Analisi teorica ed empirica sulla determinazione dei costi e dei benefici sociali generati dalla gestione dei rifiuti. Tra reti sociali e illegalità, strumenti di governance e buone pratiche

Il lavoro di ricerca proposto in queste pagine si e' cimentato nel tentativo di rispondere a due quesiti, che in realta' racchiudono entrambi un lungo elenco di domande. Il primo e' stato quello di comprendere meglio come si articola e come si manifesta l’illegalita' nel settore dei rifiuti e, soprattutto, perche' ha trovato così ampio spazio nel Paese, seppure articolandosi in maniera abbastanza disomogenea da un punto di vista geografico. Per fare cio', la prima accortezza e' stata\ud quella di non usare solo la chiave di lettura giudiziaria, quanto piuttosto ricorrere agli strumenti\ud interpretativi e metodologici delle scienze sociali per avere una visione olistica e non parziale, se non quando distorta, del fenomeno. Insomma, non e' una vicenda relegabile all’annosa lotta tra guardie e ladri, ma una estrinsecazione violenta della ricorrente modalita' economica e politica di scaricare sulla collettivita' i costi dello smaltimento illegale dei rifiuti. Trattandosi di una forma di crimine di natura prettamente economica e' con i molteplici strumenti e le molteplici declinazioni dell’economia e della sociologia che si e' spaziato nell’intera analisi. Determinante e' stato, dunque, intercettare quegli elementi, di diversa natura, che hanno agevolato il ricorso all’illegalita', adoperando un approccio laico e multidisciplinare al tema. Per rispondere alla prima domanda – che in realta' ne racchiude tante altre – e' stata dedicata l’intera Parte Prima della ricerca.\ud La seconda domanda e' stata, invece, quella di capire perche' e come ha funzionato il modello di gestione dei rifiuti implementato nei 12 Comuni della Media Vallesina, concretizzatosi attraverso la società Sogenus Spa, compagine societaria di diritto privato ma a totale capitale pubblico. Un caso concreto di societa' investita da una mission interamente pubblica perseguita con gli strumenti del diritto privato e dell’economia aziendale. Lungi dal rappresentare un alieno per il territorio,\ud questa societa' si e' invece rivelata punto di snodo e centro propulsore di quel fascio di relazioni che\ud ha consentito la realizzazione senza traumi del sistema di gestione previsto precedentemente solo in astratto. Comprendere cosa ha funzionato, come ha funzionato e perche' ha funzionato, costituisce il nocciolo duro della ricerca. Con l’ambizione di proporre un piccolo contributo di conoscenza allargata, utile sia agli scienziati sociali che ai policymakers chiamati a mettere in pratica strumenti di policies in uno dei settori più delicati e foriero di conflitti sociali, soprattutto in un’ottica di prevenzione dai rischi di infiltrazione ecocriminale. A queste domande e' stata dedicata l’intera\ud Seconda Parte della ricerca

Identification of two new small ncRNAs, 3' and 5' Glu-tRNA-derived fragments: their possible role as biomarkers for breast cancer\ud PhD

Over the last decades, small non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), ~13-40 nucleotides long, have been discovered. Many classes of this kind of molecules have been described: microRNAs (miRNAs), small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) and piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) are the most studied. However, new kinds of small ncRNAs are progressively being discovered, like tRNA-derived fragments, which have now been recognized to be the major RNA species in human cells. For a long time, small ncRNAs were considered as by-products from random degradation; nonetheless, there are increasing evidences that they are functional molecules with precise sequence structure, specific expression patterns and critical roles in gene regulation.\ud Dysregulation of genes involved in cell proliferation, differentiation and/or apoptosis is associated with tumorigenic processes. Such as gene regulators, a wide variety of small ncRNAs have been demonstrated to be involved in tumor initiation and progression controlling and modulating cancer-related gene expression. Interestingly, besides cellular small ncRNAs, they have been also discovered in body fluids as stable circulating small ncRNAs carried within extracellular microvesicles (exosomes) or associated with Ago proteins. Numerous of them have been studied as promising non-invasive biomarkers for several kinds of diseases like cancer. Currently, breast cancer is the most common cancer and leading cause of cancer death among women worldwide. The HER2+ -breast cancer subtype has been described as one with the most aggressive phenotype. Albeit new therapies have been developed, more efforts to improve diagnosis, treatment and prognosis are needed.\ud Here, we report the identification of two new circulating tRNA-derived fragments, 3’Glu-tRF-M and 5’Glu-tRF-M. Cloning experiments and in silico analyses suggest that they are processed by Dicer enzyme from mature Glutamic tRNA. We assessed their expression in different healthy and HER2+ -breast cancer samples from mice and humans by semi-quantitative PCR, Northern Blot and quantitative real-time PCR. Moreover cytoplasmatic location of both, 3’Glu-tRF-M and 5’Glu-tRF-M, was proved by an immunofluorescence assay. A significative decrease of 3’Glu-tRF-M expression was observed in both, mice and human individuals with HER2+ -breast cancer.\ud We conclude hypothesizing that the neoplasia could regulate, directly or indirectly, 3’Glu-tRF-M expression, leading to its decrease. Since this variation seems to depend on tumor development status, outcome that will be confirmed in further studies, 3’Glu-tRF-M could be considered a future non-invasive biomarker for HER2+ -breast cancer

