117,381 research outputs found
NOVEL GREEN STRATEGIES FOR PREPAREDENESS TO FUTURE PANDEMIC DISEASES: DEVELOPMENT OF A BIODEVICE FOR WATER REMEDIATION FROM PATHOGENIC BACTERIA AND EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF A NEW SARS-COV-2 PLANT-BASED VIRUS-LIKE PARTICLE VACCINE
No full textThe global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the urgent need for innovative and rapid strategies to enhance preparedness for future pandemics. The risk of the emergence of new infectious disease is extremely concrete and it is essential to invest in the development of vaccines and biotechnological drugs as well as to speedup of clinical trials.
Currently, one of the main focus is shifting to the global public health threat caused by the rise of antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) bacterial strains. Multidrug-resistant (MDR) pathogen infections are on increasing incidence and frequently lead to multiple events of sepsis. Therefore, it is necessary to discover both novel approaches and novel drugs active against these multidrug-resistant bacteria to prevent the spreading of sepsis. On the other hand, emerging viruses represent a real menace and it is essential to set-up and validate methods to monitore the spread of the diseases and speed up the release of vaccines and antiviral drugs.
This dissertation is divided in two main project:
The first project is focused on the development of a new SET-M33-based device for the multiple and selective removal of both bacterial toxins (LPS and LTA) and live bacteria (Escherichia coli O111:B4 and Staphylococcus aureus USA 300) from wastewater. The antimicrobial peptide SET-M33 has a remarkable capacity to both destroy and bind components of bacterial walls, including lipopolysaccharide (LPS) from Gram-negative bacteria and lipoteichoic acid (LTA) from Gram-positive bacteria. It is a cationic non-natural peptide synthetized in a tetra-branched form that makes it more resistant to degradation in biological fluids aand water. Moreover, it shows a high antimicrobial activity both in vitro and in vivo, anti-inflammatory capacity through neutralization of endotoxins such as LPS, low hemolytic activity, lack of immunogenicity, and is active against biofilm-forming bacteria.
The device was realized by immobilization of the peptide on a biocompatible resin composed of agarose beads via a thiol residue at the C-terminal of the peptide. The peptide was synthesized with amino acids in L-configuration to facilitate the conjugation with the resin via the thiol residue at the C-terminal. Preliminary results showed that the peptide mantained its strong antimicrobial anctivity against both Gram positive and Gram Negative strains as well as bacterial molecules, released upon cell lysis.
A second part of the PhD was conducted inside Vismederi srl and was aimed to evaluate the effectiveness and immunogenicity of a SARS-CoV-2 plant-based vaccine manufactured through a Nicotiana benthamiana platform.
SARS-CoV-2 was directly responsible for the COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) pandemic, an acute respiratory syndrome which led to significant health, social and economic consequences worldwide. Vaccination is the principal and single most cost-effective strategy of preventing COVID-19 and reduce illness and the severity of infection, especially in specific highrisk groups for complications.
In this context, microneutralization cytopathic effect-based (MN-CPE) assays were used to analyze the potency of this candidate vaccine to elicit a specific humoral immune response against five propagated variants of concern (VOCs) Alfa, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Omicron (BA.1) up to 21 days post-second immunization and up to 201 days after second immunization, in the context of a phase I clinical trial. This study was conducted in order to evaluate whether this novel COVID-19 vaccine was able to elicit a specific humoral immune response. Particularly, 540 human serum samples were analyzed revealing a strong humoral response against wt, Alpha and Delta variants, a moderate immunogenicity against Beta and Gamma and an important decrease against BA.1. Subsequently, serum neutralizing activity against the overmentioned five VOCs in hospitalized COVID-19 patients from the first pandemic wave was analyzed. Results were comparable to data obtained for the plant-based vaccine highlighting the occurrence of an antigenic drift event which required a periodic update of vaccine formulation. Moreover, this study highlights the importance of evaluating SARS-CoV-2 pre-existing immunity against emerging variants as a tool to foresee the immune escape and the extent of vaccine efficacy
Role of Doppler color ultrasonography and of flowmetric analysis in the diagnosis and follow-up of Grave's disease
No full textRuolo dell’eco color Doppler e dell’analisi flussimetrica nella diagnosi e nel follow-up della malattia di Graves.
No full textGoing Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Square Dancing with the Stars to Enhance Dynamic Hirschman Linkages?
No full textIn this Presidential Address, the author takes the reader on a reconnaissance of his life and time as a regional scientist. He points out scenery he found scintillating along the way, hoping that some may pick up the banner and chew on a few of the ideas for a while. He suggests a revisit to Albert O. Hirschman’s notion of key sectors and more empirical analysis related to Marcus Berliant’s and Masahisa Fujita’s notion of knowledge creation and transfer.Presidential Address, San Antonio, Texas, March 29, 2014 (53rd Meetings of the Southern Regional Science Association
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
No full textWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Letter from unknown writer to Jesse L. Boyce
No full textLetter to Jesse L. Boyce from unknown author (possibly Jack) about the investigation into the powder magazine located in the Grand Canyon. Some personal news is included in the letter such as the writer's marriage to the daughter of C.A. Taylor, former Supervisor of Cochise County
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
No full textWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Impact of organic linking and terminal groups on the mechanical properties of self-assembly based low-k dielectrics
No full textACE inhibitors (ACEI) prevent an early albumin permeability defect in isolated glomeruli from streptozotocin-treated rats
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