COVID-19 pandemic led many countries to implement lockdown measures. Italy declared lockdown from 9th March to 3rd May 2020, and universities shifted to online classes. Home confinement could prevent students from achieving the physical activity and sleep levels recommended for their psychophysical health, and medicine students are already known to be at risk of inactivity and reduced sleep due to their time-consuming curricula. This study aimed at describing medicine students' behaviours during lockdown and comparing them with pre-lockdown data and current recommendations. A crosssectional questionnaire survey was conducted among 6th-year Italian medicine students (n = 714; age=25 ± 2 y; female: 62%; male: 38%) in October-November 2019. The same survey was repeated in 6th-year students during lockdown (n = 394; age=25 ± 2 y; female: 73%; male: 27%), and extended to 1st-5th year (total 1st-6th-year sample during lockdown: n = 1471; age=23 ± 2 y; female: 70%; male: 30%). International Physical Activity Questionnaire Short Form (IPAQ) and selected questions from Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index were administered to evaluate physical activity, sitting and sleep time. Decreased physical activity, and increased sitting and sleep time were observed from pre-to during lockdown in 6thyear students (p<0.01). 1st-6th-year students featured 10 [8-12] hours sitting (median [Q1-Q3]) and an IPAQ score of 1170 MET-min/week. Even participants with higher physical activity featured high sitting time. Sleeping less than recommended (<7 h/night) was associated with more sitting time and less energies to perform daily activities. Strategies fostering compliance with current guidelines for physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep should be implemented, especially in case of a repeated or intermittent lockdown.

Various studies have shown that the insulin receptor (IR) is increased in most human breast cancers, and both liganddependent malignant transformation and increased cell growth occur in cultured breast cells overexpressing the IR. However, although numerous in vivo and in vitro observations have indicated an important contributory role for the IR in breast cancer cell biology, the molecular mechanisms accounting for increased IR expression in breast tumors have not previously been elucidated. Herein, we did immunoblot analyses of nuclear protein from cultured breast cancer cells and normal and tumoral tissues from breast cancer patients combined with promoter studies by using a series of human wild-type and mutant IR promoter constructs. We provide evidence that IR overexpression in breast cancer is dependent on the assembly of a transcriptionally active multiprotein-DNA complex, which includes the high-mobility group A1 (HMGA1) protein, the developmentally regulated activator protein-2 (AP-2) transcription factor and the ubiquitously expressed transcription factor Sp1. In cultured breast cancer cells and human breast cancer specimens, the expression of AP-2 was significantly higher than that observed in cells and tissues derived from normal breast, and this overexpression paralleled the increase in IR expression. However, AP-2 DNAbinding activity was undetectable with the IR gene promoter, suggesting that transactivation of this gene by AP-2 might occur indirectly through physical and functional cooperation with HMGA1 and Sp1. Our findings support this hypothesis and suggest that in affected individuals, hyperactivation of the AP-2 gene through the overexpression of IR may play a key role in breast carcinogenesis. (Cancer Res 2006; 66(10): 5085-93)

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We perform a systematic study of the modifications to the QCD vacuum energy density ǫ vac in the zero-temperature case (T = 0) caused by a small, but non-zero, value of the parameter θ, using different effective Lagrangian models which include the flavoursinglet meson field and implement the U(1) axial anomaly of the fundamental theory. In particular, we derive the expressions for the topological susceptibility χ and for the second cumulant c 4 starting from the θ dependence of ǫ vac (θ) in the various models that we have considered. Moreover, we evaluate numerically our results, so as to compare them with each other, with the predictions of the Chiral Effective Lagrangian, and, finally, also with the available lattice data. *