66 research outputs found
Amazonian plants from ethnomedicine to biotechnology through pharmaceutical biology approaches: a PhD experience in connecting forest with laboratory
No full textThe South american Natives, Shuar and Achuar people and their ethnomedical culture constitute the
background subject of the Phd research, performed both in Ecuador (Salesian Politechnic University,
Quito), and in Italy (Pharmaceutical biology labs, University of Ferrara). Based on ethnomedical
responses, Piper aduncum, Maytenus macrocarpa, Schinus molle, Tecoma stans and Eugenia hallii were
chosen as amazonian plant species subject of the research.
AIMS
The research has been focused on:
− checking the presence of endophytic fungi in plants;
− isolating and subculturing pure endophytic strains;
− checking the biotransformation capacity of the isolated endophytes on pure compounds; the most
performing endophytes were also tested on phytocomplexes and pure chemicals obtained by the
plant from which the fungi were isolated;
− phytochemical characterization and bioactivity assays of plant extracts: P. aduncum.
−
METHODS
Biotransformations. Fresh aerial plant parts were properly washed in sanitizing solutions and in vitro
cultured using adequate solid media to isolate endophytes. (+/-)-cis-bicyclo[3.2.0]hept-2-en-6-one,
acetophenone, 1-indanone, 2-furyl methyl ketone, 2-methylcyclopentanone, 2-methylcyclohexanone, 2-
methoxycyclohexanone were chosen as substrate model for biotransformations. The cultures were
sampled after 1, 3, 7, 10 days of culturing, and ethyl acetate extracted to verify by GC-MS the presence of
possible biotransformation products. Biotransformations were also checked on P. aduncum whole
essential oil and on dillapiol, cis-ocimene, piperitone, (-)-terpinen-4-ol as most abundant chemicals.
Chemical fingerprinting of P. aduncum essential oil. Steam distillation was adopted to obtain the essential
oil, then characterized by GC-MS, NMR analyses.
In vitro bioassays of P. aduncum essential oil. Antimicrobial activities were checked in vitro using proper
agarized media to reach MIC. Antioxidant capacities were checked through DPPH test, ABTS and
photochemiluminescence assays. Born's turbidimetric method and Writhing test were respectively
adopted to check platelet-aggregation and anti-nociceptive properties. Mutagenic, antimutagenic
properties and toxicity were assayed using classical and modified Ames test.
MAIN RESULTS
364 fungal strains were in vitro isolated. Among all, 5 strains performed biotransformations on
acetophenone to (S)-1-phenylethanol, with important yields (78-97%) and enantiomeric excess (78-
100%). Three strains gave also phenols probably by enzymatic reactions (Baeyer-Villiger oxidations). 15
fungal strains gave the lactones (-)-(1S,5R)-2-oxabicyclo[3.3.0]oct-6-en-3-one and (-)-(1R,5S)-3-
oxabicyclo[3.3.0]oct-6-en-2-one from (+/-)-cis-bicyclo[3.2.0]hept-2-en-6-one, probably as result of
monooxygenase activation. Phytochemical characterization of P. aduncum essential oil has evidenced
dillapiol as the most abundant terpene, followed by cis-ocimene, piperitone and terpinen-4-ol. Only cisocimene
and piperitone gave several biotransformation products through dehydrogenation and
hydroxylation reactions. The essential oil has evidenced non-mutagenic properties and interesting
antifungal and antioxidant activities.
CONCLUSIONS
Several endophytic fungal strains from Amazonian plants were isolated and checked for
biotransformations on pure chemicals and on P. aduncum essential oil. Data obtained will be useful for
possible following patents about micro-organisms able to transform pharmaceutically interesting
chemicals. Taxonomical characterization of the most performing fungal strains is still in progress. P.
