The most significant results in the framework of this research topic is represented by the synthesis of several poly(aryleneethynylene)s with repeating units bearing glucose molecules as substituents, with regular distribution over the polyconjugated chain (Scheme). These materials have been obtained by means of a palladium-catalyzed polymerization reaction, in the presence of silver oxide as cocatalyst, between dihalo derivatives and a suitable hydroquinone O-diglucoside derivative, bearing two ...

The cooperation between the institute of Chemistry of Organometallics (ICCOM-CNR) and IdeLab srl has given rise to a new family of catalysts, named PlatinosinteticoTM, projected and evolved through innovative nanotechnologies. PlatinosinteticoTM anodic and cathodic catalysts are able to reproduce, and in many cases, improve, the catalytic activity of platinum in electrodes useable in many fuel cells types. PlatinosinteticoTM catalysts contain nanometric and subnanometric iron, nickel, cobalt ...

Innovative results in the Biostructure Section have been achieved during the year 2003 in the field of modified oligonucleotides. The PNAs are DNA analogues in which the sugar-phosphate backbone has been substituted by an aminoethylglycine; thanks to their ability to tightly bind complementary DNA and RNA and to their high resistance to enzymes they have been widely used as antisense and antigene molecules. It has been demonstrated that PNA do not bind transcription factors because of their ...

In the field of the management of cultural heritage, it is well known the necessity of acquiring a documentation, the most complete and accurate as possible, on works of art belonging to the common cultural patrimony. The aim is to maintain their state of conservation under continuous control. Besides to carry out classification tasks, this documentation would allow one to foresee and plan conservative actions by preventing the spread and worsening of degradation phenomena. Focusing on ...

DYSTROGLYCAN: background. Dystroglycan (DG) is encoded by a single gene [1-3] and is highly conserved in higher vertebrates. Recently, DG orthologues have also been identified in invertebrates [4,5]. DG is produced as a unique polipeptide chain that is successively cut in two subunits alpha and beta-DG, by a post-translational proteolitic process that would occur at the level of endoplasmatic reticulum with still unclear molecular details [6]. alpha-DG is a heavily glycosylated peripheral ...

Flavours and fragrances are associated with the major part of our daily activities. These substances are present in foods, beverages, toilette products, laundry powder and, of course, perfumes. This variety of possible applications prompted a great differentiation of the chemical components available on the market and rise up the economical relevance of the flavours industries. Moreover, the latter companies have recently directed theirs efforts towards the synthesis of more effective, more ...

The climate prediction at the seasonal time scale (1-6 months) represents a challenge of the climatic research, with important scientific impacts regarding the identification of the effective long range climate predictors and the definition of the climate predictability. The research contributes to fill the gap between the instantaneous weather predictions and the climatic predictions. The seasonal forecasts of the climatic anomalies still suffer from relatively large errors and miss an ...

Neutron stars do not shine like "normal" stars do: isolated neutron stars are visible only because 1) they are born very hot in the SN event which generates them or 2) they slowly lose their rotational energy through radiation processes connected with the superstrong magnetic field co-rotating with the star. Both such thermal and non-thermal processes contribute to neutron star luminosities in X-rays, especially in the .1-to-10 kev energy region. It is precisely for this two-decade range that ...

Polar ice caps conserve within them exceptional archives that can be worked upon to reveal important climatic and environmental information. The layers of snow that accumulate year after year contain diverse substances that are transported by the wind in the form of fine particles to remote areas. These are then incorporated into the snow mantle during precipitation and via post-depositional processes overtime. The dust encapsulated in the snow can be of anthropogenic origin, from manmade ...

The parks of the metropolitan areas constitute a "window" through which it is possible to explore the subsoil. An intersesting characteristic of the metropolitan parks is that they have experienced a generally low anthropic interaction in the historical times. Therefore the subsoil below their surface preserves the geological and environmental features which are the consequence of the processes occurred in that areas along the time. The geologic-physical characterization of the subsoil of the ...

