Recommendations for neonatologists and pediatricians working in first level birthing centers on the first communication of genetic disease and malformation syndrome diagnosis: consensus issued by 6 Italian scientific societies and 4 parents' associations.

Background: Genetic diseases are chronic conditions with relevant impact on the lives of patients and their families. In USA and Europe it is estimated a prevalence of 60 million affected subjects, 75% of whom are in developmental age. A significant number of newborns are admitted in the Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) for reasons different from prematurity, although the prevalence of those with genetic diseases is unknown.

Recognition of wall materials through active thermography coupled with numerical simulations.

In the framework of historical buildings, wall thickness as well as wall constituents are not often known a priori, and active IR thermography can be exploited as a nonintrusive method for detecting what kind of material lies beneath the external plaster layer. In the present work, the wall of a historical building is subjected to a heating stimulus, and the surface temperature temporal trend is recorded by an IR camera. A hybrid numerical model is developed in order to simulate the transient thermal response of a wall made of different known materials underneath the plaster layer.

Antitumor activity of 1,4-bis (2'-chloroethyl)-1,4-diazabicyclo-[2.2.1] heptane dimaleate (Dabis Maleate) in M5076 and its subline resistant to cyclophosphamide M5/CTX.

We investigated the antitumoral activity of Dabis Maleate given on different dosage schedules and as continuous infusion in a murine reticular cell sarcoma M5076 (M5) and in a subline made resistant to cyclophosphamide and other nitrogen mustards (M5/CTX). The therapeutic index of Dabis Maleate was clearly better when the drug was given as a continuous 72-h infusion. Dabis Maleate appeared non-cross-resistant to cyclophosphamide and this property renders it interesting for further clinical development.

O6-methylguanine and temozolomide can reverse the resistance to chloroethylnitrosoureas of a mouse L1210 leukemia.

Using L1210 and a subline resistance to chloroethylnitrosoureas (L1210/BCNU), we found that the resistance to 1-(2-chloroethyl)-1-nitrosourea (CNU) or to diethyl-1-3-(2-chloroethyl)-3-nitrosoureido ethyl phosphonate (fotemustine) can be reversed by a pretreatment with O6-methyl Guanine (O6-mGua) or temozolomide. In L1210/BCNU but not in L1210 the pretreatment with O6mGua caused an increased peak level of CNU-induced DNA-interstrand crosslinks. We then evaluated whether the resistance to BCNU could be counteracted in vivo by i.