Journals
2014 EN
Pagano Ester · Laudato Massimiliano · Griffo Michele
+1 more
Benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH) is a common condition affecting older men, with an incidence that is age‐dependent. Histological BPH, which typically develops after the age of 40 years, ranges in prevalence from >50% at 60 years to as high as 90% by 85 years of age. Typical symptoms include increased frequency of urination, nocturia, urgency, hesitancy, and weak urine stream. Conventional medicines used for the treatment of BPH include alpha blockers and 5‐alpha reductase inhibitors. This articles review the mode of action, the efficacy, and the safety, including herb‐drug interactions of the most common botanicals ( Serenoa repens , Pygeum africanum , Urtica dioica , and Cucurbita pepo ) and nutraceuticals (isoflavones, lycopene, selenium, and β‐Sitosterol) in controlling the lower urinary tract symptoms associated to BPH. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Journals
2014 EN
CastroPerez Jose · Hatcher Nathan · Kofi Karikari Nana
+13 more
RATIONALE The ability to quantify rates of formation, regression and/or remodeling of atherosclerotic plaque should facilitate a better understanding of the pathogenesis and management of cardiovascular disease. In the current study, we coupled a stable isotope labeled tracer protocol with matrix‐assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry imaging (MALDI‐MSI) to examine spatial and temporal lipid dynamics in atherosclerotic plaque. METHODS To promote plaque formation in the aorta region, ApoE KO mice were fed a high cholesterol diet (0.15% cholesterol) and orally dosed with (2,2,3,4,4,6‐d 6 )‐cholesterol over several weeks. Tissue sections of ~10 µm thickness were analyzed by MALDI‐MSI using matrix deposition by either chemical sublimation or acoustic droplet ejection. RESULTS MALDI‐MSI yielded distinct spatial distribution information for a variety of lipid classes including specific lysophosphatidylcholines typically associated with atherosclerosis‐related tissue damage such as phospholipase 2 (Lp‐PLA 2 ) that mediate chemotactic responses to inflammation (e.g. LPC 16:0, LPC 18:0 and LPC 18:1) as well as free cholesterol and cholesteryl esters that contribute to atheroma formation. MALDI mass spectra acquired from aorta tissue sections clearly distinguished non‐esterified and esterified versions of (2,2,3,4,4,6‐d 6 )‐cholesterol within aortic plaque regions and showed distinct spatial accumulation of the cholesterol tracer. CONCLUSIONS The ability to couple stable isotope based protocols with MALDI‐MSI enables a novel strategy to characterize the effects of therapeutic treatments on atherosclerotic plaque formation, regression and potential remodeling of the complex lipid components with high chemical specificity and spatiotemporal information. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Journals
2014 EN
Ansarin Mohssen · Zorzi Stefano · Massaro Maria Angela
+5 more
Background Transoral laser microsurgery (TLM) is a mature approach to supraglottic cancer, while transoral robotic surgery (TORS) is emerging. The present study compared these approaches. Methods The first 10 patients (2002–2005) given TLM were compared with the first 10 (2007–2011) given TORS for cT1‐3 cN0‐cN2c supraglottic cancer. Results A feeding tube was used in four TLM and seven TORS patients. Margins were more often positive, but operating times shorter, in TORS. All 10 TORS patients are without evidence of disease, but only six TLM patients remain disease‐free after much longer follow‐up. TORS was considerably less uncomfortable and fatiguing for the surgeon. Conclusions TORS seems as safe and effective as TLM. Shorter TORS operating times are probably attributable to prior experience with TLM. For laryngeal exposure, length of tube placement and margin evaluability, TLM was superior; however, this may change as TORS develops and transoral robotic instruments are optimized. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Journals
2014 EN
Gentile Aniello · Luglio Michele · Manzo Maurizio
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SUMMARY Broadband communication via satellite systems finds applications in several contexts where other technologies are not available or economically not convenient. Examples are remote areas, disaster struck areas, or vessels/ships. The scarce availability and the high cost of the bandwidth impose to improve flexibility in bandwidth management and dynamic allocation, especially on the shared return link. Typically, this capability is available only to the satellite operator (SO). An innovative dynamic bandwidth management of satellite capacity for the return link has been developed and prototyped as an Internet protocol‐based solution. This solution allows small operators renting bandwidth from the satellite operator and providing services to final customers, managing the permanently assigned resources in a flexible and efficient way. The scope of the paper is to illustrate this technique to achieve the dynamic bandwidth management for a subgroup of satellite terminals (subdomain) by using a centralized controller and distributed software with IP shaping capabilities, without interacting with the satellite operator. This approach has been applied in particular to a satellite maritime ship owner, which is thus able to dynamically distribute capacity among satellite terminals installed onboard of its ship fleet as required, as a network operator. The presented results are the outputs of simulations performed with the NS2 simulator and tests by using real hardware. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Journals
2014 EN
AbdelHamid Tarek · Ankel Felix · BattleFisher Michele
+18 more
