Growth impairment after TBI of leukemia survivors children: a model- based investigation.

BACKGROUND: Children receiving Total Body Irradiation (TBI) in preparation for Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation (HSCT) are at risk for Growth Hormone Deficiency (GHD), which sometimes severely compromises their Final Height (FH). To better represent the impact of such therapies on growth we apply a mathematical model, which accounts both for the gompertzian-like growth trend and the hormone-related 'spurts', and evaluate how the parameter values estimated on the children undergoing TBI differ from those of the matched normal population. METHODS: 25 patients long-term childhood lymphoblastic and myeloid acute leukaemia survivors followed at Pediatric Onco-Hematology, Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapy Division, Regina Margherita Children's Hospital (Turin, Italy) were retrospectively analysed for assessing the influence of TBI on their longitudinal growth and for validating a new method to estimate the GH therapy effects. Six were treated with GH therapy after a GHD diagnosis. RESULTS: We show that when TBI was performed before puberty overall growth and pubertal duration were significantly impaired, but such growth limitations were completely reverted in the small sample (6 over 25) of children who underwent GH replacement therapies. CONCLUSION: Since in principle the model could account for any additional growth 'spurt' induced by therapy, it may become a useful 'simulation' tool for paediatricians for comparing the predicted therapy effectiveness depending on its timing and dosage.

A novel approach to the analysis of human growth.

OBJECTIVES: Several formulations have been proposed in order to model human growth from birth to maturity. They are usually based on "ad hoc" heuristic assumptions. In the present contribution we adopt, as an alternative, a completely general (interdisciplinary) approach, based on the formalism of the Phenomenological Universalities (PUN). METHODS: The main PUN class investigated to date, i.e. UN, can only account for the overall growth pattern. For a realistic description it is necessary to add to it one or more "spurts", as expected on biological grounds, due to the stimulation of growth and sex hormones. RESULTS: A new PUN class (UN + FM) is generated and shown to be able to provide excellent agreement with standard auxological datasets. The accuracy of the fitting and reliability of the model suggest applications both at the diagnostic and therapeutic level. CONCLUSIONS: The developed formalism can be suitably related to the biological description of bone plate growth under selective hormonal stimulation on the bone epiphysis; i.e., the additional increase of stature is the "macroscopic" response to a well defined biological signal.

Tunable photo-responsive elastic metamaterials.

The metamaterial paradigm has allowed an unprecedented space-time control of various physical fields, including elastic and acoustic waves. Despite the wide variety of metamaterial configurations proposed so far, most of the existing solutions display a frequency response that cannot be tuned, once the structures are fabricated. Few exceptions include systems controlled by electric or magnetic fields, temperature, radio waves and mechanical stimuli, which may often be unpractical for real-world implementations. To overcome this limitation, we introduce here a polymeric 3D-printed elastic metamaterial whose transmission spectrum can be deterministically tuned by a light field. We demonstrate the reversible doubling of the width of an existing frequency band gap upon selective laser illumination. This feature is exploited to provide an elastic-switch functionality with a one-minute lag time, over one hundred cycles. In perspective, light-responsive components can bring substantial improvements to active devices for elastic wave control, such as beam-splitters, switches and filters.

Scaling, growth and cyclicity in biology: a new computational approach.

BACKGROUND: The Phenomenological Universalities approach has been developed by P.P. Delsanto and collaborators during the past 2-3 years. It represents a new tool for the analysis of experimental datasets and cross-fertilization among different fields, from physics/engineering to medicine and social sciences. In fact, it allows similarities to be detected among datasets in totally different fields and acts upon them as a magnifying glass, enabling all the available information to be extracted in a simple way. In nonlinear problems it allows the nonscaling invariance to be retrieved by means of suitable redefined fractal-dimensioned variables. RESULTS: The main goal of the present contribution is to extend the applicability of the new approach to the study of problems of growth with cyclicity, which are of particular relevance in the fields of biology and medicine. CONCLUSION: As an example of its implementation, the method is applied to the analysis of human growth curves. The excellent quality of the results (R2 = 0.988) demonstrates the usefulness and reliability of the approach.

Phenomenological approach to mechanical damage growth analysis.

The problem of characterizing damage evolution in a generic material is addressed with the aim of tracing it back to existing growth models in other fields of research. Based on energetic considerations, a system evolution equation is derived for a generic damage indicator describing a material system subjected to an increasing external stress. The latter is found to fit into the framework of a recently developed phenomenological universality (PUN) approach and, more specifically, the so-called U2 class. Analytical results are confirmed by numerical simulations based on a fiber-bundle model and statistically assigned local strengths at the microscale. The fits with numerical data prove, with an excellent degree of reliability, that the typical evolution of the damage indicator belongs to the aforementioned PUN class. Applications of this result are briefly discussed and suggested.

Ultrasonic Monitoring of the Interaction between Cement Matrix and Alkaline Silicate Solution in Self-Healing Systems.

Alkaline solutions, such as sodium, potassium or lithium silicates, appear to be very promising as healing agents for the development of encapsulated self-healing concretes. However, the evolution of their mechanical and acoustic properties in time has not yet been completely clarified, especially regarding their behavior and related kinetics when they are used in the form of a thin layer in contact with a hardened cement matrix. This study aims to monitor, using linear and nonlinear ultrasonic methods, the evolution of a sodium silicate solution interacting with a cement matrix in the presence of localized cracks. The ultrasonic inspection via linear methods revealed that an almost complete recovery of the elastic and acoustic properties occurred within a few days of healing. The nonlinear ultrasonic measurements contributed to provide further insight into the kinetics of the recovery due to the presence of the healing agent. A good regain of mechanical performance was ascertained through flexural tests at the end of the healing process, confirming the suitability of sodium silicate as a healing agent for self-healing cementitious systems.

A new computational tool for the phenomenological analysis of multipassage tumor growth curves.

Multipassage experiments are performed by subcutaneous implantation in lab animals (usually mice) of a small number of cells from selected human lines. Tumor cells are then passaged from one mouse to another by harvesting them from a growing tumor and implanting them into other healthy animals. This procedure may be extremely useful to investigate the various mechanisms involved in the long term evolution of tumoral growth. It has been observed by several researchers that, contrary to what happens in in vitro experiments, there is a significant growth acceleration at each new passage. This result is explained by a new method of analysis, based on the Phenomenological Universalities approach. It is found that, by means of a simple rescaling of time, it is possible to collapse all the growth curves, corresponding to the successive passages, into a single curve, belonging to the Universality Class U2. Possible applications are proposed and the need of further experimental evidence is discussed.