QUALITÀ DELL’ETICA PUBBLICA, QUALITÀ POLITICA E COSTITUZIONI ITALIANE

The Author treats the argument of the quality of public ethics starting from norms that regulate it in various Sicilian Constitutions of the 19th century until Constitutional Chart of the Italian Republic.Therefore, he shows how the Sicilian Constitution of 1812, modeled according to the example of political institutions of Great Britain, and that of 1848 both have already had a great interest towards the profile of morality exercised in the political life and how both have prescribed the parliamentary decadence of Deputies who made themselves guilty of having corrupted the electorate in order to be elected or became authors of criminal offences. The question of the quality of public ethics appears, for the Author, even today of a relevant actuality not only in order to restrain the corruption that devastates the politics, transforming it in bad politics, but also to give force to a successful recruitment of political élites. Therefore, in this work he treats the topic of the regeneration of political life aiming to connect the exigency of reform of the access to political roles with a not less necessary ethical vigilance expressed by the suffrage of electoral body. Following the line of Max Weber’s thought, the Author concludes that the quality of politics has no need of demagogues, political hacks or political dilettantes, but of austere men of politics, dedicated to good purposes of general interest, and which should act according to the ethics of responsibility

Italy: money transfer, money laundering and intermediary liability.

The aim of this paper is to offer a general overview of money transfers in Italy and Europe focusing specifically on the migrant community. This is of particular interest because it’s in that community where money transfers are most prevalent. This shows the money transfer system as a tool that could guarantee the financial inclusion of migrants but at the same time being used in a distorted and unlawful manner. After a brief introduction focused on working principles and legal frameworks, the paper will go deeper in evaluating money transfer data. This data, which comes from various legal authorities, will show the extent to which different migrant communities who reside in Italy are able to carry out illicit activity using money transfers. It will also highlight the existence of legislative inconsistencies through a case by case approach. This paper shows the reason why people find it relatively easy to use money transfers to launder money, or in a more broader sense, take part on other illicit financial operations such as financing terrorism. This work will examine recent Italian criminal cases concerning the unlawful use of money transfers. This paper is the original work of the author and has not been submitted elsewhere for publication

COMMUNITY VERSUS BIOCOENOSIS IN MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS OF BENTHIC MOLLUSCAN THANATOCOENOSES

Community and biocoenosis as descriptive units for benthic ecology are not perfectly interchangeable. Although the conceptual framework based on communities, originally defined by a statistical quantitative approach, appears to be the most suitable in the statistical treatment of thanatocoenoses data, this framework appears to oversimplify the picture of the most important ecological units in the Mediterranean benthos. On the contrary, the benthic bionomy with the biocoenoses, identified by a group of characteristic species (disregarding their abundance) derives from a qualitative approach which has been more successfully adopted for the research in the Mediterranean area. A group of twelve thanatocoenoses from the Tyrrhenian Sea has been treated with both approaches with the aim to identify a practical strategy for analysing multispecies distribution patterns in benthic paleoecology, trying to combine the advantages of both quantitative and qualitative approaches. When dealing with large-sized data matrices of benthic thanatocoenoses, it is recommended to use a qualitative approach for data reduction, on the basis of their significance in benthic bionomy, prior to perform the quantitative multivariate analysis (classification, ordination, similarity and dissimilarity analysis). This procedure appears to be the most suitable for the identification of “natural” grouping of biotopes, since the results are not obscured by the diffuse occurrence of the most common and ubiquitous species.&nbsp

Evidence of mud diapirism and coral colonies in the ionian sea (central mediterranean) from high resolution chirp sonar survey

A chirp sonar survey in the Ionian Sea investigated the Calabrian margin, the Calabrian accretionary wedge, the Taranto Trench and the Apulian foreland. Shallow tectonics structures have been related to deeper ones, recognised on CROP seismic profiles. The identified echo characters have been compared with those described in the modern literature and have been related to different kinds of sediments, on the basis of core samples. Based on echo character and morphology we have recognised: 1) A widespread presence of mounds, up to 50 m high, occurring on the Apulian plateau as isolated mounds in the deepest zones (1600-800 m) and in groups in the shallower ones (800-600 m); they have been interpreted as coral mounds, according to a recent discovery of living deep water coral colonies in this zone. 2) Some mud diapirs, isolated or in groups of two or three elements, widespread in the whole study area. In analogy of what has been observed on the Mediterranean Ridge, their presence suggests the activity of deep tectonic structures (thrusts and faults) and a reduced thickness (or absence) of Messinian evaporites in this part of the Ionian Sea

