15,227 research outputs found
Studi sui discorsi e sulle lettere del Bellum Vandalicum di Procopio di Cesarea
No full textLa presente tesi magistrale consiste in un commento ai λόγοι (tra i quali si comprendono sia discorsi che epistole) inseriti all'interno del Bellum Vandalicum di Procopio di Cesarea (libri III e IV del De bellis). Il lavoro è impostato come un commento retorico-stilistico: sono quindi analizzate la prosa e la lingua di Procopio, ricercando sia le tendenze tipiche della lingua classica che quelle della lingua tarda. Si identificano le figure di suono, di parola e di pensiero, prestando particolare attenzione all’ornatus e alla partitio orationis, dove è possibile individuarla. Si analizzano, inoltre le modalità tramite le quali Procopio, mantenendo un forte atticismo, inserisce richiami letterari e anche vere e proprie citazioni ad autori della letteratura classica ed ellenistica. Vengono dunque individuate le relazioni che intercorrono tra l’opera procopiana e le opere storiografiche di età classica le quali, molto spesso, servono da chiave di lettura per comprendere meglio i λόγοι di Procopio
Link stability estimation based on link connectivity changes in mobile ad-hoc networks
Get PDFDear Wang,
Re: Link Stability Estimation Based on Link Connectivity Changes in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks
I have not been able to assess if this is an author version peer-reviewed or is it an author version non peer reviewed. Could you please clarify this so I can proceed to add your paper to Spiral. Spiral digital repository only accept peer-reviewed papers.
30/11/12 author has confirmed peer reviewe
Detection of nuclear and membrane antigens by liquid-based cytology following long-term storage of d1 cells, karpas cells, and peripheral blood mononuclear cells.
No full textImmunofluorescence is the most frequently utilized technique to analyze protein expression. Fixed immunofluorescent cell suspensions, however, can only be stored for a week. We investigated whether liquid-based cytology could be used to detect antigens in cultured cells after a long storage period. Murine and human cells were fixed in PreservCyt solution, stored for various periods, and then used to perform an automated immunocytochemical analysis. Phosphorylation of the nuclear transcription factor Stat-5 induced by IL-7 was detected up to 4 months after IL-7 stimulation. Simultaneous nuclear positivity for the proliferation index MIB-1 and membrane positivity for the CD30 antigen were evident three months after fixation. Liquid-based cytology thus ensures long-lasting nuclear and membrane antigen immunoreactivity and permits the storage of cells from laborious experiments at room temperature for future analyse
Un análisis de la aischrología en los Anécdota (Historia Secreta) de Procopio
No full textThe study of the terminology used by Procopius in the Anecdota (“unpublished writings”), commonly known as the Secret History (Historia Arcana) –which constitutes a form of invective against Justinian and his wife Theodora– offers an insight into the axiology of the culture of the Eastern Roman Empire in the 6th century AD. This paper analyzes the rhetorical elements of aischrology against the emperor and his wife in the work, establishing the Anecdota as an essential source for exploring the cultural values of the period. First, a lexical search is carried out through a classification of the aischrological elements used by Procopius to denigrate the figures of Justinian and Theodora. Then, the semantic interrelationships of the terms present in the text are analyzed, showing the conceptual dependence articulated by the author, thus achieving the composition of a unified and holistic invective discourse of greater forcefulness against the emperor. In effect, this analysis aims to highlight, in addition to the Procopius's rhetorical and compositional resources, some moral conceptions shared between the author and the recipients of the discourse.El estudio de la terminología utilizada por Procopio en los Anécdota (“escritos inéditos”), conocidos comúnmente como la Historia Secreta (Historia Arcana) –que constituye una forma de invectiva frente Justiniano y su esposa Teodora–, ofrece una aproximación a la axiología de la cultura del Imperio Romano de Oriente en el siglo VI d. C. En este trabajo se analizan los elementos retóricos de la aischrología contra el emperador y su esposa en la obra, lo que permite establecer a los Anécdota como una fuente insoslayable para la exploración de los valores culturales del periodo. En primer lugar, se realiza un rastreo léxico a través de una clasificación de los elementos ‘aischrológicos’ empleados por Procopio para denostar las figuras de Justiniano y Teodora. Luego, se analizan las interrelaciones semánticas de los términos presentes en el texto, mostrando la dependencia conceptual articulada por el autor, logrando así la composición de un discurso invectivo unificado y holístico de mayor contundencia frente al emperador. En efecto, este análisis pretende evidenciar, además de los recursos retóricos y compositivos de Procopio, algunas concepciones morales compartidas entre el autor y los receptores del discurso
