The melting of glaciers coming with climate change threatens the heritage of the last glaciation of Europe likely contained in subglacial lakes in Greenland and Svalbard. This aspect urges specialists to focus their studies (theoretical, numerical and on- field) on such fascinating objects. Along this line, beneath Amundsenisen Plateau (Svalbard) the research groups, led by Jacek Jania (Dept. Earth Science, Univ. of Silesia) and Piotr Glowacki (Inst. Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences, ...

Nel 2014, 6,7 miliardi di telefoni cellulari hanno generato oltre due exabyte di dati relativi a una vasta gamma di servizi di telefonia mobile, tra cui la navigazione web, il social networking, video streaming, storage online ed il gioco on-line. Questa enorme quantità di attività può essere monitorato e geo-referenziata dagli operatori di telefonia mobile e divenire una fonte di informazioni senza precedenti su grandi popolazioni di individui. L'analisi dei dati di traffico di telefonia ...

Computer science today is driven by two main trends: the use of computing resources on demand (outsourced computing) and the need of processing a huge amount of data coming from different sources (data-centric computing). The effects of these two trends will lead the future computing platforms towards hybrid systems composed of distributed specialized subsystems with specific and complementary features that operate synergistically. These systems will interact with the users by means of multiple ...

Nowadays, companies and individuals are immersed in digital interconnected ecosystems in which huge amounts of heterogeneous data, the so-called Big Data, are generated at an unprecedented speed. In this scenario, approaches and technologies for Big Data have the aim to make computable problems that involve large volumes of data, highly heterogeneous in size and structure, often generated in real-time, which can not be dealt with the existing information technologies. The purpose of the ...

The Speedy laboratory investigates the principles, models, methodologies and tools needed for the design and development of high-performance, distributed and pervasive systems. Such systems are a complex ecosystem of heterogeneous entities (services, smart objects/M2M, people, etc.) that cooperate to provide the related functionalities, and are able to evolve and quickly adapt to changing requirements. The focus is on combining Cloud Computing and the Internet of Things (IoT), in order to enable ...

Il trasporto cellulare mediante vescicole opera, secondo gli stessi principi generali, in organismi differenti quali uomo e lievito. Tale sistema è cruciale per una serie di processi fisiologici in cui la fusione delle vescicole deve avvenire sotto stretto controllo, mediante il rilascio di ormoni e citochine. Difetti nel trasporto si traducono in vari tipi di malattie tra cui una serie di disturbi neurologici ed immunologici. Il simposio di una giornata organizzato dall'Istituto di Biochimica ...

Writing the Mitigation Measure Whitebook for Italy. Surface water bodies (e.g. rivers, streams, lakes, ponds) need to be protected from unacceptable impacts of crop protection products. Diffuse pollution can originate from correct pesticide applications to fields; two major potential pollution pathways exist: surface runoff and spray drift. Each of these pollution pathways may lead in principle to unacceptable predicted exposure concentrations in the receiving water body. Consequently, suitable ...

The Cognitive Systems Lab is aimed at studying and realizing cognitive systems of new generation, able to learn, reason, and pervasively engage with humans in a natural, personalized, reactive and/or proactive way. Theoretical, experimental, and applied research activities will be aimed at designing and implementing cognitive systems able to: i) engage individually or collectively with humans by combining advanced visualization techniques with adaptive and proactive multi-modal mechanisms based ...

Translational Bioinformatics is an emergent field of health informatics that addresses the application of the scientific discoveries and technological innovations from the laboratories to the clinical practice. In the last decade, this area has seen a rising interest among the scientific community due to the development of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) techniques that allowed the availability of increasingly voluminous amounts of genomic data. In this context, the main objective of the TBLab ...

Nanotechnology applied to medicine is the new frontier of drug therapy that aims to create personalized, safer and more effective treatments. Nano-structured systems that can facilitate the penetration, the site-specific transport and controlled release of a drug, improving efficiency and reducing the unwanted side effects, could have evolutionary implications for pharmacotherapy. This explains the great interest of the academic and industrial research in drug delivery nanotechnology. This ...

