The most efficacy drug therapy employed to treat Parkinson's disease is the levodopa but, for obscure reasons, after few years this induces motor complications called dyskinesias. The Institute of Bioimaging and Molecular Physiology-CNR of Catanzaro, in collaboration with the Institute of Neurology of the Policlinico "Magna Graecia" Catanzaro, has shed new light on the neurobiological correlates of this motor complication demonstrating the efficacy of neurostimulation. This research has been ...

Bernd Pulverer, Chief Editor of the EMBO Journal, will give an overview on the peer reviewed research paper which remains the main conduit for the exchange of research discoveries. With the growth and diversification of global research, publishing in selected journals and citation metrics are increasingly employed as surrogates for quality in research assessment. Consequently, the pressures to publish in only a handful of journals have increased, with the risk of hampering scientific progress. ...

VCSELs are semiconductor micro-lasers, a Key Enabling Technology for many ICT applications, from datacom to sensors. Nowadays they are the main semiconductor optical source on the market and their production volume is exponentially increasing. Soon they will be part of every smart-phone and used for intra- and inter-chip communications in future microprocessors. VCSELs are complex dielectric resonator, composed of hundreds of layers and with plenty of possible transverse geometries, which can ...

La proteina p53 è stata identificata nel 1979 da Arnold Levine della Princeton University (USA) e da David Lane, dell'Imperial Cancer Research Fund (Regno Unito), ma solo dopo dieci anni si è scoperta la sua importante funzione di gene soppressore tumorale indicandola una delle più interessanti nell'elaborazione delle terapie anticancro. Si attiva infatti ogni volta che le nostre cellule subiscono un alterazione, fermando la divisione delle cellule e consentendo la riparazione del Dna. Se il ...

"Metabolic Profiling": a new strategy for the study of metabolic diseases. Debora Paris, ICB-CNR Metabolomics describes the chemical profile of an organism in terms of metabolites, which are the end products of all chemical reactions of metabolism. The metabolic profile can be defined as a 'fingerprint' as it characterizes the biochemical phenotype of a biological system as a whole, by taking a snapshot of the overall metabolic levels. The study of the alterations induced by a disease, for ...

A ruthenium catalyst for the efficient production of hydrogen from methanol. Elisabetta Alberico, ICB-CNR Hydrogen is an ideal fuel as its combustion releases energy and water as the sole by-product. Its widespread use would allow to successfully tackle several issues, the increasing demand for energy, the pollution and green-house gases arising from the use of fossil fuels. However, mainly because of its physical and chemical properties, hydrogen is not an ideal energy vector: it is a flammable ...

New natural-like agrochemicals and fungicides for agrofood application Giovanna Delogu, ICB-CNR The new chemistry has a key role to play in maintaining and improving the quality of life, such as protection of the environment and development of sustainable synthetic techniques to solve environmental problems and to produce compounds selective and active at low concentration, with decreasing toxicity and side effects to humans, animals and vegetation. Chemical challenger includes the discovery ...

Dejà-vù is a fascinating and mysterious psychological phenomenon investigated by philosophers, psychologists, psychiatrists and neurologists. However, until now there is not a clear scientific theory able to explain this phenomenon. The Institute of Bioimaging and Molecular Physiology-CNR of Catanzaro, in collaboration with the Institute of Neurology of the Policlinico "Magna Graecia" Catanzaro, has shed new light on the neurobiological correlates underlying Dejà-vù. This research has been ...

"Spice of life": polyphenol curcumin by-products may act on Parkinson's relates protein aggregation. Paolo Ruzza, ICB-CNR Parkinson's disease (PD) belongs to the group of protein misfolding diseases and it is characterized by the progressive degeneration of the dopaminergic neurons from the substantia nigra of the brain. Among the biochemical mechanisms proposed for the pathogenesis of PD, our attention has been focused on the intracellular accumulation and aggregation of misfolded proteins, in ...

It takes just 300 ms to our brain to understand whether one person's facial mimic and body language are consistent with her inner feelings and mental states or with a verbal description of her feelings and mentations. And, when they are not, that person's verbal message has a short life in our brain. Indeed, our brain very quickly compares the inputs deriving from areas processing facial expressions, and face and body mimics (including the mirror neurons system) with the visceral feelings of ...