aduncum essential oil can be considered genotoxically safe and provides interesting antifungal and
antioxidant properties, supporting its ethnomedical use as cicatrising and disinfectant crude drug and
suggesting an extension of its employ as preservative ingredient
Architecture, Phantasmagoria, and the Culture of Capitalism
No full textPresented on March 31, 2017 at the 2017 Spring Symposium on Architecture, Phantasmagoria, and the Culture of Contemporary Capitalism in the Architecture Library, Architecture West Building, College of Design at Georgia Tech.IntroductionProfessor Libero Andreotti is an architect, critic, and
historian of European avant-garde
movements between the two World Wars
and after. He writes on architecture and
politics during Fascism and the post-war
movements on the 1960s, especially the
Internationale Situationniste. A native of
Italy and two-time Fulbright scholar, from
1994 to 2011 he was Director of Georgia
Tech’s Paris Program at the Ecole
d’Architecture de Paris-La Villette in Paris,
France. Andreotti’s books include
Spielraum: Benjamin et L’Architecture
(Paris, Editions La Villette 2011), Le Grand
Jeu a Venir: Ecrits situationnistes sur la ville
(Paris, Editions la Villette 2007),
Situationists: Art, Politics, Urbanism, with
Xavier Costa, based on the exhibition he
curated at the MACBA in 1996 (Barcelona,
ACTAR 1996), and Theory of the Derive
and Other Situationist Writings on the City
(Barcelona, ACTAR 1996). Professor
Andreotti’s essays and projects have appeared
in October, Grey Room, Lotus International,
Japan Architect, and JAE. His book, The
Architecture of Phantasmagoria: Specters of the
City, co-authored with Nadir Lahiji, was
published by Routledge in November 2016.Nadir Lahiji is the author of the most recent
Adventures with the Theory of the Baroque
and French Philosophy (Bloomsbury, 2016)
and co-author of The Architecture of
Phantasmagoria: Specters of the City
(Rutledge, 2016). He has edited a number
of books including the recent Can
Architecture Be An Emancipatory Project,
Dialogues on Architecture and the Left, (Zero
Books, 2016), The Missed Encounter of
Radical Philosophy with Architecture
(Bloomsbury, 2015), Architecture Against the
Post-Political: Essays in Re-Claiming the
Critical Project (Rutledge, 2014). He is an
honorary faculty at the university of
Canberra. Previously, he has taught at
numbers of universities including Georgia
Tech, the University of Pennsylvanian, the
Lebanese American University.Runtime: 23:59 minutesThis symposium addresses the concept of
phantasmagoria in architecture,
unearthing its various manifestations in
the contemporary culture of spectacle.
Participants from a variety of fields at the
intersection of architecture, technology,
and political philosophy will examine the
history of phantasmagoria from the late
eighteenth century to the present and the
place it occupies in the writings of Marx,
Benjamin, Adorno, and others. More
specifically, participants will discuss its
role in analyses of capitalist commodity
fetishism where, along with the notions
of the spectral and the fantastic, it is used
to question, and occasionally to subvert,
the relationship between ‘reality’ and
‘illusion’. Special attention will be paid to the present-day significance of
phantasmagoria in an age of
tele-technological and communicative
capitalism. Just as new technologies,
according to Benjamin, reorganized the
human sensorium in the 19th century,
turning Paris into the interior space of
the flaneur, so technical innovations are
reconfiguring the most basic conditions
of urban experience in our time,
generating new forms of
‘hyper-mediated’ subjectivity that
transform the city through the force of
psychic shock. By bringing a variety of
perspectives to bear on this one
concept, the symposium will attempt to
frame a general critique of the culture
of contemporary capitalism
Ancient restoration practices in the Monumental Nymphaeum at Tripolis ad Maeandrum (Turkey): multi-analytical approach on Roman and Byzantine bonding mortars
No full textThe study of ancient architectural restoration has recently gained attention in the field of archaeometry thanks to a new sensitivity for the long biographies of human artifacts. The paper focuses on ancient repairs documented in the column shafts of the Monumental Nymphaeum of Tripolis ad Maeandrum (Denizli, Turkey). Bonding mortars used to hold the ancient patches in place were sampled and analysed according to a multi-analytical protocol, coupling mineralogical and petrographic investigation (XRPD and OM) together with FT-IR and chromatographic and mass spectrometric techniques (i.e. Py-GC-MS, GC- MS, HPLC-MS) for the characterisation of the inorganic and organic components. For the inorganic part, medium and fine-grained crystals of calcite are used as aggregates. As for the organic fractions, three different ingredients have been detected: egg, beeswax and Pinaceae resin. These multi-ingredient recipes detected in Tripolis are discussed with reference to ancient literary sources and the results of scientific investigations previously performed on ancient architectural repairs in the nearby city of Hierapolis of Phrygia, to highlight functional and chronological differences.& COPY; 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Masson SAS on behalf of Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR).This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Presidente, Duce, Segretario, Cavaliere: The evolution of leadeship patterns in contemporary Italy
