ABSTRACT
The new collective Thomson scattering diagnostic installed on the Frascati Tokamak Upgrade device started its first operations in 2014. The ongoing experiments investigate the presence of signals synchronous with rotating tearing mode islands, possibly due to parametric decay processes, and phenomena affecting electron cyclotron beam absorption or scattering measurements. The radiometric system, diagnostic layout, and data acquisition system were improved accordingly. The present status and near-term developments of the diagnostic are presented.
ABSTRACT
Since December 2013, chikungunya virus (CHIKV) spread in many countries of the Western Hemisphere, and during the last year some cases of infected European travelers, coming back from the Caribbean, have been reported. The risk of acquiring severe travel-related illness is higher in immunocompromised subjects, such as patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection or solid organ transplant recipients. We reported the first case, to our knowledge, of CHIKV infection in an HIV-infected kidney transplant recipient.
Subject(s)
Chikungunya Fever/etiology , HIV Infections/complications , Kidney Transplantation/adverse effects , Antibodies, Viral/blood , Antibody Specificity , Chikungunya Fever/epidemiology , Chikungunya virus/immunology , Dominican Republic/epidemiology , Female , Humans , Immunocompromised Host , Immunoglobulin G/blood , Immunoglobulin M/blood , Immunosuppressive Agents/pharmacology , Italy/epidemiology , Middle AgedABSTRACT
A Martin Puplett interferometer for electron cyclotron emission (ECE) measurements from JET tokamak plasmas was extended to multichannel operation for simultaneous radial and oblique ECE measurements. This paper describes the new optics and the instrument's performance.
ABSTRACT
The oblique electron cyclotron emission (ECE) diagnostic installed at JET allows simultaneous analysis of the ECE spectra along three lines of sight (with toroidal angles of 0°, â¼ 10°, and â¼ 20°) and two linear polarizations for each oblique line of sight. The diagnostic is capable of measuring EC emission over the band of 75800 GHz with 5 ms time resolution and 7.5 GHz spectral resolution, and it is designed to investigate the features of ECE spectra related to electron distribution in the thermal velocity range. Instrumental accuracy was assessed using sources at different temperatures (77900 K) and with plasma emission. ECE from high temperature plasmas and in the presence of fast ions has been compared to simulations performed with the modeling code SPECE, setting an upper limit to possible discrepancies from thermal emission.
ABSTRACT
Tuberculosis causes nearly two million deaths per year world-wide. In addition multidrug-resistant mycobacterial strains rapidly emerge so novel therapeutic approaches are needed. Recently, several promising mycobacterial target molecules were identified, which are involved in bacterial or host cell signalling e.g. the serine/threonine protein kinases, PknB and PknG, NAD kinase and the NAD synthetase. Here we describe some early efforts in the development of novel signal transduction inhibitory anti-mycobacterial drugs using a multiple target approach, with special emphasis on the kinase inhibitory field. Initially, we are using the Nested Chemical Library (NCL) technology and pharmacophore modelling. A hit-finding library, consisting of approximately 19000 small molecules with a bias for prototypic kinase inhibitors from our NCL library and commercial sources was virtually screened against these validated target molecules. Protein structures for the virtual screening were taken from the published three dimensional crystal structures of the enzymes. The hits from the virtual screening were subsequently tested in enzymatic assay systems. Potent hits were then tested for biological activity in macrophages, infected with mycobacteria. The final goal of this exercise is not only to identify potent anti-mycobacterial substances, but also a common pharmacophore for the mycobacterial target PknG in combination with PknB, NAD kinase and/or NAD synthetase. This common pharmacophore still needs to be a unique pharmacophore for the mycobacterial target proteins over human off-targets. Such a pharmacophore might then drive the optimization of a completely new profile of an antibiotic agent with activity against latent mycobacteria and resistance mycobacterial strains.
Subject(s)
Anti-Bacterial Agents/pharmacology , Anti-Bacterial Agents/therapeutic use , Mycobacterium tuberculosis/drug effects , Mycobacterium tuberculosis/metabolism , Signal Transduction/drug effects , Tuberculosis/drug therapy , Tuberculosis/metabolism , Anti-Bacterial Agents/toxicity , Drug Evaluation, Preclinical , Drug Resistance, Multiple, Bacterial , Enzyme Inhibitors/pharmacology , Enzyme Inhibitors/therapeutic use , Enzyme Inhibitors/toxicity , Humans , Macrophages/drug effects , Macrophages/enzymologyABSTRACT
We first describe the improved receiving system of the diagnostic experiment of millimeter-wave collective Thomson scattering being run on the Frascati Tokamak Upgrade (FTU), and then discuss some peculiar problems and new operating procedures related to the investigation of strong anomalous spectra of nonthermal origin, many-orders-of-magnitude stronger than the ion thermal feature merged in them, systematically observed in the experimentation, and finally ascribed to a perturbation of the gyrotron that generates the probing beam. Arguments in favor of a more general valence of the solutions actuated for the specific case of FTU are finally given.
