Antioxidant, antifungal, antibiofilm, and cytotoxic activities of Mentha spp. essential oils

Since ancient times, plants have been used to preserve food, or for their health properties. Essential oils are complex mixtures of volatile compounds that are obtained from botanical material, specifically from aromatic plants. Lamiaceae is one of the most important families in the production of essential oils, as it has both antioxidant and antimicrobial properties. The essential oils of Mentha (the Lamiaceae family) have been extensively studied for their biological actions. In this review, we report the antioxidant, antifungal, antibiofilm, and cytotoxic properties of Mentha spp. essential oils. The first objective is to provide comprehensive information about the use of essential oils in the treatment of fungal infections, or as antioxidants and integrative anticancer therapy. The second is to explore the evidence supporting its effectiveness in treating diseases without causing any serious adverse reactions

A novel method for transmission electron microscopy study of cytoplasmic fragments from preimplantation human embryos

Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is the main tool for exploring the intracellular damage and organelle distribution. The cause of producing embryo cytoplsamic fragmentation is not completely understood. Since the fragments have detrimental effects on embryo development, the ultrastructural analysis of fragments may play an important role in fragmentation etiology and in embryo development as well. There are no studies regarding the ultrastructure of fragments in transferable embryos, because the preparation for TEM is not vital and embryos are discarded inevitably. This study aims to introduce a new method for ultrastructural evaluation of fragments without damaging the human cleaving embryos

L'archivio di ugo Spirito

Osservando l'archivio di Ugo Spirito si resta colpiti da quanti segni questi abbia lasciato del suo complesso percorso di ricerca. Sembra quasi che il medesimo fascino che il filosofia esercitava, con la sua vivacità e apertura intellettuale, sugli studenti e su quanti vi furono in contatto, continui a caratterizzare le carte che ne conservano memoria riflettendone fedelmente la varietà di interessi. Questo anche grazie all'attenzione con cui Spirito e i suoi familiari hanno provveduto a conservare questi documenti

Inibitori delle metalloproteasi Sulfonammido Idrossammati: valutazione dell'effetto sull'attivita gelatinolitica della MMP-2 ricombinante e sull'invasivita di cellule di glioma umano

l mio lavoro di tesi, condotto presso il laboratorio di Biologia Molecolare, della Facoltà di Farmacia dell’Università di Pisa, ha avuto come scopo la valutazione dell’attività di sette inibitori delle MMPs, appartenenti alla classe degli sulfonammido idrossammati, in relazione all’invasività ed alla vitalità cellulare, in cellule di glioma multiforme umano di grado IV,U87MG.Inoltre è stato valutato l'effetto inibitorio esercitato da questi composti di nuova sintesi, sull'attività proteolitica della MMP-2 (MMP maggiormente implicata nell'invasività del glioblastoma multiforme)sul suo substrato naturale (gelatina). Quest'ultimo punto è stato perseguito attraverso analisi zimografica effettuata su MMP-2 ricombinante umana, incubata con i composti in questione e con lo standard (CGS_27023A). L’invasività è stata invece valutata utilizzando il saggio di invasività su matrigel (membrana basale ricostuita) e la vitalità con il saggio di vitalità cellulare con il saggio di Trypan Blue . I risultati hanno dimostrato che questi composti sono potenti inibitori dell’invasività (p<0.0001), e non hanno effetto sulla vitalità cellulare. In particolare due composti sono risultati maggiormente attivi,aprendo quindi la strada per lo sviluppo di nuove terapie antitumorali, volte alla riduzione della forte diffusione metastatica che caratterizza i gliomi, ed alla limitazione degli effetti collaterali riscontrati nei trials clinici con l’utilizzo di MMPI a largo spettro