A mild decrease of oxygen supply to the brain can selectively impair the brain's arousal levels and behavioral responses, but not orienting of spatial attention and executive control functions. This is indicated by the findings of a study carried out by the Institute of Molecular Bioimaging and Physiology in collaboration with the University of Milan Bicocca. These findings were presented at the "2014 Society for Neuroscience" Annual Congress, the largest and most influential Neuroscience ...

Emerging phenomena like UBER, Car2Go, Enjoy, etc. are examples of the increasing trend towards a sharing of mobility resources. What are the effects of this trend on urban traffic? In principle, a better utilization of mobility resources (vehicles, bikes, etc.) hints to a more sustainable urban traffic, but can we provide a quantification of these benefits at the city level? To address this and related questions, jointly with MIT Senseable City Lab, we have introduced a novel, network-based ...

Nowadays, data sharing through Cloud platforms is widespread among the Internet users, think for example to services such as Dropbox and Google Drive, and it is also facilitated by the availability of such sharing tools on mobile devices . However, in some scenarios, in particular when organizations are involved (e.g., companies or public bodies), this data sharing must be regulated by real digital contracts, called Data Sharing Agreements (DSA), which must be paired with data. The researchers ...

In the Healthcare domain taxonomies or classifications and above all coding systems are fundamental for the "unique identification" of relevant clinical data in critical situations and emergencies. Medical coding systems are generally used: (i) to classify diseases and other clinical data unambiguously; (ii) to support epidemiological studies; (iii) to index and retrieve information of interest. General research activities performed in this area are: o Knowledge acquisition, terminology ...

A driving force behind the new applications is empowering individuals in order to promote awareness and overall quality of life. The Web is the core technology at the heart of this process. Like the press and other media, the Web has expanded the knowledge base that everyone can access, revolutionizing the way we live and becoming the most frequently used tool for learning, reporting, informing, working, and socializing. With the increasing pervasiveness of mobile devices, the Web has the ...

Road safety and traffic congestions are among major concerns today. The Global status report on road safety 2013 indicates a worldwide total number of road traffic deaths of 1.24 million per year. A large part of them occurs at intersections. Intersection management is also critical to reduce the traffic jams in our cities. However, the percentage of intersections that are governed by traffic lights is inevitably limited and significantly increasing the number of traffic lights is not realistic ...

Sensors based on nanostructured materials, due to their extremely reduced size as well as electrical and optical properties related to the matter arrangement, are able both to communicate with the infinitely small world and to perceive and to reveal even a single molecule in the atmosphere or a single ion in the liquid. In addition the development of nanostructured sensing materials provides high surface-area-to-volume ratio layers mimicking the strong biological sensory systems. These sensors ...

Comunicato stampa CNR - 18 Dicembre 2014 Un team dell'Ifac-Cnr e dell'Università di Firenze mette a punto un nuovo tipo di trattamento del cancro: nanoparticelle d'oro riconoscono le cellule cancerose quando queste sviluppano un enzima che permette loro di sopravvivere senza ossigeno. La tecnologia, illustrata su Advanced Functional Materials, è protetta da brevetto. Utilizzare la temibile capacità delle cellule tumorali di sopravvivere anche in condizioni di scarsa ossigenazione per ...

Il processo di integrazione europea passa anche attraverso la creazione di uno "Spazio europeo di giustizia". Viviane Reding, Vicepresidente della Commissione europea e Commissaria per la Giustizia, ha dichiarato: «Nel giro di pochi anni, la politica di giustizia è salita alla ribalta dell'attività dell'Unione europea, un po' come l'impulso dato al mercato unico negli anni '90. Abbiamo fatto molta strada, ma il cammino per sviluppare un vero spazio europeo di giustizia è ancora ...

Presentazione del libro Laura Ambrosini - Vincent Jolivet (sous la direction de), Les potiers d'Étrurie et leur monde : contacts, échanges, transferts. Hommages à Mario A. Del Chiaro, Paris 2014, che si svolgerà a Roma, giovedi 5 giugno alle ore 16 presso l'Aula Marconi del CNR, Piazzale Aldo Moro 7.