Characterization of Bacterial Translation Elongation Inhibitors

Resistance to antibiotics has increased and is still growing so that almost every human pathogen has acquired resistance to at least one class of antimicrobials in clinical use. As a result, every year bacterial pathogens infect more than 1/3 of the world population causing >2 million fatalities and hospital-acquired infections in Europe account for ca.175,000 deaths. In Italy ca. 7000 deaths are caused by bacterial infections acquired by about 6.7% of hospitalized patients. The fairly large number of fatalities caused by untreatable bacterial infections in Europe in recent years further underlies the existence of an antibiotic-emergency which renders even more formidable the health threat caused by infectious diseases by both traditional pathogens and\ud emerging superbugs.\ud In this contest, the need for new antibiotics has increased.\ud The aim of my work is to study the mechanisms of action of two translational inhibitors called NAI003 and HygromycinA. NAI003, is a chemical derivative of the thiopeptide GE2270A an inhibitor of bacterial elongation factor Tu (EF-Tu), while HygromycinA is an old antibiotic (discovered in the 1953) whose mechanism of action and its location on the ribosome have not yet been elucidated at least at the molecular level

Topographic metrics in the Southern Sector of the Marche Foothills: possible implication of Rock Uplift and active Tectonics

The investigated area is situated in central Italy and it extends from the axial zone of the Umbria–Marche Apennines to the Adriatic Sea, including the southern sector of the Marche Region and belongs to the foredeep domain of the Apennines orogenic system, which has affected by tectonic activity up to very recent times.\ud The rheology of outcropping deposits doesn’t allow the strain to be easily recorded at the outcrop scale. Thus, the quantitative geomorphic analysis can be provided a useful contribution to the study of recent tectonics. Some parameters, that quantify the channels morphology, as the Stream Length-Gradient (SL) Index [...] and the Steepness (Ks) Index [...], are generally used to detect anomalies on the expected concave-up equilibrium stream-profile, which can result in local abrupt changes in stream gradient (i.e., knickpoints) and/or broad convexities on stream long-profiles extending for tens of\ud kilometres (i.e., knickzones).\ud The main goal of this work is the study of the morphological and morphometrical features in the southern sector of the Marche Region, with the aim to gain new knowledge on the influences of rock resistance and rock uplift on the fluvial and topographic system.\ud The analyses have been aimed at to test the sensitivity of both SL and Ks for evaluating active crustal deformations, acting at different wavelengths on land surface, within a low tectonically active thrust-and-fold belt. Additional purpose was the understanding of the\ud pattern of regional differential crustal activity in the topographic arrangement of the study area.\ud In this research project two sets of analysis were conducted. The first analysis was aimed at defining quantitatively the geometry of stream long-profiles along six adjacent trunk-valleys through different morphometric parameters. The objective of this first analysis was\ud to identify and characterize the stream reaches and/or segments where the long-profiles exhibit anomalies on the typical concave up steady-state profile, respectively knickpoints and/or knickzones, possibly related to the activity of crustal deformation acting at different\ud wavelengths. With the second analysis were investigated the general topographic features focusing on the spatial variation in the minimum, mean, and maximum elevations and in local relief values. To study topography at regional scale, were computed three swath profile, local relief map and topographic spatial filters at four different wavelengths.\ud The results obtained from this work highlight, in the investigated area, four anomalies areas that are compatible with the sectors of the Periadriatic basin, split by transverse and oblique faults and on which a different tectonic and sedimentary evolution are present\ud [...].\ud Notably, the crustal differential uplift demonstrated to be the main process responsible for the formation of knickzones along the middle portions of the major rivers draining this sector of the Marche foothills. The quantitative dataset has shown useful for detecting\ud large topographic features transversal to the trend of the main regional morphostructures, which revealed effective on controlling stream long-profiles and relief. Moreover, the combine method used in this work (stream channel metrics and topography analysis) provides an advantageous approach in an area characterized by lithologies that are unlikely to preserve o tectonic deformation, where the longitudinal profile channel analysis is not sufficient to identifies anomalies