No full textThe author discusses the changing nature of political leadership in united Italy, making reference to the four political systems: liberal Italy (1861-1922), Fascist Italy (1922-1945), The First Republic (1946-1994), The Second Republic (from 1994). He analyzes the practices of transformism under Depretis, Crispi and Giolitti, as well as Mussolini's image as the nation's hero. Furthermore the author describes the gradual decline of Christian Democrats' leaders from De Gasperi to Andreotti and the original approach adopted by Berlusconi. The cases are studied in order of their contribution to the present condition of Italian political leadership with respect to such criteria as the leaders' background, age, motivations and values, and their pragmaticism/idealism. Mosca's ruling class theory is applied throughout as to demonstrate specific Italian inspirations and meanings
Functional Characterisation of Alpha-Galactosidase A Mutations as a Basis for a New Classification System in Fabry Disease
No full textThis is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.The study has been supported partially by an unrestricted scientific grant from Shire Human Genetic Therapies (Germany
Coping Strategies in a Wealthy City of Northern Italy
No full textThe article focuses on the coping strategies of three categories of people usually considered to be at risk of becoming socially excluded - single mothers with minor children, long-term unemployed males and foreign immigrants - in the northern Italian city of Milan. The concept of social exclusion, often used as an alternative to the concept of poverty, occasionally as its synonym, is here intended as multidimensional, dynamic and, most of all, relational. The article shows how this concept can be useful in analysing the condition of the three categories of people and how their condition is strongly related to the constraints and resources offered by the local context. Through the empirical material gathered from in-depth interviews with the three above-mentioned categories of people, the article first shows how these people profit from the labour market and the social services available in the city. It then analyses the role of social networks and the mechanisms behind the mobilization of people in support of the interviewees. Finally, it deals with the subjective dimension, that is, it examines whether, and to what extent, interviewees express feelings of uselessness. A visualization of the strategies will also be proposed. The empirical material will help to understand whether these people are socially excluded or not, and in which sense. Copyright (c) 2006 The Author. Journal Compilation (c) 2006 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Cultivating global citizenship education in context
No full textAs educators grapple with the notion of global interconnectivity in classrooms, there is increasing pressure to determine a contextual response to global citizenship education (GCE). While nominal overtones addressing GCE have been documented by an increasing array of scholars, extensive evidence-based activations of GCE have yet to be made available to the latent practitioner. This paper explores the deepening GCE conceptual terrain through three proposed activations of GCE in schools; namely, authenticating, substantiating and co-creating. These suggested applications are aligned with a theoretical framework presented by Andreotti, Biesta, and Ahenakew outlining GCE dispositions. The juxtaposition of these concepts, the author argues, provides practical buoyancy to the notion of GCE learning. This article aims to support educators seeking practical means of articulating GCE and navigating sustainable GCE implementation. Further, the development of GCE praxis creates an opportunity to address interdependency as an integral element of curriculum and how individuals, communities, and schools might benefit from a refined exploration of the global self
From "knowing" to "not knowing": Critical global citizenship education for engineering partnerships
