, the first name of author Vitaly Sorokin was misspelled. This has now been corrected above and in the full article
