Maths Games without Frontiers

The use of games in higher education significantly benefits cognitive, motivational, affective, and sociocultural perspectives. This paper describes a mathematical challenge for first-year STEM students at the “College of Merit Camplus”, located in different cities in Italy from South to Nord, during the autumn of 2020 and 2021. Students in pairs play different puzzler games to reinforce mathematical prerequisites and basic knowledge. Due to the pandemic situation, non-digital games were forced to adjust to the remote environment. On the one hand, moving online was a challenge both from the organisational side and for the students that sometimes need to cooperate from different locations. On the other end, approaching the games remotely allowed students from colleges all around Italy to participate. The work describes and comments on each game in detail, considering the students’ performance. In general, it can be stated that students liked the playful experience, although they found themselves not wholly confident with some topics and the related time restriction. These games, first-of-all helped review and train the basic concepts; therefore, the students have a better approach to studying the first Mathematical course at the University. They found the games’ dynamics helpful in highlighting some simple tricks and common mistakes

Unlocking AI Literacy:The SMaILE-App Gaming Experience

AI's promise to become embedded in every aspect of modern life is quickly becoming a reality. However, a significant gap emerges in educational resources tailored for adolescents. This void often cultivates misconceptions about AI's capabilities and potential risks. To close this gap, we present SMaILE-App, a novel educational cross-platform app designed to foster AI literacy among individuals aged 10 to 18. While inclusive, the app design is purposely biased towards rectifying the gender gap in STEM. Applying a constructionist educational framework, SMaILE-App promotes learning AI fundamentals through interactive gameplay, merging entertainment with personalized knowledge acquisition. SMaILE-App comprises a suite of \emph{minigames} in an engaging narrative, each focusing on a different AI concept, as well as interactive creational and instructive modules. SMaILE-App rests on two key ideas: AI is not a singular, all-encompassing term but a spectrum of methodologies, each with its nuances, and AI is not without its limitations

MATHEMATICAL JOURNEY ON A DESERT ISLAND OR EXPERIENCING THE MATHEMATICIAN'S CRAFT

We propose a path involving definitions, examples, and conjectures in order to rediscover a special case of a theorem by the American mathematician Marston Morse. Our aim is to exemplify the path taken by mathematicians in their work, by freeing it from technical aspects, and to give the opportunity to experience maths by means of simple games and tactile experiences

Targeting interventions for displacement minimization in opinion dynamics

Social influence is largely recognized as a key factor in opinion formation processes. Recently, the role of external forces in inducing opinion displacement and polarization in social networks has attracted significant attention. This is in particular motivated by the necessity to understand and possibly prevent interference phenomena during political campaigns and elections. In this paper, we formulate and solve a targeted intervention problem for opinion displacement minimization on a social network. Specifically, we consider a min-max problem whereby a social planner (the defender) aims at selecting the optimal network intervention within her given budget constraint in order to minimize the opinion displacement in the system that an adversary (the attacker) is instead trying to maximize. Our results show that the optimal intervention of the defender has two regimes. For large enough budget, the optimal intervention of the social planner acts on all nodes proportionally to a new notion of network centrality. For lower budget values, such optimal intervention has a more delicate structure and is rather concentrated on a few target individuals

Systemic risk and network intervention

We consider a novel adversarial shock/protection problem for a class of network equilibria models emerging from a variety of different fields as continuous network games, production networks, opinion dynamic models. The problem is casted into a min-max problem and analytically solved for two particular cases of aggregate performances: the mean square of the equilibrium or of its arithmetic mean. The main result is on the shape of the solutions, typically exhibiting a waterfilling type structure with the optimal protection concentrated in a proper subset of the nodes, depending significantly on the aggregate performance considered. The relation of the optimal protection with the Bonacich centrality is also considered

Biodegradable and gas barrier polylactic acid/star-shaped polycaprolactone blend films functionalized with a bio-sourced polyelectrolyte coating

: This work aims at improving and disclosing new properties of films based on polylactic acid (PLA) and a star-shaped polycaprolactone (PCL). Indeed, previous works demonstrated that the presence of ad-hoc synthesized PCL, characterized by low molecular weight and carboxyl end groups (coded as PCL-COOH), improves the elongation at break of the films compared to that of neat PLA and increases their functionality. To further improve the properties of the system, alternating layers of chitosan (CH) and DNA were deposited on the surface applying a Layer-by-Layer (LbL) technique. This method was chosen because it allows the properties of the system to be modified without affecting the specific features of the bulk. In addition, the LbL technique is easily scalable and environmentally friendly because it is based on the use of an aqueous solution of two biomaterials, namely DNA and CH, which are not only derived from renewable sources but are also biocompatible and biodegradable. IR measurements on model silicon substrates subjected to the same treatment as the films, pointed out a linear growth of the proposed LbL assembly. Indeed, FE-SEM measurements highlighted the deposition of a uniform coating. The presence of the CH/DNA assembly reduced the oxygen permeability under both dry and humid (50% R.H.) conditions when compared to the uncoated film. In addition, the coating had no relevant effect on the hydrolytic and enzymatic degradation of the system, so that the biodegradability of the film was maintained

