Acoustic transmitters for underwater neutrino telescopes.

In this paper acoustic transmitters that were developed for use in underwater neutrino telescopes are presented. Firstly, an acoustic transceiver has been developed as part of the acoustic positioning system of neutrino telescopes. These infrastructures are not completely rigid and require a positioning system in order to monitor the position of the optical sensors which move due to sea currents. To guarantee a reliable and versatile system, the transceiver has the requirements of reduced cost, low power consumption, high pressure withstanding (up to 500 bars), high intensity for emission, low intrinsic noise, arbitrary signals for emission and the capacity of acquiring and processing received signals. Secondly, a compact acoustic transmitter array has been developed for the calibration of acoustic neutrino detection systems. The array is able to mimic the signature of ultra-high-energy neutrino interaction in emission directivity and signal shape. The technique of parametric acoustic sources has been used to achieve the proposed aim. The developed compact array has practical features such as easy manageability and operation. The prototype designs and the results of different tests are described. The techniques applied for these two acoustic systems are so powerful and versatile that may be of interest in other marine applications using acoustic transmitters.

Long-Term Monitoring of Dolphin Biosonar Activity in Deep Pelagic Waters of the Mediterranean Sea.

Dolphins emit short ultrasonic pulses (clicks) to acquire information about the surrounding environment, prey and habitat features. We investigated Delphinidae activity over multiple temporal scales through the detection of their echolocation clicks, using long-term Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM). The Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare operates multidisciplinary seafloor observatories in a deep area of the Central Mediterranean Sea. The Ocean noise Detection Experiment collected data offshore the Gulf of Catania from January 2005 to November 2006, allowing the study of temporal patterns of dolphin activity in this deep pelagic zone for the first time. Nearly 5,500 five-minute recordings acquired over two years were examined using spectrogram analysis and through development and testing of an automatic detection algorithm. Echolocation activity of dolphins was mostly confined to nighttime and crepuscular hours, in contrast with communicative signals (whistles). Seasonal variation, with a peak number of clicks in August, was also evident, but no effect of lunar cycle was observed. Temporal trends in echolocation corresponded to environmental and trophic variability known in the deep pelagic waters of the Ionian Sea. Long-term PAM and the continued development of automatic analysis techniques are essential to advancing the study of pelagic marine mammal distribution and behaviour patterns.

Clinical and Research Activities at the CATANA Facility of INFN-LNS: From the Conventional Hadrontherapy to the Laser-Driven Approach.

The CATANA proton therapy center was the first Italian clinical facility making use of energetic (62 MeV) proton beams for the radioactive treatment of solid tumors. Since the date of the first patient treatment in 2002, 294 patients have been successful treated whose majority was affected by choroidal and iris melanomas. In this paper, we report on the current clinical and physical status of the CATANA facility describing the last dosimetric studies and reporting on the last patient follow-up results. The last part of the paper is dedicated to the description of the INFN-LNS ongoing activities on the realization of a beamline for the transport of laser-accelerated ion beams for future applications. The ELIMED (ELI-Beamlines MEDical and multidisciplinary applications) project is introduced and the main scientific aspects will be described.

Corrigendum: Clinical and Research Activities at the CATANA Facility of INFN-LNS: From the Conventional Hadrontherapy to the Laser-Driven Approach.

[This corrects the article on p. 223 in vol. 7, PMID: 28971066.].

Clinical experience with bevacizumab in colorectal cancer.

Angiogenesis, the process of generating new capillary blood vessels, is a fundamental requirement for normal physiological processes including embryogenesis, reproductive function and wound healing. Angiogenesis is also implicated in various pathological conditions including age-related retinal macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and cancer growth and metastasis. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is one of the best characterized of the pro-angiogenic growth factors, and multiple strategies have been developed to inhibit this pathway. Bevacizumab, a monoclonal antibody developed against VEGF, has shown initial preclinical and clinical activity. This review discusses the critical role of VEGF and summarizes the available data on the use of bevacizumab in colorectal cancer.

Size Distribution of Sperm Whales Acoustically Identified during Long Term Deep-Sea Monitoring in the Ionian Sea.

The sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) emits a typical short acoustic signal, defined as a "click", almost continuously while diving. It is produced in different time patterns to acoustically explore the environment and communicate with conspecifics. Each emitted click has a multi-pulse structure, resulting from the production of the sound within the sperm whale's head. A Stable Inter Pulse Interval (Stable IPI) can be identified among the pulses that compose a single click. Applying specific algorithms, the measurement of this interval provides useful information to assess the total length of the animal recorded. In January 2005, a cabled hydrophone array was deployed at a depth of 2,100 m in the Central Mediterranean Sea, 25 km offshore Catania (Ionian Sea). The acoustic antenna, named OνDE (Ocean noise Detection Experiment), was in operation until November 2006. OνDE provided real time acoustic data used to perform Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) of cetacean sound emissions. In this work, an innovative approach was applied to automatically measure the Stable IPI of the clicks, performing a cepstrum analysis to the energy (square amplitude) of the signals. About 2,100 five-minute recordings were processed to study the size distribution of the sperm whales detected during the OνDE long term deep-sea acoustic monitoring. Stable IPIs were measured in the range between 2.1 ms and 6.4 ms. The equations of Gordon (1991) and of Growcott (2011) were used to convert the IPIs into measures of size. The results revealed that the sperm whales recorded were distributed in length from about 7.5 m to 14 m. The size category most represented was from 9 m to 12 m (adult females or juvenile males) and specimens longer than 14 m (old males) seemed to be absent.

Annual Acoustic Presence of Fin Whale (Balaenoptera physalus) Offshore Eastern Sicily, Central Mediterranean Sea.

In recent years, an increasing number of surveys have definitively confirmed the seasonal presence of fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus) in highly productive regions of the Mediterranean Sea. Despite this, very little is yet known about the routes that the species seasonally follows within the Mediterranean basin and, particularly, in the Ionian area. The present study assesses for the first time fin whale acoustic presence offshore Eastern Sicily (Ionian Sea), throughout the processing of about 10 months of continuous acoustic monitoring. The recording of fin whale vocalizations was made possible by the cabled deep-sea multidisciplinary observatory, "NEMO-SN1", deployed 25 km off the Catania harbor at a depth of about 2,100 meters. NEMO-SN1 is an operational node of the European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water-column Observatory (EMSO) Research Infrastructure. The observatory was equipped with a low-frequency hydrophone (bandwidth: 0.05 Hz-1 kHz, sampling rate: 2 kHz) which continuously acquired data from July 2012 to May 2013. About 7,200 hours of acoustic data were analyzed by means of spectrogram display. Calls with the typical structure and patterns associated to the Mediterranean fin whale population were identified and monitored in the area for the first time. Furthermore, a background noise analysis within the fin whale communication frequency band (17.9-22.5 Hz) was conducted to investigate possible detection-masking effects. The study confirms the hypothesis that fin whales are present in the Ionian Sea throughout all seasons, with peaks in call detection rate during spring and summer months. The analysis also demonstrates that calls were more frequently detected in low background noise conditions. Further analysis will be performed to understand whether observed levels of noise limit the acoustic detection of the fin whales vocalizations, or whether the animals vocalize less in the presence of high background noise.