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The estimation of surgical blood loss is routinely performed during and after surgical procedures and has morbidity and mortality implications related to the risk of under- and over-resuscitation. The strategies for estimating surgical blood loss include visual estimation, the gravimetric method, the colorimetric method, formula-based methods, and other techniques (e.g., cell salvage). Currently, visual estimation continues to be the most widely used technique. In addition, unique considerations exist when these techniques are applied to various clinical settings such as massive transfusion, cardiac surgery, and obstetrics. Ultimately, when using estimated surgical blood loss to guide perioperative fluid management and transfusion thresholds, it is also important to mitigate the risks associated with resuscitation by targeting a goal-directed fluid therapy approach by utilizing markers of fluid-responsiveness to optimize stroke volume (cardiac output) and delivery of oxygen.

Aim: Neutrophil migration in the intestine depends on chemotaxis of neutrophils to CXC chemokines produced by epithelial cells. The goal of this project was to determine if acute induction of a CXC chemokine gradient originating from intestinal epithelial cells is sufficient to induce neutrophil influx into intact intestinal tissue. Methods and results: The authors developed a double transgenic mouse model with doxycycline induced human IL-8 expression restricted to intestinal epithelial cells. Doxycycline treatment of double transgenic mice for three days resulted in a 50-fold increase in the caecal IL-8 concentration and influx of neutrophils into the lamina propria. Although neutrophils entered the paracellular space between epithelial cells, complete transepithelial migration was not observed. Doxycycline treatment also increased the water content of the caecal and colonic stool, indicating dysfunctional water transport. However, the transmural electrical resistance was not decreased. Neutrophils recruited to the intestinal epithelium did not show evidence of degranulation and the epithelium remained intact as judged by histology. Conclusions: This conditional transgenic model of chemokine expression provides evidence that acute induction of IL-8 in the intestinal epithelium is sufficient to trigger neutrophil recruitment to the lamina propria, but additional activation signals are needed for full activation and degranulation of neutrophils, mucosal injury, and complete transepithelial migration.

Within the framework of ATLAS research project (Interreg Alpine Space Programme 2014-2020. ID: ASP644) experts of different countries of the Alpine arc studied and compared the measures implemented in the various countries to strengthen and further promote the implementation of renewable energies at the local level. This study highlights those strategies and existing tools for potential assessment of renewables taking into account the applicability for historic buildings, pointing out similarities and differences as model reference between the different territorial areas. The work aims to disseminate and capitalize on the best practical experiences on the topic, and to engage as many stakeholders as possible for a wider implementation of renewable energies in the territory of the Alpine arc. Direct examples of implementation at regional and local level to exploit RES while preserving the authenticity of historic buildings and settlements to be protected in the different countries and regional areas of Alpine Region are shown exploiting their full potential with practical advice for model regions.

The Silicon Vertex Trigger (SVT) is a processor developed at CDF experiment to perform online fast and precise track reconstruction. SVT is made of two pipelined processors, the Associative Memory, finding low precision tracks, and the Track Fitter, refining the track quality whith high precision fits. We will describe the architecture and the performances of a next generation track fitter, the GigaFitter, developed to reduce the degradation of the SVT efficiency due to the increasing instantaneous luminosity. The GigaFitter reduces the track parameter reconstruction to a few clock cycles and can perform many fits in parallel, thus allowing high resolution tracking at very high rate. The core of the GigaFitter is implemented in a modern Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA chip, rich in powerful DSP arrays. The FPGA is housed on a mezzanine board which receives the data from a subset of the tracking detector and transfers the fitted tracks to a Pulsar motherboard for the final corrections. Instead of the current 12 boards, one per sector of the detector, the final system will be much more compact, consisting of a single GigaFitter Pulsar board equipped with four mezzanine cards receiving the data from the entire tracking detector. Moreover, the GigaFitter modular structure is adequate to scale for much better performances and is general enough to be easily adapted to future High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments and applications outside HEP.

