Multidisciplinary treatment of hepatocarcinoma]

Radical treatment of the hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is complete surgical removal; it may be done by resection or total hepatectomy. Although multicentric carcinogenesis predicts that liver transplantation is likely adequate to treat both the hepatoma and the underlying cirrhosis, it doesn't seem justified in the advanced stages or in absence of end-stage liver disease and therefore liver resection remains the treatment of choice for radical cure of HCC. However, low resectability and high recurrence rate make surgery alone ineffective. Unresectable HCC may be converted to resectable by multimodality radiation/chemotherapy, and embolization of portal branch feeding tumour, improving the function of the nonembolized liver, can extend the surgical indications for HCC. Adjuvant chemoembolization has already shown to reduce recurrence rate after radical resection and it should be widely applied. In unresectable or not converted HCCs as well as in postoperative recurrence, alternative therapies, particularly as multimodality treatment, can improve survival rate. To date, multidisciplinary treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma, waiting for further studies on newer modalities (prevention and gene therapy, especially), represents the best way to improve long-term results.     

A dynamic model of outer hair cell motility including intracellular and extracellular fluid viscosity

The deformation response of a guinea pig outer hair cell is modeled for mechanical and electrical stimulation up to 25 kHz. The analysis uses a Fourier series technique for a finite length cell surrounded internally and externally by a much larger continuum of viscous fluid. The analytical solution predicts that outer hair cell length changes occur due to applied mechanical or electrical stimulation without significant resonance, characteristic of a highly damped system. The deformation is found to have little attenuation up to a corner frequency of about 2 kHz for long cells and 10 kHz for short cells, in agreement with published experimental results. For electrical loading of 1 mV across the lateral cell wall, deformation for short cells is calculated to be greater than 1 nm for frequencies up to 20 kHz. These results support the proposition that in vivo the outer hair cell modifies the character of basilar membrane deformation on a cycle-by-cycle basis. An estimate of the capability of the cell to supply energy to the basilar membrane is given based on published values of outer hair cell material properties.     

Reliable M2M/IoT data delivery from FANETs via satellite

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is rising in several application fields. This work deals with the communication challenges in UAV swarms, or flying ad hoc network (FANET), when taking into account non–line‐of‐sight scenarios. The use of satellites is a necessity in such operating conditions; thus, this work provides architectural considerations and performance assessments when several (FANETs) share an uplink random access satellite channel, fed with M2M/IoT traffic generated from on‐board sensors, to be reliably delivered to a remote ground destination.     

High and low surface area NiO–MgO and CoO–MgO solid solutions: a study of XPS surface composition and CO oxidation activity

Oxide solid solutions NiO–MgO of high surface area were studied by XPS. The surface Ni²⁺ concentration was found to be equal, within experimental errors, to the bulk concentration. The result is analogous to that found previously for the low surface area NiO–MgO system and for both the high and low surface area systems of CoO–MgO. The catalytic oxidation of CO by O₂, on high and low surface area NiO–MgO and CoO–MgO materials, was investigated with the aim of relating the catalytic activity with transition metal ion nature and concentration. Turnover frequency data (CO₂ molecules produced per second per surface atom) show that the activity is due primarily to the transition metal ions and is not subject to the ions being in special configurations (dimers or trimers) or in special positions (edges, corners). The activity of CoO–MgO is higher than that of NiO–MgO solid solution. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Review on Anionic/Cationic Surfactant Mixtures

It is commonly known that cationic and anionic surfactants cannot be mixed without the risk of precipitation or instability. However, many studies have shown that not only is it possible to combine cationic and anionic surfactants, but also that this combination can present synergic properties. Mixtures of anionic and cationic surfactants have many unique properties that can be very useful when used properly. The aim of this report is to present relevant information concerning the interaction between anionic and cationic surfactants. A bibliographic review on anionic/cationic mixtures is presented here in order to better understand their properties and possible synergic effects, as this is of practical importance for the chemical industry.

Transport of thermal energy by a simple two-phase loop

A loop filled with a phase changing fluid is proposed as a device capable of transferring heat power from a generation place to a user. Through the solution of a set of non-linear equations, operating conditions of the system are determined. It is seen that even large amounts of energy can be transported under relatively small mass flow rates and differences of pressure and temperature. Then only a small degradation of the energy conveyed takes place. The operating conditions of the system are sensitive to the filling degree and the inner diameter of the loop pipe.     

Gas chromatographic control of the coal coking process: analysis of gases and aromatic by-products

A gas purification and chemical recovery process connected to the coal coking plant of an iron- and steelworks has been controlled by analytical methods based on gas chromatography. The raw and purified coal gas, the debenzolization medium (straw oil), the products and the by-products of benzene recovery were all analysed for their content of permanent gases, light hydrocarbons, aromatic hydrocarbons, water, ammonia, hydrogen sulphide, naphthalene, traces of straw oil and other impurities. The GC method compared with the classical analytical procedures offers several advantages. It increases the speed and precision of analysis, reduces the working time, improves the working conditions, and permits a better control of products and process.     

Rational Design,Synthesis, and DNA Binding Properties of Novel Sequence‐Selective Peptidyl Congeners of Ametantrone

Natural and synthetic compounds characterized by an anthraquinone nucleus represent an important class of anti‐neoplastic agents, the mechanism of action of which is related to intercalation into DNA. Ametantrone (AM) is a synthetic 9,10‐anthracenedione bearing two (hydroxyethylamino)ethylamino residues at positions 1 and 4; along with other anthraquinones and anthracyclines, it shares a polycyclic intercalating moiety and charged side chains that stabilize DNA binding. All these drugs elicit adverse side effects, which represent a challenge for antitumor chemotherapy. In the present work the structure of AM was augmented with appropriate groups that target well‐defined base pairs in the major groove. These should endow AM with DNA sequence selectivity. We describe the rationale for the synthesis and the evaluation of activity of a new series of compounds in which the planar anthraquinone is conjugated at positions 1 and 4 through the side chains of AM or other bioisosteric linkers to appropriate dipeptides. The designed novel AM derivatives were shown to selectively stabilize two oligonucleotide duplexes that both have a palindromic GC‐rich hexanucleotide core, but their stabilizing effects on a random DNA sequence was negligible. In the case of the most effective compound, the 1,4‐bis‐[Gly‐(L ‐Lys)] derivative of AM, the experimental results confirm the predictions of earlier theoretical computations. In contrast, AM had equal stabilizing effects on all three sequences and showed no preferential binding. This novel peptide derivative can be classified as a strong binder regarding the sequences that it selectively targets, possibly opening the exploitation of less cytotoxic conjugates of AM to the targeted treatment of oncological and viral diseases.     

Interdependence and predictability of human mobility and social interactions

Previous studies have shown that human movement is predictable to a certain extent at different geographic scales. The existing prediction techniques exploit only the past history of the person taken into consideration as input of the predictors.In this paper, we show that by means of multivariate nonlinear time series prediction techniques it is possible to increase the forecasting accuracy by considering movements of friends, people, or more in general entities, with correlated mobility patterns (i.e., characterised by high mutual information) as inputs. Finally, we evaluate the proposed techniques on the Nokia Mobile Data Challenge and Cabspotting datasets.