Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI) Reprograms Circulating Extracellular Vesicles from ACS Patients Impairing Their Cardio-Protective Properties

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are promising therapeutic tools in the treatment of cardiovascular disorders. We have recently shown that EVs from patients with Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS) undergoing sham pre-conditioning, before percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) were cardio-protective, while EVs from patients experiencing remote ischemic pre-conditioning (RIPC) failed to induce protection against ischemia/reperfusion Injury (IRI). No data on EVs from ACS patients recovered after PCI are currently available. Therefore, we herein investigated the cardio-protective properties of EVs, collected after PCI from the same patients. EVs recovered from 30 patients randomly assigned (1:1) to RIPC (EV-RIPC) or sham procedures (EV-naive) ({"type":"clinical-trial","attrs":{"text":"NCT02195726","term_id":"NCT02195726"}}NCT02195726) were characterized by TEM, FACS and Western blot analysis and evaluated for their mRNA content. The impact of EVs on hypoxia/reoxygenation damage and IRI, as well as the cardio-protective signaling pathways, were investigated in vitro (HMEC-1 + H9c2 co-culture) and ex vivo (isolated rat heart). Both EV-naive and EV-RIPC failed to drive cardio-protection both in vitro and ex vivo. Consistently, EV treatment failed to activate the canonical cardio-protective pathways. Specifically, PCI reduced the EV-naive Dusp6 mRNA content, found to be crucial for their cardio-protective action, and upregulated some stress- and cell-cycle-related genes in EV-RIPC. We provide the first evidence that in ACS patients, PCI reprograms the EV cargo, impairing EV-naive cardio-protective properties without improving EV-RIPC functional capability.     

Comparison between ozonation and the OSA process: analysis of excess sludge reduction and biomass activity in two different pilot plants

The excess biomass produced during biological treatment of municipal wastewater represents a major issue worldwide, as its disposal implies environmental, economic and social impacts. Therefore, there has been a growing interest in developing technologies to reduce sludge production. The main proposed strategies can be categorized according to the place inside the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) where the reduction takes place. In particular, sludge minimization can be achieved in the wastewater line as well as in the sludge line. This paper presents the results of two pilot scale systems, to evaluate their feasibility for sludge reduction and to understand their effect on biomass activity: (1) a pilot plant with an ozone contactor in the return activated sludge (RAS) stream for the exposition of sludge to a low ozone dosage; and (2) an oxic-settling-anaerobic (OSA) process with high retention time in the anaerobic sludge holding tank have been studied. The results showed that both technologies enabled significant excess sludge reduction but produced a slight decrease of biomass respiratory activity.     

Manufacturing of polypropylene laminates and related structural reorganization in the crystalline phase

The conditions for obtaining recrystallization in more ordered modifications are described for an uniaxially oriented sample of isotactic polypropylene, annealed with fixed ends. These recrystallization conditions are related to the conditions of a lamination process.     

Cyclic bond behaviour of plain bars. Part I: Experimental investigation

In recent years there has been wide use of non-linear dynamic analysis for the evaluation of existing structures in areas of high seismic risk. In the simulation of the cyclic behaviour of elements in reinforced concrete (RC) its bonding performance cannot be ignored. There are numerous numerical models developed in recent decades which can explicitly account for the slip between reinforcing bars and the surrounding concrete through the definition of the local hysteretic bond–slip relationship. As for plain bars, commonly used in reinforced concrete buildings before the 1970s, there are almost no references to hysteretic bond mechanisms.This paper describes the results of a series of monotonic and cyclic pull-out tests aimed at the assessment of the bond performances of plain round bars. Monotonic behaviour is characterized by a first ascending branch, up to the maximum bond strength; in this phase, as the slip increases, chemical–physical adhesion and micro-interlocking between the cement paste and the indentations of the bar surface progressively activate. During post-peak phase the only frictional contribute is present, gradually degrading towards a minimum value as the slip increases. The two parameters, maximum bond strength and minimum frictional bond, in spite of the high variability shown, seem to reflect well the literature indications about bond performances of plain bars. In cyclic field, where the only frictional mechanism is present, experimental results show a significant degradation of bond capacities. Hysteretic cycles show a singular shape, characterized by a reloading phase showing a slight reduction for slip values approaching zero and a subsequent increase in bond stress towards the maximum imposed slip. Bond stresses in cyclic field show a high variability, but it is generally possible to recognize a decreasing trend both with the number of cycles and with the maximum imposed slip.     