Human body energy storage operates as a stock‐and‐flow system with inflow (food intake) and outflow (energy expenditure). In spite of the ubiquity of stock‐and‐flow structures, evidence suggests that human beings fail to understand stock accumulation and rates of change, a difficulty called the stock–flow failure. This study examines the influence of health care training and cultural background in overcoming stock–flow failure. A standardized protocol assessed lay people's and health care professionals’ ability to apply stock‐and‐flow reasoning to infer the dynamics of weight gain/loss during the holiday season (621 subjects from seven countries). Our results indicate that both types of subjects exhibited systematic errors indicative of use of erroneous heuristics. Indeed 76% of lay subjects and 71% of health care professionals failed to understand the simple dynamic impact of energy intake and energy expenditure on body weight. Stock–flow failure was found across cultures and was not improved by professional health training. The problem of stock–flow failure as a transcultural global issue with education and policy implications is discussed. Copyright © 2014 System Dynamics Society
Journals
2014 EN
Iacob Erica · Vanzetti Lia · Gennaro Salvatore
+7 more
With the continuously increasing demand for traceable and often accredited measurements in the scientific community, the quality management of laboratory activity according to international ISO standards can be a valuable and proficient solution. In this paper, we describe a decade of work in this direction. The implementation of quality management according to the ISO/IEC 17025 ‘ General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories ’ in a surface science research‐oriented analytical laboratory is presented. We analyze difficulties and drawbacks as well as benefits and permanent improvements that followed the accreditation, its maintenance, and extension to new methods. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Journals
2014 EN
Bai Shuo · Debnath Sisir · Gibson Kirsty
+4 more
Uniformly‐sized, nanostructured peptide microparticles are generated by exploiting the ability of enzymes to serve (i) as catalysts, to control self‐assembly within monodisperse, surfactant‐stabilized water‐in‐oil microdroplets, and (ii) as destabilizers of emulsion interfaces, to enable facile transfer of the produced microparticles to water. This approach combines the advantages of biocatalytic self‐assembly with the compartmentalization properties enabled by droplet microfluidics. Firstly, using microfluidic techniques, precursors of self‐assembling peptide derivatives and enzymes are mixed in the microdroplets which upon catalytic conversion undergo molecular self‐assembly into peptide particles, depending on the chemical nature of the precursors. Due to their amphiphilic nature, enzymes adsorb at the water‐surfactant‐oil interface of the droplets, inducing the transfer of peptide microparticles from the oil to the aqueous phase. Ultimately, through washing steps, enzymes can be removed from the microparticles which results in uniformely‐sized particles composed of nanostructured aromatic peptide amphiphiles.
Journals
2014 EN
Bai Shuo · Debnath Sisir · Gibson Kirsty
+4 more
Uniformly‐sized, nanostructured peptide microparticles are generated by exploiting the ability of enzymes to serve both as catalysts, to control selfassembly within monodisperse, surfactant‐stabilized waterin‐oil microdroplets, and as destabilizers of emulsion interfaces, to enable facile transfer of the produced microparticles to water. As reported by M. Zagnoni, R. V. Ulijn, and co‐workers on page 285, this approach combines the advantages of biocatalytic self‐assembly with the compartmentalization properties enabled by droplet microfluidics.
Journals
2014 EN
Bussetta Philippe · Dialami Narges · Boman Romain
+4 more
Friction stir welding (FSW) process is a solid‐state joining process during which materials to be joined are not melted. As a consequence, the heat‐affected zone is smaller and the quality of the weld is better with respect to more classical welding processes. Because of extremely high strains in the neighborhood of the tool, classical numerical simulation techniques have to be extended in order to track the correct material deformations. The Arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian (ALE) formulation is used to preserve a good mesh quality throughout the computation. With this formulation, the mesh displacement is independent from the material displacement. Moreover, some advanced numerical techniques such as remeshing or a special computation of transition interface is needed to take into account non‐cylindrical tools. During the FSW process, the behavior of the material in the neighborhood of the tool is at the interface between solid mechanics and fluid mechanics. Consequently, a numerical model of the FSW process based on a solid formulation is compared to another one based on a fluid formulation. It is shown that these two formulations essentially deliver the same results in terms of pressures and temperatures.
Journals
2014 EN
Oliveira Alandeom W. · Reis Giuliano · Chaize Daniel O.
+1 more
Little research has been conducted on how to address the complex topic of death when teaching science to children. The present paper addresses this issue by examining how three elementary teachers discuss the death of wild animals during science read‐aloud sessions. Our findings reveal the variety of ways in which nonhuman death can be cognitively, sociolinguistically and morally organized in such contexts. In terms of cognition, animal death was conceptualized metaphorically in terms of linear or cyclic motion (SOURCE‐PATH‐GOAL and CYCLE image schemas). Sociolinguistically, animal death was sometimes approached as the product of an agent's action (e.g., a predator) and at other times as an agentless outcome (e.g., a biological event that simply befell upon living creatures). Lastly, natural death was presented as morally “good” (i.e., acceptable biological outcomes of life in the wild), whereas pollution‐related death was organized as unnatural and morally “bad” (i.e., unacceptable loss of natural life whose occurrence students should critically question). This study highlights the centrality of metaphorical structuring to nonhuman death discussions in the science read‐alouds investigated and the possible pedagogical implications of favoring the approaches described. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 51: 117–146, 2014