Business Models for Sustainable Finance: The Case Study of Social Impact Bonds

Business models for sustainability (BMfS) are relevant topics on research agendas, given their orientation toward sustainability issues. However, traditional versions of these models are often ill-equipped at solving complex social problems. Cross-sector partnerships for sustainability (CSPfS) have been recognized as a new paradigm that mitigates the failure of traditional models. Impact investing, and social impact bonds (SIBs) in particular, represent an interesting field of research in innovative business models for sustainable finance, even though the literature does not consider SIBs within this broader field. We propose an exploratory study based on qualitative methods aimed at conceptualizing SIBs within the framework of BMfS and understanding how SIB collaboration varies across social sectors and geographical areas. Our study identifies three different models of SIBs characterized by the different degrees of collaboration between actors: (i) SIB as a fully collaborative partnership; (ii) SIB as a low-collaborative partnership; and (iii) SIB as a partially collaborative partnership. Our findings are useful to policy makers and practitioners involved in the SIB design, suggesting that a fully collaborative SIB model may stand a better chance of achieving the expected social impacts

Systematic uncertainties in MonteCarlo simulations of the atmospheric muon flux in the 5-line ANTARES detector

The ANTARES detector was operated in a configuration with 5 lines for a period of 10 months from February until November 2007. The duty cycle was better than 80% during this period and almost 2*10**7 atmospheric muon triggers were collected. This large sample was used to test Monte Carlo simulation programs and to evaluate possible systematic effects due to uncertainties on environmental parameters and detector description. First results are presented and discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 7 figures, presented at the International Workshop on a Very Large Volume $\nu$ Telescope for the Mediterranean Sea, 22-24 Oct. 2007, Toulon, Franc

‘SHALL’ AMBIGUITIES IN EU LEGISLATIVE TEXTS

Autorka analizuje użycie czasownika modalnego ‘shall’, którego nadużywanie może prowadzić do problemów translacyjnych i interpretacyjnych (Coode 1843, Driedger 1976). Korpus badawczy obejmował akty normatywne Unii Europejskiej w języku angielskim, francuskim, niemieckim i włoskim wydawane w okresie od 2001 do 2004 roku. Należy tu zaznaczyć, że komunikacja prawnicza w ramach tej organizacji międzynarodowej ma stosunkowo krótką tradycję, a przekład prawniczy jest głównym kanałem komunikacyjnym. Analiza wykazała, że czasownik modalny ‘shall’ jest używany do wyrażania zarówno nakazu, zakazu jak i opisu stanów faktycznych.This paper investigates the modal ‘shall’, whose excessive use can be problematic both in legal translation and interpretation (Coode 1843, Driedger 1976). The context of analysis is the EU for offering a relative young legal environment where translation represents the main channel of communication. The analysis moves from the deontic speech acts of ordering and prohibiting and looks at examples of performativity where ‘shall’ is not only deontically binding, but it is also used to express a necessary condition or to set a new state of things up. The disambiguation is particularly evident in multilingual translation and is performed with the help of parallel concordances, which also shed light on the conceptual framework of norms. Data consist of a parallel corpus including English, French, German and Italian versions of EU legislative texts chosen between 2001-04. As a term of comparison, a small comparable corpus containing English orginal texts has also been compiled

Selection of the distributional rule as an alternative tool to foster cooperation in a Public Good Game

This paper presents an investigation about cooperation in a Public Good Game using an Agent Based Model calibrated on experimental data. Starting from the experiment proposed in Colasante and Russo (2016), we analyze the dynamic of cooperation in a Public Good Game where agents receive an heterogeneous income and choose both the level of contribution and the distribution rule. The starting point is the calibration and the output validation of the model using the experimental results. Once tested the goodness of fit of the Agent Based Model, we run some policy experiment in order to verify how each distribution rule, i.e. equidistribution, proportional to contribution and progressive, affects the level of contribution in the simulated model. We find out that the share of cooperators decreases over time if we exogenously set the equidistribution rule. On the contrary, the share of cooperators converges to 100% if we impose the progressive rule. Finally, the most interesting result refers to the effect of the progressive rule. We observe that, in the case of high inequality, this rule is not able to reduce the heterogeneity of income.This research has received funding from the European Union, Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreements n. SYMPHONY—ICT-2013-611875