Human blood-vessel-derived stem cells for tissue repair and regeneration

Multipotent stem/progenitor cells with similar developmental potentials have been independently identified from diverse human tissue/organ cultures. The increasing recognition of the vascular/perivascular origin of mesenchymal precursors suggested blood vessels being a systemic source of adult stem/progenitor cells. Our group and other laboratories recently isolated multiple stem/progenitor cell subsets from blood vessels of adult human tissues. Each of the three structural layers of blood vessels: intima, media, and adventitia has been found to include at least one precursor population, that is, myogenic endothelial cells (MECs), pericytes, and adventitial cells (ACs), respectively. MECs and pericytes efficiently regenerate myofibers in injured and dystrophic skeletal muscles as well as improve cardiac function after myocardial infarction. The applications of ACs in vascular remodeling and angiogenesis/vasculogenesis have been examined. Our recent finding that MECs and pericytes can be purified from cryogenically banked human primary muscle cell culture further indicates their potential applications in personalized regenerative medicine. Copyright 2012 Chien-Wen Chen et al

Human blood-vessel-derived stem cells for tissue repair and regeneration

Multipotent stem/progenitor cells with similar developmental potentials have been independently identified from diverse human tissue/organ cultures. The increasing recognition of the vascular/perivascular origin of mesenchymal precursors suggested blood vessels being a systemic source of adult stem/progenitor cells. Our group and other laboratories recently isolated multiple stem/progenitor cell subsets from blood vessels of adult human tissues. Each of the three structural layers of blood vessels: intima, media, and adventitia has been found to include at least one precursor population, that is, myogenic endothelial cells (MECs), pericytes, and adventitial cells (ACs), respectively. MECs and pericytes efficiently regenerate myofibers in injured and dystrophic skeletal muscles as well as improve cardiac function after myocardial infarction. The applications of ACs in vascular remodeling and angiogenesis/vasculogenesis have been examined. Our recent finding that MECs and pericytes can be purified from cryogenically banked human primary muscle cell culture further indicates their potential applications in personalized regenerative medicine. Copyright 2012 Chien-Wen Chen et al

Tecnologie Robotiche e responsabilità extracontrattuale: un'analisi comparata

Attraverso un esame delle soluzioni giuridiche derivanti, da un lato, dal percorso normativo posto in essere dall’Unione Europea e, dall’altro lato, da quanto emerge dal case law in via di formazione nel mondo, con questo lavoro si vuole dimostrare che l’avvento delle tecnologie robotiche non comporta necessariamente l'individuazione di nuove categorie giuridiche né induce mutamenti radicali nel sistema consolidato dei principi della responsabilità civile. In questa prospettiva si vuole verificare se il ricorso alla categoria della responsabilità oggettiva possa consentire un livello di tutela adeguato del danneggiato senza per ciò stesso limitare o incidere negativamente sulla opera di innovazione e sviluppo scientifico e tecnologico

Tecnologie robotiche e responsabilità extracontrattuale: un'analisi comparata

Attraverso un esame delle soluzioni giuridiche derivanti, da un lato, dal percorso normativo posto in essere dall’Unione Europea e, dall’altro lato, da quanto emerge dal case law in via di formazione nel mondo, con questo lavoro si vuole dimostrare che l’avvento delle tecnologie robotiche non comporta necessariamente l'individuazione di nuove categorie giuridiche né induce mutamenti radicali nel sistema consolidato dei principi della responsabilità civile. In questa prospettiva si vuole verificare se il ricorso alla categoria della responsabilità oggettiva possa consentire un livello di tutela adeguato del danneggiato senza per ciò stesso limitare o incidere negativamente sulla opera di innovazione e sviluppo scientifico e tecnologico

Lysophosphatidic acid mediates myeloid differentiation within the human bone marrow microenvironment.

Lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) is a pleiotropic phospholipid present in the blood and certain tissues at high concentrations; its diverse effects are mediated through differential, tissue specific expression of LPA receptors. Our goal was to determine if LPA exerts lineage-specific effects during normal human hematopoiesis. In vitro stimulation of CD34+ human hematopoietic progenitors by LPA induced myeloid differentiation but had no effect on lymphoid differentiation. LPA receptors were expressed at significantly higher levels on Common Myeloid Progenitors (CMP) than either multipotent Hematopoietic Stem/Progenitor Cells (HSPC) or Common Lymphoid Progenitors (CLP) suggesting that LPA acts on committed myeloid progenitors. Functional studies demonstrated that LPA enhanced migration, induced cell proliferation and reduced apoptosis of isolated CMP, but had no effect on either HSPC or CLP. Analysis of adult and fetal human bone marrow sections showed that PPAP2A, (the enzyme which degrades LPA) was highly expressed in the osteoblastic niche but not in the perivascular regions, whereas Autotaxin (the enzyme that synthesizes LPA) was expressed in perivascular regions of the marrow. We propose that a gradient of LPA with the highest levels in peri-sinusoidal regions and lowest near the endosteal zone, regulates the localization, proliferation and differentiation of myeloid progenitors within the bone marrow marrow