Introduction Agricultural structured environments, like greenhouses, are facilities where it's possible to obtain profitable crops, in virtue of favourable agronomical conditions that can be realized in order to increase plants growth. Unfortunately the favourable atmosphere created inside greenhouses for plant growth causes pests and undesirable organisms to prosper as well, making necessary the use of pesticides and other products that must be sprayed directly on the plants quite ...

In the cypress improvement programme for resistance against canker disease, caused by Seiridium cardinale, controlled crosses among cypress species were done by the IPP. The hybrids Cupressus sempervirens (as female) x C. dupreziana (as male) aroused great interest, becuase some morphological traits of hybrids were always identical to those of the paternal tree, C. dupreziana. A team, constituted by Italian and French biologists, geneticists and sylviculturists, examined six 15-year-old families ...

A global approach to the different forms of spatial mobility is one of the most promising research trends in migration studies. This approach is able to stress ties, relationships, similarities and dissimilarities between the different types of migration. Migration research at IRPPS move on this direction. The establishment of an Observatory on Italian migrants has the aim to use and improve the skills acquired in a field where IRPPS has an important tradition. The complexity of Italian ...

Pest control is a basic problem in agriculture. Recentely, research on sustainable pest control strategies has become very important. Implementation of biological and integrated control strategies is based both on the knowledge of pest population abundance and the possibility to forecast the time evolution of the population dynamics in order to optimize the control operations. Jointly with ENEA - La Spezia and the University of Reggio Calabria, a modelling strategy for a single species ...

Researchers of the Institute of Radioastronomy are working in collaboration with collegues at the European Southern Observatory and at MPIA-Heidelberg to observe and interpret optical emission from hot spots in radio galaxies. Part of this work has recently published in Science (Prieto, Brunetti, Mack, 2002, 298, p. 193) and received attention in several magazines and newspapers. Hot spots (HSs) are regions of enhanced radio emission located at the end of the radio lobes of powerful ...

The scientific results here presented derive from the use of an integrated remote sensing system to monitor the quality of surface water resources, manly linked to ecosystems that are stressed by human impacts and exploitations, such as lakes, estuarine areas, lagoons and coastal zones. The research started to support the calibration/validation needs of remote sensing observations, with a further development toward the necessity to monitor the eutrophication processes within the routinely ...

The cerebral blood flow is finely regulated by neuronal activity. When neurons in a specific brain region are highly activated following a distinct set of stimuli - for example, the neurons in the auditory cortex during listening to a concert - the blood flow in that region increases in a temporally and spatially coordinated manner. This phenomenon is called functional hyperemia and is a fundamental event in brain function. It was first described by the italian Angelo Mosso and later by the ...

Those research activities consist of an innovating experimental work on the so called "Smart Materials". These materials act in particular ways and times when some specific kind of thermo-mechanical conditions are applied. When removing those conditions the entire system will recover its original status. Particular active materials are shape memory alloys (SMA) made by Aluminium Copper and Nickel, or by Nickel and Titanium, whose commercial name is Nitinol. SMA are commonly used as ...

The plastic capability of our brain is at the basis of the cognitive abilities that are distinctive of humans. Cerebral plasticity is also at the basis of the attempts to recovery functions lost because of vascular or traumatic lesions of the brain. Unfortunately, as demonstrated by the deficits present in patients affected by these pathologies, these attempts even if present are scarcely effective. However, if the lesion occurs during childhood, when the brain is still highly plastic, there is ...

In the last few years catastrophic rainfall events have occurred in the Mediterranean area, leading to floods, flash floods and shallow landsliding. These recent events have outlined the urgent need for: · the implementation of forecasting systems able to predict meteorological conditions leading to disastrous runoff occurrences; · some policies for issuing warnings, or alarms, to local authorities and the population. Indeed, early warning systems in urban areas appear to be the only non ...

