Surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) on eight-fold quasicrystal arrays with precisely controlled size and spacing fabricated via electron beam lithography was investigated. This SERS substrate shows high efficiency at 785 nm excitation in the detection of p-mercaptoaniline (pMA), and a SERS enhancement factor (EF ) of 107 is achieved. SERS behavior of the realized engineered SERS substrate indicates that the present engineered metamaterial may be used as an ultrasensitive Raman probe and ...

Metal nanoparticles (NPs) were prepared from acrylamide complex of iron and nickel nitrates by controlled thermolysis at constant temperature in a self-generated atmosphere and used to fabricate epoxy resin nanocomposites. X-ray diffraction performed on the nanoparticles revealed a metal core/polymeric shell structure for the nanoparticles thermolysed at higher temperature as also confirmed by cross analysis of thermo-gravimetrical and vibrating magnetometer data. Optical microscopy was used to ...

PMM2-CDG (PMM2 gene mutations) is the most common congenital disorder of N-glycosylation. We conducted a nationwide survey to characterize the frequency, clinical features, glycosylation and genetic correlates in Italian patients with PMM2-CDG. Clinical information was obtained through a questionnaire filled in by the referral physicians including demographics, neurological and systemic features, neuroimaging data and genotype. Glycosylation analyses of serum transferrin were complemented by ...

Intervertebral disc (IVD) degeneration is one of the main causes of low back pain. Current surgical treatments are complex and generally do not fully restore spine mobility. Development of injectable extracellular matrix-based hydrogels offers an opportunity for minimally invasive treatment of IVD degeneration. Here we analyze a specific formulation of collagen-low molecular weight hyaluronic acid (LMW HA) semi-interpenetrating network (semi-IPN) loaded with gelatin microspheres as a potential ...

Cnr-Nano researchers developed a device that allow heat to flow preferentially in one direction, providing the homologue of an electrical diode. In a paper published in Nature Nanotechnology, researchers show the performances achieved in a hybrid device combining normal metals tunnel-coupled to superconductors, providing the realization of a thermal diode for electronic heat current that could be successfully implemented in true low-temperature solid-state thermal circuits. The results are ...

The effect of graphene phonons and electrons on the spin dynamics of molecules grafted on graphene was investigated in a paper published in Nature Materials (C.Cervetti, A.Rettori, M.G.Pini, A.Cornia, A.Repollés, F.Luis, M.Dressel, S.Rauschenbach, M.Burghard, and L.Bogani). Dirac electrons introduce dominant quantum-relaxation channels and allow reaching a quantum tunneling regime, that was predicted 20 years ago by the French physicist Jacques Villain. A novel theoretical background is ...

L'attività di ricerca è rivolta allo studio di materiali, interfacce e dispositivi ibridi magnetici nanostrutturati per applicazioni nel campo della micro-nano elettronica (ICT), per la sensoristica finalizzata alla diagnostica bio-medicale e ambientale, per la rigenerazione tissutale e altre applicazioni innovative in nanomedicina. Nell'ambito ICT, le attività sono focalizzate allo sviluppo e ottimizzazione di dispositivi Spintronici ibridi per l'elettronica futura: memorie e logic-gate ...

Attività rivolta alla progettazione, sintesi e caratterizzazione di materiali nanostrutturati e sviluppo di dispositivi per la catalisi ambientale, per la chimica sostenibile e per la produzione di combustibili ed energia da fonti rinnovabili. Tali attività sono finalizzate alla rimozione di agenti inquinanti, alla produzione di combustibili da biomasse e di energia elettrica tramite celle a combustibile o dispositivi fotovoltaici. L'Istituto rappresenta un punto di riferimento sul piano ...

Down syndrome, also known as Trisomy 21, is associated, albeit with varying severity, with intellectual disability, premature aging, propensity to develop a disease similar to Alzheimer's, and the onset of some types of leukemia. Several studies have associated this phenotype with increased oxidative stress. A research conducted by a team of IGM researchers coordinated by Ennio Prosperi, in collaboration with the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the University of Pavia, have shown that ...

Da FOCUS CNR n.1 2015 L'Italia custodisce un immenso patrimonio storico-artistico, che costituisce una preziosa eredità da salvaguardare e tramandare alle generazioni future, sviluppando nuove tecniche di intervento non invasive e adottando efficaci strategie conservative. L'ultima frontiera nel campo della conservazione è l'impiego di impulsi laser per la rimozione di depositi e materiali applicati in precedenti restauri dalla superficie di un'opera d'arte. "La tecnica, solitamente, sfrutta ...

The location of Italian Peninsula at the convergence between the African and Eurasian plates, makes it a Country with high level of seismic hazard. The relationship between the damage and the energy released by earthquakes is much stronger in Italy than in other Countries with high seismicity, such as California or Japan. This is mainly because our Country is characterized by the presence of historical centers with buildings that often are not adequate to support seismic forces. Our historical ...

