Cytokines are immunomodulatory proteins, or glycoproteins, that are able to control and modulate the activities of cells of the immune system in a complex network of interactions. In renal transplantation, although rejection is mediated by recipient lymphocytes or by donor-specific anti-HLA antibody production, the local environment in which an antigen-lymphocyte interaction takes place is influenced by both donor and recipient factors and cytokines are the major determinant of this milieu. ...

The istituto Tecnologie Didattiche (ITD) has recently started a survey, technical evaluation, analysis and cataloguing of Open Source educational software. An Open Source educational software is characterized by the free access to its souorce codes and can therefore be modified by all those who wish and can do it. In this way teachers have an opportunity to afford functional and personalized technological tools. Most available Open educational software packages run under Linux operative system ...

"Learning from children" is a dictionary of the Italian language in which definitions of words come from children. Words (nearly 1,000) have been selected by children themselves. Each word can feature more than one definition coming from different children and each definition may come with examples of use to help understand the meaning. But with so many dictionaries, do we really need one written by children? Who is interested in consulting it? Though it may often appear inaccurate and even ...

The Italian building culture is based on bricks and stones for the walls, but until the first half of the 20th century almost all the floorings and the roof structures were made of timber, often richly decorated with paints or bas-reliefs. In general, the conservation authorities recommend that these structures should be maintained as integrally as possible, even when structural upgrading is needed, and in effect the interventions with glued-in rods or other analogous techniques is an ...

It has been largely shown that hydroxycinnamates and flavonoids, which are relevant classes of the general phenylpropanoid metabolism, serve a crucial role in the response mechanisms to several stressful agents, particularly excess light stress. Fluorescence signatures of plant tissue, namely the shape and the peak of maximum emission in the 400-600 nm waveband, depend on the relative concentration of various phenylpropanoids. As a consequence, the spectrofluorometric analysis may estimate the ...

Implementation of a Prototype of wooden house for emergency housing to replace the currently used containers in case of earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters. The prototype can be mounted easily by 4 volunteers of Civil Defense in not exceeding 36 hours. The house has an area of 40 square meters. Based on this experience and in collaboration with Techset Society, 50 prefabricated houses with wooden structure was built (2003) in Bonefro (CB) in order to protect people affected by ...

The Population Genetics Institute carries on since 1995 a multidisciplinary project for the identification of genes predisposing to multifactorial diseases and to complex traits. This project is conducted in the villages of the Ogliastra geographic isolate of central-eastern Sardinia. These villages are examined under the epidemiological, genealogical, genetic, molecular and statistical profile. The identification of genes associated with pathological phenotypes in such populations is ...

Detection of water-soluble substances present in the environment is commonly defined as taste and is crucial for animal's survival. In the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans repellents trigger an avoidance reaction, consisting in a reversal of the forward movement. We developed a quantitative single worm assay for this behavior and showed that many repellents, which induce an avoidance reaction in the nematode, are toxic to animals, are recognized as bitter by humans and are discarded in double ...

Welding of biological tissues induced by laser radiation can integrate or substitute traditional suturing procedures employed in various surgical fields, with remarkable advantages, such as simplification of the surgical technique, reduction of the surgery time, and faster healing process of the wound, without the typical foreign-body reaction caused the presence of the suture wire. Regarding development and application of laser welding techniques in ophthalmic surgery studies were started in ...

Works of art cannot be appreciated without light, but light is also one of the most powerful parameters in altering colour and so causing irreversible damage. Therefore, a compromise has to be found that can balance visitor's requirements and object's safety. It is known that the damage increases with the length of exposure and the irradiance. Rather than limiting the time of exposure for each object, it is advisable to monitor the lighting conditions on site. A continuous monitoring program for ...

Plants normally acquire nitrogen from the soil, but leguminous plants are almost independent of soil N due to a beneficial association with rhizobia bacteria that induce the formation of N fixing root nodules. During symbiosis bacteria invade developing nodules and within a group of invaded plant cells, differentiate into intracellular bacteroids. A single or few bacteroids surrounded by a plant membrane form organelle-like structures, the symbiosome, which convert the unusable N2 of the air ...