Erlotinib is registered for treatment of all patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, its efficacy for treatment of patients whose tumours are EGFR wild-type—which includes most patients—is still contentious. We assessed the efficacy of erlotinib compared with a standard second-line chemotherapy in such patients. We did this randomised controlled trial in 52 Italian hospitals. We enrolled patients who had metastatic NSCLC, had had platinum-based chemotherapy, and had wild-type EGFR as assessed by direct sequencing. Patients were randomly assigned centrally (1:1) to receive either erlotinib orally 150 mg/day or docetaxel intravenously 75 mg/m2 every 21 days or 35 mg/m2 on days 1, 8, and 15, every 28 days. Randomisation was stratified by centre, stage, type of first-line chemotherapy, and performance status. Patients and investigators who gave treatments or assessed outcomes were not masked to treatment allocation, investigators who analysed results were. The primary endpoint was overall survival in the intention-to-treat population. The study is registered at ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT00637910. We screened 702 patients, of whom we genotyped 540. 222 patients were enrolled (110 assigned to docetaxel vs 112 assigned to erlotinib). Median overall survival was 8·2 months (95% CI 5·8–10·9) with docetaxel versus 5·4 months (4·5–6·8) with erlotinib (adjusted hazard ratio [HR] 0·73, 95% CI 0·53–1·00; p=0·05). Progression-free survival was significantly better with docetaxel than with erlotinib: median progression-free survival was 2·9 months (95% CI 2·4–3·8) with docetaxel versus 2·4 months (2·1–2·6) with erlotinib (adjusted HR 0·71, 95% CI 0·53–0·95; p=0·02). The most common grade 3–4 toxic effects were: low absolute neutrophil count (21 [20%] of 104 in the docetaxel group vs none of 107 in the erlotinib group), skin toxic effects (none vs 15 [14%]), and asthenia (ten [10%] vs six [6%]). Our results show that chemotherapy is more effective than erlotinib for second-line treatment for previously treated patients with NSCLC who have wild-type EGFR tumours. Agenzia Italiana del Farmaco.

In the early Greek tradition--from Homer to Hesiod--the term mythos obviously meant \"word,\" \"discourse,\" and \"account.\" In fact, Romans equate mythos with fabula. The Greek myths collected by Hyginus in his homonymous work are fabulae, as fabulae are called the Greek myths from which the philosopher must keep his distance, according to Cicero's Balbus. Here, Bettini discusses the fascinating world of Roman fabula.

This paper provides an analysis of Aeneas' visit to the \"parva Troia\" in Epirus (Vergil, \"Aeneid\" 3.294ff.), centered on the theme of \"substitutes\" and \"doubles,\" and beginning with Andromache, the heroine of this encounter. With Helenus as a substitute for her deceased husband, Hector, Andromache is involved in a sort of levirate marriage. Moreover, she reacts to Aeneas and his companions as if they too were \"substitutes,\" living persons who immediately evoke images of the dead, \"doubles\" for her lost loved ones (Hector first and foremost, and also Creusa and Astyanax). This makes Andromache perfectly at home in \"parva Troia\", which is itself a \"double,\" a \"substitute\" for the city destroyed by the Greeks. Except that, like all \"doubles,\" \"parva Troia\" is an insubstantial illusion, the effigy of something that no longer exists. This city and its landscape can only be \"seen,\" not actually \"inhabited.\" These Trojan exiles are thus victims of a syndrome very similar to \"nostalgia\" (a Greek word unknown to the ancient Greeks, dating to the early eighteenth century, and beautifully described in a remarkable passage by Chateaubriand). Helenus and his companions are \"too faithful\" to their vanished city; their destiny, like that of the dead, has been hopelessly fulfilled. Aeneas, however, is not allowed to become a prisoner of the past. Against his will, he must be \"unfaithful\" to his former city: he will not rebuild Troy. The companions of Helenus and Andromache suffer from an \"excess of identity\" (one way to define nostalgia). Aeneas, on the other hand, submits to the almost total loss of his own identity: except for the Penates, a highly significant, sacred part of the lost patria, which will contribute to the formation of his identity in a way similar to Helenus and Andromache's own nostalgic cult of the image of Troy.

Bettini discusses the relations between Greek and Roman civilizations and the world today. Several stories from ancient times are discussed.

The use of double-faced, metallized, perforated PCB planes, segmented into strips for the anodic read-out of ionization signals in liquid argon TPCs, is emerging as a promising technology for charge readout in liquid argon TPCs used in large volume detectors.As a proof of concept, a prototype liquid Argon TPC hosting this new anode configuration based on single side perforated PCB planes has been constructed and exposed to cosmic rays at LNL in Italy. Tests were performed with both the metallized and insulating sides of the anode facing the drift volume, providing the first evidence of the focusing effect on drift electron trajectories through the PCB holes due to charge accumulation on the insulator surface.