A giant depression (0.5 km2) associated with hydrothermal activity has been recently discovered, on the seafloor surrounding Zannone Island (western Pontine Archipelago, Tyrrhenian Sea) at water depth ranging between 110 and 130 m, by CNR-IGAG researchers. This depression has been studied through very high resolution bathymetric data in the framework of the MaGIC project (http://www.magicproject.it/). Successively, during the research cruise "BOLLE 2014" aboard of the Urania R/V the site has ...

This research aim at: -tracing, monitoring, preserving, characterizing and exploiting the biodiversity of species of interest for the agri-food sector, and the natural and agroforestry ecosistems (including non-plant organisms) with the goal of securing their sustanability; -enhancing the knowledge on the evolution of bioresources and their distribution and functional role, with the goal of securing their adaptive potential against stress factors generated by the climate change, and defining ...

Segno e parola is the title of the exhibition organized by the Istituto per il Lessico Intellettuale Europeo e Storia delle Idee (ILIESI) of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, to celebrate its 50 years of research activities.  The event has been organized in collaboration with the Istituto Centrale per la Grafica in Rome and it is dedicated to the works of Carlo Lorenzetti, sculptor and engraver. Since the mid-eighties, the art of Carlo Lorenzetti has been associated with the most ...

Systems medicine is a flourishing discipline that stimulates widespread research interests. The highlighted map in Fig.1 presents a health ecosystem, which is a connected community of living and non-living elements whose cooperation forms a complex space of relations, decisions and actions. The wealth of health- and disease-related data from biomedical, environmental, clinical and social studies is the product of such ecosystem, which continues to generate new challenges together with ...

This research focuses on: -the investigation of molecular, genetic and epigenetic mechanisms underlying plant fitness and the quality of their products; -transfer of basic knowledge from model species to species of natural and agricultural interest though translational approaches; -translate into practice the basic knowledge obtained from both biological studies and PGR assessment through biotechnological or "precision" breeding activities. Combining "omics" and bioinformatics platforms and ...

Il DNA è costantemente minacciato nella sua integrità. A proteggerlo o a rimediare quando viene danneggiato ci pensa il cosiddetto DNA damage response, che provvede a prevenire che venga danneggiato e a ripararlo se questo accade. Nella genesi tumorale l'attivazione di un oncogene è un evento necessario. In passato abbiamo scoperto che gli oncogeni danneggiano il DNA sottoponendolo ad una replicazione "eccessiva", non regolata e perciò prona alla rottura. Abbiamo recentemente scoperto che un ...

This research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of biological systems involved in agri-food and biotechnological progress, human health and eco-sustainable development. Multidisciplinary investigations in this line deal with functional and molecular studies on proteins, enzymes and microorganisms (archaea and bacteria as a source of hyperstable biocatalizers), and with physiological studies of eucaryotes (plants, algae, filamentous fungi, polar marine organisms, insect host/parasitoid ...

Device-free radio vision is an augmented functionality provided by radio transceivers - typically heterogeneous, densely distributed and networked - that monitor the fluctuations of the electromagnetic (EM) field across the space. These monitoring devices may be pre-existing, deployed at arbitrary (or optimized) locations for communication purposes in the area of interest, and exchange digital information by any wireless communication protocol. Radio vision systems leverage diffraction, ...

The role of low doses of chemicals or chemical mixtures in carcinogenesis is still an open research field. On June 23rd of this year, the Journal Carcinogenesis published a special issue on this topic entitled "Assessing the Carcinogenic Potential of Low Dose Exposures to Chemical Mixtures in the Environment" (http://carcin.oxfordjournals.org/content/36/Suppl_1?etoc), result of the work of 174 researchers working on cancer research in several and prominent institutions all over the world. The ...

This reseach focuses on: -the comprehension of extant relations among biochemical features of food, nutrition and cellular functions for the assessment of their effects on human and animal health, and their possible role in the disease prevention; -the identification of interactions of genetic, epigenetic, nutritional and environmental factors with human health, and their impacts on growth regulation, homeostasis and cellular differentiation both along development and in physiological and ...

This research focuses on the molecular mechanisms underlying the following processes: the development and differentiation, the degeneration and senescence, the reproduction, the evolutionary adaptation, the defence from endogenous and exogenous stresses, the maintainance of genomic integrity and fuctionality, the apoptosis, the protein stability, transfer and metabolism, the genetic expression and the signal transduction. The study of the above mechanisms is carried out adopting a ...

Researchers at the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the CNR of Pavia, IFOM and the Department of Biosciences of the University of Milan, have shown that the protein Nova2, until now considered only present in the brain, is also expressed by the cells of the blood vessels and is directly related to their development. The study, published in Nature Communications, was supported by AIRC - Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro. The formation of new blood vessels, a process called ...

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 ...

One of the greatest challenges in biomedicine is to get a unified view of observations made from the molecular (microscopic) to the cellular (mesoscopic) up to the organism (macroscopic) scale. Towards this goal, multiscale models have been highly instrumental in contexts such as the cardiovascular field, angiogenesis, neurosciences and tumour biology. More recently, such models are becoming an increasingly important resource to address immunological questions as well. Multiscale modelling aims ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...