Procopio di Gaza. Panegirico per l'imperatore Anastasio. Introduzione, testo critico, traduzione e commentario
No full textLa monografia offre la prima traduzione in italiano, accompagnata da testo critico e commentario, di un discorso in onore dell'imperatore Anastasio, pronunciato dal retore Procopio di Gaza intorno al 515 d. C.. Cristiano, anche se influenzato dall'alessandrinismo neoplatonico, Procopio è un significativo rappresentante della Scuola di Gaza, la quale seppe conciliare l'ellenismo culturale con la fede cristiana. A differenza di altri rappresentanti di codesta Scuola, Procopio mantenne ben distinta la sua professione pubblica di retore dall'attività di teologo, autore di approfonditi commentari alle Sacre Scritture. Nel Panegirico egli offre una interpretazione personale dell'ideologia imperiale tardoantica che troverà la sua più significativa espressione nelle Novelle di Giustiniano. In Procopio di Gaza è presente il caratteristico sincretismo tra filosofia e retorica, paganesimo e cristianesimo, che distinse alcune insigni personalità degli ultimi secoli del Tardo Antico; era egli uno di quegli spiriti eccelsi che, secondo il modello del perfetto umanista, vedeva nella paideia il sommo ideale di vita, la guida nel sentire e nell'agire. Il commentario ha il fine precipuo di mettere in luce la lingua e lo stile di un autore, che, pur essendo un retore di stretta osservanza atticistica, come dimostrano altri componimenti della sua produzione, adopera nel Panegirico una lingua ed un tenore stilistico più semplice nel rispetto rigoroso delle regole della retorica.La lingua, nella quale egli sviluppa il compito assegnatogli dalla cittadinanza nella sua qualità di sofista, evita un esasperato arcaismo, pur rispettando i dettami di un severo Atticismo, senza cedere mai ad un eloquio colloquiale. Tale veste linguistica, come illustrata nel commentario, ha fatto del panegirico per l'imperatore Anastasio un modello esemplare per la retorica d'apparato dell'età successiva
MitomiRs in human inflamm-aging: A hypothesis involving miR-181a, miR-34a and miR-146a
Get PDFMitochondria are intimately involved in the aging process. The decline of autophagic clearance during aging affects the equilibrium between mitochondrial fusion and fission, leading to a build-up of dysfunctional mitochondria, oxidative stress, chronic low-grade inflammation, and increased apoptosis rates, the main hallmarks of aging. Current research suggests that a large number of microRNAs (miRs or miRNAs) are differentially expressed during cell aging. Other lines of evidence indicate that several miRs likely share in "inflamm-aging", an aging-related state characterized by systemic chronic inflammation that in turn provides a biological background favoring susceptibility to age-related diseases and disabilities. Interestingly, miRs can modulate mitochondrial activity, and a discrete miR set has recently been identified in mitochondria of different species and cell types (mitomiRs). Here we show that some mitomiRs (let7b, mir-146a, -133b, -106a, -19b, -20a, -34a, -181a and -221) are also among the miRs primarily involved in cell aging and in inflamm-aging. Of note, Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) of aging-related mitomiR targets has disclosed a number of resident mitochondrial proteins playing large roles in energy metabolism, mitochondrial transport and apoptosis. Among these, Bcl-2 family members - which are critically involved in maintaining mitochondrial integrity - may play a role in controlling mitochondrial function and dysfunction during cellular aging, also considering that Bcl-2, the master member of the family, is an anti-oxidant and anti-apoptotic factor and regulates mitochondrial fission/fusion and autophagy. This intriguing hypothesis is supported by several observations: i) in endothelial cells undergoing replicative senescence (HUVECs), a well-established model of cell senescence, miR-146a, miR-34a, and miR-181a are over-expressed whereas their target Bcl-2 is down-regulated; ii) IPA of the miR-146a, miR-34a and miR-181a network shows that they are closely linked to each other, to Bcl-2 and to mitochondria; and iii) miR-146a, miR-34a, and miR-181a are involved in important cell functions (growth, proliferation, death, survival, maintenance) and age-related diseases (cancer, skeletal and muscle disorders, neurological, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases). In conclusion several aging-related mitomiRs may play a direct role in controlling mitochondrial function by regulating mitochondrial protein expression. Their modulation could thus mediate the loss of mitochondrial integrity and function in aging cells, inducing or contributing to the inflammatory response and to age-related diseases
Sistema migliorato di alimentazione elettrica per tunnel, in particolare tunnel stradali
No full textL'invenzione si prefigge lo scopo di fornire un sistema di alimentazione elettrica di tunnel migliorato, che offra una accresciuta affidabilità operativa in tutte le condizioni di esercizio normale e di emergenza, unitamente a costi di esercizio contenuti.