Analytical approach to technologies for the environment: from wastewater aeration to energy production

This thesis started in March 2012 from Financial support of “Provincia di Macerata”, “Camera di Commercio”, “Confindustria della Provincia di Macerata” and University of Camerino in according with Faggiolati Pumps S.p.a. company.\ud The research activity was partially carried out at Faggiolati Pumps company, University of Camerino in the School of Science and Technology, and at University of Nottingham, School of Chemistry.\ud \ud The structure of this PhD thesis is divided in two Sections.\ud In the Section 1, entitled “PERFORMANCE EVALUATION WASTEWATER AERATION SYSTEM, are present three Chapters. After a general introduction in Chapter 1, in Chapter 2 are reported all the results request to Project with Faggiolati Pumps S.p.a., regarding an accurate evaluation of thermodynamic and kinetics aspects in the water oxygenation process necessary for the optimization of a laboratory prototype (designed for this study) to simulate what happens in OSSI-MIX aerator produced by the company. In Chapter 3, are studied the effects of the addition in clean water of three types of chloride salts as LiCl, NaCl and KCl on the water oxygenation process by using the designed laboratory prototype.\ud In the Section 2, entitled DYE-SENSITISED SOLAR CELL: ABSORPTION, KINETICS AND IMPROVING PERFORMANCE STUDIES OF DSSCs DEVICES, are present four Chapters. After a general introduction in Chapter 4, in Chapter 5 are described equilibrium and kinetic aspects in the sensitization of monolayer transparent TiO2 thin films with porphyrin dyes for DSSC applications. Chapter 6 reports the study of porphyrins functionalized multiwall carbon nanotubes and their interaction with TiO2 nanoparticles surface while in Chapter 7 are reported the results of Ni-Mg mixed metal oxides used for p-type dye-sensitized solar cells

Dynamics of a Trapped Particle in a Double-Well Potential

Potential wells are widely studied entities nowadays, because of their wide range of applications in many fields of science. Experimental and technological improvements make it possible to design and control the potential shape. For instance, one can modify a single-well potential into\ud a double well and backwards. To investigate this kind of problems, one needs to properly take into account the time-dependency of the system Hamiltonian.\ud We used split operator method to study the dynamics of wavepacket in general, and in time-dependent potential wells in particular. While considering time-dependent potential wells, we concentrated on the case when a single-well is transformed into a double-well. Our goal was to explore the range of validity of the adiabatic theorem. We have made observations on the dynamics of the wavepacket for different barrier heights and widths. For each case, we estimated how long the switching time should be in order to leave the system in the ground state. In doing this, we established a link between the eigenvalues of potential well and the time taken by the wavepacket to be in the ground state of potential well. The greater the difference between the first two eigenvalues of the double well, the lesser the switching time requested to go from single- to double well.\ud Moreover, we simulated the system dynamics while going from single- to asymmetric doublewell. We noticed that the superposition of left and right states is very fragile with respect to asymmetry. By introducing any asymmetry in the double-well, the wavepacket tends to be trapped in the deeper side of the potential well. While talking in terms of eigenvalues of asymmetric double-well, we again observed that the greater the difference between eigenvalues, the\ud lesser the time needed by the wavepacket to be in ground state of double-well.\ud Finally, we applied the theoretically discussed approach to estimate the switching time needed by a trapped ion to be in the ground state of a double-well potential, for realistic experimental parameters

Bioaccumulation and bioremediation modelling in Aquatic ecosystems: the Adriatic Sea case study

