La produzione di energia ecosostenibile richiede il miglioramento delle prestazioni e la riduzione dell'impatto sull'ambiente e sul clima dei processi utilizzati. L'Istituto di Ricerche sulla Combustione (IRC) del CNR di Napoli, capofila d'importanti progetti finanziati dalla Ricerca di Sistema Elettrico del MiSE e del progetto FECUNDUS finanziato dalla Commissione Europea, svolge da tempo attività di studio sui processi tecnologicamente avanzati per la cattura della CO2(CCS). Le attività di ...

One of the key steps in nanotechnology is our ability to engineer and fabricate low-dimensional nano-objects, such as quantum dots, nanowires, two-dimensional atomic layers or three-dimensional nano-porous systems. Silicon carbide (SiC), a wide band-gap semiconductor, offers fascinating structural, thermomechanical, electronic, and chemical properties with a vast range of advanced applications including high-power, high-frequency, and high-temperature electronic devices and sensors. SiC ...

Il Progetto SOLar Thermal Energy Solid Storage (SOLTESS), inserito nel contesto delle energie rinnovabili e in particolare dell'energia solare, introduce una tecnologia innovativa applicata al solare termodinamico a concentrazione. SOLTESS ha ricevuto nel 2012 un prestigioso riconoscimento con una menzione speciale quale Miglior Processo/Tecnologia alla VI edizione del Premio Impresa Ambiente. Il Premio è un'iniziativa promossa dal Ministero dell'Ambiente e dalla Camera di Commercio di Roma che ...

La trasformazione di liquame fresco in pellet ha diversi vantaggi. La riduzione del contenuto di acqua e la densificazione della massa solida conferisce al materiale organico una migliore conservabilità e una maggiore facilità di trasporto e distribuzione. La pellettizzazione del materiale organico ottimizza la gestione aziendale dei reflui da un punto di vista economico ed ambientale. Infatti il materiale pellettizzato può essere utilizzato come ammendante organico oltre i confini aziendali ...

The introduction of inorganic natural or artificial pigments permit to obtain colored geopolymers can be used in the restoartion field. The mechanical and physical characteristics are able to use the obtained products for realising musive tesserae. At the present, briquettes of different colors are realised. the obtained tesseare can also be used to realise modern mosaics as altenartive solutions to resin tesserae.

Wool-geopolymer composite pots were produced as an alternative to commonly used peat ones. Already grown plants and seeds were studied over a period of 6 weeks. First results outlined that wool-geopolymer pots promote the earlier growth of seeds comparing to the reference ones. The alkaline environment of the geopolymer is indeed able to partially degrade the keratin structure of the wool (but preserving the fibers' nature), making most nutrients readily available for the sprouts. Moreover, the ...

The ESA's GOCE satellite was launched on 17 March 2009. It had a dry mass of 1002 kg and a roughly cylindrical shape of 1 m diameter and 5.3 m length, with wing-shaped fins spanning 2 m. After mapping the geopotential with unrivalled accuracy and detail for four years from an extremely low circular polar orbit, on 21 October 2013 the low thrust ion propulsion motor used to contrast the atmospheric drag was automatically shut down when the pressure in the xenon propellant tank dropped below a ...

To mitigate the impact of fossil energy on pollution and greenhouse effect, the current technologies need to be improved for achieving limited environmental impact and high sustainability (zero emission). When CO2 sorbents are used in granular or structured forms, high superficial area and well developed open porosity are prerequisites for an effective process. A typical continuous process also requires the sorbent to be mechanically resistant, regenerable and easily available. ISTEC has tested ...

CNR, Aula Marconi, 5 novembre 2013, ore 9,30-13,00 L'evento è dedicato alla presentazione del "Gruppo di Ricerca Interdisciplinare di Storia degli Studi Orientali" (GRISSO), iniziativa permanente nata nel 2013 all'interno dell'Istituto di Studi sul Mediterraneo Antico (ISMA). Coordinato da Silvia Alaura, GRISSO si propone come centro di aggregazione e promozione di ricerca e come luogo di discussione e formazione. Ne fanno parte professori e ricercatori di istituti, centri di ricerca e ...