Wilson disease is an autosomal recessive disorder of copper transport characterized by reduced copper incorporation into ceruloplasmin, and by impaired copper biliary excretion. This results in progressive copper accumulation in the liver and subsequently in the brain, cornea, and other tissues. So tissue damage and symptoms in WD are the result of the toxic effect of copper overload. While the incidence of WD is approximately 1/50-100000 live births world wide, in Sardinia it is approximately ...

Female Infertility is a common condition affecting about 1% of women worldwide. The majority of these women have an alteration of their ovarian function. In spite of the relevance of this disorder the causes of the infertility are still unknown in the most part of the cases. With our research we have been able to identify a new gene, FOXL2, representing the first gene involved in the development and maintenance of ovarian follicles. The study of this gene will lead to new prospective for the ...

The studies of the researchers of the neurobiology section are centered on the cellular and molecular mechanisms that preside at the differentiation of the nervous cells, with particular reference to the NGF-dependent populations, and on those that provoke their degeneration and death: the potential practical utilization of research results is on neurodegenerative diseases. This activity is the main nucleus of research of the neurobiology section of the Institute. The scope of these studies is ...

We have characterized the molecular mechanism by which the muscle-specific transcription factor MyoD activates transcription from the RB gene promoter. Our data reveal a novel mechanism of MyoD-dependent transactivation of target genes, linking the activity of MyoD to that of the ubiquitous transcription factor CREB. Skeletal muscle differentiation is regulated by the MyoD family of transcription factors, which activate transcription by heterodimerizing with ubiquitously expressed E-proteins, to ...

Le dimensioni geometriche raggiunte dai transistor MOSFET (Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor) sono ormai tali da rendere alla portata della capacità tecnologica di un moderno impianto di produzione di circuiti integrati ad altissima densità (ULSI) la realizzazione di dispositivi elettronici la cui operazione è dominata da fenomeni quantistici e da effetti legati all'energia coulombiana associata al trasferimento di singoli elettroni. Tali effetti, da tempo studiati nell'ambito ...

When monitoring landsldies (Fig.1) it is of utmost importance obtaining set of data that are: i - continuous; ii - reliable; iii - obtained contemporaneously by means of different techniques and from different sources, in oredr to obtai a model that is as consistent as possible with resect to the real phenomenon to model. Using innovative and technologically advanced instrumentation, allows the continuous monitoring and the gathering of the different parameters that characterize slope movements, ...

High temperature and high power applications of microsystems require sensors or devices that cannot be built in Si due to the limitation of some of its physical properties. Among wide bandgap semiconductors, silicon carbide (SiC) is to date the only one commercially available in relatively large diameter wafers with the electronic purity and quality. Furthermore, it has a high thermal conductivity, three times higher than Si and comparable to Cu, 10-fold breakdown field strength which allows ...

Electronic Noses are devices able to generate digital maps of complex odors. Their working principles are aimed at reproducing the human olfactive system. The sensitivity of these artificial sensors, in fact, is comparable to that of human olfactive receptors; their data processing is similar to the sensing events occurring inside the olfactive bulbs and the resulting odor classification is carried out by Neural Networks or Statistic Multi-Component Analysis which reproduce both the learning and ...

Some ESA scientific missions (e.g. GOCE, SMART-2) require an accurate control of the attitude of the spacecratf. Many European factories have developed small thrusters capable of delivering very small forces (3 mN). Those thrusters have to be characterized in order to determine their thrust and its noise. IMGC has developed, as required by Alenia Spazio, an instrument able to perform those measurements, the "Nanobalance". The instrument is mainly constituted by two Cu-Be plates, hold by a ...

Neutron activation analysis for trace elements characterization in the atmospheric pollution studies The monitoring of trace elements (TE) content in the atmospheric particulate furnishes additional information for assessing the air quality of our cities. Many TE of anthropogenic origin may constitute a potential risk for the population not only at level of threshold concentrations but also in terms of prolonged exposure to low levels. At the CNR Unit of Radiochemistry and ...