Understanding the pathways of contaminant transfer within trophic networks is of paramount importance to weigh up forces driving ecological changes and to plan focused intervention strategies targeted to environmental\ud conservation. The subject developed in this PhD dissertation aligns with this goal and encompasses the combination of different modelling approaches with experimental data to interpret the effects of bioaccumulation and bioremediation phenomena on species.\ud Toxic agents adversely influence substance and energy fluxes at the ecosystem level affecting in turn the number of inter- and intra-specific interactions\ud both at the community and population levels. Furthermore, the environmental stochasticity and the diversity of food webs along with the specificity of action of different bioaccumulative compounds greatly increase the\ud complexity of this field of research. Current challenges in ecotoxicology focus on the need to find reliable predictive tools able to turn toxicity data of biota into powerful estimation methods and to asses the long-term effects of chemical exposure on species.\ud In this context, predator-prey relationships are crucial to characterize the contamination patterns and to predict how chemicals transfer and accumulate within food webs. Food web members exhibit different levels of bioaccumulation in function of their trophic role, in a way that trophic links cannot be considered equal for all species in bioaccumulation phenomena.\ud However, marine ecosystems are not just ensembles of macro-species, but complex multiscale networks. Microbial marine communities are metabolically involved in bioremediation processes and also represent an active compartment in the lower trophic levels of food webs. Thus, microbial degradation of persistent organic chemicals may play a key factor in changing the fate of these compounds within ecosystems and in reducing the contaminant uptake that leads to bioaccumulation in marine species.\ud The work of research carried out during my PhD studies has been centred on the bioaccumulation and bioremediation modelling problems with specific interest on polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) contamination of the\ud Adriatic food web. Notwithstanding a number of specific experimental studies on PCBs concentrations in different Adriatic species have been carried out over the last decades, to the best of our knowledge, a comprehensive\ud PCBs bioaccumulation model for the Adriatic food web was still missing prior to the work presented in this thesis.\ud The contributions of this PhD dissertation are structured by publication.\ud Chapter 1 introduces the main content and includes an unpublished review of experimental PCBs concentration data in Adriatic species over the last two decades, along with an overview of the most important modelling approaches for bioaccumulation and bioremediation.\ud In Chapter 2, we present a computational framework to model the bioaccumulation of organic chemicals in aquatic food webs, and to discover the toxic keystones, i.e. the species with a key role in the trophic transfer of\ud contaminants. The approach is applied to reconstruct the first PCBs bioaccumulation model of the Adriatic food web, parametrized with a subset of the concentration data reviewed in Chapter 1. The framework integrates\ud different modelling and analysis techniques, the first being the reconstruction of a trophic network from biomass data. Then, we use the estimated biomass flows and concentration data to derive the PCBs bioaccumulation\ud network. Network reconstruction is performed using linear inverse modelling (LIM), an efficient technique for estimating food webs from empirical data. This step allows us to infer concentration values and contaminant\ud flows for all species and remarkably, also for species with no input data associated. The estimated concentrations highlight the occurrence of PCBs\ud biomagnification, which we show depending mainly on the trophic structure. The second main part of the framework is dedicated to the problem of identifying the toxic keystones, for which we propose the application of\ud network analysis tools, typically employed in the trophic context. To this aim, we define a new network index, sensitivity centrality, able to capture not just direct and indirect effects in the PCBs network, but also the dynamics of bioaccumulation. Indeed, the index is based on the sensitivity analysis of a differential equation model derived from the bioaccumulation network. We compare sensitivity centrality with established network centrality indices, by evaluating the impact of successive species extinctions on global network properties, where such extinctions are performed following the importance ordering of the different indices. This analysis demonstrates that the introduced index can better identify the species with the highest impact on the total contaminant flows and on the efficiency of contaminant transport within the food web.\ud In Chapter 3, we propose a novel computational framework of analysis to investigate multiscale effects of bioremediation processes at the ecosystem level. We integrate the bioaccumulation model presented in Chapter\ud 2 with the genome-scale metabolic network of Pseudomonas putida KT2440 (iJN746), which we extend to simulate the aerobic PCBs degradation under arbitrary scenarios of contaminant removal. We use a reaction-based ecological/microbial network representation by combining ecological and metabolic modelling techniques, namely LIM and flux balance analysis. In this way, we describe in a unique framework PCBs flows among species, metabolites concentrations and reactions fluxes in the microbial metabolism. We investigate the tradeoff between PCBs uptake and growth of P. putida at different oxygen levels, by using a bi-level flux balance analysis approach. We study the interdependence between PCBs and toluene uptake, which is a natural degradation pathways in P. putida, by performing a phenotypic phase plane analysis. We apply this framework to study how different\ud bioremediation strategies can impact PCBs concentration in species, thus enabling an ecosystem level analysis. Finally, we evaluate also the effect of bioremediation on indices of species centrality in the PCBs bioaccumulation\ud network.\ud To sum up, the aims and contributions of this PhD thesis are:\ud Provide a review of PCBs concentration data in the Adriatic ecosystem and of modelling methods for bioaccumulation and bioremediation.\ud Reconstruct the first PCBs bioaccumulation model of the Adriatic food web and investigate species having a central role in the trophic transfer of contaminants.\ud Integrate the Adriatic bioaccumulation model with a genome-scale metabolic model for PCBs biodegradation in order to enable multiscale ecosystem analyses.\ud \ud References\ud chapter 2: M. Taffi, N. Paoletti, P. Liò, S. Pucciarelli, and M. Marini. Bioaccumulation modelling and sensitivity analysis for discovering key players in contaminated food\ud webs: The case study of PCBs in the Adriatic Sea. Ecological Modelling, 2014.\ud chapter 3: M. Taffi, N. Paoletti, C. Angione, S. Pucciarelli, M. Marini, and P. Liò. Bioremediation\ud in marine ecosystems: a computational study combining ecological modelling and flux balance analysis. Frontiers in Genetics, 5(319), 2014.\ud