Most of the substances involved both in the organization and the functional-metabolic aspects of biological material can act as fluorophores, giving rise to a fluorescence emission under excitation at suitable wavelengths. The properties of this fluorescence signal are strictly related to the chemical nature and the concentration of the endogenous fluorophores, to their distribution inside the biological substrate, and to the physico-chemical characteristics of their microenvironment. On ...

La comprensione dei processi geodinamici e l'analisi dei fattori che ne influenzano l'evoluzione rappresenta un traguardo fondamentale nell'ambito delle Scienze della Terra. Tra i vari processi, l'estensione continentale e la formazione delle rift valleys riveste un ruolo di notevole importanza in quanto precede la formazione dei bacini oceanici. L'importanza delle aree di estensione crostale è inoltre legata alla presenza di giacimenti minerari e idrocarburi ed all'elevato impatto sociale ...

All plants emit a wide range of volatile compounds such as nitric oxide, carbon monoxide, and non-methane volatile organic compounds, the so-called biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOC). BVOC emissions have received increased scientific attention in the last two decades because BVOCs are highly reactive and, thus, may profoundly influence the chemical and physical properties of the atmosphere. The global carbon emitted as BVOCs is about 1.1 Pg per year, and is believed to be of the same ...

On December 30th 2002 the inhabited coastal areas of Stromboli Island were hit by a series of tsunami waves up to 10 metre high. Tsunami waves were the effect of at least two destructive landslides which involved the submarine and subaerial Sciara del Fuoco slope, respectively. Sciara del Fuoco is the NW flank of the Stromboli volcano, where the products of the volcanic activity accumulate. At present the NW flank looks like a regular slope above and below the sea level. Actually it is the ...

Marble exploitation in the Apuane Alps gives rise to rock wall faces and underground voids of uncommon size and shape. The trend towards gigantism in quarry operations (the height of the faces increases up to 150m, the length of underground voids to 80-120m, their height to 30-50m and their span to 20-40m) is sustained by the higher outputs required and favored by the growing mechanization of the stopes. It is known however that ornamental stones exploitation, both surface and underground, is ...

Recent news of mercury contamination in the Priolo-Agusta-Melilli industrial zone (Sicily) brought to public attention the seriousness of mercury pollution on human health and ecosystems. Mercury pollution is a long standing environmental problem, going back to the 19th century, starting with mercury used in gold extraction in North America; this practice is still widely used in Laos, Vietnam, Tanzania and Venezuela today. Mercury is much used in the manufacturing industry (eg., chlor-alkali ...

Receptors for growth factors are membrane proteins that are activated by binding to the ligand. Ligand activation causes swichting on receptor enzimatic function, consisting in transfer of a phosphate group from ATP to specific tyrosine residues contained either on the receptor itself or on external protein substrates. The phosphorylation event induces a signal cascade that leads to cellular proliferation and/or survival. Therefore any perturbation of such a system can lead to neoplastic ...

The ever more strong presence of information technology is decisive for the elaboration of new styles of research, for the production, storage and diffusion of texts and, last but not least, also for the modalities of teaching and learning in the field of Humanities. Such a radical change of perspectives and languages is obviously at work also for the possible interconnections between digital innovations and studies on ancient philosophy. Taken for granted such basic considerations, the 'Sezione ...

In recent years, a specific Laboratory for Surface Tensiometry has been built and organised at IENI- Dept. of Genoa, with characteristics of a particular interest at an international level. In this infrastructure, which can be defined as an "Infrastructural Center open for services to a wide Scientific Community" can offer support both experimental and scientific for measurements of Surface and Interface tensions, wettability, elasticity and surface rheology in a temperature range which span ...

