494 research outputs found
Some Remarks on the Recent SRM Related Case-Law of the CJEU with Special Regard to the Meroni Doctrine
No full textThe study elaborates on the development of the Meroni doctrine, derived from the Meroni judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Coal and Steel Community under a different Founding Treaty framework and its applicability to the Banking Union under the current Treaty framework. To fulfil this aim, the author first elaborates on the Advocate General’s opinion and the Judgment of the Court of Justice in the Meroni case and then briefly introduces the evolution and the literature on the issue. After a short introduction of the Banking Union’s institutional order, the author introduces two cases in which issues related to the Meroni doctrine were raised before the General Court, as well as the appellate procedures before the Court of Justice in one of these cases
Design, Identity and Sensemaking: a Fertile Approach for Small Territories
No full textRecently, global competition among nations, big cities and major tourist destination has powered the specialization of disciplines such as territorial marketing, place and city branding, as well as numerous ranking systems for continuous monitoring of perception and reputation of places.
The design approach to these issues has always been sensitive to the enhancement of peripheral and marginal areas compared to the large economic flows, with research and experimental design activities.
Enabling small communities to recover their identity and to anticipate possible and sustainable futures is a goal that the strategic design for territorial enhancement pursues with great interest, as an appropriate alternative to growth systems based on large urban settlements.
The story of a successful case, the “Postaja Topolove” project in a small village on the border between Italy and Slovenia, offers an opportunity to reflect on a number of key issues in the design process: recognition and planning of the sense of place, storytelling and narrative methods, use of certain levers for development as art and culture, and the centrality of the participatory and collaborative dimension
Artifact-Driven Business Process Monitoring - A Novel Approach to Transparently Monitor Business Processes, Supported by Methods, Tools, and Real-World Applications
No full textThis book proposes a novel technique, named artifact-driven process monitoring, by which multi-party processes, involving non-automated activities, can be continuously and autonomously monitored. This technique exploits the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm to make the physical objects, participating in a process, smart. Being equipped with sensors, a computing device, and a communication interface, such smart objects can then become self-aware of their own conditions and of the process they participate in, and exchange this information with the other smart objects and the involved organizations. To allow organizations to reuse preexisting process models, a method to instruct smart objects given Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) collaboration diagrams is also presented. The work constitutes a revised version of the PhD dissertation written by the author at the PhD School of Information Engineering of Politecnico di Milano, Italy. In 2019, the PhD dissertation won the “CAiSE PhD award”, granted to outstanding PhD theses in the field of Information Systems Engineering
Should we increase instruction time in low achieving schools? Evidence from Southern Italy
No full textAbstractThis paper investigates the short term effects of a large scale intervention, funded by the European Social Fund, which provides additional instruction time to selected classes of lower secondary schools in Southern Italy. Selection is addressed using institutional rules that regulate class formation: first year students are divided into groups distinguished by letters, they remain in the same group across grades at the school, and the composition of teachers assigned to groups is stable over time. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we consider consecutive cohorts of first year students enrolled in the same group. We compare participating groups to non-participating groups within the same school, as well as to groups in non-participating schools. We find that the intervention raised scores in mathematics for students from the least advantaged backgrounds. We also find that targeting the best students with extra activities in language comes at the cost of lowering performance in mathematics. We go beyond average effects, finding that the positive effect for mathematics is driven by larger effects for the best students
Fostering collaboration between start-ups and students for mutually beneficial inspiring learning
No full textThis two-voiced paper is the result of a student-teacher interaction in which the teacher simply paves the floor for a student’s narrative and commentary, from their perspective, of an innovative projectbased studio experience. By partnering with an incubation and start-up program for social innovators in Milan, university faculty considered how to design a studio to stimulate both students and innovators in their different educational and personal trajectories by organising "pairs of teams" with the same design goal(s), conscientious of social innovation, environmental sustainability within a circular economy, and striving for radical solutions. The team for which this student-author is sharing their experience in this paper has been paired with the start-up team “NoLo Ricicla - ilVespaio”, whose innovation idea was based on the question “How could a system of plastic packaging recovery, production and distribution of recycled artefacts be organised on a neighbourhood scale in the neighbourhood of NoLo?
