178,444 research outputs found
Globalization and public administration: a complex relationship
No full textThe paper examines the relationship between globalization and public administration through economic theory principles and an example. Starting from the consideration of early concerns about globalization, it argues that although the size of government has rarely declined, its power has been eroded, making room on the one hand to the quest for global public goods, while on the other hand urging for more local public goods and decentralization. University education, mainly publicly supplied in Italy as well as in many European countries, exemplifies the awkwardness of introducing best practices in a context of asymmetric information with many idiosyncratic features.globalization,university education,public goods,public administration
Testosterone, fraternal birth order, and homosexuality: comment on Kishida and Rahman (2015)
No full textRe: Surrogacy: a family-building option in search of legitimacy: Surrogacy and mental health: the psychiatric perspective.
No full textFederigo e Lady Chatterley: note sulla traduzione inglese di Tre croci (1921)
No full textNella prima parte si considerano le circostanze della traduzione inglese di Tre croci presso l'editore Secker di Londra. Nella seconda, si analizza la resa stilistica del testo originale da parte della traduttrice, Rina Capellero
Holy Terror, Batman! Frank Miller’s Dark Knight and the Superhero as Hardboiled Terrorist
No full textConceived in the late thirties as “bold humanist response to Depression-era fears of runaway scientific advance and soulless industrialism” (Morrison 2012, 6), the superhero has flourished as one of the most resilient archetypes of American popular culture. This essay analyses the literary and cultural contaminations that have engendered an unprecedented revision of the paradigm since the 1980s. In particular, it will take into account three graphic novels by American cartoonist Frank Miller (1957 - ), one of leading figures of the mainstream comics renaissance, whose ideas have indelibly influenced the artistic development of both medium and genre. The Dark Knight Returns (1986), The Dark Knight Strikes Again (2002) and Holy Terror (2011) constitute an ideal Batman trilogy that charts the character’s evolution as political counterpoint to the perceived crisis of American identity. In this regard, Reaganism and 9/11 are polarized as historical discontinuities triggering the need for a new kind of a criminal (super)hero. It will be in fact demonstrated how the novels hybridise the latent generic links to hardboiled pulp novels (R. Chandler, D. Hammet) with narrative and aesthetics elements appropriated from the culturally-received concepts of terrorism and terrorists. This fruitful contamination on the one hand “play[s] with reader assumptions about genre” (Baetens and Frey 2015, 46), while on the other hand deconstructs the ideological underpinnings of the archetype, as the moral dichotomy and the alienation of justice from the law
Valutazione di alcune metodiche peer il recupero di enterovirus da molluschi sperimentalmente contaminati
No full textK:D-Rib ON BIOLOGY OF HUMAN CANCER AND NOT CANCER CELL LINE
No full textThis work describes different effects of K:D-Rib solution treatment: from one side the slow down of cell proliferation and the reduction of chemoinvasive potential of human breast cancer cell line (HTB-126) and from the other the maintenance of normal proliferation and normal morphology in mammary human not cancer epithelial cell line (HTB-125). K:D-Rib is a water solution of D-ribose and KHCO
3
. The role of D-ribose on the energetic metabolism and its involvement into glycogen synthesis [1, 2], as well as the importance of K
+
into the cell physiology, are well known [3, 4]. It has been found that K
+
is essential to fold and to stabilize G-quadruplex [5] with a strong relevance for telomeric structures [2, 6] and for oncogenic promoter regions. Our results showed that K:D-Rib has a cytostatic effect on canine carcinoma cell line (A72), slows the colony formation ability of the HTB-126 cell line and has an antioxidant behaviour reducing MTT salt to formazan in absence of cells [1]. These results are confirmed by our most recent work, demonstrating that 5mM K:D-Rib increase the cell cycle time of HTB-126 cell line treated with K:D-Rib at the concentration of 5mM, from 44h to 59h. Here it will be show how K:D-Rib interferes both on HTB-126 cell line proliferation and cell morphology. Results on cell morphology using Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) are presented. K:D-Rib is tested also on human mammary epithelial cell line (HTB-125). HTB-125 cells treated with 5 mM K:D-Rib do not display toxicity or notable cell proliferation decreasing rate compared to the control one. HTB-125 cell morphology is analyzed by AFM. As mentioned before a key point of cancer cells is the capability to invade tissues nearby or far from cancer formation site. Tumour motility is an important step in the intricate process leading to the formation of metastasis. It has been shown that metastatic cells are more motile than non-metastatic tumour cells and most motile of normal cells. Metastatic cells lose growth-inhibitory responses, undergo alterations in adhesiveness and demonstrate enhanced production of enzymes that can degrade extracellular matrix components. Since the development of metastatic disease in breast cancer is one of main responsible of cancer mortality, the stopping and the understanding of the mechanisms that facilitate metastatic tumour progression is of prime importance [7]. We have investigated if K:D-Rib solution within 9 days can modify the migration and the invasion ability. The experiments show HTB-126 cells are able to migrate across the coverslip toward the FBS
–
agar spot and to invade it within 48, but the relative cell number inside the AGAR-FBS decrease already after five days of treatment. After nine days of treatment with K:D-Rib the relative cell number, inside the AGAR-FBS spot is reduced to 25%, demonstrating that tumorigenic potential is highly decreased with K:D-Rib treatment. These results show that 5mM K:D-Rib causes the change of some aspects like migration, invasion and proliferation of HTB-126 cell line. Despite these evidences K:D-Rib does not interfere neither with the proliferation of HTB-125 cell line nor with cell morphology.
