Pharmacogenetics Biomarkers and Their Specific Role in Neoadjuvant Chemoradiotherapy Treatments: An Exploratory Study on Rectal Cancer Patients

Background: Pathological complete response (pCR) to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (CRT) in locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) is still ascribed to a minority of patients. A pathway based-approach could highlight the predictive role of germline single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The primary aim of this study was to define new predictive biomarkers considering treatment specificities. Secondary aim was to determine new potential predictive biomarkers independent from radiotherapy (RT) dosage and cotreatment with oxaliplatin. Methods: Thirty germ-line SNPs in twenty-one genes were selected according to a pathway-based approach. Genetic analyses were performed on 280 LARC patients who underwent fluoropyrimidine-based CRT. The potential predictive role of these SNPs in determining pathological tumor response was tested in Group 1 (94 patients undergoing also oxaliplatin), Group 2 (73 patients treated with high RT dosage), Group 3 (113 patients treated with standard RT dosage), and in the pooled population (280 patients). Results: Nine new predictive biomarkers were identified in the three groups. The most promising one was rs3136228-MSH6 (p = 0.004) arising from Group 3. In the pooled population, rs1801133-MTHFR showed only a trend (p = 0.073). Conclusion: This exploratory study highlighted new potential predictive biomarkers of neoadjuvant CRT and underlined the importance to strictly define treatment peculiarities in pharmacogenetic analyses.     

Labyrinth 3D. Cultural archetypes for exploring media archives

Since the advent of the World Wide Web, online media archives have changed their audience from a restricted number of professionals and amateurs to the general public. This shift is not without consequences: if, on the one side, it represents an important opportunity for archives to engage in a dialogue with a larger audience, on the other side, it advocates novel forms of access that go beyond the highly specialized models underlying traditional access tools. In this paper, we propose to use 3-D graphics for designing novel tools of exploratory search in cultural heritage archives. Our approach has been deployed as an online virtual environment where the user can navigate the meaning relations over the items in the archive. Targeted at cultural heritage, the application, called Labyrinth 3D, relies on the use of cultural archetypes to inform the conceptualization of the archive and the creation of the virtual environment, with the goal of engaging the user in the exploration of the archive through the creation of personal paths.     

Multi-agent quality of experience control

International Journal of Control, Automation and Systems - In the framework of the Future Internet, the aim of the Quality of Experience (QoE) Control functionalities is to track the personalized...     

An approach to the measurement of shunt resistance of individual subcells in thin‐film tandem devices

In this paper, the selective illumination approach is adopted to separately extract the shunt resistance of the individual subcells belonging to a tandem cell. The method relies on simple theoretical considerations and is based on the measurement of the current–voltage characteristic of the tandem cell by alternately keeping one of the subcells under dark conditions. Numerical simulations are employed to support the reliability of the technique, which is experimentally tested on micromorph devices deposited onto glass covered by a V‐shaped transparent conducting oxide and subject to different thermal treatments. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Comparison of thin epitaxial film silicon photovoltaics fabricated on monocrystalline and polycrystalline seed layers on glass

We fabricate thin epitaxial crystal silicon solar cells on display glass and fused silica substrates overcoated with a silicon seed layer. To confirm the quality of hot‐wire chemical vapor deposition epitaxy, we grow a 2‐µm‐thick absorber on a (100) monocrystalline Si layer transfer seed on display glass and achieve 6.5% efficiency with an open circuit voltage (V_OC) of 586 mV without light‐trapping features. This device enables the evaluation of seed layers on display glass. Using polycrystalline seeds formed from amorphous silicon by laser‐induced mixed phase solidification (MPS) and electron beam crystallization, we demonstrate 2.9%, 476 mV (MPS) and 4.1%, 551 mV (electron beam crystallization) solar cells. Grain boundaries likely limit the solar cell grown on the MPS seed layer, and we establish an upper bound for the grain boundary recombination velocity (S_GB) of 1.6x10⁴ cm/s. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.