Prognostic and Theranostic Applications of Positron Emission Tomography for a Personalized Approach to Metastatic Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer

Metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) represents a condition of progressive disease in spite of androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), with a broad spectrum of manifestations ranging from no symptoms to severe debilitation due to bone or visceral metastatization. The management of mCRPC has been profoundly modified by introducing novel therapeutic tools such as antiandrogen drugs (i.e., abiraterone acetate and enzalutamide), immunotherapy through sipuleucel-T, and targeted alpha therapy (TAT). This variety of approaches calls for unmet need of biomarkers suitable for patients’ pre-treatment selection and prognostic stratification. In this scenario, imaging with positron emission computed tomography (PET/CT) presents great and still unexplored potential to detect specific molecular and metabolic signatures, some of whom, such as the prostate specific membrane antigen (PSMA), can also be exploited as therapeutic targets, thus combining diagnosis and therapy in the so-called “theranostic” approach. In this review, we performed a web-based and desktop literature research to investigate the prognostic and theranostic potential of several PET imaging probes, such as ¹⁸F-FDG, ¹⁸F-choline and ⁶⁸Ga-PSMA-11, also covering the emerging tracers still in a pre-clinical phase (e.g., PARP-inhibitors’ analogs and the radioligands binding to gastrin releasing peptide receptors/GRPR), highlighting their potential for defining personalized care pathways in mCRPC.     

Fully non-interactive onion routing with forward secrecy

Onion routing is a privacy-enabling protocol that allows users to establish anonymous channels over a public network. In such a protocol, parties send their messages through $n$ anonymizing servers (called a circuit) using several layers of encryption. Several proposals for onion routing have been published in recent years, and TOR, a real-life implementation, provides an onion routing service to thousands of users over the Internet. This paper puts forward a new onion routing protocol which outperforms TOR by achieving forward secrecy in a fully non-interactive fashion, without requiring any communication from the router and/or the users and the service provider to update time-related keys. We compare this to TOR which requires $O(n^2)$ rounds of interaction to establish a circuit of size $n$ . In terms of the computational effort required to the parties, our protocol is comparable to TOR, but the network latency associated with TOR’s high round complexity ends up dominating the running time. Compared to other recently proposed alternative to TOR, such as the PB-OR (PETS 2007) and CL-OR (CCS 2009) protocols, our scheme still has the advantage of being non-interactive (both PB-OR and CL-OR require some interaction to update time-sensitive information), and achieves similar computational performances. We performed implementation and simulation tests that confirm our theoretical analysis. Additionally, while comparing our scheme to PB-OR, we discovered a flaw in the security of that scheme which we repair in this paper. Our solution is based on the application of forward secure encryption. We design a forward secure encryption scheme (of independent interest) to be used as the main encryption scheme in our onion routing protocol.     

Cruise ships like buildings: Wayfinding solutions to improve emergency evacuation

This research aims at demonstrating that wayfinding solutions can improve the effectiveness of the evacuation processes in complex architectural spaces such as those of cruise ships. We investigated the behaviours of passengers in maritime disaster to figure out whether people act similarly during buildings egress and ships evacuation. Data were collected through questionnaires administered in 2015 to passengers boarding various cruise ships at the port of Ancona (Italy), and through the analysis of real footage of the evacuation of the Costa Concordia. The open source software Fire Dynamics Simulator with Evacuation (FDS+EVAC), used in building egress analyses, was adapted to include these behavioural and event information such as familiarity with ship layout, ship rotation and lifeboats boarding. Simulation results on the case study confirmed similarities between ships and buildings evacuations, underlining the effectiveness of wayfinding solutions to improve passengers’ evacuation flows and routes selection. This study also demonstrated that computer simulation could benefit the ship design process, the preparation of safety guidelines, and the crewmembers during naval emergency management training.     

Some problems related to an environmental factual database: the case Aeolian project

Factual databanks can make an important contribution to environmental management. They help considerably with the difficult processes of integrating the various scientific languages used, and also with the development of valid methods for interdisciplinary research. In the planning the Aeolian project (a multidisciplinary study of an Archipelago north of Sicily), it was considered useful to include a group of workers on methodology and computer science. The hope is that they will help to facilitate the exchange of data and thus contribute to a better understanding of the various phenomena occurring on the islands. This paper discusses the conceptual working aspects of environmental information, together with those characteristics that render it suitable for inclusion in a modern computer‐based system.     

Effects of roof tile permeability on the thermal performance of ventilated roofs: Analysis of annual performance

This paper shows the results of the second part of an experimental study aimed at analysing the effects of roof tile permeability on the thermal performances of ventilation ducts. Ventilation ducts under the layer of tiles are typically used in south European countries to limit the energy load during the summer period. The results of the first part of the study, carried out by analysing 14 different types of roof, proved that the air permeability of the layer of tiles determines a certain amount of heat to be released, in addition to the release connected with the stack effect, in ventilation ducts which have the same characteristics but are perfectly airtight. However, the study did not completely resolve some issues since it was carried out on a model roof (6 m × 1.5 m) with devices to raise the layer of tiles and to create the ventilation duct but without those building elements which are present in real roofs and are used to stop insects and small animals from entering the ventilation duct. These elements narrow the inlet and outlet and consequently cause important reductions in pressure. Moreover, the measurements were based on data collected for limited periods of time during the summer season.     

A Novel Assembly of Substituted Pyrroles by Acid‐Catalyzed Sequential Three‐Component Reaction of Amines,Alkynoates, and 1,2‐Diaza‐1,3‐dienes

A novel protocol for the assembly of polysubstituted pyrroles has been developed through the acid‐catalyzed, sequential three‐component reaction of primary aliphatic amines, alkynoates and 1,2‐diaza‐1,3‐dienes (DDs). This methodology proceeds with complete chemo‐/regioselectivity involving first formation of an enamino ester intermediate, in situ Michael addition with azo‐ene compounds and subsequent intramolecular ring closure.     

Evaluation of the anti-rutting potential of polymer-modified binders by means of creep-recovery shear tests

In the experimental study reported in this paper a creep-recovery shear test method was used to evaluate the anti-rutting potential of different polymer-modified bituminous binders. The effects of several factors related to modification were investigated, such as polymer type (SBS, styrene–butadiene–styrene vs. ethylene–vinyl–acetate), composition (styrene content), structure (linear vs. radial SBS) and dosage (3–6 % by weight of the base bitumen). The effect of short-term aging was also considered by comparing binder response before and after treatment with the rolling thin-film oven test. Following previous work on the development of the test protocol, experimental results were analyzed by referring to shear modulus curves G(t) and to permanent compliance (J _P), obtained by dividing residual strain at the end of the unloading phase by the stress applied during creep loading. Results indicated the effectiveness of the proposed method in discriminating between the behavior of the different polymer-modified binders and in capturing the effects caused by the factors considered in the investigation. Reliable rankings of the binders were established and were explained by referring to the specific behavior of employed modifiers.     

Surface-enhanced Raman Scattering Study on 1D-2D Graphene-based Structures

In order to explore novel functional nanomaterials, we have produced sp²-sp hybrid carbon structures composed of graphene layers (2D) and linear carbon chains (1D). A remarkable change of the graphene electronic and phononic behaviour is observed after the interaction with 1D carbon nanostructures. Raman and surface enhanced Raman spectroscopies together with a density functional theory approach are used to explain charge transfer phenomena as a function of linear molecule orientation in the produced 1D-2D carbon-based structures, inducing hole-doping in graphene layers.