Full Sails against Cancer Mastronuzzi, Angela; Basso, Alessandra; Del Baldo, Giada ...
International journal of environmental research and public health,
12/2022, Volume:
19, Issue:
24
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Cancer is very disruptive in adolescence and hospitalizations interfere with this development stage in becoming independent, developing social relationships, and making plans for the future. A major ...challenge in the care of adolescents with cancer is being able to enhance their quality of life. The aim of this project is to increase our understanding of how adventure therapy influenced quality of life for adolescents with cancer.
Bambino Gesù Children's Hospital, in collaboration with the Tender to Nave Italia Foundation (TTNI), has been conducting a unique project, located on a beautiful brigantine of the Italian Navy. Adventure therapy is a form of experiential therapy that consists of various types of adventure, in particular outdoor and sailing activities. Ninety teenagers have been the protagonists of this project to date and filled out two questionnaires about quality of life and self-esteem, before and after the sailing experience.
The adventure provides the opportunity for the participants to build interpersonal relationships and develop life skills that they can benefit from in the future experiences. All participants report a significant improvement in their quality of life and self-esteem at the end of this experience.
This collaborative adventure project is a great way to learn and practice new behaviors, improve interpersonal skills, heal painful emotions, overcome personal obstacles and challenges, and help the teenagers to resume their developmental path after an onco-hematological diagnosis.
The present work aims to study the effects that acute exposure to low concentrations of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) cause in digestive glands of terrestrial isopods (Porcellio scaber). The ...experiments were designed to integrate different analytical techniques, such as transmission electron microscopy, atomic absorption spectroscopy, proton induced X-ray emission, and Fourier transform IR imaging (FTIRI), in order to gain a comprehensive insight into the process from the AgNPs' synthesis to their interaction with biological tissues in vivo. To this aim, terrestrial isopods were fed with AgNPs having different shapes, sizes, and concentrations. For all the tested conditions, no toxicity at the whole organism level was observed after 14 days of exposure. However, FTIRI showed that AgNPs caused detectable local changes in proteins, lipids, nucleic acids and carbohydrates at the tissue level, to an extent dependent on the interplay of the AgNPs' properties: shape, size, concentration and dissolution of ions from them.
This paper presents a property of propositional theories under the answer sets semantics (called Equilibrium Logic for this general syntax): any theory can always be reexpressed as a strongly ...equivalent disjunctive logic program, possibly with negation in the head. We provide two different proofs for this result: one involving a syntactic transformation, and one that constructs a program starting from the countermodels of the theory in the intermediate logic of here-and-there.
Abstract Objective To investigate the short-term optical, chemical and morphological changes in Invisalign appliances. Methods One ‘as-received’ Invisalign aligner, one ‘as-received’ Invisalign ...aligner immersed in artificial saliva for 14 days and 10 Invisalign aligners worn by 10 randomly selected patients for 14 days were used. Fourier transform infra-red microspectroscopy was used to characterise any molecular changes on the surfaces of the appliances, spectrophotometry was used to evaluate any changes in colour and transparency, scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis were used to examine the surface morphology and elemental composition of deposits on the surfaces of the aligners and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry was used to identify substances released from the aligners into the artificial saliva. Results Aligners worn for 14 days had microcracks, abraded and delaminated areas, localised calcified biofilm deposits and loss of transparency. Monomers and/or by-products were not released from the aligner suspended in artificial saliva for 14 days, which suggests that the material is chemically stable. Conclusions Further studies are required to evaluate how intra-oral conditions may influence the optical properties and chemical stability of the aligners.
To characterize from a vibrational point of view the alterations caused by aging on human oocytes.
Reproductive biology.
Private assisted reproductive technology clinic, synchrotron beam line, and ...university infrared laboratory.
Twenty women of different ages (30 ± 2 and 39 ± 2 years) selected on the basis of detailed inclusion criteria and submitted to controlled ovarian stimulation according to a specific protocol.
Collection of 68 supernumerary oocytes that were not used during the IVF cycle from the above cited consenting patients.
Focal Plane Array Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) analysis of human oocytes.
Specific spectral differences were highlighted in the two experimental groups of oocytes. In particular, in oocytes of 39-year-old women, the occurrence of peroxidative processes and a decrease in the amount of carbohydrates were observed, together with alterations in the phospholipid membrane, proteic pattern, and nucleic acids content.
