The Mediterranean Solar Plan through the Prism of External Governance

Through the prism of external governance, this paper investigates the emergence of the Mediterranean Solar Plan (MSP) as an external mode of sectoral governance and its actual capacity to cope with the regulatory gapproblem between the European Union (EU) and Mediterranean Partner Countries (MPCs). Although network forms of energy governance generally prevail in the EU and the Mediterranean region, the solar plan emerges as a very loosely institutionalized form of market governance in which political interaction and outcomes are the result of inter-MPCs competition over external funding. This paper shows that competitive pressure at best unleashes a reform dynamic in which individual MPCs undertake partial regulatory and institutional reforms in order to ‘lock in’ funding and longterm power purchase agreements. But, market governance under the Mediterranean Solar Plan is far to provoke a region-wide renewable energy transition. The discontinuity between the internal-external mode of energy governance and external governance under the Mediterranean Solar Plan is attributed to early choices of key member states (France and Germany) within the making of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) - facts that ultimately impacted on the resulting sectoral patterns of external governance, thus constraining the potential and limits of the Mediterranean Solar Plan to reduce the EU-MPCs regulatory gap

Il SITAR. Verso la conoscenza condivisa

Valorizzare il patrimonio culturale attraverso la diffusione della conoscenza grazie a sistemi informativi compless

Drug delivery in overcoming the blood-brain barrier: role of nasal mucosal grafting

The blood–brain barrier (BBB) plays a fundamental role in protecting and maintaining the homeostasis of the brain. For this reason, drug delivery to the brain is much more difficult than that to other compartments of the body. In order to bypass or cross the BBB, many strategies have been developed: invasive techniques, such as temporary disruption of the BBB or direct intraventricular and intracerebral administration of the drug, as well as noninvasive techniques. Preliminary results, reported in the large number of studies on the potential strategies for brain delivery, are encouraging, but it is far too early to draw any conclusion about the actual use of these therapeutic approaches. Among the most recent, but still pioneering, approaches related to the nasal mucosa properties, the permeabilization of the BBB via nasal mucosal engrafting can offer new potential opportunities. It should be emphasized that this surgical procedure is quite invasive, but the implication for patient outcome needs to be compared to the gold standard of direct intracranial injection, and evaluated whilst keeping in mind that central nervous system diseases and lysosomal storage diseases are chronic and severely debilitating and that up to now no therapy seems to be completely successful

Caroli Carafa Episcopi Aversani Commentaria De Germania Sacra Restavrata, sub Summis PP. Gregorio XV, & S. D. N. Vrbano VIII. Regnante Aug. & Piiss.mo Imp. Ferdinando Secvndo

Vorlageform des Erscheinungsvermerks: Coloniae Agrippinae, Apud Cornelivm Ab Egmond, M D C XXXIX

Linking Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecosystems: Complexity, Persistence and Biodiversity in European Food Webs

In this work we have defined and analyzed the network structure, properties and composition of cohesive sub webs in two food web networks at two selected European sites: Ferto lake in Hungary and Ria Formosa lagoon in Portugal, respectively. The main objective of this work was to test and to apply a coherent methodology for the definition and analysis of trophic networks in typical European ecosystems. Persistence and cohesion of the two networks have been determined and studied. Moreover the biodiversity in terms of number of species have been measured. Several preliminary conclusions can be drawn on a basis of results obtained from application of network analysis indices and dynamical simulation. In terms of ecosystem stability the lake Ferto network (persistence 0.42) seems more stable than Ria Formosa (persistence 0.26), but if we consider the stability of the main k-core, we obtain opposite results (0.48 and 0.50 respectively). Taking into account the distribution of species in the k-core partition, the general structure of Ria Formosa network appears more complex than Ferto lake. In both networks a main core containing species taxonomically different is present, but in the Ria Formosa network (37.7%) the proportion of species inside the core is lower than in Ferto lake (60%), this can be an indication that the dimension of the main core is not related to size of the network in real ecosystems. This hypothesis is confirmed by results obtained from k-core partition of simulated networks. In both studied networks the cohesion (measured in terms of mean density and degree) of k-cores is greater than k-cores extracted from simulated networks generated by different models, this may indicate a complex and not arbitrary structure of ecological networks, not easily reproducible by models. In general the approach used appears to be able of defining the main proprieties of the trophic networks examined. The extension to other European ecosystems is needed for having a clearer and complete picture and to use data collected to simulation of different scenarios, afterwards the effects on network structure and ecosystem biodiversity as a function of different European environmental policies could be assessedJRC.H.5-Rural, water and ecosystem resource

Sirtuin functions and modulation: from chemistry to the clinic

Sirtuins are NAD+ -dependent histone deacetylases regulating important metabolic pathways in prokaryotes and eukaryotes and are involved in many biological processes such as cell survival, senescence, proliferation, apoptosis, DNA repair, cell metabolism, and caloric restriction. The seven members of this family of enzymes are considered potential targets for the treatment of human pathologies including neurodegenerative diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer. Furthermore, recent interest focusing on sirtuin modulators as epigenetic players in the regulation of fundamental biological pathways has prompted increased efforts to discover new small molecules able to modify sirtuin activity. Here, we review the role, mechanism of action, and biological function of the seven sirtuins, as well as their inhibitors and activators

Analysing grouping of nucleotides in DNA sequences using lumped processes constructed from Markov chains

The most commonly used models for analysing local dependencies in DNA sequences are (high-order) Markov chains. Incorporating knowledge relative to the possible grouping of the nucleotides enables to define dedicated sub-classes of Markov chains. The problem of formulating lumpability hypotheses for a Markov chain is therefore addressed. In the classical approach to lumpability, this problem can be formulated as the determination of an appropriate state space (smaller than the original state space) such that the lumped chain defined on this state space retains the Markov property. We propose a different perspective on lumpability where the state space is fixed and the partitioning of this state space is represented by a one-to-many probabilistic function within a two-level stochastic process. Three nested classes of lumped processes can be defined in this way as sub-classes of first-order Markov chains. These lumped processes enable parsimonious reparameterizations of Markov chains that help to reveal relevant partitions of the state space. Characterizations of the lumped processes on the original transition probability matrix are derived. Different model selection methods relying either on hypothesis testing or on penalized log-likelihood criteria are presented as well as extensions to lumped processes constructed from high-order Markov chains. The relevance of the proposed approach to lumpability is illustrated by the analysis of DNA sequences. In particular, the use of lumped processes enables to highlight differences between intronic sequences and gene untranslated region sequences