Antirheumatic drugs and reproduction in women and men with chronic arthritis.

The impact of rheumatic disease on fertility and reproduction can be remarkable. Many disease-related factors can influence patients' sexual functioning, perturb fertility and limit family planning. Antirheumatic pharmacological treatment can also have a crucial role in this field. Proper counselling, preferably provided by a multidisciplinary team of rheumatologists, obstetricians, gynaecologists and neonatologists, is recommended for patients taking antirheumatic drugs, not only at the beginning, but also during the course of treatment. Paternal exposure to antirheumatic drugs was not found to be specifically associated with congenital malformation and adverse pregnancy outcome, therefore discontinuation of these drugs while planning for conception should be weighed against the risk of disease flare. Drugs in Food and Drug Administration (FDA) category 'X' should be withdrawn in a timely manner in women who desire a pregnancy. Meanwhile, disease control can be achieved with anti-tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-α agents, which are not teratogenic drugs. If maternal disease control is permissive, they can be stopped as soon as the pregnancy test turns positive and be resumed during pregnancy in case of a flare

Eigenvalue Distributions for a Class of Covariance Matrices with Applications to Bienenstock-Cooper-Munro Neurons Under Noisy Conditions

We analyze the effects of noise correlations in the input to, or among, BCM neurons using the Wigner semicircular law to construct random, positive-definite symmetric correlation matrices and compute their eigenvalue distributions. In the finite dimensional case, we compare our analytic results with numerical simulations and show the effects of correlations on the lifetimes of synaptic strengths in various visual environments. These correlations can be due either to correlations in the noise from the input LGN neurons, or correlations in the variability of lateral connections in a network of neurons. In particular, we find that for fixed dimensionality, a large noise variance can give rise to long lifetimes of synaptic strengths. This may be of physiological significance.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure

ANALISIS INTERDEPENDENSI FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT (FDI) DENGAN VARIABEL MAKRO EKONOMI

ABSTRAK Tujuan utama dari penelitian ini adalah untuk menganalisis interdependensi antara FDI dengan beberapa variabel yang lain, seperti PDB, Trade, Nilai Tukar, dan Tingkat bunga. Model VAR digunakan untuk menunjukkan pandangan yang komprehensif dari interdependensi ini. Hasil empiris menunjukkan bahwa melalui model VAR, interdependensi antara variabel FDI, PDB, Trade, Nilai Output Industri, Nilai Tukar dan Tingkat Suku Bunga telah diteliti dalam hubungan jangka panjang melalui kointegrasi vektor dan jangka pendek yang berdampak pada model VAR. Korelasi dinamis variabel telah diperoleh dengan analisis varian dan analisis respon impuls. Beberapa implikasi besar muncul dari hasil penelitian. Jika pemerintah Indonesia berkeinginan mendorong FDI dan pertumbuhan ekonomi, hal ini dapat dilakukan dengan output dan nilai tukar. Dalam jangka pendek maupun jangka panjang, keduanya sangat penting untuk stabilitas ekonomi. Kata Kunci : FDI, Pertumbuhan ekonomi, variabel makro dan model VARBanda Ace

IS LOCAL A MATTER OF FOOD MILES OR FOOD TRADITIONS?

In the last decade, the local food movement has achieved a growing popularity in the Italian food system. Nevertheless, the Italian food market still lacks a shared definition and labels indicating the local origin of the food products. In this study, we explore the meaning of \u201clocal food\u201d in the Italian market using a qualitative approach. Results from twenty-three individual semi-structured interviews show that the meaning of \u201clocal\u201d should be explained more in terms of connection between a community traditions and a geographical area than in terms of food miles

The Destruction of Tori in Volume-Preserving Maps

Invariant tori are prominent features of symplectic and volume preserving maps. From the point of view of chaotic transport the most relevant tori are those that are barriers, and thus have codimension one. For an $n$-dimensional volume-preserving map, such tori are prevalent when the map is nearly "integrable," in the sense of having one action and $n-1$ angle variables. As the map is perturbed, numerical studies show that the originally connected image of the frequency map acquires gaps due to resonances and domains of nonconvergence due to chaos. We present examples of a three-dimensional, generalized standard map for which there is a critical perturbation size, $\epsilon_c$, above which there are no tori. Numerical investigations to find the "last invariant torus" reveal some similarities to the behavior found by Greene near a critical invariant circle for area preserving maps: the crossing time through the newly destroyed torus appears to have a power law singularity at $\epsilon_c$, and the local phase space near the critical torus contains many high-order resonances.Comment: laTeX, 16 figure