Foodstuffs treatment by ionisation is a safe tool to produce both a shelf-life extension and/or a food-borne disease control through the pathogenic population reduction/elimination. The main goal is therefore to guarantee the best safe quality of the product to be marketed by means of a restriction of the spreading risk ("cross-contamination") for several diseases having an alimentary origin. About 50 countries provide clearances for the treatment of more than 50 different types of foodstuffs ...

After a previous interest in metals for industrial applications (steels for industrial plants), our research is now mainly related to the field of Cultural Heritage. The activity refers to degradation studies of bronzes for outdoor sculptures and also includes stones and related protective materials. The activities are financially supported by funds, obtained within European and National research programmes. In particular, we work within a European project (EUREKA), named "Bronzart", concerning ...

The spread of new technologies leads to a crucial role for the modeling of 3D objects, and in particular for shape modeling, in many applications. Actually, most of the information our senses collect is visual and shape-oriented, and most of our knowledge about the physical world comes as a shape information: reasoning about shape is a common way of describing real objects in engineering, architecture, medicine, biology, physics, and in daily life. Geometric modeling has been a key research ...

On July 2002 a railway derailment on the route Messina-Palermo caused eight people dead and forty ones remained injured. The accident was caused by bad conditions of railroad and more precisely some rails were deformed and some fastening elements were lacking. Nowdays, considered the high tecnological level both in construction of and in the realization of the trains should consider high safety level, so when those kind of accidents happen, the ways which the maintenance management and ...

by Domenico Laforenza Introduction Nowdays the popularity of Internet and the availability of powerful computers and fast networks make possible to couple a wide variety of computational resources like supercomputers, storage systems, data sources and special devices, and using all of them as a single powerful parallel machine. This new computational paradigm has been defined "Grid Computing". This research topic has raised enoumous interest both in US [1] and Europe, as witnessed by the ...

Optical fibre sensor for NO2 based on metal-phthalocyanines of This project has been developed in collaboration with the IFAC-CNR and with the PRODOTEC srl in the PF MSTA II Introduction Material chemistry and particularly the synthesis and characterisation of new materials is allowing the design and the development of many new chemical sensors which are opening highly exciting perspectives in the area of chemical sensing. The optical fibre sensor for NO2 consists on the utilisation of an ...

The fabrication of new nanostructured materials is a rapidly growing field with strong possibilities of applications. Particular attention is actually devoted to overcome the superparamagnetic limit of nanoparticles by means of the controlled manipulation of the shape and magnetocrystalline anisotropies and to the development of composite elements for magnetic memories and sensors. The activity of the institute in that field is specifically dedicated to the synthesis and to investigate the ...

The historiography on the productive activities in the Middle Ages and in the first years of the Modern age, has privileged their economic aspects or has focalised the attention on the productive processes and on manufacturing. A lesser interest is given to the actors of the production, except for what concerns the legal and institutional aspects linked to the artisan corporations. In many Italian cities, besides the social stratification, there was an intermediate cultural layer among men of ...

The Progetto Cardano is an international initiative for the appreciation of the work of Girolamo Cardano (Pavia 1501 - Rome 1576). Interlinking high culture and popular science, Cardano's work extends from medicine to philosophy, from mathematics to astrology and occupies a central position in the European Renaissance. The Progetto, which is interdisciplinary, is intendend to make this work available for historical research through the production of critical editions, in both traditional ad ...

Pietro Piovani was the first to formulate the general project of a Critical Edition of Giambattista Vico's Works in 1972, in the second number of "Bollettino del Centro di studi vichiani". His aim was to start up in a new approach to Vico's opus, focused on a remarkable multidisciplinary strain, and to get away from the ecdotical Tradition by Benedetto Croce and Fausto Nicolini, combining philological and philosophical Method. Benedetto Croce started in 1904, with the first redaction of ...