Intracellular Redox-Modulated Pathways as Targets for Effective Approaches in the Treatment of Viral Infection

Host-directed therapy using drugs that target cellular pathways required for virus lifecycle or its clearance might represent an effective approach for treating infectious diseases. Changes in redox homeostasis, including intracellular glutathione (GSH) depletion, are one of the key events that favor virus replication and contribute to the pathogenesis of virus-induced disease. Redox homeostasis has an important role in maintaining an appropriate Th1/Th2 balance, which is necessary to mount an effective immune response against viral infection and to avoid excessive inflammatory responses. It is known that excessive production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) induced by viral infection activates nuclear factor (NF)-kB, which orchestrates the expression of viral and host genes involved in the viral replication and inflammatory response. Moreover, redox-regulated protein disulfide isomerase (PDI) chaperones have an essential role in catalyzing formation of disulfide bonds in viral proteins. This review aims at describing the role of GSH in modulating redox sensitive pathways, in particular that mediated by NF-kB, and PDI activity. The second part of the review discusses the effectiveness of GSH-boosting molecules as broad-spectrum antivirals acting in a multifaceted way that includes the modulation of immune and inflammatory responses.     

Osteoporosis in Men: A Review of an Underestimated Bone Condition

Osteoporosis is called the ‘silent disease’ because, although it does not give significant symptoms when it is not complicated, can cause fragility fractures, with serious consequences and death. Furthermore, the consequences of osteoporosis have been calculated to weigh heavily on the costs of health systems in all the countries. Osteoporosis is considered a female disease. Actually, the hormonal changes that occur after menopause certainly determine a significant increase in osteoporosis and the risk of fractures in women. However, while there is no doubt that women are more exposed to osteoporosis and fragility fractures, the literature clearly indicates that physicians tend to underestimate the osteoporosis in men. The review of the literature done by the authors shows that osteoporosis and fragility fractures have a high incidence also in men; and, furthermore, the risk of fatal complications in hip fractured men is higher than that for women. The authors report the evidence of the literature on male osteoporosis, dwelling on epidemiology, causes of osteoporosis in men, diagnosis, and treatment. The analysis of the literature shows that male osteoporosis is underscreened, underdiagnosed, and undertreated, both in primary and secondary prevention of fragility fractures.     

Evaluating headspace component vapor-time profiles by solid-phase microextraction with external sampling of an internal standard

The vapor-time profiles of explosive materials are of valuable interest to Homeland Security, providing critical information that can aid in the detection of explosive-containing devices. An approach is described that achieves reproducible characterization of volatile components as a function of time based on comparison of the sample response to an externally sampled internal standard (ESIS). Utilizing nonequilibrium solid-phase microextraction (SPME) measurements, this SPME-ESIS technique improves reproducibility (reported as percent relative standard deviation) of vapor-time profiles by approximately an order of magnitude and allows for an equitable comparison of the target compound between diverse materials. Two odorants associated with canine detection of explosives, 2-ethyl-1-hexanol and 2,4-dinitrotoluene, are used to optimize parameters for the SPME-ESIS technique.     

Introducing Mobile Edge Computing Capabilities through Distributed 5G Cloud Enabled Small Cells

Current trends in broadband mobile networks are addressed towards the placement of different capabilities at the edge of the mobile network in a centralised way. On one hand, the split of the eNB between baseband processing units and remote radio headers makes it possible to process some of the protocols in centralised premises, likely with virtualised resources. On the other hand, mobile edge computing makes use of processing and storage capabilities close to the air interface in order to deploy optimised services with minimum delay. The confluence of both trends is a hot topic in the definition of future 5G networks. The full centralisation of both technologies in cloud data centres imposes stringent requirements to the fronthaul connections in terms of throughput and latency. Therefore, all those cells with limited network access would not be able to offer these types of services. This paper proposes a solution for these cases, based on the placement of processing and storage capabilities close to the remote units, which is especially well suited for the deployment of clusters of small cells. The proposed cloud-enabled small cells include a highly efficient microserver with a limited set of virtualised resources offered to the cluster of small cells. As a result, a light data centre is created and commonly used for deploying centralised eNB and mobile edge computing functionalities. The paper covers the proposed architecture, with special focus on the integration of both aspects, and possible scenarios of application.     

Validation of an alternative method for the identification of 2-dodecylcyclebutanone (2-DCB) of irradiated meats by solid-phase microextraction (SPME) gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS)

A rapid and simple procedure to detect irradiated food containing fat is proposed. This method is based on HS-SPME coupled with GC-MS to determine the presence of a radiolytic product in irradiated meats: 2-dodecylcyclobutanone (2-DCB) and is proposed as an alternative to EN 1785:2003, which is a long and complex procedure. The qualitative confirmation method is validated on different type of meats: chicken, turkey, duck, beef, pork on both nonirradiated and irradiated samples at different dose levels (0.05, 0.12, 0.5, 1.0 and 3.0 kGy) with a biological X-ray irradiator. The validation parameters investigated are selectivity, minimum dose level (MDL), limit of detection (LOD), sensitivity and specificity. The MDL and LOD values were 0.5 kGy and 5.0 ng mL⁻¹, respectively, for all matrices. No false positives or false negatives occurred, and 100% of samples were correctly identified. The results show that HS-SPME GC-MS is suitable for routine analysis.     

从实践到方法:梁思成在建筑教育知识整合中的遗产

对比梁思成在清华大学的课程设置中整合技术科学和社会科学的理念以及罗伯托·盖贝蒂在都灵理工大学建筑学院的教育思想,二者的相通之处是两位教育家都以历史研究为基础,通过归纳推理和"临床研究"的方式建立并发展了建筑学科。在此框架中,建筑项目不再是教义的物理实现,而是每一次具体实践成果的归纳累积,其并不预设意向,而是在面临不断变化的随机条件时灵活应对。方法论通过实践而被构建,理论知识源于真实的经验,由此建筑教育经历了范式的转变。     

Twenty Years After (Deconstructivism): An Interview with Bernard Tschumi

Michele Costanzo interviews Bernard Tschumi about his work and his vision of the changing field of contemporary design research. How do the younger generation of students receive Tschumi's seminal theoretical works? Is a lack of time merely the current scapegoat for a more considered conceptual approach? How does Tschumi view the proliferation of architectural fetishes in the urban landscape? How is his own theoretical landscape shifting? Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.