Explore the vast range of titles available.

In recent years, with the development of haptic technologies, the investigation of the potential of vibrotactile perception of musical parameters has attracted much interest. The possibility of vibrotactile musical note discrimination has already been studied. In this study, we approach the problem of vibrotactile perception of musical consonant and dissonant tone relationships, essential components of Western tonal music. Thirty participants were asked to distinguish between consonant and dissonant intervals presented in two different conditions: the Auditory Condition and the Vibrotactile Condition (through tactile stimulation). The stimuli were occidental tonal piano music intervals considered from the point of view of a musical theory perfect consonant or dissonant interval. The results show that consonant and dissonant musical intervals can be perceived at the tactile level and that there is no significant difference in the number of intervals correctly recognised in the Vibrotactile Condition and the Auditory Condition in participants who have no musical training. The consonance/dissonance perception shows some differences in both conditions, with vibrotactile perception being more accurate with larger intervals of more than ten semitones. In the Auditory Condition, it is related to the number of semitones, becoming more sensitive from eleven semitones onwards, and the type of interval, possibly due to the influence of auditory musical training. These results open up the possibility of transmitting other tonal musical characteristics; through tactile stimulation the possibility of transmitting the melodic and harmonic basis of Western music vibrotactically opens up, offering a wide range of options for investigation.

The ability of music to induce emotions has been arousing a lot of interest in recent years, especially due to the boom in music streaming platforms and the use of automatic music recommenders. Music Emotion Recognition approaches are based on combining multiple audio features extracted from digital audio samples and different machine learning techniques. In these approaches, neuroscience results on musical emotion perception are not considered. The main goal of this research is to facilitate the automatic subtitling of music. The authors approached the problem of automatic musical emotion detection in movie soundtracks considering these characteristics and using scientific musical databases, which have become a reference in neuroscience research. In the experiments, the Constant-Q-Transform spectrograms, the ones that best represent the relationships between musical tones from the point of view of human perception, are combined with Convolutional Neural Networks. Results show an efficient emotion classification model for 2-second musical audio fragments representative of intense basic feelings of happiness, sadness, and fear. Those emotions are the most interesting to be identified in the case of movie music captioning. The quality metrics have demonstrated that the results of the different models differ significantly and show no homogeneity. Finally, these results pave the way for an accessible and automatic captioning of music, which could automatically identify the emotional intent of the different segments of the movie soundtrack.

Nursing students can be exposed to patients with hepatitis A virus (HAV) and can represent a vehicle of transmission both for health personnel, patients and relatives. The aim of this study was to assess the risk of HAV infection in nursing students during their internship. A seroprevalence survey on HAV infection was performed on nursing students at the Cagliari university-hospital, together with the assessment of the compliance to preventive measures to decrease the risk of infection during their internship. Blood specimens were obtained from 253 students. All serum samples were tested for anti-HAV antibodies (IgG) by the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Compliance to preventive measures was recorded by trained personnel. Overall HAV seropositivity in nursing students (mean age 24, range 17 - 45 years) was 3%. Compliance to preventive measures was not uniform (6% - 76%) and extremely low in some specific measures targeted to decrease the oral-fecal transmission. The high proportion of susceptible nursing students can contribute to an increase in the risk of nosocomial transmission, especially when specific preventive measures are not completely applied. Nursing education packages, before starting medical internship, should be implemented in order to increase their compliance to preventive measures, especially in wards at higher risk. Vaccination should be considered in wards at higher risk.

β-Thalassemia and sickle cell disease both display a great deal of phenotypic heterogeneity, despite being generally thought of as simple Mendelian diseases. The reasons for this are not well understood, although the level of fetal hemoglobin (HbF) is one well characterized ameliorating factor in both of these conditions. To better understand the genetic basis of this heterogeneity, we carried out genome-wide scans with 362,129 common SNPs on 4,305 Sardinians to look for genetic linkage and association with HbF levels, as well as other red blood cell-related traits. Among major variants affecting HbF levels, SNP rs11886868 in the BCL11A gene was strongly associated with this trait (P < 10⁻³⁵). The C allele frequency was significantly higher in Sardinian individuals with elevated HbF levels, detected by screening for β-thalassemia, and patients with attenuated forms of β-thalassemia vs. those with thalassemia major. We also show that the same BCL11A variant is strongly associated with HbF levels in a large cohort of sickle cell patients. These results indicate that BCL11A variants, by modulating HbF levels, act as an important ameliorating factor of the β-thalassemia phenotype, and it is likely they could help ameliorate other hemoglobin disorders. We expect our findings will help to characterize the molecular mechanisms of fetal globin regulation and could eventually contribute to the development of new therapeutic approaches for β-thalassemia and sickle cell anemia.