A new ionic conductor from AgI and Ag2O.B2O3

A room temperature conductivity maximum was recognized in the system AgI:Ag₂O.B₂O₃ at 78.8 mole% AgI, the mobile species being silver ions.X-rays diffraction and DTA showed the glass-like nature of this material which maintains its good electrochemical performances in the temperature range 25–230°. The discharge behaviour of solid state galvanic cells containing this material is close to that obtained from 4AgI:Ag₂WO₄.     

A simple and effective design strategy to increase power conversion efficiency of linear charge pumps

This paper introduces a simple design strategy to increase the power efficiency of linear charge pumps. The technique exploits a voltage amplitude of the clock signal lower than the supply voltage to reduce the power conversion losses. The nominal output voltage is maintained unaltered by increasing the number of stages.     

Analytical comparison of reversed nested Miller frequency compensation techniques

In this paper, novel and previously proposed reversed nested Miller compensation (RNMC) networks are analyzed and compared, and their design equations are also presented. Hence, this paper is the natural extension of a previous paper by the authors (Int. J. Circ. Theor. Appl. 2008; 36 (1):53–80), where only the nested Miller compensation topologies were treated. In particular, a coherent and comprehensive analytical comparison of the RNMC topologies, including two new networks presented for the first time, is performed by means of the figure of merit that expresses a trade‐off among gain‐bandwidth product, load capacitance and total transconductance, for equal values of phase margin (Int. J. Circ. Theor. Appl. 2008; 36 (1):53–80). The analysis shows that there is no unique optimal solution among the RNMC topologies, as this depends on the load condition as well as on the relative transconductance magnitude of each amplifier stage. From this point of view, the proposed comparison also outlines useful design guidelines for the optimization of large‐signal and small‐signal performance. Simulations confirming the effectiveness of the proposed design methodology and analytical comparison are also included. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Generation of Rho Zero Cells: Visualization and Quantification of the mtDNA Depletion Process

Human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is located in discrete DNA-protein complexes, so called nucleoids. These structures can be easily visualized in living cells by utilizing the fluorescent stain PicoGreen^®. In contrary, cells devoid of endogenous mitochondrial genomes (ρ⁰ cells) display no mitochondrial staining in the cytoplasm. A modified restriction enzyme can be targeted to mitochondria to cleave the mtDNA molecules in more than two fragments, thereby activating endogenous nucleases. By applying this novel enzymatic approach to generate mtDNA-depleted cells the destruction of mitochondrial nucleoids in cultured cells could be detected in a time course. It is clear from these experiments that mtDNA-depleted cells can be seen as early as 48 h post-transfection using the depletion system. To prove that mtDNA is degraded during this process, mtDNA of transfected cells was quantified by real-time PCR. A significant decline could be observed 24 h post-transfection. Combination of both results showed that mtDNA of transfected cells is completely degraded and, therefore, ρ⁰ cells were generated within 48 h. Thus, the application of a mitochondrially-targeted restriction endonuclease proves to be a first and fast, but essential step towards a therapy for mtDNA disorders.     

Combining Nonstably Infinite Theories

The Nelson–Oppen combination method combines decision procedures for first-order theories over disjoint signatures into a single decision procedure for the union theory. In order to be correct, the method requires that the component theories be stably infinite. This restriction makes the method inapplicable to many interesting theories such as, for instance, theories having only finite models. In this paper, we describe two extensions of the Nelson–Oppen method that address the problem of combining theories that are not stably infinite. In our extensions, the component decision procedures exchange not only equalities between shared variables but also certain cardinality constraints. Applications of our results include the combination of theories having only finite models, as well as the combination of nonstably infinite theories with the theory of equality, the theories of total and partial orders, and the theory of lattices with maximum and minimum. Calogero G. Zarba: Work done by this author at Stanford University and later at LORIA and INRIA-Lorraine.