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Objective: Hydraulic permeability is a topic of deep interest in biological materials because of its important role in a range of drug delivery-based therapies. The strong dependence of permeability on the geometry and topology of pore structure and the lack of detailed knowledge of these parameters in the case of brain tissue makes the study more challenging. Although theoretical models have been developed for hydraulic permeability, there is limited consensus on the validity of existing experimental evidence to complement these models. In the present study, we measure the permeability of white matter (WM) of fresh ovine brain tissue considering the localised heterogeneities in the medium using an infusion-based experimental set up, iPerfusion . We measure the flow across different parts of the WM in response to applied pressures for a sample of specific dimensions and calculate the permeability from directly measured parameters. Furthermore, we directly probe the effect of anisotropy of the tissue on permeability by considering the directionality of tissue on the obtained values. Additionally, we investigate whether WM hydraulic permeability changes with post-mortem time. To our knowledge, this is the first report of experimental measurements of the localised WM permeability, also demonstrating the effect of axon directionality on permeability. This work provides a significant contribution to the successful development of intra-tumoural infusion-based technologies, such as convection-enhanced delivery (CED), which are based on the delivery of drugs directly by injection under positive pressure into the brain.

This paper shows the experimental activities carried out by a joint research group on the case study of the Basilica di San Nicola in Carcere in Rome, concerning the integration of different 3D reconstruction technologies in the Cultural Heritage domain. Dataset obtained from laser scanner and photogrammetry, were processed on a remote platform based on the powerful ENEA computational infrastructure, in order to analyse the dense clouds, to compare them and to improve the quality of the data. This paper also shows the efforts to upgrade this platform and the optimisation of the processes.

An elevated level of total plasma homocysteine (tHcy) is considered to be a predictor of the mortality risk for all diseases. A high consumption of vegetables and citrus fruit, both good sources of folate, decreases the concentration of tHcy. We investigated if supplementation of concentrated fruit and vegetables is able to decrease tHcy concentrations. For this purpose, we used a product that is presently on the market, made up of fruit and vegetable powders. 26 subjects participated in a cross-over design intervention trial. At the end of the study, each participant received 2 capsules of fruit and 2 capsules of vegetables a day for 4 weeks and then acted his/her own control for another 4 weeks. Daily extract intake decreased plasma tHcy from an expected mean ± SD level of 12.71 ± 3.23 umol/L observed after the 28-day control period to 7.98 ± 1.70 umol/L, a difference of 4.73 ± 1.153 (p Elevated tHcy is a risk factor causally linked to chronic disease. The plasma tHcy concentration was decreased as a result of taking a powdered fruit and vegetable extract on a daily basis.