University of Catania

About: University of Catania is a education organization based out in Catania, Italy. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Large Hadron Collider. The organization has 14599 authors who have published 41195 publications receiving 1032705 citations. The organization is also known as: Università degli Studi di Catania & Universita degli Studi di Catania.

The anomalous magnetic moment of the muon in the Standard Model

Abstract: We review the present status of the Standard Model calculation of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. This is performed in a perturbative expansion in the fine-structure constant $\alpha$ and is broken down into pure QED, electroweak, and hadronic contributions. The pure QED contribution is by far the largest and has been evaluated up to and including $\mathcal{O}(\alpha^5)$ with negligible numerical uncertainty. The electroweak contribution is suppressed by $(m_\mu/M_W)^2$ and only shows up at the level of the seventh significant digit. It has been evaluated up to two loops and is known to better than one percent. Hadronic contributions are the most difficult to calculate and are responsible for almost all of the theoretical uncertainty. The leading hadronic contribution appears at $\mathcal{O}(\alpha^2)$ and is due to hadronic vacuum polarization, whereas at $\mathcal{O}(\alpha^3)$ the hadronic light-by-light scattering contribution appears. Given the low characteristic scale of this observable, these contributions have to be calculated with nonperturbative methods, in particular, dispersion relations and the lattice approach to QCD. The largest part of this review is dedicated to a detailed account of recent efforts to improve the calculation of these two contributions with either a data-driven, dispersive approach, or a first-principle, lattice-QCD approach. The final result reads $a_\mu^\text{SM}=116\,591\,810(43)\times 10^{-11}$ and is smaller than the Brookhaven measurement by 3.7$\sigma$. The experimental uncertainty will soon be reduced by up to a factor four by the new experiment currently running at Fermilab, and also by the future J-PARC experiment. This and the prospects to further reduce the theoretical uncertainty in the near future-which are also discussed here-make this quantity one of the most promising places to look for evidence of new physics.

Semi Supervised Semantic Segmentation Using Generative Adversarial Network

Abstract: Semantic segmentation has been a long standing challenging task in computer vision. It aims at assigning a label to each image pixel and needs a significant number of pixel-level annotated data, which is often unavailable. To address this lack of annotations, in this paper, we leverage, on one hand, a massive amount of available unlabeled or weakly labeled data, and on the other hand, non-real images created through Generative Adversarial Networks. In particular, we propose a semi-supervised framework – based on Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) – which consists of a generator network to provide extra training examples to a multi-class classifier, acting as discriminator in the GAN framework, that assigns sample a label y from the K possible classes or marks it as a fake sample (extra class). The underlying idea is that adding large fake visual data forces real samples to be close in the feature space, which, in turn, improves multiclass pixel classification. To ensure a higher quality of generated images by GANs with consequently improved pixel classification, we extend the above framework by adding weakly annotated data, i.e., we provide class level information to the generator. We test our approaches on several challenging benchmarking visual datasets, i.e. PASCAL, SiftFLow, Stanford and CamVid, achieving competitive performance compared to state-of-the-art semantic segmentation methods.

The MLL recombinome of acute leukemias in 2013

Abstract: Chromosomal rearrangements of the human MLL (mixed lineage leukemia) gene are associated with high-risk infant, pediatric, adult and therapy-induced acute leukemias. We used long-distance inverse-polymerase chain reaction to characterize the chromosomal rearrangement of individual acute leukemia patients. We present data of the molecular characterization of 1590 MLL-rearranged biopsy samples obtained from acute leukemia patients. The precise localization of genomic breakpoints within the MLL gene and the involved translocation partner genes (TPGs) were determined and novel TPGs identified. All patients were classified according to their gender (852 females and 745 males), age at diagnosis (558 infant, 416 pediatric and 616 adult leukemia patients) and other clinical criteria. Combined data of our study and recently published data revealed a total of 121 different MLL rearrangements, of which 79 TPGs are now characterized at the molecular level. However, only seven rearrangements seem to be predominantly associated with illegitimate recombinations of the MLL gene (∼90%): AFF1/AF4, MLLT3/AF9, MLLT1/ENL, MLLT10/AF10, ELL, partial tandem duplications (MLL PTDs) and MLLT4/AF6, respectively. The MLL breakpoint distributions for all clinical relevant subtypes (gender, disease type, age at diagnosis, reciprocal, complex and therapy-induced translocations) are presented. Finally, we present the extending network of reciprocal MLL fusions deriving from complex rearrangements.

GSK-3 as potential target for therapeutic intervention in cancer.

Abstract: // James A. McCubrey 1 , Linda S. Steelman 1 , Fred E. Bertrand 2 , Nicole M. Davis 1 , Melissa Sokolosky 1 , Steve L. Abrams 1 , Giuseppe Montalto 3 , Antonino B. D’Assoro 4 , Massimo Libra 5 , Ferdinando Nicoletti 5 , Roberta Maestro 6 , Jorg Basecke 7,8 , Dariusz Rakus 9 , Agnieszka Gizak 9 Zoya Demidenko 10 , Lucio Cocco 11 , Alberto M. Martelli 11 and Melchiorre Cervello 12 1 Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University Greenville, NC, USA 2 Department of Oncology, Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University Greenville, NC, USA 3 Biomedical Department of Internal Medicine and Specialties, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy 4 Department of Medical Oncology, Mayo Clinic Cancer Center, Rochester, MN, USA 5 Department of Bio-Medical Sciences, University of Catania, Catania, Italy 6 Experimental Oncology 1, CRO IRCCS, National Cancer Institute, Aviano, Pordenone, Italy. 7 Department of Medicine, University of Gottingen, Gottingen, Germany 8 Sanct-Josef-Hospital Cloppenburg, Department of Hematology and Oncology, Cloppenburg, Germany 9 Department of Animal Molecular Physiology, Institute of Experimental Biology, Wroclaw University, Wroclaw, Poland 10 Department of Cell Stress Biology, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, NY, USA 11 Dipartimento di Scienze Biomediche e Neuromotorie, Universita di Bologna, Bologna, Italy 12 Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Biomedicina e Immunologia Molecolare “Alberto Monroy”, Palermo, Italy Correspondence: James A. McCubrey, email: // Keywords : GSK-3, cancer stem cells, Wnt/beta-catenin, PI3K, Akt, mTOR, Hedgehog, Notch, Targeted Therapy, Therapy Resistance, Mutations, Rapamycin Received : April 24, 2014 Accepted : May 28, 2014 Published : May 28, 2014 Abstract The serine/threonine kinase glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3) was initially identified and studied in the regulation of glycogen synthesis. GSK-3 functions in a wide range of cellular processes. Aberrant activity of GSK-3 has been implicated in many human pathologies including: bipolar depression, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, cancer, non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) and others. In some cases, suppression of GSK-3 activity by phosphorylation by Akt and other kinases has been associated with cancer progression. In these cases, GSK-3 has tumor suppressor functions. In other cases, GSK-3 has been associated with tumor progression by stabilizing components of the beta-catenin complex. In these situations, GSK-3 has oncogenic properties. While many inhibitors to GSK-3 have been developed, their use remains controversial because of the ambiguous role of GSK-3 in cancer development. In this review, we will focus on the diverse roles that GSK-3 plays in various human cancers, in particular in solid tumors. Recently, GSK-3 has also been implicated in the generation of cancer stem cells in various cell types. We will also discuss how this pivotal kinase interacts with multiple signaling pathways such as: PI3K/PTEN/Akt/mTORC1, Ras/Raf/MEK/ERK, Wnt/beta-catenin, Hedgehog, Notch and others.