1. Croci S, Bruni L, Bussolati S, Castaldo M, Dondi M: Potassium bicarbonate and D-ribose effects on A72 canine and HTB-126 human cancer cell line proliferation in vitro.
Cancer Cell International
2011, 11. 2. Heiden MGV, Cantley LC, Thompson CB: Understanding the Warburg Effect: The Metabolic Requirements of Cell Proliferation.
Science
2009, 324(5930):1029-1033. 3. Dai JX CM, Yang DZ: Polymorphism of human telomeric quadruplex structures.
4.
Xianfeng Zhou FS, † Yanqing Tian
,* Cody Youngbull, Roger H. Johnson, and Deirdre R. Meldrum: A New Highly Selective Fluorescent K+ Sensor.
Journal of the American Chemical Society
2011(133, ):18530
–
18533. 5. Parkinson GN, Lee MPH, Neidle S: Crystal structure of parallel quadruplexes from human telomeric DNA.
Nature
2002, 417(6891):876-880. 6. Lipps HJ, Rhodes D: G-quadruplex structures: in vivo evidence and function.
Trends in Cell Biology
2009, 19(8):414-422. 7. Fernandis AZ, Prasad A, Band H, Klosel R, Ganju RK: Regulation of CXCR4-mediated chemotaxis and chemoinvasion of breast cancer cells.
Oncogene
2004, 23(1):157-167
RNA DEPENDENT RNA POLYMERASE: A VALUABLE TARGET TO BLOCK VIRAL REPLICATION IN SINGLE-STRANDED (+)SENSE RNA VIRUSES.
No full textThe (+)strand RNA viruses include a very large group of viruses that cause epidemic diseases in humans, including dengue fever and gastroenteritis. The human (+)RNA viruses include Flaviviruses (FV) and Norovirus (NV). Both encode for proteins essential for viral replication, such as the RNA dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp). Since human cells lack RdRp, it appears as one of the most promising targets for antivirals development. I worked on the identification of new non-nucleotide inhibitors against FV and NV, using RdRp as the main target. In this context, suramin and NF023 have been identified in my lab as NV RdRp inhibitors that, however both are hampered in their application by pharmacokinetics problems. To overcome such problems, I analyzed the potential inhibitory role of Naf2, a fragment derived from these two molecules. Although Naf2 showed a low inhibitory activity, the crystal structures of NV RdRp/Naf2 complex revealed a new binding site. To further map this new site, I tested a Naf2 related molecule, PPNDS. The crystal structures of the RdRp/PPNDS complex revealed interesting features about the new binding site. I also focused on structurally related molecules synthesized following structure-driven information. NV RdRp crystal structures in complex with one of these compounds (Cpd6) were analyzed, providing new knowledge on the interactions between a small fragment and NV RdRps, establishing a platform for structure-guided drug optimization. In parallel to the NV work, I screened in silico a library of compounds against FV RdRp. One of the best compounds identified (HeE1-2Tyr) was able to inhibit the RdRp activity and several FVs in cell-based assays. Although the crystallographic analyses don't reveal clear enough electron density for the inhibitor, indirect evidence suggests that HeE1-2Tyr interferes with the RdRp priming loop that appears disordered
Quale convergenza? Tendenze evolutive delle disparità di reddito tra le regioni dell'Unione Europea
No full textThe paper addresses the issue of per capita income convergence among the regions of the European Union. Ia aims at shading light on the influence of the economic integration process experienced by the European countries on the dynamics of income distribution across regions. Various quantitative methods have been employed to answer the question as to whether a reduction in income disparities has taken place in Europe since 1980 and, if so, to what extent and with what qualifications
ChroKit: a Shiny-based framework for interactive analysis, visualization and integration of genomic data
No full textWe developed ChroKit (the Chromatin toolKit), an interactive web-based framework written in R that enables intuitive exploration, multidimensional analyses, and visualization of genomic data from ChIP-Seq, DNAse-Seq or any other NGS experiment that reports the enrichment of aligned reads over genomic regions. This program takes preprocessed NGS data and performs operations on genomic regions of interest, including resetting their boundaries, their annotation based on proximity to genomic features, the association to gene ontologies, and signal enrichment calculations. Genomic regions can be further refined or subsetted by user-defined logical operations and unsupervised classification algorithms. ChroKit generates a full range of plots that are easily manipulated by point and click operations, thus allowing 'on the fly' re-Analysis and fast exploration of the data. Working sessions can be exported for reproducibility, accountability, and easy sharing within the bioinformatics community. ChroKit is multiplatform and can be deployed on a server to enhance computational speed and provide simultaneous access by multiple users. ChroKit is a fast and intuitive genomic analysis tool suited for a wide range of users due to its architecture and its user-friendly graphical interface. ChroKit source code is available at https://github.com/ocroci/ChroKit and the Docker image at https://hub.docker.com/r/ocroci/chrokit
- …
