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Background The potential contribution of denture-related sores to oral carcinogenesis still fuels controversies. This study assessed the association between recurrent denture-related sores and squamous cell carcinoma in anatomic sites of the mouth that are specifically at risk of sores by ill-fitting dentures. Methods We conducted a hospital-based case-control study comprising 71 histologically-confirmed cases of squamous cell carcinoma in anatomic sites of the mouth that were specifically at risk of developing sores due to ill-fitting dentures, who were attended at two hospitals in Sao Paulo, Brazil; and 240 controls without cancer, recruited from outpatient units of the same hospitals. Associations were assessed by multivariate logistic regression conditioned on socio-demographic (family income) and behavioural characteristics (tobacco smoking, alcohol drinking and dietary patterns). Results The association between ill-fitting dentures and mouth cancer was statistically significant in the multivariate model, which adjustment for socio-demographic and behavioural characteristics: OR=3.98 (95% CI 1.06 to 14.96). The specific assessment of association between tumours in the lower jaw and sores by mandibular dentures confirmed this result (OR=6.39; 95% CI 1.49 to 29.52). Conclusions These results reinforce the hypothesis that an appropriate application and monitoring of dental prosthesis represent a non-negligible scope for cancer prevention.

When the concentration of negative ions is larger than a critical value, a small compressive pulse evolves into a subionic wave train and a large pulse develops into a solitary wave. The threshold amplitude and velocity of the solitary waves are measured and compared with predictions using the pseudopotential method.

The probability of recovering pathogenic Escherichia coli from food by the Bacteriological Analytical Manual method was determined by the effects of several factors: the number of strains per food, the ability of pathogenic strains to survive enrichment, and the frequency of plasmid loss during enrichment. Biochemical patterns indicated the presence of about six E. coli strains per food sample. About half of the strains isolated from humans did not survive enrichment. Among those which grew, plasmid loss, as determined by gel electrophoresis and DNA colony hybridization, ranged from 20 to 95%. The combined effects of failure to survive enrichment and plasmid loss decreased the relative numbers of these strains and reduced the chance of detecting pathogens. To counteract this tendency and obtain a 90 to 95% probability off recovering a given pathogenic strain, 40 to 50 colonies per food sample should be picked during the routine testing of foods.

The propagation of ion-acoustic solitons in a plasma with negative ions has been observed. For sufficiently large concentration of negative ions, applied rarefactive (negative) voltage pulses break up into solitons, whereas compressive pulses evolve into wave trains, with exactly the opposite behavior as that for a plasma composed only of positive ions. There is a critical value of the negative-ion concentration for which a finite-amplitude pulse propagates without steepening.

Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli strains may produce a cholera-like, heat-labile enterotoxin (LT) as a virulence factor. The gene that codes for LT can be purified by recombinant DNA techniques and used as a genetic probe for DNA hybridization. These probes detect enterotoxigenic strains as well as strains that may not manifest toxin production but carry the genetic information to do so. In this study, 13 laboratories tested 3 known and 25 unknown (10 positive and 15 negative) cultures off. coli for the presence of the LT gene. The isolates had been tested and classified by the mouse Y-l adrenal cell test and an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Cultures were spotted on nitrocellulose filters on MacConkey agar and incubated. Colonies were lysed in situ and their DNA was hybridized to 32P-labeled, purified LT gene DNA (provided to the collaborators). Positive colonies were identified by autoradiography. Of 325 samples, 315 (96.9%) were identified correctly and 10 were misclassified; there were 6 false negative and 4 false positive identifications. Chi-square values indicated that the method agreed with the previous classification and was equally efficient in distinguishing positive and negative samples (95.7 and 98.1%, respectively). The method has been adopted official first action.

Ion-acoustic solitons in a three-component plasma which consists of electrons and positive and negative ions have been investigated experimentally. When the concentration of negative ions is smaller than a certain value, positive or compressive solitons are observed. At the critical concentration, a broad pulse of small but finite amplitude propagates without changing its shape. When the concentration is larger than this value, negative or rarefactive solitons are excited. The velocity and the width of these solitons are measured and compared with predictions of the Korteweg-de Vries equation which takes the negative ions and the ion temperature into consideration. Head-on and overtaking collisions of the rarefactive solitons have been observed to show that the solitons are not affected by these collisions.

The aim of this work is to prospectively evaluate the incidence of infection, from June 1986 to June 1987, in 640 patients submitted to surgical treatment at the São Francisco Hospital, in Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil. The overall incidence of infection was 10.31%. The incidence of wound abscess was 6.25%, and urinary infection 5.75%. In the surgical procedures considered as clean, the infection rate was 8.62%, in the clean-contaminated 14.81%, in the contaminated 8.33%, and in the dirty 16.94%. The antimicrobian drugs contributed to increase the infection rate. The hospital infection rate for the patients at infirmaries was 10.88%, and for the patients at private rooms 4.92%. The mortality rate due to hospital infection was 12.12%. The authors stress that a constant attention with the hospital infection is needed to verify the infection rate to be able to make a control program of the asepsis, antisepsis and sterilization methods, as well as to improve the operative techniques and the patient's management during the pre, per and postoperative period.

Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli strains may produce a cholera-like, heat-labile enterotoxin (LT) as a virulence factor. The gene that codes for LT can be purified by recombinant DNA techniques and used as a genetic probe for DNA hybridization. These probes detect enterotoxigenic strains as well as strains that may not manifest toxin production but carry the genetic information to do so. In this study, 13 laboratories tested 3 known and 25 unknown (10 positive and 15 negative) cultures of E. coli for the presence of the LT gene. The isolates had been tested and classified by the mouse Y-1 adrenal cell test and an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Cultures were spotted on nitrocellulose filters on MacConkey agar and incubated. Colonies were lysed in situ and their DNA was hybridized to 32P-labeled, purified LT gene DNA (provided to the collaborators). Positive colonies were identified by autoradiography. Of 325 samples, 315 (96.9%) were identified correctly and 10 were misclassified; there were 6 false negative and 4 false positive identifications. Chi-square values indicated that the method agreed with the previous classification and was equally efficient in distinguishing positive and negative samples (95.7 and 98.1%, respectively). The method has been adopted official first action.

The Giant Pairing Vibration (GPV) is a correlated two-nucleon excitation mode in atomic nuclei predicted long time ago. It is expected to be excited in two-nucleon transfer reactions, similarly to the pairing vibrations feeding the ground states of even-even nuclei near shell-closure. Recent experiments have provided evidence for this mode in $$^{\mathrm {14}}$$ C and $$^{\mathrm {15}}$$ C nuclei populated via $$^{\mathrm {12}}$$ C, $$^{\mathrm {13}}$$ C( $$^{\mathrm {18}}$$ O, $$^{\mathrm {16}}$$ O) $$^{\mathrm {14}}$$ C, $$^{\mathrm {15}}$$ C two-neutron transfer reactions at 84 MeV beam energy. In the present paper, new data show the persistence of the same structures in the energy spectra of $$^{\mathrm {14}}$$ C and $$^{\mathrm {15}}$$ C populated by the same reactions at a higher bombarding energy of 275 MeV. The extracted centroid, width, spin-parity and transition probability fully agree with the previous observation thus giving a robust confirmation that the GPV mode is populated in such transfer reactions.

Neutrinoless double beta decay (0{\nu}\b{eta}\b{eta}) is considered the best potential resource to determine the absolute neutrino mass scale. Moreover, if observed, it will signal that the total lepton number is not conserved and neutrinos are their own anti-particles. Presently, this physics case is one of the most important research beyond Standard Model and might guide the way towards a Grand Unified Theory of fundamental interactions. Since the \b{eta}\b{eta} decay process involves nuclei, its analysis necessarily implies nuclear structure issues. The 0{\nu}\b{eta}\b{eta} decay rate can be expressed as a product of independent factors: the phase-space factors, the nuclear matrix elements (NME) and a function of the masses of the neutrino species. Thus the knowledge of the NME can give information on the neutrino mass scale, if the 0{\nu}\b{eta}\b{eta} decay rate is measured. In the NURE project, supported by a Starting Grant of the European Research Council, nuclear reactions of double charge-exchange (DCE) will be used as a tool to extract information on the \b{eta}\b{eta} NME. In DCE reactions and \b{eta}\b{eta} decay, the initial and final nuclear states are the same and the transition operators have similar structure. Thus the measurement of the DCE absolute crosssections can give crucial information on \b{eta}\b{eta} matrix elements., Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2001.09657; text overlap with arXiv:2001.09648

Large quantities of Carbon Oxides (CO x ) Sulfide Oxides (SO x ) and Nitride Oxides (NO x ) are the main cause for acid rains, photochemical smog and Greenhouse effect. The plasma process within induced free energetic electrons discharge is one of the most effective methods of reducing SO x , NO x and CO2 from industrial flue gases. This paper for dissociation of a atmosphere pollutant gases by corona discharge. The reactor consists of two coaxial, specially designed cylindrical electrodes. An ac barrier corona discharge at atmospheric pressure is generated by application of high voltage to the inner electrode while the outer electrode is grounded. Discharge by products of air and NO x are measured by a mass spectrometer in order to investigate the effect of a surface multidipole magnetic fields on the corona discharge and on the pollutant gas reduction.

Neutrinoless double beta decay of nuclei, if observed, would have important implications on fundamental physics. In particular it would give access to the effective neutrino mass. In order to extract such information from 0νββ decay half-life measurements, the knowledge of the Nuclear Matrix Elements (NME) is of utmost importance. In this context the NUMEN and the NURE projects aim to extract information on the NME by measuring cross sections of Double Charge Exchange reactions in selected systems which are expected to spontaneously decay via 0νββ. In this work an overview of the experimental challenges that NUMEN is facing in order to perform the experiments with accelerated beams and the research and development activity for the planned upgrade of the INFN-LNS facilities is reported.

The NUMEN project aims at accessing experimentally driven information on Nuclear Matrix Elements (NME) involved in the half-life of the neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ). In this view measurements of Heavy Ion (HI) induced Double Charge Exchange (DCE) reaction cross sections are performed with high-accuracy. In particular, the (18O,18Ne) and (20Ne,20O) reactions are used as tools for β+β+ and β-β- decays, respectively. In the experiments, performed at INFN - Laboratory Nazionali del Sud (LNS) in Catania, the beams are accelerated by the Superconducting Cyclotron (CS) and the reaction ejectiles are detected the MAGNEX magnetic spectrometer. The measured cross sections are challengingly low (a few nb), being the total reaction cross section much larger (a few b), thus a high sensitivity and a large rejection capability are demanded to the experimental set-up. This limits the present exploration to few selected isotopes of interest in the context of typically low-yield experimental runs. A major upgrade of the LNS facility is under way in order to increase the experimental dataset of more than two orders of magnitude, still preserving the high sensitivity of the present set-up. When accomplished this effort will make the INFN-LNS as the state-of-the-art research infrastructure for the systematic study of all the cases of interest for 0νββ. In this view, frontiers technologies are going to be adopted for the accelerator and the detection systems. In parallel, advanced theoretical models are being developed in order to extract the nuclear structure information from the measured cross sections.