Trace elements produce double-edged effects on the lives of animals and particularly of humans. On one hand, these elements represent potentially toxic agents; on the other hand, they are essentially ...needed to support growth and development and confer protection against disease. Certain trace elements and metals are particularly involved in humoral and cellular immune responses, playing the roles of cofactors for essential enzymes and antioxidant molecules. The amount taken up and the accumulation in human tissues decisively control whether the exerted effects are toxic or beneficial. For these reasons, there is an urgent need to re-consider, harmonize and update current legislative regulations regarding the concentrations of trace elements in food and in drinking water. This review aims to provide information on the interrelation of certain trace elements with risk of autoimmune disease, with a particular focus on type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis. In addition, an overview of the current regulations and regulatory gaps is provided in order to highlight the importance of this issue for everyday nutrition and human health.
In recent years, due to the globalization of food trade and certified agro-food products, the authenticity and traceability of food have received increasing attention. As a result, opportunities for ...fraudulent practices arise, highlighting the need to protect consumers from economic and health damages. In this regard, specific analytical techniques have been optimized and implemented to support the integrity of the food chain, such as those targeting different isotopes and their ratios. This review article explores the scientific progress of the last decade in the study of the isotopic identity card of food of animal origin, provides the reader with an overview of its application, and focuses on whether the combination of isotopes with other markers increases confidence and robustness in food authenticity testing. To this purpose, a total of 135 studies analyzing fish and seafood, meat, eggs, milk, and dairy products, and aiming to examine the relation between isotopic ratios and the geographical provenance, feeding regime, production method, and seasonality were reviewed. Current trends and major research achievements in the field were discussed and commented on in detail, pointing out advantages and drawbacks typically associated with this analytical approach and arguing future improvements and changes that need to be made to recognize it as a standard and validated method for fraud mitigation and safety control in the sector of food of animal origin.
A
bstract
We extend to black branes (BB) in arbitrary dimensions the results of ref. 1 about hyperscaling violation and phase transition for scalar black 2-branes. We derive the analytic form of the ...(
d
+ 1)-dimensional scalar soliton interpolating between a conformal invariant AdS
d+2
vacuum in the infrared and a scale covariant metric in the ultraviolet. We show that the thermodynamical system undergoes a phase transition between Schwarzschild-AdS
d+2
and a scalar-dressed BB. We calculate the critical exponent
z
and the hyperscaling violation parameter
θ
in the two phases. We show that our scalar BB solutions generically emerge as compactifications of
p
−brane solutions of supergravity theories. We also derive the short distance form of the correlators for the scalar operators corresponding to an UV exponential potential supporting our black brane solution. We show that also for negative θ these correlators have a short distance power-law behavior.
In order to understand the distribution of fluorine in surface environments, also linked to fluoride deposits, this paper discusses the role of rift systems in fluorine enrichment of surface waters, ...with two examples: the Sardinia Island and the East African Rift. The main goal of this study is aimed to highlighting the areas that could potentially host fluorine in the surface waters in order to make it easier the lecture also for people to search and read not experts in the field, such as the biomedical field. Furthermore, potentialities and limitations of the currently available defluoridation techniques were examined, in order to identify the best intervention technology.
From a careful review of the literature, to the addition of the extensive field observations in Sardinia and Ethiopia carried by the authors in the previous decades, we highlight the origin, processes and evolution of F-migration in Rift systems.
The given examples of Sardinia and Ethiopia show that the origin and consequent behaviour of fluorine is strictly controlled by the rift systems. In this framework, the availability of fluorine for surface waters depends on two possible types of sources: a direct supply and an indirect supply. Directly from spring waters and ground waters fed by hydrothermal systems related to rifting, and indirectly from the leaching of products of rift-related activities, such as fluorite-bearing deposits, sedimentary or meta-sedimentary rift-related sequences, and volcanic or metavolcanic complexes emplaced along rift structures. The whole geological history of a given area must be taken into account in interpreting its present fluorine geochemistry.
In conclusion, we underline the aspects of a possible control of these areas where fluoride exposure might lead to a long-term harm to local communities and we point out the nowadays best remediation-technologies, discussing their pro and cons in their applicability to different scales and social-contexts.
We investigate three-dimensional (3D) Anti-de Sitter (AdS) gravity coupled to a complex scalar field
ϕ
with self-interaction potential
V
(|
ϕ
|). We show that the mass of static, rotationally ...symmetric, AdS black hole with scalar hairs is determined algebraically by the scalar charges. We recast the field equations as a linear system of first order differential equations. Exact solutions, describing 3D AdS black holes with real spherical scalar hairs and vortex-black hole solutions are derived in closed form for the case of a scalar field saturating the Breitenlohner-Freedman (BF) bound and for a scalar field with asymptotic zero mass. The physical properties of these solutions are discussed. In particular, we show that the vortex solution interpolates between two different AdS
3
vacua, corresponding respectively to a U(1)-symmetry-preserving maximum and to a symmetrybreaking minimum of the potential
V
.