Da novembre 2013 è online il sito web "LiBER | Linear B Electronic Resources". Il progetto LiBER, nato presso l'Istituto di Studi sul Mediterraneo Antico (ISMA) e sviluppato da Maurizio Del Freo e Francesco Di Filippo, si propone di realizzare un'edizione elettronica aggiornata dei testi in lineare B interrogabile online attraverso un motore di ricerca specificamente progettato per il trattamento delle scritture logo-sillabiche. La base di dati contiene le trascrizioni dei testi con le relative ...

La mostra è il risultato di una collaborazione internazionale che vede coinvolti il Louvre, l'ISMA-CNR e la Soprintendenza per i Beni archeologici dell'Etruria meridionale. Oltre 450 oggetti prestati da Musei di tutto il mondo e provenienti da Cerveteri, l'antica Caere, saranno esposti nella "Sister Gallery" del Louvre a Lens, nella regione del Nord-Pas-de-Calais e permetteranno per la prima volta di ripercorrere circa dieci secoli di storia che videro la città etrusca fra le metropoli più ...

The focus of the Istitute of Nanoscence is on graphene with the ambitious of developing research activities that have the potential to bring this material and related nanostructures from a state of raw potential to a point where they can revolutionize multiple industries - from flexible, transparent electronics, to energy and high performance computing and spintronics. Our current efforts are on the growth of epitaxial graphene and its chemical functionalization for energy applications. Other ...

Nanobrain is part of the flagship project NanoMax and originates from the collaboration between four CNR Institutes: Nanoscienze (Nano), Neuroscienze (IN), Officina dei Materiali (IOM) and Istituto Nazionale di Ottica (INO). This project promotes the collaboration between the neuroscience and the nanofabrication technologies present in CNR. At the basis of this project is the consideration that the brain is biochemically isolated from the body by the Blood Brain Barrier (BBB): because of this ...

How many times in daily research activity do we face with datasets where is contained some relevant knowledge, which a direct visual inspection is not able to extract?!? And in how many cases we would desire an integrated system capable of performing advances statistical analysis or employing complex data mining algorithms without having to manage the choice of obscure options and unknown formats?!? The problem of extracting knowledge from real world data producing effective models that allow ...

It is time to rethink platelet count reference intervals actually used to define "normal" a person basing on his sex and age. A study recently published in PLOS ONE (http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0054289) analyzed about 41.000 subjects involving 3 CNR Institutes and other research facilities, and showed that women had steadily more platelets than men. The number of platelets decreases quickly in childhood, stabilizes in adulthood, and further decreases in oldness. Furthermore a ...

Locus/Spatium è stato il tema del XIV Colloquio Internazionale dell'Istituto Lessico Intellettuale Europeo e Storia delle Idee. Durante i lavori del XIV Colloquio, la polisemia dei termini locus/spatium è stata indagata nel suo articolarsi storico, attraverso interventi che si sono soffermati su momenti centrali del pensiero pre-greco, greco classico e di età ellenistica, fino agli epigoni della tradizione interpretativa sul Timeo di Platone suscitati dalla profonda influenza della traduzione ...

The mammalian neurons can live as long as the body that has generated them. The limit of their existence would not, therefore, written in the genes. In practice, the brain can survive the body. This is demonstrated by an Italian experiment in which rat neurons were transplanted into the brain of a rat, where they set perfectly. The research was coordinated by the neurosurgeon Magrassi Lorenzo, who works at the University of Pavia, at the Fondazione Policlinico San Matteo and the lnstitute of ...

DA Almanacco della Scienza CNR - N. 4 - 27 feb 2013 Un nuovo materiale 'intelligente', nanostrutturato e potenzialmente capace di rilasciare un farmaco in una superficie di pochi nanometri, nella misura e nella concentrazione desiderata e nei tempi prestabiliti. È l'esito di una ricerca condotta da due Istituti del Cnr fiorentino, quello di fisica applicata (Ifac) e quello di chimica dei composti metallorganici (Iccom), in collaborazione con il dipartimento di Chimica del locale ateneo ...

The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) represents the future of radioastronomy. It will be composed of several subsystems operating in various frequency bands from 50 MHz to 10 GHz. The lower portion of this spectrum will be covered by a sparse array of antennas with more than 250000 elements which will provide incredibly high sensitivity and resolution performance. Italy is very active in the SKA design. A long-term collaboration between the Istituto di Radio Astronomia (IRA) of the Istituto ...