For the first time, FTIR spectroscopy was applied to human oocytes, leading to strong evidence of damage from aging in the gametes of mature women, which could be related to a decline in reproductive function. All the information obtained may be considered useful to improve the scientific knowledge on human reproduction and to exploit new strategies for detecting oocyte aging.
Answer set programming (ASP) is a logic programming paradigm that can be used to solve complex combinatorial search problems. Aggregates are an ASP construct that plays an important role in many ...applications. Defining a satisfactory semantics of aggregates turned out to be a difficult problem, and in this article we propose a new approach, based on an analogy between aggregates and propositional connectives. First we extend the definition of an answer set/stable model to cover arbitrary propositional theories; then we define aggregates on top of them both as primitive constructs and as abbreviations for formulas. Our definition of an aggregate combines expressiveness and simplicity, and it inherits many theorems about programs with nested expressions, such as theorems about strong equivalence and splitting.
Equilibrium logic, introduced by David Pearce, extends the concept of an answer set from logic programs to arbitrary sets of formulas. Logic programs correspond to the special case in which every ...formula is a “rule” — an implication that has no implications in the antecedent (body) and consequent (head). The semantics of equilibrium logic looks very different from the usual definitions of an answer set in logic programming, as it is based on Kripke models. In this paper we propose a new definition of equilibrium logic which uses the concept of a reduct, as in the standard definition of an answer set. Second, we apply the generalized concept of an answer set to the problem of defining the semantics of aggregates in answer set programming. We propose, in particular, a semantics for weight constraints that covers the problematic case of negative weights. Our semantics of aggregates is an extension of the approach due to Faber, Leone, and Pfeifer to a language with choice rules and, more generally, arbitrary rules with nested expressions.
The concept of a stable model provided a declarative semantics for Prolog programs with negation as failure and became a starting point for the development of answer set programming. In this paper we ...propose a new definition of that concept, which covers many constructs used in answer set programming and, unlike the original definition, refers neither to grounding nor to fixpoints. It is based on a syntactic transformation similar to parallel circumscription.
Microimaging Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy is able to monitor differentiation between normal and malignant tissues. All the specimens, previously submitted to histological analysis, ...displayed abnormal spectra compared with the corresponding normal tissues with changes in many diagnostic bands like those arising from phosphate, C–O and CH stretching vibrational modes. The comparison between cancer (K) and connective (C) spectra evidenced the following differences: in the
vCH region 3000–2800
cm
−1 no hypomethylation effect was evident in K; the convolution of the bands of connective indicated an expected higher membrane fluidity; in the neoplastic zone, Amide I and II modes showed convoluted bands with maxima at 1651 and 1547
cm
−1, respectively, indicating an α-helix conformation of proteins due to changes in the secondary structure proteins upon carcinogenesis. Other signature bands, such as the deformation O–P–O phosphate band at 965
cm
−1, suggested DNA conformational changes in solid cancer, infiltrating cancer and neoplasia in the region 1350–800
cm
−1. These characteristic bands have been monitored as a function of the degree of cancer progression. Chemometric methods, such as principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA) have been used in order to distinguish spectra of neoplastic and normal zones.
This study aimed to investigate the effects of two different doses (100nM (M1) and 1µM (M2)) of exogenous melatonin on the reproductive capacity of Fundulus heteroclitus. Eight days of melatonin ...exposure significantly increased the fecundity and embryo survival of F. heteroclitus only in the M2 group compared with the control; the hatching rate was unaffected. Moreover, increases in the local expression of the melatonin receptor (mtnr) gene during follicle maturation were found; however, there were no differences between the experimental groups. Furthermore, in vitro melatonin-treated follicles showed a significantly higher germinal vesicle break down percentage compared with the control, while SDS-PAGE showed no difference in the electrophoretic pattern of the major yolk proteins. Nevertheless, densitometry revealed a greater intensity of the 118-, 95- and 40-kDa components in groups treated with melatonin. Finally, Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy was applied to classify the different stages of oocyte development (Stages I-II, III and IV) on the basis of their macromolecular composition. The effects induced by melatonin on oogenesis were investigated by comparing vibrational spectra of females exposed to melatonin with those of controls. Changes to the Amide I band, corresponding to an increase in β-structure, were found in oocytes of females exposed to the highest melatonin dose. These results highlight the positive role of melatonin, which is able to enhance the reproductive capacity of F. heteroclitus. Further studies are in progress to better explain the molecular mechanisms by which melatonin treatment affects reproduction in this marine species.
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