No full textThis article was part of a larger study that explored community participants’ perspectives in [Municipality, Country] about the long-term global service learning (GSL) partnership with [Name of university] University’s College of Engineering (Author, year). This article explores the question: From the community participants’ perspectives, what are their educational goals for the university engineering students in this partnership? While I intentionally centered this article on the community participants’ perspectives, I also explored areas of alignment and areas of difference between the different stakeholder groups’ perspectives about learning and knowledge. Although global citizenship surfaced in interviews with both community and university participants, the community participant perspectives push farther than the university administrators/ faculty and call for critical global citizenship education (Andreotti, 2006).Este artículo fue parte de un estudio más amplio que investigó las perspectivas de miembros de la comunidad en [municipio, el país] sobre una alianza de largo plazo con [nombre de universidad] Facultad de Ingenería (Autor, año). Este artículo investigó la pregunta: ¿Desde las perspectivas de miembros de la comunidad, cuales son sus metas educativas para los estudiantes de ingenería de la universidad? Intencionalmente, enfoco en las perspectivas de los miembros de la comunidad, pero también exploro áreas semejantes y diferentes dentro de las varias personas interesadas en la alianza sobre aprendizaje y conocimiento. Aunque la ciudanía global salió en las entrevistas con participantes en la comunidad y la universidad, las perspectivas de los participantes de la comunidad empujaron más que los de la universidad y llama para la educación critica de ciudanía global (Andreotti, 2006)
Cost-utility of transcatheter aortic valve implantation for inoperable patients with severe aortic stenosis treated by medical management: a UK cost-utility analysis based on patient-level data from the ADVANCE study.
No full textOBJECTIVE: To use patient-level data from the ADVANCE study to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) compared to medical management (MM) in patients with severe aortic stenosis from the perspective of the UK NHS.
METHODS: A published decision-analytic model was adapted to include information on TAVI from the ADVANCE study. Patient-level data informed the choice as well as the form of mathematical functions that were used to model all-cause mortality, health-related quality of life and hospitalisations. TAVI-related resource use protocols were based on the ADVANCE study. MM was modelled on publicly available information from the PARTNER-B study. The outcome measures were incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) estimated at a range of time horizons with benefits expressed as quality-adjusted life-years (QALY). Extensive sensitivity/subgroup analyses were undertaken to explore the impact of uncertainty in key clinical areas.
RESULTS: Using a 5-year time horizon, the ICER for the comparison of all ADVANCE to all PARTNER-B patients was £13 943 per QALY gained. For the subset of ADVANCE patients classified as high risk (Logistic EuroSCORE >20%) the ICER was £17 718 per QALY gained). The ICER was below £30 000 per QALY gained in all sensitivity analyses relating to choice of MM data source and alternative modelling approaches for key parameters. When the time horizon was extended to 10 years, all ICERs generated in all analyses were below £20 000 per QALY gained.
CONCLUSION: TAVI is highly likely to be a cost-effective treatment for patients with severe aortic stenosis
A emergencia da motricidade humana no percurso historico da UNICAMP Aplicacao de referencias epistemologicas a concepcao de um modelo de estrutura curricular
No full textThe attendance of Manuel Sergio seals an epistemological turning or a change of paradigm in the Faculty of Physical Education of the State University of Campinas - FEF/UNICAMP, considering that this Portuguese Professor suggests, that, in Theoretical Matrix study of Physical Education we pass from the physical to the motor and even from the movement of Man to Man in movement. The Motricity to Manuel Sergio is an intention movement of transcendence, or rather, the specific human movement where man looks for sense when surpasses itself. The author of this Thesis, Dean of FEF/UNICAMP from 1985 to 1990, has presented the Manuel Sergio theory to University Council of UNICAMP, which, after inflamed an complete discussion, it was recognized as a valid instrument and capable of developing new ways of research in the epistemological field of Human Motricity as an inquiring science and to present it as a integrating element of an emergent paradigm, since cartesian paradigm is considered dead. Finally, it is taken into account the presence of a new theoretical matrix in the scholar curriculum of FEF/UNICAMPAvailable from Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia, Servico de Informacao e Documentacao, Av. D. Carlos I, 126, 1200 Lisboa / FCT - Fundação para o Ciência e a TecnologiaSIGLEPTPortuga
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