Probing the diffusive behaviour of beam-halo dynamics in circular accelerators

Circular particle accelerators at the energy frontier are based on superconducting magnets that are extremely sensitive to beam losses as these might induce quenches, i.e. transitions to the normal-conducting state. Furthermore, the energy stored in the circulating beam is so large that hardware integrity is put in serious danger, and machine protection becomes essential for reaching the nominal accelerator performance. In this challenging context, the beam halo becomes a potential source of performance limitations and its dynamics needs to be understood in detail to assess whether it could be an issue for the accelerator. In this paper, we discuss in detail a recent framework, based on a diffusive approach, to model beam-halo dynamics. The functional form of the optimal estimate of the perturbative series, as given by Nekhoroshev’s theorem, is used to provide the functional form of the action diffusion coefficient. The goal is to propose an effective model for the beam-halo dynamics and to devise an efficient experimental procedure to obtain an accurate measurement of the diffusion coefficient

Seismic assessment and retrofit design of a school building in florence

The recent earthquakes occurred in Italy highlighted again the high vulnerability of structures built before the release of national Seismic Standards. This induced several local authorities to undertake extensive performance assessment campaigns of public buildings, among which mainly schools. A study carried out within one of these campaigns, concerning the evaluation of seismic vulnerability and the design of retrofit interventions in a school building in Florence, is presented herein. The structure was built at the beginning of 1970s, and is characterized by a ground storey with reinforced concrete frame skeleton, and a first and second storey with steel structure. An extensive on-site experimental investigation was developed at a first step of the study, which allowed identifying the mechanical characteristics of the constituting materials, and re-drawing the main structural details. Based on these data, a check of the seismic performance in current conditions was carried out, which highlighted several drawbacks, especially concerning the steel members. This prompted to propose a seismic retrofit hypothesis of the building, consisting in the installation of a set of dissipative braces incorporating fluid viscous dampers as protective devices. A synthesis of the assessment analyses in current conditions and the retrofit design, which allows attaining an elastic structural response up to the maximum considered earthquake level, is reported in the paper

Mitochondrial DNA Repair in Neurodegenerative Diseases and Ageing

Mitochondria are the only organelles, along with the nucleus, that have their own DNA. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is a double-stranded circular molecule of ~16.5 kbp that can exist in multiple copies within the organelle. Both strands are translated and encode for 22 tRNAs, 2 rRNAs, and 13 proteins. mtDNA molecules are anchored to the inner mitochondrial membrane and, in association with proteins, form a structure called nucleoid, which exerts a structural and protective function. Indeed, mitochondria have evolved mechanisms necessary to protect their DNA from chemical and physical lesions such as DNA repair pathways similar to those present in the nucleus. However, there are mitochondria-specific mechanisms such as rapid mtDNA turnover, fission, fusion, and mitophagy. Nevertheless, mtDNA mutations may be abundant in somatic tissue due mainly to the proximity of the mtDNA to the oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) system and, consequently, to the reactive oxygen species (ROS) formed during ATP production. In this review, we summarise the most common types of mtDNA lesions and mitochondria repair mechanisms. The second part of the review focuses on the physiological role of mtDNA damage in ageing and the effect of mtDNA mutations in neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Considering the central role of mitochondria in maintaining cellular homeostasis, the analysis of mitochondrial function is a central point for developing personalised medicine

Evidence for a Conserved Quantity in Human Mobility

Recent seminal works on human mobility have shown that individuals constantly exploit a small set of repeatedly visited locations. A concurrent study has emphasized the explorative nature of human behaviour, showing that the number of visited places grows steadily over time. How to reconcile these seemingly contradicting facts remains an open question. Here, we analyse high-resolution multi-year traces of ~40,000 individuals from 4 datasets and show that this tension vanishes when the long-term evolution of mobility patterns is considered. We reveal that mobility patterns evolve significantly yet smoothly, and that the number of familiar locations an individual visits at any point is a conserved quantity with a typical size of ~25. We use this finding to improve state-of-the-art modelling of human mobility. Furthermore, shifting the attention from aggregated quantities to individual behaviour, we show that the size of an individual’s set of preferred locations correlates with their number of social interactions. This result suggests a connection between the conserved quantity we identify, which as we show cannot be understood purely on the basis of time constraints, and the ‘Dunbar number’ describing a cognitive upper limit to an individual’s number of social relations. We anticipate that our work will spark further research linking the study of human mobility and the cognitive and behavioural sciences

Multi-scale spatio-temporal analysis of human mobility

The recent availability of digital traces generated by phone calls and online logins has significantly increased the scientific understanding of human mobility. Until now, however, limited data resolution and coverage have hindered a coherent description of human displacements across different spatial and temporal scales. Here, we characterise mobility behaviour across several orders of magnitude by analysing ∼850 individuals' digital traces sampled every ∼16 seconds for 25 months with ∼10 meters spatial resolution. We show that the distributions of distances and waiting times between consecutive locations are best described by log-normal and gamma distributions, respectively, and that natural time-scales emerge from the regularity of human mobility. We point out that log-normal distributions also characterise the patterns of discovery of new places, implying that they are not a simple consequence of the routine of modern life