In order to "see" what is infinitely small, man uses "eyes" that are made of electron, X-ray, or neutron beams. The use of neutrons, essential in some cases, has gained an increased importance in the last decades, and the role played by neutron spectroscopy is clearly summarised in the motivation of the 1994 Physics Nobel Prize awarded to two pioneers of this technique, Shull from USA and Brockhouse from Canada, for having helped to "understand where the atoms are and what the atoms do". ...

Rare earths are a group of chemical elements well known for their important spectroscopic properties and widely used as dopants of glass or crystalline matrices to constitute active materials. Neodymium is perhaps the most widely used rare earth in laser physics (when excited, it emits in the near-infrared region, at 1060 nm): one of the first solid-state lasers was a Nd:glass, and today Nd:YAG lasers are present both in research laboratories and in manufacturing companies worldwide. ...

THE AGRICULTURAL REUSE OF RECLAIMED WASTE-WATERS SLUDGES The wide-spread technologies currently applied to the treatment of municipal waste waters involve high energetic consumptions and produce a huge quantity of sludges containing heavy metals, organic compounds, pathogenous agents as well as appreciable amount of nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. The EU directives, namely EC 91/271/EEC, do not permit the spreading of waste waters sludges on the ground, whereas the ...

Geological-geomorphological framework and site effects at San Giuliano di Puglia (CB) and othter localities struck by the seismic sequence of October-November 2002. Since Oct. 31 2002 a seismic sequence has affected a sector of the Molise Apennines between the Fortore and Biferno river valleys. Although the magnitude of the two main events (Ml 5.4 and 5.3) is lower than that of the large historical earthquakes of the Apennines, some villages experienced significant damage and casualties ...

Type 2 diabetes is a very common disease in most countries around the word, and its prevalence is presently raising. The seriousness of type 2 diabetes "epidemics" depends on both the high mortality rate and the devastating morbidity of its complications. In addition, the economic costs of diabetes have become astonishing and can no longer be tolerated. Despite this huge burden, there is currently no cure for diabetes. Thus, efforts to prevent and ultimately to cure type 2 diabetes, the ...

In spite of the tragic conclusion of the scientific mission STS-107 of the shuttle Columbia, the results of some experiments have been saved, perhaps making less vain the Astronauts' sacrifice. One of the experiments is FAST (Facility for Adsorption and Surface Tension), conceived by the Department of Genoa of IENI and aimed at the investigation of the adsorption process of surfactants at liquid interfaces, which had a complete success. FAST houses two Capillary Pressure tensiometers to ...

The qualification of trade marks of agro-industrial products is consumer oriented with a growing demand of objective methods to assess production, preservation and market distribution methods. Monitoring volatile organic compounds (VOC) in traces it's an approach that requires instrumentation adequate in sensitivity, selectivity and reliability. Solid state sensors give only a very limited answer to this demand. Our approach is based on the development of instrumentation based on mass ...

In the vascular endothelium, nitric oxide (NO) is constitutively produced from L-arginine by the enzyme endothelial Nitric Oxide Synthase (eNOS). NO plays a key role in the relaxation of vascular smooth muscle, inhibits platelets and leukocytes adhesion to the endothelium, reduces vascular smooth muscle cells migration and proliferation and limits the oxidation of atherogenic low-density lipoproteins. Because of these multiple actions, NO plays a central role in maintaining normal ...

Optical diagnosis of breast tumour has been of growing interest in the last few years due to its non invasive character and to the chance of obtaining information complementary to x-ray mammograms. In fact, the principal tissue components, as oxy- and deoxy-haemoglobin, lipid and water, exhibit different light absorption properties in the spectral range from 600 nm to 1000 nm. Thus in principle, it is possible to distinguish different breast structures on the basis of their light ...

Greek philosophers and Christians, western and eastern civilizations, Latin and German peoples faced each other in Late Antiquity. The cultural and historical identity of Europe arose from such a confrontation. It can be aptly conceived of as a "clash of civilizations". The Istituto per il Lessico Intellettuale Europeo e Storia delle Idee, Sezione Pensiero Antico, conducts several researches on later ancient philosophy and its legacy in Latin, Byzantine and Arab traditions. The Sezione Pensiero ...