Conventional techniques of Terahertz spectroscopy (which use the range of electromagnetic radiation between infrared and microwave) reach a spatial resolution that, depending on the radiation used, cannot go beyond an intrinsic limit, the so-called diffraction limit, which is between 3 and 3000 microns. This limitation thus only allows the investigation of ensembles, in which the relevant physical parameters are estimated as the mean value of the size, orientation, shape, and density of ...

Approda a Roma, al Palazzo delle Esposizioni, la grande mostra archeologica "Gli Etruschi e il Mediterraneo. La città di Cerveteri", già allestita al Louvre-Lens con grande successo di pubblico e critica. Organizzata in partenariato dall'Azienda Speciale Palaexpo e dal Louvre-Lens, la mostra è stata curata dal CNR-ISMA, dal Louvre e dalla Soprintendenza per i Beni archeologici dell'Etruria meridionale. Un'ampia selezione di temi e oggetti (oltre 450) illustrano la nascita e lo sviluppo fino ...

The perfect coherent absorption, observed for the first time 3 years ago in a silicon slab, has attracted a great interest in the scientific community because from a theoretical point of view it is the reverse of the laser: in fact it gives rise to a device that absorbs the light completely, contrary to the laser which generates it. In general the absorption of light by a material depends on its dielectric properties and increases in proportion to its thickness. However, when not one beam but ...

Spin control of single electrons is of great interest for future applications in electronics and spintronics. However, to observe these phenomena at room temperature it is necessary to confine the electrons to conductive islands with reduced size, almost atomic. Although this type of confinement is feasible today, the technological difficulty is to control independently the different conductive islands separated by a few nanometers. A goal almost prohibitive. Recently a group of researchers from ...

Smart cities are nowadays subject of many innovation projects, as well as on the political agenda of many (local) governments. Often, in the design of smart services, and discussions in this regard, the emphasis is mainly on the importance of data collection and of communications, particularly with respect to the Internet of things. Less attention is instead directed to the necessary interactions between the various parts (humans, things, programs, communications systems, etc..) and to the need ...

The regeneration of critical-size bone defects requires the implantation of porous scaffolds exchanging suitable chemical, morphological and mechanical signals with cells so as to activate new bone formation and colonization of the whole scaffold. Pore size and morphology must be designed to achieve cell penetration and the establishment of a suitable vascular network to sustain the bone metabolism. The mechanical strength of the scaffolds should be sufficient for early physical stabilization ...

The regeneration of hard connective tissues (e.g. bone, teeth) is activated by the presence of specific chemical and morphological signals inducing new bone formation and organization. In this respect hydroxyapatite phases presenting bone-like composition (i.e. multiple ionic substitutions such as Mg2+, CO32-, Na+, K+, SiO44-, Sr2+), nanosized microstructure and low crystal order can be synthesized by wet methods at room temperature. These new phases closely mimic the inorganic part of bone and ...

Dye Sensitized solar cells, also known as Grätzel cells, are devices used to directly convert solar light into electricity. In 1991 O'Regan and Grätzel realized the first prototype of solar cell with good efficiency using low-cost materials if compared to silicon solar cell. DSSC (Dye Sensitized Solar Cell) are made of multilayer materials with selected band gap that allow photon adsorption and electron injection in the conduction band of the anodic material to produce electric energy. Heart ...

Gas separation membranes are electrochemical devices that allows the separation of specific components contained in gas streams at high temperatures (500-800°C). These systems can be classified on the bases of the materials used as : Oxygen separation membranes; Hydrogen separation membranes. These devices are ceramics or ceramic-metallic bilayers constituted of a supporting element and an active layer. Separation membranes are produced at ISTEC starting from commercial or synthesized ...

Hydroxyapatite (HA: Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2) is a widely used biomaterial for the repair and regeneration of bone defects; however HA is also recognized as a very interesting material for environmental purification due to its ability to easily absorb a number of inorganic compounds as well as different organic substances such as proteins and bacteria. In this respect, specific ion substitutions in the lattice of HA can enable specific functionality so to open the way to multi-functional and ...