For a few years the Institute has had a research group in quantitative methods for finance and economics. Most of the group's research activity is, at this time, concentrated on a collaboration with the Italian Ministry for Economic Affairs for the optimization of the management of the Public Debt in Italy, an issue of paramount importance for the Italian society. There are a number of possible fixed income securities issued by the Italian Treasury ("zero coupon", called BOT, and bonds with ...

Prostate cancer is one of the most relevant tumors in male. After radical treatment for this tumor an increase of PSA serum level indicates a recurrence of disease. Once recurrence is suspected re-staging procedures are indicated, involving different studies such as trans-rectal ultrasound, CT, MR imaging and bone scintigraphy. PET with [18F]FDG is showing increasing usefulness in clinical oncology. However, its use in some tumors, including prostate adenocarcinoma, is limited by a low ...

Several chemical processes of utmost industrial relevance occur at medium/elevated pressure of gases, for example many Ziegler-Natta polymerizations, and almost all hydrogenation and carbonylation reactions of unsaturated substrates. The investigations in these fields are commonly carried out in autoclaves that are generally expensive and devoid of many devices of importance to control and monitor the course of the reactions. Also, a high gas pressure does not allow for in situ studies of ...

The preliminary results of a physiological and molecular study carried out in the frame of the Pyramid project have been reported on the occasion of the "International Seminars on Mountains" (Kathmandu, Nepal, March 2002). For the first time some variables related to physical performance have been investigated in Tibetan refugees, during the early phase of reacclimatization to normoxia. Tibetans, the only population resident permanently at high altitude since thousands of years, appear to ...

ICEVO studies mainly Eastern Mediterranean (Greece, Turkey, Syria) and Near Eastern (Armenia, Iran) countries. Among the research carried on in these nations the Urartu Project stands out because of its multidisciplinary character and of the number of international collaborations. In our days the territory of the ancient kingdom of Urartu, a mighty state rival of the Assyrian empire, is divided among Turkey, Armenia, Iran and Iraq. Political difficulties notwithstanding this Institute ...

The research concerned the selection of new Arabidopsis mutants disturbed in the growth of the roots in general, and in particular in gravitropism and circumnutational movements. In the year 2002 the cloning of the AtRHA1 gene, that characterizes the Atrha1 mutant of Arabidopsis, was pursued. This mutant, isolated from the Feldmann collection of T-tagged mutants some years ago, shows in the roots reduced gravitropic response and notable resistance to the plant hormones auxin and ...

Plants have great potentials as bioreactors for the production of pharmaceutical proteins. For safety, product quality, and costs plants have important advantages compared to animals and microorganisms (fungi and bacteria): plants are not infected by human pathogenic viruses, perform protein synthesis and modifications more similarly to mammals than to microorganisms and have maintenance costs much lower than those of transgenic animals, animal cell cultures or bacteria and yeast ...

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, ...

The modern pig industry relies on a relatively limited number of breeds, common to all countries, which are used in the framework of highly integrated breeding schemes. The evolution of improved pig populations over the last decades has brought some performances close to their biological or economic optimum, thus reducing their future importance in the breeding objectives. Consequently, traits as meat and fat quality, reproductive fitness, mothering abilities, adaptation to extensive ...

The recognition of Earth's orbital cyclicity in the geologic record and its link with periodic variation in orbital parameters (precession, obliquity, eccentricity) has been instrumental in improving our understanding of past climate changes at different time scales. To this aim, some intervals of the Cretaceous, a period of Earth's history ranging from 135 to 65,5 million years ago, are considered among the possible proxies of warm phases of the near future climate extremes. Our experience ...

The main aim of this research is to generate and upgrade prediction models of radio propagation impairments, necessary to design satellite systems at centimetric and millimetric wavelengths with large capacity. To obtain this goal, an extensive use was made of the experimental equipments at disposal: an S band meteorological radar, radiometers operating in the 13-50 GHz frequency bands, and an ASI receiving station for different satellites. Two main research areas have been considered: 1) ...

Gamma-Ray-Burst studies have rapidly become one of the hot frontiers in astrophysical research, thanks to the BeppoSAX italian satellite. This mission, managed by the IASF in Rome together with Bologna and Palermo sections, has been launched in 1996 and successfully concluded in 2002, with a wealth of bursts data. It opened an entirely new research chapter: the physics of afterglows, lower energy residual emissions of these cosmic explosions, whose analysis led to the epochal discovery of ...