“Contratti di trasferimento di tecnologia. L’ipotesi del know-how”

La tesi si propone di sviluppare il tema dei contratti di trasferimento di tecnologia alla luce di quanto risulta dall'attenta disamina della prassi internazionale e della normativa comunitaria in materia. Dopo aver analizzato il significato del termine «tecnologia» da un punto di vista storico-semantico e ripercorso le esperienze degli accordi TRIPs e del Codice di condotta dell'UNCTAD, il lavoro si dedica ad un esame accurato della normativa comunitaria in tema di tecnologia con specifico riferimento al recentissimo regolamento CE 316 del 2014 che introduce il concetto di "diritti tecnologici". Tra questi ultimi e' riconosciuta una posizione di chiara preminenza al c.d. "know-how" all'analisi del quale lo studio dedica ampio spazio allo scopo di delimitare i confini di quella che ancor oggi appare essere una delle categorie piu' controverse, specie in considerazione del quasi totale silenzio del legislatore e della scarsa coerenza di dottrina e giurisprudenza in materia. Superando la tradizionale bipartizione tra know-how in senso stretto e in senso lato e il diverso approccio basato sulla natura, tecnica o commerciale, delle conoscenze definite come know-how, il lavoro si dedica all'esame dei possibili elementi essenziali caratterizzanti la figura in questione. Ampio spazio e' dedicato dunque all'analisi del carattere della segretezza inteso non come elemento indispensabile affinche' le conoscenze oggetto di scambio possano utilmente essere definite know-how, bensi' come potenziale termometro del valore economico della conoscenza in caso di controversia relativa alla sua circolazione. La ricerca si propone quindi di esaminare il contratto di cessione di know-how nella sua forma piu' semplice allo scopo di procedere ad una corretta qualificazione di quest'ultimo utilizzando, laddove possibile, i tipi contrattuali previsti dal legislatore. In conclusione la ricerca si concentra sull'ipotesi di trasferimento di know-how in ambito internazionale, sull'applicabilita' al medesimo delle principali norme convenzionali ed all'analisi della normativa vigente in tema di diritto internazionale privato.\ud \ud Abstract\ud \ud The thesis aims to develop the theme of the technology transfer contracts taking into account the results of an accurate examination of International practices and EU legislation. After analysing the meaning of the term 'Technology' from an historical and semantic point of view, and traced the experiences of the TRIPs Agreements and the UNCTAD Code of Conduct, the work contains a deep analysis of the EU legislation in the field of technology with specific reference to the recent EC Regulation 316 of 2014 which introduces the concept of "technology rights". Among the latter a position of prominence is given to "Know-how" to the analysis of which the thesis gives extensive attention in order to demarcate the boundaries of what still appears to be one of the most controversial categories, especially in the almost total silence of the legislator and the lack of consistency of doctrine and courts decisions. Overcoming the traditional division between know-how in the "narrow sense" and in a "broad sense" and the different approach based on the nature, technical or commercial, of the knowledge defined as know-how, the study examines the possible essential elements characterizing the figure in question. Considerable space is given to the analysis of the character of "secrecy" here considered not essential to make the knowledge usefully defined as know-how, but as a thermometer of the potential economic value of knowledge in the event of a dispute concerning its circulation. The research is therefore aimed at examining the contract for the transfer of know-how in its simplest form in order to make a correct classification of the latter using, wherever possible, contract types provided by the legislator. In conclusion, the research focuses on the hypothesis of international transfer of know-how, the applicability of the most important conventional treaties and the analysis of the current legislation in the field of private international law