In the last years the use of plastic films for agricultural soils mulching and for low tunnels -in particular based on polyethylene (PE) and ethylene-vinylacetate copolymers (EVA)- has shown an increasing diffusion. In Italy the plastics employed for these purposes cover an area of more than 100.000 hectares with an annual consumption of about 65.000 tons that, for the vast majority (about 80%) are abandoned on the soil or burnt without control by the farmers, with a consequent emission of ...

Engineering inorganic surfaces by covalent bonding of organic molecules represents an interesting approach to the synthesis of hybrid organic/inorganic nanomaterials, in the perspective of fabrication of highly sensitive gas sensors for environmental monitoring. Both porphyrin and phthalocyanine thin films offer attracting challenges for the easy monitoring at ppm level on the basis of their semiconducting and also optical properties. We focused our interest on the ...

Our Galaxy is a bright source of gamma-rays that has been observed over many decades of energy. The interstellar medium is probably responsible for most of the Galactic emission below 10 keV, and above 300 keV. However, in the soft gamma-ray domain (>20 keV)the nature of the Galactic emission was still uncertain and a matter of debate. The lack of sensitive, high resolution observations did not allow for the relative contribution of compact sources and the interstellar medium to be ...

Many plants form and emit in the atmosphere foliar volatile organic compounds belonging to the isoprenoid family. It is now known that the isoprenoids emitted by the vegetation are directly formed from photosynthetic carbon through a specific, and entirely chloroplastic, metabolic pathway. But it is still unclear why plants invest on average 2 to 10% of the photosynthetic Carbon for forming these compounds apparently useless in the metabolism and therefore re-emitted in the atmosphere. At the ...

Ten-year experience on the production of thin films by vapor phase deposition (CVD and MOCVD) has allowed to apply this process to the growth of alumina and chromia films as protective coatings against wear and corrosion. In particular well compact and adherent deposits of amorphous alumina have been obtained on metallic surfaces. The coatings result transparent, therefore they leave unchanged the aspect of the metallic surfaces, while they are able to protect the surfaces against wear and ...

Introduction: Among materials used for the fabrication of works of art and of handicraft, gemstones play a peculiar role, since they are often endowed, beyond their historical and artistic interest, with a relevant commercial value. The distinction between more precious gems and simulants, the determination of the origin - synthetic or natural - and the recognizion of possible treatments require non-destructive techniques that should be applicable to both loose gemstones and jewels having any ...

Grid computing has emerged as an important new field in the distributed computing arena. The Grid computing concept is intended to enable coordinate resource sharing and problem solving in dynamic virtual organizations. The basic idea is to provide computational power to everyone who can access it, just like electric power Grid providing electricity. The sharing in this computational Grid refers to not only file exchanges but also direct access to a spectrum of computers, software, data, and ...

A large body of work indicates that chromosomes play a key role in the assembly of mitotic spindles. Here, we show that Drosophila sspermatocytes can assemble morphologically normal spindles in the absence of chromosomes. The cells containing chromosome-free spindles are also able to assemble regular cytokinetic structures and cleave normally. This suggests that chromosomes are not indispensable for spindle formation or function. Bucciarelli E, Giansanti MG, Bonaccorsi S, Gatti M. Spindle ...

While the crystallographic phase problem is definitively solved in practice far small molecules, it is still a challenging problem in Macromolecular Crystallography. This is one of the most exciting areas of the modern Sciences and constitutes a primary tool for studying the structure of complex biological systems, so providing insight into the mechanisms at the basis of the life. Indeed Macromolecular Crystallography allows to determine the crystal structure of proteins, nucleic acids, ...

A recent study about the neurobiological mechanisms underlying language processes has focused on behavioural-cognitive aspects and functional neuroimaging (fMRI) in bilingual subjects. fMRI technique is based on changes of cerebral blood flow that are linked with the regional cerebral activation associated with the execution of motor, sensory and cognitive tasks. Previous studies have contributed to the realization of a functional map of cerebral circuits responsible for the elaboration of the ...

