University of Cagliari

About: University of Cagliari is a education organization based out in Cagliari, Italy. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Dopamine. The organization has 11029 authors who have published 29046 publications receiving 771023 citations. The organization is also known as: Università degli Studi di Cagliari & Universita degli Studi di Cagliari.

Autoantibodies against Type I Interferons as an Additional Diagnostic Criterion for Autoimmune Polyendocrine Syndrome Type I

Abstract: Context: In autoimmune polyendocrinopathy syndrome type I (APS-I), mutations in the autoimmune regulator gene (AIRE) impair thymic self-tolerance induction in developing T cells. The ensuing autoimmunity particularly targets ectodermal and endocrine tissues, but chronic candidiasis usually comes first. We recently reported apparently APS-I-specific high-titer neutralizing autoantibodies against type I interferons in 100% of Finnish and Norwegian patients, mainly with two prevalent AIRE truncations. Objectives: Because variability in clinical features and age at onset in APS-I frequently results in unusual presentations, we prospectively checked the diagnostic potential of anti-interferon antibodies in additional APS-I panels with other truncations or rare missense mutations and in disease controls with chronic mucocutaneous candidiasis (CMC) but without either common AIRE mutation. Design: The study was designed to detect autoantibodies against interferon-α2 and interferon-ω in antiviral neutralization as...

Lithium Treatment and Risk of Suicidal Behavior in Bipolar Disorder Patients

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Lithium may exert an antisuicidal effect in bipolar disorder patients, but this hypothesis requires further testing by direct comparison of patients with and without lithium treatment. METHOD: Risk of life-threatening suicidal acts over time and associated factors were analyzed in 310 patients with DSM-IV bipolar I (N = 186) or II (N = 124) disorder evaluated for a mean of 8.3 years before, and prospectively during, a mean of 6.4 years of lithium maintenance in a mood disorder clinic; 185 were also followed for a mean of 3.7 years after clinically discontinuing lithium. RESULTS: In 5233 patient-years of observation, 58 patients made 90 suicide attempts (8 were fatal). Survival analyses with Weibull modeling with adjustments for covariates indicated a highly significant 6.4-fold adjusted hazard ratio during versus before and 7.5-fold ratio after versus during lithium maintenance. Suicidal acts were more common early in the course of illness before lithium and were associated with prior suicide attempts, greater proportion of time depressed, and younger age. After the discontinuation of lithium, suicidal acts were more frequent in the first year than at later times or before start of lithium treatment. Fatalities were 9 times more frequent after versus during treatment. CONCLUSION: Lithium maintenance was associated with marked reduction of life-threatening suicidal acts, the number of which sharply increased after discontinuing lithium. Suicidal behavior was strongly associated with prior suicide attempts, more time depressed, and younger age or recent onset. Greater attention to suicidal risk in patients with bipolar depression and assessment of all proposed mood-stabilizing agents for antisuicidal effects are strongly encouraged. Language: en

Why Do Adversarial Attacks Transfer? Explaining Transferability of Evasion and Poisoning Attacks

Abstract: Transferability captures the ability of an attack against a machine-learning model to be effective against a different, potentially unknown, model. Empirical evidence for transferability has been shown in previous work, but the underlying reasons why an attack transfers or not are not yet well understood. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis aimed to investigate the transferability of both test-time evasion and training-time poisoning attacks. We provide a unifying optimization framework for evasion and poisoning attacks, and a formal definition of transferability of such attacks. We highlight two main factors contributing to attack transferability: the intrinsic adversarial vulnerability of the target model, and the complexity of the surrogate model used to optimize the attack. Based on these insights, we define three metrics that impact an attack's transferability. Interestingly, our results derived from theoretical analysis hold for both evasion and poisoning attacks, and are confirmed experimentally using a wide range of linear and non-linear classifiers and datasets.

The Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survey - V. Finding binary and millisecond pulsars

Abstract: The Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survey is the most successful survey of the Galactic plane ever performed, finding over 600 pulsars in the initial processing. We report on a reprocessing of all 40 000 beams with a number of algorithms, including conventional frequency-domain searches and an acceleration search for fast binary pulsars. The very large volume of results coupled with the need to distinguish new candidates from known pulsars and their many harmonics, often with multiple detections from different search algorithms, necessitated the development of a new graphical selection tool tightly linked to a web-based results data base. We discuss and demonstrate the benefits of these software systems, which are specifically designed for large survey projects. The results of this processing have been encouraging. We have discovered 128 new pulsars, including 11 binary and 15 millisecond pulsars; in addition to those previously found in the survey, we have thus far discovered 737 pulsars. In this paper, we discuss the discoveries of PSR J1744-3922 (a 172-ms mildly recycled pulsar in a 4.6-h orbit that exhibits nulling behaviour, not previously observed in recycled or binary objects), PSR J1802-2124 (an intermediate mass binary pulsar) and PSR J1801-1417 (a solitary millisecond pulsar).

Bipolar Charge Transport in PCPDTBT‐PCBM Bulk‐Heterojunctions for Photovoltaic Applications

Abstract: An experimental study of the transport properties of a low-bandgap conjugated polymer giving high photovoltaic quantum efficiencies in the near infrared spectral region (Eg-opt ∼ 1.35 eV) is presented. Using a organic thin film transistor geometry, we demonstrate a relatively high in-plane hole mobility, up to 1.5 · × 10−2 cm2 V−1 s−1 and quantify the electron mobility at 3 × · 10−5 cm2 V−1 s−1 on a SiO2 dielectric. In addition, singular contact behavior results in bipolar quasi-Ohmic injection both from low and high workfunction metals like LiF/Al and Au. X-ray investigations revealed a degree of interchain π-stacking that is probably embedded in a disordered matrix. Disorder also manifests itself in a strong positive field dependence of the hole mobility from the electric field. In blends made with the electron acceptor methanofullerene [6,6]-phenyl C61 butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM), the transistor characteristics suggest a relatively unfavorable intermixing of the two components for the application to photovoltaic devices. We attribute this to a too fine dispersion of [C60]-PCBM in the polymer matrix, that is also confirmed by the quenching of the photoluminescence signal measured in PCPDTBT [C60]-PCBM films with various composition. We show that a higher degree of phase separation can be induced during the film formation by using 1,8-octanedithiol (ODT), which leads to a more efficient electron percolation in the [C60]-PCBM. In addition, the experimental results, in combination with those of solar cells seem to support the correlation between the blend morphology and charge recombination. We tentatively propose that the drift length, and similarly the electrical fill factor, can be limited by the recombination of holes with electrons trapped on isolated [C60]-PCBM clusters. Ionized and isolated [C60]-PCBM molecules can modify the local electric field in the solar cell by build-up of a space-charge. The results also suggest that further improvements of the fill factor may also be limited by a strong electrical-field dependence of the hole transport.