Neologismi quotidiani. Un dizionario a cavallo del millennio (1998-2003), the first volume to emerge from the Osservatorio neologico della lingua italiana, has been published in the series "Lessico Intellettuale Europeo", by Leo S. Olschki (Florence). The Osservatorio neologico della lingua italiana (Onli) is a research project by Giovanni Adamo e Valeria Della Valle begun in 1998, with the support of the Istituto per il lessico intellettuale europeo e la storia delle idee of the CNR (under the ...

The experimental and theoretical research activity of the Istituto di Fisica del Plasma "Piero Caldirola" is mainly focused on the physics of the interaction of electromagnetic waves with laboratory plasmas. Research in this field is essential in providing the means for plasma heating in magnetized plasmas in fusion devices and in developing diagnostic methods appropriate both to laboratory and space. The technological research is mainly dedicated to the use of plasma-materials interaction ...

In 1987, the first observation of neutrinos from the gravitational collapse of a bleu giant in the Magellanic Clouds made the neutrino astrophysics an experimental science. Since then a number of different, more sensitive neutrino telescopes have been constructed and are observing the Galaxy, even in this moment, to search for the most catastrophic phenomena that occur in the universe. At the same time these phenomena as: supernovae, masses captured by black holes and merging binary stars, ...

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 to pathological phenotypes in such populations is ...

Identification of the genes that are mutated in cancer is a central aim of cancer research. It forms the foundation for understanding the biological abnormalities within neoplastic cells, provides information on the function of gene products, and sheds light on more complex questions such as the relationships between genes and biochemical pathways. Current strategies for the development of new therapeutic and preventive agents in cancer are increasingly dependent upon modulation of these ...

GENERATION OF DOPAMINERGIC (DA) NEURONS IN VITRO: AN OPTIMAL SOURCE OF FUNCTIONAL NEURONS FOR GRAFTS TO RESTORE NIGROSTRIATAL PATHWAY IN EXPERIMENTAL MODELS OF PARKINSON'S DISEASE (PD). In mammals most DA neurons are located in the midbrain (MES), where they form the nigrostriatal and mesocorticolimbic pathways. They are involved in motor control, cognition and emotion, and are implicated in psychiatric and neurological disorders, including schizophrenia and PD. DA progenitors are ...

Maria Persico Multifactorial diseases like cardiovascular diseases, tumors, neurodegenerative disorders and diabetes are the more frequent cause of morbidity and mortality in the undustrialized countries. One approach useful to identify loci and genes responsible for complex diseases takes advantage of populations of small villages that have been geographically isolated for centuries. In Italy many small villages have been isolated for centuries. We have initiated a project in twelve ...

Autofluorescence as an intrinsic parameter of cell and tissue suitable for non-invasive, real-time diagnostic techniques. 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 ...

The survival of organisms depends on the accurate transmission of the genetic information from one cell to its daughters through a metabolic pathway called DNA replication. DNA replication occurs in vivo in an ordered and highly organized way to satisfy three main tasks: 1) DNA replication must occur in a specific moment of the cell cycle called S phase or synthesis phase 2) each DNA sequence must be duplicated once per cell cycle 3) the genetic information (determined by the nucleotide ...

Definizione e applicazioni. Gli Agenti Virtuali con Faccia Parlante costitutiscono la più recente proposta per una interazione uomo-macchina più robusta e più naturale rispetto agli attuali sistemi unimodali di sintesi e di riconoscimento automatico del parlato. Sono sistemi più naturali perchè si propongono di riprodurre l'interazione comunicativa umana faccia-a-faccia nella quale l'informazione viene scambiata lungo i canali uditivo e visivo attraverso messaggi verbali, intonazione, ...

Introduction The development of new technologies in the field of the automatic treatment of human language are essential for an effective utilization of new multimodal and multimedia systems built with the eventual goal of enabling people to communicate with machines using natural communication skills. Advances in human language technology (HLT) offer the promise of nearly universal access to on-line information and services. Since almost everyone speaks and understands a language, the ...