Macromolecules (DNA, proteins, and lipids) in all cells are constantly damaged by reactive oxygen species (ROS). In particular, ROS cause 1,000-7,000 DNA damages per day. Due to its lowest redox potential, the base guanine is mostly affected, resulting in the formation of 8-oxo-7,8-dihydroguanine. This modified base instructs incorporation of adenosine, instead of cytidine, by replicative DNA polymerases, potentially leading to GC ->TA transversion mutations. DNA polymerase lambda is the most ...

Food allergies can provoke clinical reactions whose most severe is anaphylaxis, with respiratory and/or cardiovascular problems that might result in death. They are common in 1-2% of adults and up to 8% of children, corresponding to a serious public health problem that affects over 15 million people in Europe from infants to the elderly and its prevalence is increasing. The skin prick test is the most commonly used test for allergy diagnostics. However, this test has its limitation in patients ...

This focus is devoted to numerical methods for the solution of optimization problems where first order derivatives of the functions defining the problems are not available. All of the presented methods are available for download under the GPL license. The library director is Giampaolo Liuzzi (giampaolo.liuzzi@iasi.cnr.it). At the moment, the packages that can be downloaded are the following: Local Optimization SDBOX, for bound constrained problems SDPEN, for general (inequality/equality) ...

Experimental studies have shown that the slime mold Physarum polycephalum, a single-cell slime mold that feeds on bacteria and spores, is able to perform tasks that are surprisingly complex for such a simple organism: for example, finding the shortest path through a maze. From these experiments and from the mathematical model proposed by biologists, IASI researchers have developed a rigorous mathematical analysis that confirms how the process followed by Physarum is a perfect "natural algorithm" ...

Cytokinesis is the final step in cell division. Errors at this stage prevent the final separation of the newly formed cells and give rise to a single cell, defined as polyploid, harbouring an abnormal chromsome content. Polyploidy promotes in turn chromosomal instability, a hallmark of cancer. Here Rinaldo and collaborators show that HIPK2, a kinase involved in many cell fate decisions during development and in response to stress, controls cytokinesis and prevents the formation of polyploid ...

Nicotine improves the capacity of the 'working memory', the store where information is temporarily stocked in order to re-use it during cognitive processing, through the activation of regions of the frontal and prefrontal cortices of the right hemisphere in the human brain. It also appears to impair brain processing underpinning motor response choice and execution. These are the outcomes of a study carried out by the CNR-IBFM and the Bicocca University of Milan suggesting that the ...

Unlike laypersons' brain, professional basketball players brain's mirror neurons system (MNS) can automatically detect incorrect basketball playing actions in four tenths of a second. This was revealed by a study of the Bicocca University of Milan and the CNR-IBFM just published in Scientific Reports.Nature.

A joint study between IFOM (FIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology) in Milan and the Institute ofg Molecular Genetics - National Research Council (IGM-CNR) of Pavia, with the support of AIRC and Telethon, published in Cell, confirms the key role of senataxina in regulating the process of transcription and replication of DNA. Its mutation affects two serious neurodegenerative diseases and may play a role in cancer formation. Reference: Chiara Lucca, Daniele Piccini, Walter Carotenuto, Marco ...

The Huntington's disease (Huntington's Disease, HD) is a hereditary nuerodegenerativa pathology, in which a particular sequence of three nucleotides (CAG), is "expanded", that is inserted in multiple copies at the beginning of the Huntingtin protein gene. When the number of these triplets exceeds a threshold value, the resulting protein in neurons assumes its pathological form, causing the degeneration of neurons. The mechanism by which the number of CAG triplets is expanded is not perfectly ...

The steel casting industry is always improving its manufacturing plants and techniques in terms of both product quality and safety. In this framework, a lot of open challenging problems need to be solved. As far as continuous casting is concerned, where several very long steel products (e.g. billets) are manufactured in a single machine run, the steel level in the mold should be controlled with great accuracy in order to obtain a high-quality output and to avoid breakouts. This kind of ...

La banca dati dell'Osservatorio neologico della lingua italiana è in linea, a disposizione di tutti gli studiosi e gli appassionati della lingua italiana: http://www.iliesi.cnr.it/ONLI. La banca dati dell'ONLI è costituita sulla base dello spoglio dei principali quotidiani nazionali, e anche di molti a diffusione locale, che permettono di verificare il continuo arricchimento, e quindi di ricostruire la costante evoluzione, del lessico italiano dagli anni Novanta del XX secolo a oggi. Vi sono ...