Essa si fonda su una nuova concezione di sistema di generazione energetica, e prevede l'impiego di un gruppo elettrogeno, ed in una forma di realizzazione preferita di un sistema di cogenerazione comprendente un motore termico ed un sistema di recupero del calore, costantemente in funzione e di un sistema di distribuzione dell'energia operativamente collegato a due sorgenti di energia (la rete di alimentazione pubblica ed un gruppo elettrogeno di emergenza) atto ad alimentare le utenze elettriche (o carichi) del tunnel e fornire l'energia in eccesso ad una o più reti di distribuzione estranee al tunnel, tra cui la stessa rete pubblica ed una o più infrastrutture private di distribuzione dell'energia in un'area geografica prossima al tunnel.
Il sistema è inoltre in grado di misurare la quantità di energia prodotta e convogliata ad utenze estranee al tunnel, e di contabilizzare tale quantità, sostituendosi od affiancandosi a tutti gli effetti ad un ente fornitore pubblico nella vendita di energia a terzi.
Vantaggiosamente, il sistema di alimentazione di tunnel oggetto dell'invenzione consente la produzione e vendita di elettricità, ed eventualmente calore, durante il normale funzionamento della rete di fornitura pubblica e, nel caso di interruzione di potenza dalla rete, assume il ruolo di generatore di emergenza, superando l'inconveniente dell'immobilizzazione di costi per la predisposizione e la conduzione di un sistema propriamente di emergenza secondo la tecnica nota, a beneficio del gestore del tunnel
Cerebral atrophy in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer disease: rates and acceleration.
Get PDFOBJECTIVE: To quantify the regional and global cerebral atrophy rates and assess acceleration rates in healthy controls, subjects with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and subjects with mild Alzheimer disease (AD). METHODS: Using 0-, 6-, 12-, 18-, 24-, and 36-month MRI scans of controls and subjects with MCI and AD from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database, we calculated volume change of whole brain, hippocampus, and ventricles between all pairs of scans using the boundary shift integral. RESULTS: We found no evidence of acceleration in whole-brain atrophy rates in any group. There was evidence that hippocampal atrophy rates in MCI subjects accelerate by 0.22%/year2 on average (p = 0.037). There was evidence of acceleration in rates of ventricular enlargement in subjects with MCI (p = 0.001) and AD (p < 0.001), with rates estimated to increase by 0.27 mL/year2 (95% confidence interval 0.12, 0.43) and 0.88 mL/year2 (95% confidence interval 0.47, 1.29), respectively. A post hoc analysis suggested that the acceleration of hippocampal loss in MCI subjects was mainly driven by the MCI subjects that were observed to progress to clinical AD within 3 years of baseline, with this group showing hippocampal atrophy rate acceleration of 0.50%/year2 (p = 0.003). CONCLUSIONS: The small acceleration rates suggest a long period of transition to the pathologic losses seen in clinical AD. The acceleration in hippocampal atrophy rates in MCI subjects in the ADNI seems to be driven by those MCI subjects who concurrently progressed to a clinical diagnosis of AD
Effects of protein kinase C (PK-C) activators and inhibitors on human large granular lymphocytes (LGL): role of PK-C on natural killer (NK) activity.
No full textThe role of protein kinase C (PK-C) in the early metabolic events involved in human natural killer (NK) cell activation has been studied through the action of PK-C-specific activators and inhibitors. Highly purified human large granular lymphocytes (LGL) were treated for 1 hr with the diacylglycerol analog 1-oleoyl-2-acetyl glycerol (OAG) (10(-4)-10(-5) g/ml) or with 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA) (10(-8)-10(-10) g/ml), both specific activators of PK-C. Both these agents consistently increased NK activity against K562 target cells. Suboptimal doses of either OAG or TPA also synergized with Ca2+ ionophores to augment spontaneous cytotoxic activity. Pretreatment of LGL with 1-(5-isoquinolinesulfonyl)-2-methylpiperazine dihydrocloride (H7) (5-40 microM), a potent PK-C inhibitor, greatly reduced NK activity in a time- and dose-dependent fashion. By contrast, N-(2-guanidinoethyl)-5-isoquinolinesulfonamide hydrochloride (HA 1004), a potent cAMP- and cGMP-dependent PK inhibitor with almost no effect on PK-C, marginally reduced NK activity. Moreover, almost complete NK activity inhibition was observed when H7 (10 microM), but not HA 1004 (50 microM), was present in the NK assay. Finally, 48 hr stimulation of LGL with TPA (10(-6) g/ml), a treatment able to inactivate most of the PK-C cellular pool, almost completely abrogated NK activity. This functional evidence was supported by phosphorylation of several endogenous substrates which occurs within 5 min in TPA-treated LGL. Two proteins of 70 and 56 kDa have been identified as major PK-C substrates, together with other phosphorylated proteins with MW ranging from 177 to 43 kDa. H7, but not HA 1004, almost completely inhibited the TPA-induced phosphorylation of all of these proteins in the NK cells. These data strongly suggest that selective activation of PK-C plays an essential role in the mechanisms of NK cell activation
Foreground Implications in the Scientific Exploitation of CMB Data
No full textThe study of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) represents one of the main sources of information on which the modern cosmology is based. The observables characterizing the CMB are: its own photon distribution function, the temperature anisotropies and its polarization. Any of these is affected by astrophysical foregrounds: spurious signals that contaminate the CMB observations. The level of contamination depends on the frequency of observation and on the region of the sky observed. Full-sky observation must face with high level of contamination, because of the strong Galactic emission in microwave bands.