Analysis of essential oil production in Salvia dolomitica plants cultured in vitro

Salvia L. is the largest genus of Lamiaceae (or Labiatae) family with more than 900 species of which ca. 26 are native to southern Africa like S. dolomitica Codd an aromatic perennial shrub found in the northeast province of Transvaal (1). This sage is also drought resistant (2) and extremely fragrant. S. dolomitica essential oil (EO) has been used in traditional medicine to treat different disorder such as malaria, inflammation, microbial infections as well as sickness (3). Previously reported data confirmed good antiplasmodial and antiinflammatory activities (4), antimicrobial, antimycobacterial (2) and anticancer cell line specific (5) properties. This study aims to establish protocols for in vitro manipulation of selected S. dolomitica plants for fast propagation, biomass production in controlled conditions and as genetic improvement support. Second objective is the characterization, in comparison with en plein air mother plants, of the in vitro essential oil and volatile components production and profile and the foliar morphology with particular care to secretory structures. We obtained micropropagated plants, callus and cell line culture (Fig. 1) and after 5 weekly subcultures the FDA test demonstrated that cells were totally viable (Fig. 2) and that could be suitable for the establishment of transformation procedures as well as for scale up of biomass useful for metabolite production and extraction. Moreover, we evaluated the direct neo-organogenesis ability of S. dolomitica leaves. At the same time, we performed qualitative and quantitative phytochemical analysis of the essential oil of various cultivated plants. S. dolomitica in vitro-derived plantlets showed differences in the quali-quantitative composition of the essential oil compared to the open field grown plant. The investigation of the effect of high light treatments on volatile compounds compositions demonstrated that this stress can slightly affect the essential oils composition. The results suggest that tissue culture can be exploited by researchers to drive the accumulation of selected components of the essential oils

Early investigation of a novel SI306 theranostic prodrug for glioblastoma treatment

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is one of the most aggressive malignancies with a high recurrence rate and poor prognosis. Theranostic, combining therapeutic and diagnostic approaches, arises as a successful strategy to improve patient outcomes through personalized medicine. Src is a non-receptor tyrosine kinase (nRTK) whose involvement in GBM has been extensively demonstrated. Our previous research highlighted the effectiveness of the pyrazolo[3,4-d]pyrimidine SI306 and its more soluble prodrug CMP1 as Src inhibitors both in in vitro and in vivo GBM models. In this scenario, we decided to develop a theranostic prodrug of SI306, ProSI-DOTA(Ga-68) 1, which was designed to target GBM cells after hydrolysis and follow-up on the disease's progression and improve the therapy's outcome. First, the corresponding nonradioactive prodrug 2 was tested to evaluate its ADME profile and biological activity. It showed good metabolic stability, no inhibition of CYP3A4, suboptimal aqueous solubility, and slight gastrointestinal and blood-brain barrier passive permeability. Compound 2 exhibited a drastic reduction of cell vitality after 72 h on two different GBM cell lines (GL261 and U87MG). Then, 2 was subjected to complexation with the radionuclide Gallium-68 to give ProSI-DOTA(Ga-68) 1. The cellular uptake of 1 was evaluated on GBM cells, highlighting a slight but significant time-dependent uptake. The data obtained from our preliminary studies reflect the physiochemical properties of 1. The use of an alternative route of administration, such as the intranasal route, could overcome the physiochemical limitations and enhance the pharmacokinetic properties of 1, paving the way for its future development

SIRT6 enhances oxidative phosphorylation in breast cancer and promotes mammary tumorigenesis in mice

Sirtuin 6 (SIRT6) is a NAD+-dependent deacetylase with key roles in cell metabolism. High SIRT6 expression is associated with adverse prognosis in breast cancer (BC) patients. However, the mechanisms through which SIRT6 exerts its pro-oncogenic effects in BC remain unclear. Here, we sought to define the role of SIRT6 in BC cell metabolism and in mouse polyoma middle T antigen (PyMT)-driven mammary tumors