Thyroid nodules in Graves disease and the risk of thyroid carcinoma
No full textBackground: The risk of thyroid carcinoma in patients with Graves disease has been particularly emphasized when nodules coexist with thyroid hyperplasia; a surgical approach has been suggested. Objectives: To detect thyroid nodules early in patients with Graves disease and to evaluate the risk of carcinoma. Methods: The study group included 315 consecutive outpatients with Graves hyperthyroidism not previously treated with surgery or radioiodine therapy. Thyroid ultrasonography was performed at the time of enrollment and repeated annually in all patients; fine-needle aspiration (FNA) was carried out in those patients with nodules and repeated after 2 years or at shorter intervals. Results: One hundred six of 315 patients with Graves disease had thyroid nodules 8 mm in diameter or larger detected by ultrasonography. In 49 patients, nodules were present at the time of the first examination; in 57 patients, nodules developed during follow-up. Fine- needle aspiration cytology results revealed features of carcinoma in only 1 patient; this was confirmed by histologic examination of excised thyroid tissue. The nodules with normal cytologic features at the time of the first examination did not show any clinical and/or cytologic evolution toward malignancy during follow-up. Conclusions: Ultrasonographic evidence of nodules was frequently found among our patients with Graves disease, but malignant FNA cytologic findings of the examined nodules were rare at the time of diagnosis and throughout the course of the disease. When FNA cytologic evaluation does not indicate malignancy, the presence of thyroid nodules in patients with Graves disease does not indicate an aggressive therapeutic approach
Towards a multi-risk deterministic scenario in the Mt. Etna area
No full textEtna (Sicily, Italy) is an active volcano characterized by effusive and explosive eruptions, often accompanied by intense seismic activity. Its densely urbanized territory on the eastern flanks can suffer severe impacts due to lava flows, earthquakes, and tephra, while pyroclastic flows only affect the summit area of the volcano.
As part of the Panacea project (Probabilistic AssessmeNt of volCano-related multi-hazard and multi-risk at Mount EtnA), seismic and volcanic hazard scenarios were generated; consequently risk scenarios for built-up places, lifelines and communication systems were assessed at very different scales, from local to sub-regional. In general, in case of a multi-hazard risk project, it is necessary to identify the elements exposed to the volcano’s effects, assess their vulnerability to each different hazard and proceed to complex risk analyses (Meroni et al., 2022, Pessina et al., 2022).
Mt. Etna's hazard studies provided interesting insights (Del Negro et al., 2019) but it is the first time that a multi-risk analysis has been carried out in the area. For this reason, in this study the analyses have been limited to the estimation of direct losses (in terms of structural damage, victims, and loss of functionality) and more complex risk analyses, such as multi-risk and cascade assessments, have not yet been taken into consideration.PublishedFerraraOST2 Deformazione e Hazard sismico e da maremot
Accelerated Atherosclerosis in Autoimmune Diseases
No full textAtherosclerosis (AS) is a chronic inflammatory disease of arterial vessels, leading to chronic and acute ischemic damage or hemorrhages in virtually any organ. Atherosclerotic plaque formation is the result of inflammatory processes that mediate lymphocyte and macrophage infiltration, lipid intra- and inter-cellular deposition, and eventually smooth muscle cell migration/proliferation and fibrosis. Adaptive and innate immune responses against exogenous as well as self-antigens cooperate in triggering such processes. The atherogenic processes may be magnified and accelerated in patients with autoimmune rheumatic diseases (AIRDs) because of the underlying immune abnormalities, the consequent systemic inflammation and the effects of some concomitant chronic therapies. As a matter of fact, accelerated AS is responsible for increased mortality and morbidity in almost all AIRDs, nowadays. Diagnostic strategies to detect early atherosclerotic lesions and to apply preventive therapeutical approaches have been proposed in order to avoid complications related to accelerated AS in AIRDs. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2008, 2024
Trim17, novel E3 ubiquitin-ligase, initiates neuronal apoptosis
No full textAccumulating data indicate that the ubiquitin-proteasome system controls apoptosis by regulating the level and the function of key regulatory proteins. In this study, we identified Trim17, a member of the TRIM/RBCC protein family, as one of the critical E3 ubiquitin ligases involved in the control of neuronal apoptosis upstream of mitochondria. We show that expression of Trim17 is increased both at the mRNA and protein level in several in vitro models of transcription-dependent neuronal apoptosis. Expression of Trim17 is controlled by the PI3K/Akt/GSK3 pathway in cerebellar granule neurons (CGN). Moreover, the Trim17 protein is expressed in vivo, in apoptotic neurons that naturally die during post-natal cerebellar development. Overexpression of active Trim17 in primary CGN was sufficient to induce the intrinsic pathway of apoptosis in survival conditions. This pro-apoptotic effect was abolished in Bax(-/-) neurons and depended on the E3 activity of Trim17 conferred by its RING domain. Furthermore, knock-down of endogenous Trim17 and overexpression of dominant-negative mutants of Trim17 blocked trophic factor withdrawal-induced apoptosis both in CGN and in sympathetic neurons. Collectively, our data are the first to assign a cellular function to Trim17 by showing that its E3 activity is both necessary and sufficient for the initiation of neuronal apoptosis. Cell Death and Differentiation (2010) 17, 1928-1941; doi: 10.1038/cdd.2010.73; published online 18 June 201
Circular economy of the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus: A new sustainable feed for aquaculture
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