Even though agriculture already spread into Eurasia during the Neolithic, the transition between the Copper Age and the Bronze Age was the time where Italian communities tuned horticultural techniques to foster the soil productivity. Carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analyses could be leveraged to identify some of those practices, such as manuring and irrigation. The former could spike the nitrogen values of plants, while water availability affects the carbon values.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the context of transitioning toward a more sustainable use of natural resources, the application of lignin to substitute commonly utilized petroleum-based plastics can play a key role. Although lignin is highly available at low cost and presents interesting properties, such as antioxidant and UV barrier activities, its application is limited by its low reactivity, which is a consequence of harsh conditions normally used to extract lignin from biomass. In this work, the use of glyoxylic acid lignin (GA lignin), rich in carboxylic acid groups and hence highly reactive toward epoxy cross-linkers, is presented.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGliomas are the second-most-common primary brain tumors in dogs. Surgery and radiotherapy are established treatment approaches with similar median survival time, whereas conventional chemotherapy is burdened by severe adverse effects. Spinal and leptomeningeal spread of gliomas have been described following radiotherapy treatment alone.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRadiation therapy has become the standard of care in the treatment of canine intranasal neoplasia, but because of the poor prognosis associated with stage IV nasal tumours and the proximity of the brain to the irradiation target, few data regarding the treatment of very advanced neoplasms are available. The aim of this pilot study was to evaluate the feasibility, safety and effectiveness of a combined treatment composed of definitive high-dose hypofractionated volumetric modulated arc radiotherapy on tumours with concurrent treatment of regional lymph nodes if positive or as prophylaxis, carboplatin radio-sensitising, and adjuvant metronomic chemotherapy for stage IV canine nasal tumours with intracranial extension. A pilot observational study was conducted in 7 dogs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Self-injection of biologics is a mainstay of chronic disease treatment, yet the process of self-injection often causes persistent apprehension and anxiety, distinct from needle phobia. While literature alludes to the role that routines and rituals play in self-injection, there is no comprehensive study on the routines and rituals self-injectors employ, nor of the process by which they are discovered and ingrained.
Methods: We conducted a mixed-method, observational pilot ethnography study of 27 patients with plaque psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, or ankylosing spondylitis with and without prior biologic self-injection experience.
The geographical location and shape of Apulia, a narrow land stretching out in the sea at the South of Italy, made this region a Mediterranean crossroads connecting Western Europe and the Balkans. Such movements culminated at the beginning of the Iron Age with the Iapygian civilization which consisted of three cultures: Peucetians, Messapians, and Daunians. Among them, the Daunians left a peculiar cultural heritage, with one-of-a-kind stelae and pottery, but, despite the extensive archaeological literature, their origin has been lost to time.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUsing first principles from inference, we design a set of functionals for the purposes of ranking joint probability distributions with respect to their correlations. Starting with a general functional, we impose its desired behavior through the Principle of Constant Correlations (PCC), which constrains the correlation functional to behave in a consistent way under statistically independent inferential transformations. The PCC guides us in choosing the appropriate design criteria for constructing the desired functionals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe aims of this pilot study were to evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of high-dose hypofractionated volumetric modulated arc radiotherapy (VMAT) applied to whole pelvic region radiotherapy (WPRT) with multilevel simultaneous integrated boost (MLSIB) combined with piroxicam and chemotherapy for the treatment of canine transitional cell carcinoma (TCC) of the lower urinary tract with muscle invasion TCC. Twelve dogs were enrolled, according to stage, in two groups: group 1, TCC confined to the urinary tract; group 2, TCC with metastasis. The planning target volume dose was tailored from 36 to 42 Gy in 6 fractions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFusion of the optic fissure is necessary to complete retinal morphogenesis and ensure proper function of the optic stalk. Failure of this event leads to congenital coloboma, one of the leading causes of pediatric blindness. Mechanistically it is widely accepted that the basement membrane (BM) surrounding the maturing retina needs to be remodeled within the fissure in order to facilitate subsequent epithelial sheet fusion.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnfortunately, one co-author name was incorrectly published in the original publication. The complete correct name of the co-author is given below.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the opioid-sparing effect of a cooling brace after surgical correction of idiopathic surgery in children.
Methods: We compared two consecutive cohorts of patients before and after introducing this technique in our institution. Management of patients was standardized.