The aim of Computational and Data Lab is to develop algorithms, models and software tools to detect, understand and design scientific and tecnologic solutions through the analysis of data obtained from experiments and tests, and/or through simulation of the processes generating them, dealing with new scientific challanges and multidisciplinary activities, related to ICT. Its activity is focused on the resolution of real problems with methodologies spanning from computer simulation, to scientific ...

Human activities and the environments in which they occur (real or virtual) are perceived in an increasingly sophisticated manner by artificial agents, and they can trigger complex interactions with "intelligent" software agents or "autonomous"robot. The research activities aims to study new architectures and methodologies to better manage the cycle "perception-understanding-action" of artificial autonomous systems, taking inspiration also from human cognitive models. The perception usually ...

On its website, Google describes PageRank as follows: "PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that are considered important receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results." The PageRank algorithm was introduced by the cofounders of Google in the late 1990s and has been implemented on the search engine of Google from the time of its launching. It continues to ...

It takes just 300 ms to our brain to understand whether one person's facial mimic and body language are consistent with her inner feelings and mental states or with a verbal description of her feelings and mentations. And, when they are not, that person's verbal message has a short life in our brain. Indeed, our brain very quickly compares the inputs deriving from areas processing facial expressions, and face and body mimics (including the mirror neurons system) with the visceral feelings of ...

A mild decrease of oxygen supply to the brain can selectively impair the brain's arousal levels and behavioral responses, but not orienting of spatial attention and executive control functions. This is indicated by the findings of a study carried out by the Institute of Molecular Bioimaging and Physiology in collaboration with the University of Milan Bicocca. These findings were presented at the "2014 Society for Neuroscience" Annual Congress, the largest and most influential Neuroscience ...

Bernd Pulverer, Chief Editor of the EMBO Journal, will give an overview on the peer reviewed research paper which remains the main conduit for the exchange of research discoveries. With the growth and diversification of global research, publishing in selected journals and citation metrics are increasingly employed as surrogates for quality in research assessment. Consequently, the pressures to publish in only a handful of journals have increased, with the risk of hampering scientific progress. ...

Dejà-vù is a fascinating and mysterious psychological phenomenon investigated by philosophers, psychologists, psychiatrists and neurologists. However, until now there is not a clear scientific theory able to explain this phenomenon. The Institute of Bioimaging and Molecular Physiology-CNR of Catanzaro, in collaboration with the Institute of Neurology of the Policlinico "Magna Graecia" Catanzaro, has shed new light on the neurobiological correlates underlying Dejà-vù. This research has been ...

VCSELs are semiconductor micro-lasers, a Key Enabling Technology for many ICT applications, from datacom to sensors. Nowadays they are the main semiconductor optical source on the market and their production volume is exponentially increasing. Soon they will be part of every smart-phone and used for intra- and inter-chip communications in future microprocessors. VCSELs are complex dielectric resonator, composed of hundreds of layers and with plenty of possible transverse geometries, which can ...

La proteina p53 è stata identificata nel 1979 da Arnold Levine della Princeton University (USA) e da David Lane, dell'Imperial Cancer Research Fund (Regno Unito), ma solo dopo dieci anni si è scoperta la sua importante funzione di gene soppressore tumorale indicandola una delle più interessanti nell'elaborazione delle terapie anticancro. Si attiva infatti ogni volta che le nostre cellule subiscono un alterazione, fermando la divisione delle cellule e consentendo la riparazione del Dna. Se il ...

The most efficacy drug therapy employed to treat Parkinson's disease is the levodopa but, for obscure reasons, after few years this induces motor complications called dyskinesias. The Institute of Bioimaging and Molecular Physiology-CNR of Catanzaro, in collaboration with the Institute of Neurology of the Policlinico "Magna Graecia" Catanzaro, has shed new light on the neurobiological correlates of this motor complication demonstrating the efficacy of neurostimulation. This research has been ...