"Satellites are invading our skies". At a first sight this sentence could represent only a common sense; actually it summarizes a powerful reality that permeates (sometimes in an inquietant way) everyday life of each person and that involves both strongly industrialized countries and those that hope to become such. The main reason is that satellite is the cheapest tool able to "photograph" or "inform" the whole terrestrial globe (including oceans, isolated areas, poles and everything most ...

Le attività svolte dall' Istituto possono essere distinte secondo alcune linee guida: Meteorologia e Climatologia L' Istituto si occupa dello sviluppo e trasferimento delle conoscenze e delle nuove tecnologie concernenti meteorologia e climatologia al settore agricolo-forestale, costiero, urbano e relativo alla salute umana. In quest' ambito viene studiato il Global Change ed il suo impatto sugli ecosistemi e la loro risposta, oltre che le interazioni tra fattori meteorologici, colture e ...

INTEGRAL (International Gamma Ray Astrophysical Laboratory) has been successfully launched with a Proton rocket October the 17th, 2002 and injected into the predicted highly excentric orbit (10.000km perigee and 153.000km apogee). This ESA satellite is a Space Observatory, opened to the scientific community at large, and is an devoted to high resolution imaging and spectroscopy in the hard X-ray / soft gamma ray range. The mission is currently approved for a duration of 2 years with ...

Innovative results in the Biostructure Section have been achieved during the year 2002 in the structural study of the ribosome, the complex machinery which is responsible for protein biosynthesis in cells. The determination of the ribosome structure allows gathering of information on its mechanisms of action and inhibition. In this framework, researchers of the Institute of Biostructure and Bioimaging, in collaboration with Max Planck Institut (Hamburg, Germany) and Weizmann Institute ...

The Institute for High Performance Computing and Networking (ICAR) during its first year of activity has produced the following taxonomy of research topics which represents a sort of Knowledge Map of ICAR: (A) High Performance Computing and Networking (A.1) Advanced Architecture and Pervasive Platforms (A.1.1) Dedicated Processors (A.1.2) Reflective Middleware for Pervasive Computing (A.1.3) Multichannel Software Platforms (A.2) Advanced Environments, Protocols ...

One of the main researches carried out by ICEVO concerns the study of the relations between the Mycenaean society, which flourished in the Aegean in the second half of the II millennium BC, and two specific areas of the Mediterranean selected for case studies: the island of Crete and the central Mediterranean. ICEVO has acquired a leading role in this branch of Aegean archaeology, as the numerous scientific projects and several publications may show. As for Crete, the political entities ...

Oggi le leghe a memoria di forma stanno conquistando nuovi spazi di mercato. Il settore dei dispositivi medicali di NiTi è attualmente uno dei più dinamici e quello con il più alto tasso di crescita. Il gruppo di ricerca che opera presso l'Unita' staccata di Lecco da anni e' impegnato nella sintesi e caratterizzazione di materiali metallici a memoria di forma, con particolare attenzione al sistema NiTi e fornisce semilavorati di materiali a memoria di forma per applicazioni nel settore ...

NICE Measurements of atmospheric and snow nitrates and nitrites and their fluxes above the snow surface were made during two campaigns during spring 2001 at Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard as part of the EU project "The NItrogen Cycle and Effects on the oxidation of atmospheric trace species at high latitudes" (NICE). Recent findings of NOx and HONO production in snow interstitial air showed that photochemical production of NOx in snow surfaces is sufficient to alter the composition of the ...

Polynuclear Aromatic Hydrocarbons (NPAH) and environment. Nitrated polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (NPAH) have been recognised as belonging to long-term toxic compounds and, on the other hand, were identified in several anthropogenic emissions and among by-products of photochemical smog: Therefore, in seventies and eighties they began subject of investigation in ambient air and emission products, although any regulation limited they release in the environment. Our institute, IIA-CNR, ...

Clinical and experimental evidences have shown the important role of the endocrine function in the homeostasis of cardiovascular system. In particular, triiodothyronine (T3), the biologically active thyroid hormone, plays a critical role in modulating heart rate and cardiac contractility as well as arterial peripheral resistances. A typical pattern of an altered thyroid hormone metabolism characterized by low-T3 circulating levels (Low -T3 syndrome) has been described in patients with ...

Every year, scientists put on their mittens and collect meteorites in Antarctica. Of the roughly 37,000 meteorites listed as of 2002, about 30,000 come from Antarctica or, to be precise, the ice sheets covering that continent. Antarctica is the best place to collect meteorites because they accumulate on blue ice fields, upstream of topographic barriers. Meteorites fall and become buried in the ice; the ice flows; the ice slows and is lifted up near a barrier; finally, wind ablation exhumes and ...

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 ...