The aim of this prospective pilot study was to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of curative intent high dose hypofractionated frameless volumetric modulated arc radiotherapy for treatment of canine trigeminal peripheral nerve sheath tumors. Client-owned dogs with a presumptive imaging-based diagnosis of trigeminal peripheral nerve sheath tumor were recruited for the study during the period of February 2010 to December 2013. Seven dogs were enrolled and treated with high dose hypofractionated volumetric modulated arc radiotherapy delivered by a 6 MV linear accelerator equipped with a micro-multileaf beam collimator.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Documented and undocumented skeletal collections offer unique windows into life in the past and are integral for research in biological anthropology. The objective of this article is to describe the documented and undocumented collections curated by the Museum of Anthropology at Padua University (Italy) to demonstrate their potential for research and encourage researchers to consider them for future projects.
Materials: The collection was established by Prof.
Morgagni is considered the father of pathological anatomy. He died in 1771, 89 years old, and was buried in Saint Maxim church in Padua, where his wife and five of his 15 children were already buried. In 2011, an anthropological analysis confirmed that one of the skulls belonged to the oldest individuals among those found in Morgagni's tomb.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA prospective study to assess high-dose hypofractionated volume modulated arc radiotherapy feasibility and efficacy in canine meningiomas was conducted. Thirty-nine patients with encephalic and spinal meningiomas assumed from MRI findings were recruited and received high-dose hypofractionated volumetric modulated arc radiotherapy by a linear accelerator equipped with an external beam modulator micro-multileaf collimator and an XVI cone beam computed tomography system. The prescribed mean dose was 33 Gy in five fractions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Am Anim Hosp Assoc
January 2019
A 7 yr old female pit bull terrier was presented for a cervical soft tissue swelling located in the left jugular region. No abnormalities were present at physical examination or in the laboratory workup. Computed tomography and MRI scans showed a well-defined, ovoid, single mass in the left dorsal cervical region connected to the common carotid artery, histologically consistent with carotid body paraganglioma.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVolumetric Modulated Arc Therapy (VMAT) is a modern technique, widely used in human radiotherapy, which allows a high dose to be delivered to tumor volumes and low doses to the surrounding organs at risk (OAR). Veterinary clinics takes advantage of this feature due to the small target volumes and distances between the target and the OAR. Sparing the OAR permits dose escalation, and hypofractionation regimens reduce the number of treatment sessions with a simpler manageability in the veterinary field.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAtlanto-axial (AA) instability due to ligament insufficiency is a common cause of cervical spinal cord compression in toy breeds. However, in some dogs a difference in size between the atlas and the axis leads to joint incongruence that exacerbates AA subluxation and makes surgical treatment challenging. Twelve dogs with AA instability with incongruence were enrolled in a single institution prospective observational study.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe evaluated stereotactic volume modulated arc radiotherapy (VMAT) for canine gliomas, alone (radiotherapy [RT]) and in combination with temozolomide (RT + TMZ), compared with palliation. Overall and disease-specific survival times were estimated. Thirty dogs were palliated, 22 dogs were treated with RT and 20 with RT + TMZ.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Treatment of canine peripheral nerve sheath tumours (PNSTs) is challenging and prognosis after surgical resection is considered poor. The aim of this study was to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of stereotactic radiotherapy (RT) of these tumours.
Methods: 10 dogs with clinical symptoms and MRI findings consistent with PNSTs of the brachial plexus, branches and nerve roots were treated with linear accelerator-based volumetric-modulated arc radiotherapy (VMAT) with a dose of 35 Gy/5 fractions.
Objectives: To evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of hypofractionated stereotactic volumetric-modulated arc radiotherapy in treating canine adrenal tumours with vascular invasion.
Methods: A single-arm clinical study was performed. The dogs underwent total body computed tomography, brain and abdomen magnetic resonance imaging and endocrine assay.
The aim of this work was to present a novel minimally invasive surgical stabilization technique for canine atlanto-occipital dislocation and to report the associated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings. All 5 dogs in this case series underwent 1.5 T MRI of the head and neck and 3 underwent both MRI and computed tomography (CT).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThymoma is a relatively common tumor in rabbits. Treatment with surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy alone or in combination has been reported with varying outcomes. Stereotactic volumetric modulated arc radiotherapy delivered in a hypofractionated manner allows high doses of radiation to be delivered to the target volume while allowing sparing of adjacent critical structures.
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