"Spice of life": polyphenol curcumin by-products may act on Parkinson's relates protein aggregation. Paolo Ruzza, ICB-CNR Parkinson's disease (PD) belongs to the group of protein misfolding diseases and it is characterized by the progressive degeneration of the dopaminergic neurons from the substantia nigra of the brain. Among the biochemical mechanisms proposed for the pathogenesis of PD, our attention has been focused on the intracellular accumulation and aggregation of misfolded proteins, in ...

A ruthenium catalyst for the efficient production of hydrogen from methanol. Elisabetta Alberico, ICB-CNR Hydrogen is an ideal fuel as its combustion releases energy and water as the sole by-product. Its widespread use would allow to successfully tackle several issues, the increasing demand for energy, the pollution and green-house gases arising from the use of fossil fuels. However, mainly because of its physical and chemical properties, hydrogen is not an ideal energy vector: it is a flammable ...

"Metabolic Profiling": a new strategy for the study of metabolic diseases. Debora Paris, ICB-CNR Metabolomics describes the chemical profile of an organism in terms of metabolites, which are the end products of all chemical reactions of metabolism. The metabolic profile can be defined as a 'fingerprint' as it characterizes the biochemical phenotype of a biological system as a whole, by taking a snapshot of the overall metabolic levels. The study of the alterations induced by a disease, for ...

New natural-like agrochemicals and fungicides for agrofood application Giovanna Delogu, ICB-CNR The new chemistry has a key role to play in maintaining and improving the quality of life, such as protection of the environment and development of sustainable synthetic techniques to solve environmental problems and to produce compounds selective and active at low concentration, with decreasing toxicity and side effects to humans, animals and vegetation. Chemical challenger includes the discovery ...

Comunicato stampa CNR - 18 Dicembre 2014 Un team dell'Ifac-Cnr e dell'Università di Firenze mette a punto un nuovo tipo di trattamento del cancro: nanoparticelle d'oro riconoscono le cellule cancerose quando queste sviluppano un enzima che permette loro di sopravvivere senza ossigeno. La tecnologia, illustrata su Advanced Functional Materials, è protetta da brevetto. Utilizzare la temibile capacità delle cellule tumorali di sopravvivere anche in condizioni di scarsa ossigenazione per ...

A driving force behind the new applications is empowering individuals in order to promote awareness and overall quality of life. The Web is the core technology at the heart of this process. Like the press and other media, the Web has expanded the knowledge base that everyone can access, revolutionizing the way we live and becoming the most frequently used tool for learning, reporting, informing, working, and socializing. With the increasing pervasiveness of mobile devices, the Web has the ...

Sensors based on nanostructured materials, due to their extremely reduced size as well as electrical and optical properties related to the matter arrangement, are able both to communicate with the infinitely small world and to perceive and to reveal even a single molecule in the atmosphere or a single ion in the liquid. In addition the development of nanostructured sensing materials provides high surface-area-to-volume ratio layers mimicking the strong biological sensory systems. These sensors ...

In the Healthcare domain taxonomies or classifications and above all coding systems are fundamental for the "unique identification" of relevant clinical data in critical situations and emergencies. Medical coding systems are generally used: (i) to classify diseases and other clinical data unambiguously; (ii) to support epidemiological studies; (iii) to index and retrieve information of interest. General research activities performed in this area are: o Knowledge acquisition, terminology ...

Road safety and traffic congestions are among major concerns today. The Global status report on road safety 2013 indicates a worldwide total number of road traffic deaths of 1.24 million per year. A large part of them occurs at intersections. Intersection management is also critical to reduce the traffic jams in our cities. However, the percentage of intersections that are governed by traffic lights is inevitably limited and significantly increasing the number of traffic lights is not realistic ...

Nowadays, data sharing through Cloud platforms is widespread among the Internet users, think for example to services such as Dropbox and Google Drive, and it is also facilitated by the availability of such sharing tools on mobile devices . However, in some scenarios, in particular when organizations are involved (e.g., companies or public bodies), this data sharing must be regulated by real digital contracts, called Data Sharing Agreements (DSA), which must be paired with data. The researchers ...