The SQUID (acronym of Superconducting Quantum Inteference Device) is one of the most important devices in the framework of the "small scale" applications of Superconductivity. It is based on the magnetic flux quantisation in a superconducting ring and on the Josephson Effect. In magnetometer configuration, a SQUID is the most sensitive detector of magnetic field; it is able to measure a magnetic field of the order of some billions times smaller than the earth magnetic field. SQUID magnetometers ...

For the modern information systems there an increased interest to explicitly represent the underlying conceptual layer. In this contest a reach bag of software tools have been developed to aggregate and manage the information in conceptual packaging structures (Octapy Framework), structure to render in a graphic mode. The graphic visualization is chosen in a such a way that it is possible to associate the action corresponding to the user interaction (Visual Interaction Module -IGM). The ...

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a functional imaging method frequently used to assess diagnosis and prognosis of patients with cancer. PET main clinical application are staging and restaging tumors, and the evaluation of treatment. Furthermore, in lung cancer, PET has been used to assess malignancy of solitary pulmonary nodules, that are undetermined at conventional imaging (e.g. Computed Tomography , CT). This study is the first one published showing PET usefulness for lung cancer ...

Bronchial asthma is an inflammatory disease of the airways with an increasing trend. The persistent inflammation of the airways in bronchial asthma is associated with a continuous production of inflammatory cytokines and generates structural alterations known as "remodelling" which, in turn, permanently compromise the respiratory function. The Section of "Immunopatologia e Farmacologia Clinica e Sperimentale dell'Apparato Respiratorio" has been involved over the last several years in the study ...

The final morphology of a plant is determined by the activity of two poles of growth that form early during embryogenesis, the root meristem (RAM) and the shoot meristem (SAM). The determination of all the aerial organs, and ultimately of the whole plant architecture, depends on the SAM. The shoot apical meristem is a small group of cells at the shoot apex characterized by a central zone with pluripotent slow dividing cells that is important for meristem maintenance (stem cells), and a ...

Marine organisms are highly sensitive to many environmental pressures, and consequently, the analysis of their bio-molecular responses to different stress agents is very important for the understanding of putative repair mechanisms and for application in environmental studies. A research line of activities has been recently pursued by researchers of the Section "Biologia dello Sviluppo", concerning the use of cells and embryos of an aquatic invertebrate as sentinels of the health state of ...

Plants, as sessile organisms, have evolved complex strategies to cope with adverse environmental conditions. However, crop species have been selected for centuries by humans for traits such as yield and organoleptic features. This selection has been carried out to detriment of other traits, such as the ability to grow under limiting conditions or to resist to pathogen attack. This phenomenon causes severe damages in agriculture, both as yield loss and as deterioration of food-stuffs and harvest ...

The prestigious Science magazine reports about ahighly innovative mathematical method which sheds new light into the dynamics of turbulent flows. The method has been developed by a US-italian team, including researchers from the Istituto Applicazioni Calcolo "Mauro Picone", National Research Council, in Rome, Italy. Turbulent processes play an important role in many engineering applications, for example, in the flow of air around cars or aircraft. Even though the basic equations governing the ...

HABs (Harmful Algal Blooms) are outbreaks of microalgae toxic to humans, as well as microalgae having a negative impact on the ecosystem through production of ichthyotoxins or causing conditions noxious to the habitat, such as hypoxia to anoxia. Two groups of organisms can be distincted among HAB species: 1) toxin producers, that may contaminate seafood and cause problems to the public health or fish kills and 2) organisms responsible for events known as red tides or discoloured waters, with ...

Begun in 2002 as part of the 5th framework project, the network "Fractal structures and self-organization" was finally concluded during 2003 with the realisation of an experimental apparatus with which the properties of granular materials may be studied. This has been possible also through financing from MIUR within the FIRB project "Rheological propoerties of granular materials," in collaboration with the department of physics at "La Sapienza." The apparatus constitutes the first and only ...