A
bstract
We derive exact brane solutions of minimally coupled Einstein-Maxwell-scalar gravity in
d
+ 2 dimensions with a vanishing scalar potential and we show that these solutions are conformal to ...the Lifshitz spacetime whose dual QFT is characterized by hyperscaling violation. These solutions, together with the AdS brane and the domain wall sourced by an exponential potential, give the complete list of scalar branes sourced by a generic potential having simple (scale-covariant) scaling symmetries not involving Galilean boosts. This allows us to give a classification of both simple and interpolating brane solution of minimally coupled Einstein-Maxwell-scalar gravity having no Schrödinger isometries, which may be very useful for holographic applications.
We present a general method for solving exactly the static field equations of Einstein and Einstein-Maxwell gravity minimally coupled to a scalar field. Through this method one can derive broad ...classes of static solutions with radial symmetry of the theory, which may play an important role in applications of the AdS/CFT correspondence to condensed matter and strongly coupled QFT's. Moreover, the method allows to prove a new no-hair theorem about the existence of hairy black brane and black hole solutions.
A
bstract
We investigate the infrared behavior of the spectrum of scalar-dressed, asymptotically Anti de Sitter (AdS) black brane (BB) solutions of effective holographic models. These solutions ...describe scalar condensates in the dual field theories. We show that for zero charge density the ground state of these BBs must be degenerate with the AdS vacuum, must satisfy conformal boundary conditions for the scalar field and it is isolated from the continuous part of the spectrum. When a finite charge density is switched on, the ground state is not anymore isolated and the degeneracy is removed. Depending on the coupling functions, the new ground state may possibly be energetically preferred with respect to the extremal Reissner-Nordstrom AdS BB. We derive several properties of BBs near extremality and at finite temperature. As a check and illustration of our results we derive and discuss several analytic and numerical, BB solutions of Einstein-scalar-Maxwell AdS gravity with different coupling functions and different potentials. We also discuss how our results can be used for understanding holographic quantum critical points, in particular their stability and the associated quantum phase transitions leading to superconductivity or hyperscaling violation.
Abstract
Background: Invasive lobular breast carcinoma (ILC) represents 5 to 15% of all invasive breast cancers (BCs). Here, we aim to investigate inter- and intra-tumor heterogeneity in terms of ...microenvironment composition, PAM50 molecular classification and proliferation (genomic grade index GGI) by combining spatial transcriptomics (ST) and accurate morphological annotation. Methods: Spatial RNA sequencing (Visium - 10X Genomics) was performed on frozen tumor samples from 15 primary estrogen receptor positive, HER2-negative ILC patients with long-term follow up. Hematoxylin/eosin slides were morphologically annotated integrating manual and machine learning-based approaches reaching single-cell resolution (QuPath software). The relative histomorphological categories (HC) composition of each spot across the ST slide was computed as percentage of pixels, while the level of proximity of different HC was evaluated computing the proportion of co-occurring HC at each spot. The PAM50 subtypes (AIMS R package) and GGI were computed on spots containing at least 40% of tumor (merging all the spots belonging to each sample pseudo-bulk for PAM50, while calculating mean and standard deviation SD across spots for GGI). PAM50 was also computed on the pseudo-bulk of the whole set of spots per sample. Wilcoxon and Spearman rank tests were used to compare continuous variables and assess correlations. Results: Out of 15 tumors, 7 were T2 or T3, 6 were node positive at diagnosis and 14 were grade 2. Four patients experienced disease relapse. Morphological annotation revealed that an average (per patient) of 20.3% (5.6-46.7%), 65.9% (45.5-83.5%) and 6.5% (0.0-27.1%) of the spots corresponded to tumor, stroma and fat tissue respectively. Larger tumors (T2-3 vs T1) presented a higher proportion of fat tissue and tumor cells, although these differences did not reach statistical significance. The levels and spatial variability of proliferation, measured using GGI, were higher in T2-3 compared to T1 tumors (p = 0.072 and 0.040, respectively). Of note, higher spatial variability of proliferation was also associated with node-positive tumors (p = 0.066). By computing the PAM50 classification using the pseudo-bulk, 9 samples were classified as luminal A, 1 as luminal B and 5 as normal-like. Of interest, when focusing on the tumor enriched spots, 60% of the samples previously classified as normal-like were re-classified as luminal A. Samples from patients who relapsed showed a higher fraction of fat tissue at the level of the whole slide (14.4% vs 3.5%; p = 0.018), with an increased co-localization of fat tissue and tumor cells at the spot level as well as higher proliferation values, although not significant. Conclusions: High proportion of fat tissue together with higher co-localization of fat tissue with tumor cells are associated with poor outcome in ILC. Higher spatial variability of proliferation is associated with larger tumors, lymph node positivity and recurrence. The proportion of stroma and fat tissue affected substantially the PAM50 classification of the tumors. Further validation is needed.
Citation Format: Matteo Serra, Laetitia Collet, Mattia Rediti, Frédéric Lifrange, David Venet, Xiaoxiao Wang, Delphine Vincent, Ghizlane Rouas, Danai Fimereli, David Gacquer, Andrea Joaquin Garcia, Isabelle Veys, Ligia Craciun, Denis Larsimont, Miikka Vikkula, François Duhoux, Françoise Rothé, Christos Sotiriou. Integrating spatial transcriptomics and high-resolution morphological annotation to investigate tumor heterogeneity and PAM50 molecular subtyping in lobular breast cancer abstract. In: Proceedings of the 2021 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2021 Dec 7-10; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(4 Suppl):Abstract nr P1-05-03.
PDF