Monitoring surveys of Phytophthora related diseases in four forest nurseries in Italy revealed the occurrence of fourteen Phytophthora species to be associated with collar and root rot on fourteen plants typical of Mediterranean and alpine regions. In addition, a multilocus phylogeny analysis based on nuclear ITS and ß-tubulin and mitochondrial cox1 sequences, as well as micromorphological features, supported the description of a new species belonging to the phylogenetic clade 7c, Phytophthora mediterranea sp. nov. Phytophthora mediterranea was shown to be associated with collar and root rot symptoms on myrtle seedlings. Phylogenetically, P. mediterranea is closely related to P. cinnamomi but the two species differ in 87 nucleotides in the three studied DNA regions. Morphologically P. mediterranea can be easily distinguished from P. cinnamomi on the basis of its smaller sporangia, colony growth pattern and higher optimum and maximum temperature values. Data from the pathogenicity test showed that P. mediterranea has the potential to threaten the native Mediterranean maquis vegetation. Finally, the discovery of P. cinnamomi in alpine nurseries, confirms the progressive expansion of this species towards cold environments, probably driven by climate change.

Francesco Cucca, Serena Sanna, David Schlessinger, Gonçalo Abecasis and colleagues report genome-wide association analysis results for the levels of A1, A2 and fetal hemoglobin in a large Sardinian cohort. By integrating high-density array genotyping and whole-genome sequencing, they detect 23 associations at 10 loci and observe a wide range of pleiotropic effects of variants across the 3 hemoglobin types. We report genome-wide association study results for the levels of A1, A2 and fetal hemoglobins, analyzed for the first time concurrently. Integrating high-density array genotyping and whole-genome sequencing in a large general population cohort from Sardinia, we detected 23 associations at 10 loci. Five signals are due to variants at previously undetected loci: MPHOSPH9 , PLTP - PCIF1 , ZFPM1 (FOG1) , NFIX and CCND3 . Among the signals at known loci, ten are new lead variants and four are new independent signals. Half of all variants also showed pleiotropic associations with different hemoglobins, which further corroborated some of the detected associations and identified features of coordinated hemoglobin species production.

Background Oct4 is a key factor of an expanded transcriptional network (Oct4-TN) that governs pluripotency and self-renewal in embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and in the inner cell mass from which ESCs are derived. A pending question is whether the establishment of the Oct4-TN initiates during oogenesis or after fertilisation. To this regard, recent evidence has shown that Oct4 controls a poorly known Oct4-TN central to the acquisition of the mouse egg developmental competence. The aim of this study was to investigate the identity and extension of this maternal Oct4-TN, as much as whether its presence is circumscribed to the egg or maintained beyond fertilisation. Results By comparing the genome-wide transcriptional profile of developmentally competent eggs that express the OCT4 protein to that of developmentally incompetent eggs in which OCT4 is down-regulated, we unveiled a maternal Oct4-TN of 182 genes. Eighty of these transcripts escape post-fertilisation degradation and represent the maternal Oct4-TN inheritance that is passed on to the 2-cell embryo. Most of these 80 genes are expressed in cancer cells and 37 are notable companions of the Oct4 transcriptome in ESCs. Conclusions These results provide, for the first time, a developmental link between eggs, early preimplantation embryos and ESCs, indicating that the molecular signature that characterises the ESCs identity is rooted in oogenesis. Also, they contribute a useful resource to further study the mechanisms of Oct4 function and regulation during the maternal-to-embryo transition and to explore the link between the regulation of pluripotency and the acquisition of de-differentiation in cancer cells.

ObjectiveWe aimed at identifying baseline predictive factors for emergency department (ED) readmission, with hospitalisation/death, in patients with COVID-19 previously discharged from the ED. We also developed a disease progression velocity index.Design and settingRetrospective cohort study of prospectively collected data. The charts of consecutive patients with COVID-19 discharged from the Reggio Emilia (Italy) ED (2 March 2 to 31 March 2020) were retrospectively examined. Clinical, laboratory and CT findings at first ED admission were tested as predictive factors using multivariable logistic models. We divided CT extension by days from symptom onset to build a synthetic velocity index.Participants450 patients discharged from the ED with diagnosis of COVID-19.Main outcome measureED readmission within 14 days, followed by hospitalisation/death.ResultsOf the discharged patients, 84 (18.7%) were readmitted to the ED, 61 (13.6%) were hospitalised and 10 (2.2%) died. Age (OR=1.05; 95% CI 1.03 to 1.08), Charlson Comorbidity Index 3 versus 0 (OR=11.61; 95% CI 1.76 to 76.58), days from symptom onset (OR for 1-day increase=0.81; 95% CI 0.73 to 0.90) and CT extension (OR for 1% increase=1.03; 95% CI 1.01 to 1.06) were associated in a multivariable model for readmission with hospitalisation/death. A 2-day lag velocity index was a strong predictor (OR for unit increase=1.21, 95% CI 1.08 to 1.36); the model including this index resulted in less information loss.ConclusionsA velocity index combining CT extension and days from symptom onset predicts disease progression in patients with COVID-19. For example, a 20% CT extension 3 days after symptom onset has the same risk as does 50% after 10 days.