Si conclude il progetto di raccogliere per la prima volta in un corpus unico i saggi scientifici e filosofici pubblicati da G. W. Leibniz durante la sua vita, con la loro pubblicazione da parte della casa editrice internazionale Olms (A. Lamarra, R. Palaia (ed.), G. W. Leibniz, Essais scientifiques et philosophiques. Les articles publiés dans les journaux savants. Avec une préface de Heinrich Schepers, Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim/New York, 3 voll.). Come è noto, il filosofo diede alle ...

Introduction The European Fusion Development Agency (EFDA), in the strive to develop the first international reactor-tokamak experiment (ITER) of controlled fusion energy production is placing a large number of active (i.e. financially supported) scientific and technical study contracts to the Associated Laboratories within Europe. A specific very important subject concerns the auxiliary plasma heating system based on the injection of high power millimiter waves resonantly absorbed at the ...

Introduction The fundamental problem of nuclear fusion research based on magnetic confinement of a plasma of Deuterium and Tritium is the achievement of a high temperature (~100 Million deg. Kelvin) to allow the energy yielding fusion reactions to occur, and keeping the temperature for a sufficiently long "energy confinement time". The problem motivates the study of both experimental techniques and first principle theories to improve the operation regimes of tokamaks in view of an optimal ...

Organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) are considered as the next generation of light sources for illumination. They are lighter, thinner, more efficient and easier for large area applications than usual LEDs. In addition, OLEDS offer wide tunability over a broad spectral coverage, by varying the chemical structure of the emissive species or by modifying the device structures. This work identifies for the first time the fundamental process occurring in polymeric light emitting devices by ...

In this focus we will report on the first single electron transistors (SET) fabricated on silicon/germanium heterostructures whose critical dimensions are in the nanometer scale. The evolution of fabrication techniques in large scale integrated circuit (LSI) have lead to reduction of the size of the electronic devices into the submicron scale. In parallel a large increase in the circuit operating speed and device density is observed. CMOS technology is presently used in microelectronics and ...

A new pulse tunnel based on a free piston compressor is operative at CNR-IENI-Milano, in which flight conditions up to Mach 7 can be simulated. The facility allows experimental studies of combustion in supersonic flows and tests on small scale models of propulsion systems for hypersonic cruise vehicles or reusable launchers. A number of test have been scheduled for developing reliable end efficient design of ramjet and scramjet combustion chambers and studying the rocket plumes post-combustion ...

At the robotic lab of the Palermo branch of ICAR CNR, a fruitful activity is currently dealing with the implementation of a human-machine interface based on human gestures. An anthropomorphic robotic hand (the DIST-Hand, made by GraalTech of Genova) and a low cost video acquisition system are the components of a platform for the experimentation of advanced and innovative methodologies. The system user shows his hand to the camera connected to a computer, executing some hand movements that are ...

The control aof the carbon dioxide atmospheric loading, the target of the Kyoto Protocol, is not yet implemented for the resistence to introdure cuts in the use of fossil fuels. The capture of carbon dioxide and its storage in natural sites or its utilization may bring in a new perspective in the use of fossil fuels. Marine biomass represents a form of renewable energy more effective than the terrestyrial for the higher photosynthetic activity of algae with respect to superior plants. To date ...

The reconstruction of the exchange network between East and West, in particular between the Aegean, Crete and Cyprus on the one hand and Italy on the other, during the 2nd millennium BC, long before Greek colonisation is one of the ICEVO most qualifying projects. This activity, carried out in the framework of an international collaboration, employs archaeological, archaeometric and computer methodologies focusing on strategic raw materials (metals) and precious goods (ivory) as well as on ...

MEMS, formally the acronym of Micro Electro Mechanical Systems, is the term born in the USA to indicate a family of devices made up of mechanical structures and electronic circuits integrated on the same silicon chip. An emerging field of MEMS applications, known as RF MEMS, is that of radio frequency and millimeter wave systems. Devices such as micro switches, tunable capacitors, high-Q inductors, micro-machined antennas, micro transmission lines and micro-mechanical resonators have been ...