The first part of my thesis work focus on the CMB photon distribution function. In particular, I show the implementations and the updating phases characterizing a numerical integration code (KYPRIX) for the solution of the Kompaneets equation in cosmological context. The updating is mainly related to the formalism that must be used in order to include FORTRAN libraries necessary for the integral quantities computation and to the platform transfer of the code itself. Physical implementations were also performed: the introduction of the cosmological constant in the equations dedicated to compute the evolution of the primordial Universe; the choice of the primordial chemical abundances of H and He is now possible; the ionization fractions for the species involved in the physical processes were introduced; it was created an optional interface that links KYPRIX with codes, like RECFAST, in order to calculate a recombination history of the ionization fraction of H and He. A general gain in the performances of the code was obtained and some test on the accuracy of the code are shown. All of the physical implementations contributed to perform more realistic simulation of the spectral distortion of the CMB. Some of the highlighted case are related to the contribution of the cosmological constant for the generation of spectral distortions in late epochs (like reionization induced distortions) and to the more precise estimate of the spectral distortions that could occur just before the recombination. In the last case, a recombination history, instead of an instantaneous recombination, plays a fundamental role for precise spectral simulations.
After a brief review on the past, on-going and future CMB dedicated experiments, the thesis focus on the importance of foregrounds in CMB experiment, paying attention on their description and the way they affect all the CMB osservables.
In order to subtract the foregrounds from sky maps, their morphological characteristics and their spectral behavior must be know as better as possible. The Planck Sky Model (PSM) is a complete and versatile set of programs and data, to be used for the simulation or the prediction of sky emission in the frequency range of typical CMB experiments, and in particular of the upcoming Planck sky mission (the 10-1000 GHz range). It is being developed as part of the activities of Planck Working Group 2 (WG2) on component separation, and of the AD AMIS team at APC.
During my second stage at APC I performed several tests on the PSM. The tests involved the latest two release of Galactic emission model, the Galactic foreground template derived by WMAP data and a clean CMB anisotropy map. For what concerns the PSM polarization prediction of the Galactic emission processes, the tests showed a clear improvement, at all the frequencies tested (the five WMAP bands), both for Q and U Stokes parameters. The last release of the PSM total intensity prediction of the Galactic processes showed results consistent with the previous ones for almost all the frequencies tested, while it still needs some tuning at 23 GHz, where synchrotron emission and free-free emission are more prominent. In order to recover the CMB signal, it is necessary to disentangle the mixed signals that a receiver collect looking at the sky. Component separation technics provide the tools to do it. In the thesis are exposed the main features of the component separation methods most used in CMB context, focusing on a particular tool: SMICA. I started using SMICA during my first stage at APC, in 2007. I used SMICA, and another filter (FFT filter) I developed, for a reprocessing of the IRIS mapset. Being already a reprocessing of the IRAS maps at 12, 25, 60 and 100 microm, the IRIS mapset still suffered from a non-optimal subtraction of the Zodical Light Emission (ZLE) residuals. The oscillations induced by these residuals affect any large scale statistical analysis of the mapset. Some preliminary operations had to be performed on the maps, like the subtraction of point sources and the masking Galactic plane and other relevant compact regions. The first phase of the reprocessing I performed consists in recovering the ZLE residuals pattern and power through SMICA, at all the IRIS frequencies. After several code runs and a continuos tuning of the maps and the code, the ZLE residuals pattern was clearly detected at 12,25 and 60 microm, while at 100 microm its contribution resulted to be totally negligible. The recovered component was then subtracted from the maps, but in some confined regions the subtraction wasn't optimal. A FFT filter was developed for this purpose and I used the filter only on localized regions, not on the full-sky maps. The dramatic improvements obtained on the IRIS maps are clearly visible just by eye. Anyway, a statistical analysis is in progress and preliminary results are showed in the thesis
- …
