Urban and rural green infrastructure.Two projects for the metropolitan city of Rome

Create synergies between green infrastructure, urban and rural areas

Al di là del sintomo. Il gruppo psicodinamico nelle dipendenze

Substance Use Disorders (SUD) and Eating Disorders (ED) share some characteristics such as teen or late adolescence onset and greater prevalence respectively between males and females. According to a psychodynamic approach, SUD and ED, together with psychosomatic disorders, can be defined second level disorders, where symptoms cover an underlying psychic suffering. They can also be considered useful but dysfunctional strategies of self-care and emotional self-regulation. Group analytic therapy represents an effective therapeutic tool for these disorders acting on psychological and relational functioning as well as on symptoms. This paper aims at proposing some reflections based on clinical experiences conducted by the Authors during the last few years

Cosmovisiones e imaginarios del caos en la obra de Gary Victor

Este trabajo pretende estudiar la obra de un autor haitiano contemporáneo, Gary Victor, un discípulo de la escuela literaria haitiana del caos llamada la “Spirale”. Por ello, y dado el interés que suscita cada vez más el caos asociado a la literatura, este estudio ha tratado de profundizar en las dimensiones del concepto de caos para comprender mejor su alcance, su atracción y su contribución al pensamiento y a la literatura haitiana. El caos tanto en ciencias humanas como en ciencias exactas viene a referirse a las zonas o espacios no observados hasta entonces, con leyes desconocidas en las que el azar y la incertidumbre juegan todavía un papel importante y que representa el lado opuesto a todo lo que constituye el orden, la razón y la verdad. ¿En qué medida el caos como desorden oculto puede, entonces, llegar a ordenar un espacio habitable y conformar una cosmovisión para el hombre? Este trabajo se articula alrededor de esta pregunta. Trata en un primer tiempo de profundizar en la dimensión existencial del caos así como en su aporte a la creación de nuevas cosmovisiones y ontologías a partir de nuevos valores como los derivados de sus principios: la impredecibilidad, la complejidad y el movimiento. Estas nuevas concepciones, que entran en choque con los viejos pilares de la civilización occidental (determinismo y causalidad), han suscitado un gran interés en las antiguas colonias a la hora de pensar el giro decolonial y el nuevo sujeto emancipado en busca de su propia historia. Finalmente, se aplicará el marco teórico al estudio de la obra de Gary Victor y de su particular cosmovisión e imaginarios. A partir de las dinámicas del caos que manan del complejo y violento entramado histórico-social haitiano, su literatura se dota de una función particular: la de desencriptar el caos del mundo en busca de una posibilidad para lo humano

Monitoring and assessing old-growth forest stands by plot sampling

Forest inventories are evolving towards multipurpose resource surveys, broadening their scope by including additional topics such as biodiversity issues. Surprisingly, few quantitative surveys have been devoted to old-growth forests, even if they constitute the most acknowledged forest biodiversity icons. In this framework, the use of probabilistic sampling may provide an effective as well as rigorous support for monitoring and assessing old-growth forests. To this purpose, the present paper proposes a two-phase sampling scheme. In the first phase, a coarse survey of few floristic and stand structural attributes is carried out by means of small plots systematically placed on the study area. Subsequently, in the second phase, a fine assessment of a large number of ecological attributes is performed on a subset of enlarged plots selected among the first-phase ones by means of simple random sampling without replacement. The proposed sampling scheme is implemented for monitoring and assessing the old forests of Cilento National Park (southern Italy). Results and comments are provided as an exemplicative case study.L'articolo è disponibile sul sito dell'editore www.tandf.co.uk/journals

Synthesis of Poly(acrylic acid) Nanogels and Application in Loading and Release of an Oligothiophene Fluorophore and Its Bovine Serum Albumin Conjugate

Nanometer-sized poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) hydrogels were synthesized by emulsion polymerization of methyl acrylate and subsequent acid hydrolysis, and their pH-dependent swelling behaviour was studied by dynamic light scattering. To determine the suitability of PAA nanogels as pH-sensitive carriers for biomedical applications, loading and release of an oligothiophene fluorophore and its albumin conjugate onto the PAA nanogels were investigated as a function of pH by absorption and photoluminescence measurements. it was observed that loading and release processes of both the oligothiophene and its conjugate could be controlled by changing pH of their solutions

In situ formation and size control of gold nanoparticles into chitosan for nanocomposite surfaces with tailored wettability.

The in situ formation of gold nanoparticles into the natural polymer chitosan is described upon pulsed laser irradiation. In particular, hydrogel-type films of chitosan get loaded with the gold precursor, chloroauric acid salt (HAuCl4), by immersion in its aqueous solution. After the irradiation of this system with increasing number of ultraviolet laser pulses, we observe the formation of gold nanoparticles with increasing density and decreasing size. Analytical studies using absorption measurements, atomic force microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy of the nanocomposite samples throughout the irradiation procedure reveal that under the specific irradiation conditions there are two competing mechanisms responsible for the nanoparticles production: the photoreduction of the precursor responsible for the rising growth of gold particles with increasing size and the subsequent photofragmentation of these particles into smaller ones. The described method allows the loca..

Regulation of G protein-coupled receptor kinase subtypes by calcium sensor proteins

AbstractG protein-coupled receptor homologous desensitization is intrinsically related to the function of a class of S/T kinases named G protein-coupled receptor kinases (GRK). The GRK family is composed of six cloned members, named GRK1 to 6. Studies from different laboratories have demonstrated that different calcium sensor proteins (CSP) can selectively regulate the activity of GRK subtypes. In the presence of calcium, rhodopsin kinase (GRK1) is inhibited by the photoreceptor-specific CSP recoverin through direct binding. Several other recoverin homologues (including NCS 1, VILIP 1 and hippocalcin) are also able to inhibit GRK1. The ubiquitous calcium-binding protein calmodulin (CaM) can inhibit GRK5 with a high affinity (IC50=40–50 nM). A direct interaction between GRK5 and Ca2+/CaM was documented and this binding does not influence the catalytic activity of the kinase, but rather reduced GRK5 binding to the membrane. These studies suggest that CSP act as functional analogues in mediating the regulation of different GRK subtypes by Ca2+. This mechanism is, however, highly selective with respect to the GRK subtypes: while GRK1, but not GRK2 and GRK5, is regulated by recoverin and other NCS, GRK4, 5 and 6, that belong to the GRK4 subfamily, are potently inhibited by CaM, which had little or no effect on members of other GRK subfamilies

Smart surfaces for pH controlled cell staining

In this work, novel smart surfaces for in situ cell staining were realized by covalent attachment of pH-responsive microgels on platforms dedicated to microfluidics for lab-on-chip. The poly(methacrylic acid) microgels were firstly synthesized in solution and then covalently immobilized on a glass surface. As they preserve their pH-sensitive nature after the covalent immobilization, microgels were loaded with an oligothiophene-conjugated anti-human CD4 monoclonal antibody, and finally incubated with a Jurkat T-cell suspension. The physiological pH of the extracellular environment induced the pH-triggered release of the labeled anti-CD4 antibodies and the selective staining of the CD4-positive subpopulations within the Jurkat cell suspension. The realization of this type of smart surface for the encapsulation of specific monoclonal antibodies and their release in an on-demand way should have an enormous potential in developing fully integrated platforms for cell analysis