Simboli religiosi e prestazione di lavoro

Il saggio, prendendo spunto da due controversie attualmente pendenti avanti la Corte di Giustizia, esamina il difficile bilanciamento tra il diritto del dipendente alla manifestazione della propria fede religiosa sul luogo di lavoro e la libert\ue0 dell\u2019impresa di esprimere all\u2019esterno una linea di politica aziendale ispirata a neutralit\ue0 ideologica. L\u2019indagine \ue8 incentrata sullo specifico problema delle restrizioni all\u2019uso dei simboli imposte dal datore di lavoro, analizzando le tecniche argomentative della giurisprudenza della Corte EDU che vengono confrontate con gli orientamenti della Corte di Giustizia con riguardo al divieto di discriminazione per motivi religiosi previsto dalla direttiva 2000/78Ce.The present work focuses on two recent disputes pending at the Court of Justice: in particular it examines the difficult balance between the right of the employee to express his/her religious faith in the working place and the freedom of the company to carry out an external policy not ideologically oriented. The research is based on the constraints to the use of the religious symbols imposed by the employer: in this regard it compares the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights with that one of the European Court of Justice, with a specific emphasis on the prohibition of religious discriminations on the grounds of directive 2000/78/EC

Lo sciopero nell'ordinamento interno ed eurounitario

Il saggio analizza l’evoluzione teorica del diritto di sciopero nell’ordinamento italiano e in quello europeo. Segnatamente, particolare attenzione viene dedicata all’elaborazione dottrinale sull’art. 40 Cost. e sulle teorie che inquadrano lo sciopero come diritto indivi - duale di libertà. Viene successivamente presa in esame la posizione dello sciopero nella Carta di Nizza, esaminando il valore del suo riconoscimento giuridico quale diritto sociale fondamentale

Il precariato pubblico tra normativa italiana e bacchettate dall’Europa (considerazioni a margine della sentenza della Corte di Giustizia 26 novembre 2014) = Il precariato pubblico tra normativa italiana e bacchettate dall’Europa (considerazioni a margine della sentenza della Corte di Giustizia 26 novembre 2014). WP C.S.D.L.E. “Massimo D’Antona”.IT – 243/2015

Moving from the judgment “Mascolo” (Court of Justice, 26th November 2014) the essay analyzes the situation of the Italian temporary employment, highlighting the specificity of the school sector and the different types of fixed-term works. The analysis also focuses on the techniques of argumentation used in case law, both at U.E. and national level, trying to identify the penalties in the case of abusive succession of fixed-term contracts. The finding that the lower courts and the Supreme Court do not arrive to stable and satisfactory decisions lead the Author to suggest solutions that are “de iure condito” conform to the arrets of European Court of Justice and that consider the various regulation of fixed term work in the public administration as well

The use of cryptocurrencies for hawala in the Islamic finance

This paper aims to evaluate where the application of new fintech solutions like blockchain and cryptocurrencies can be considered as an opportunity to build bridges between Islamic and western culture in order to create a trusted money transfer with low commission and a big transparency and trust.  The research question is: Can an Hawala systems based on DLT technologies be considered compliant both with anti-money laundry regulations and with Sharia values?  This is a conceptual paper relying upon an understanding of the literature in the fields of technology, sociology, anthropology, criminology and regulatory, as applied to the topic of Islamic practice known as Hawala and emerging new disruptive technologies like Distributed Ledger Technology.  The research has been conducted by a literature reviewing on Scopus data base by searching the following keywords: Islamic finance, cryptocurrencies, hawala, stablecoin, globalcoin, money laundering, blockchain.  The searching period was set on the last 10 years.  The paper discusses some scenarios to define new fintech Hawala system in an evolving scenario of cryptocurrencies, social network commitments and different type of blockchain where it can be digitally transformed by using new fintech technologies while became compliance with anti-money laundering regulations with the respect of Islamic values.  As practical implications, this paper could help to encourage researcher and entrepreneurs to evaluate and propose a digital transformation approach with the aim to maintain ancient tradition and, at the same time, apply new technology that improve the life of citizens.  As social implications this paper expands upon the understanding of how new fintech solution can be easily be integrated in the real life by using common devices like a mobile phone to be used as wallet for the daily expenses and to receive money from relatives from western countries.  The originality/value of this paper is that it covers the literature gap in the field of new fintech solutions applied to Islamic finance by providing a likely proposal by integrating popular tradition, regulations and new technologies.  The research limitations and implications are related to that this is a conceptual paper; case studies haven’t been treated, so it is not able to say definitively if the outcomes discussed can be defined as an effective solution and can be developed in the real global society, in a future prospective it’ll be possible to continue to make researches in this field of application with fintech technologies and Islamic Finance

Effects of Dried Blood Spot Storage on Lipidomic Analysis

During the lipidomic analysis of red blood cell membranes, the distribution and percentage ratios of the fatty acids are measured. Since fatty acids are the key constituents of cell membranes, by evaluating their quantities it possible to understand the general health of the cells and to obtain health indicators of the whole organism. However, because the analysis is precise, it is necessary to ensure that the blood does not undergo significant variations between the point of collection and analysis. The composition of the blood may vary dramatically weeks after collection, hence, here an attempt is made to stabilize these complex matrixes using antioxidants deposited on the paper cards on which the blood itself is deposited

Scavenging Effect of Various Extracts of the Gymnema sylvestre R. Br. and Antioxidant Activity of the Isolated Triterpenes

Gymnema sylvestre has been used in Asian traditional medicine for its anti-microbial, antihypercholesterolemic, hepatoprotective and sweet suppressing properties and activities. G. sylvestre has also been used extensively in chewing gum, as a health food for preventing obesity and diabetes, and as a tea. This study has evaluated the total phenolic content and antioxidant activity of the aqueous and organic G. sylvestre extracts and their sub-fractions for the initial characterization of the biological properties of the isolated compounds. An in vivo cell model was used to calculate the concentration inhibiting cell growth by 50% and the ability to exert antioxidant activity. All compounds inhibit cell growth in a dose-dependent manner, with an IC50 value ranging between 29 and 1462 μM. The effects on intracellular ROS levels are extremely variable, but it is of interest that some of the compounds appear to display an antioxidant effect

Lithium limits trimethyltin-induced cytotoxicity and proinflammatory response in microglia without affecting the concurrent autophagy impairment

Trimethyltin (TMT) is a highly toxic molecule present as an environmental contaminant causing neurodegeneration particularly of the limbic system both in humans and in rodents. We recently described the occurrence of impairment in the late stages of autophagy in TMT-intoxicated astrocytes. Here we show that similarly to astrocytes also in microglia, TMT induces the precocious block of autophagy indicated by the accumulation of the autophagosome marker, microtubule associated protein light chain 3. Consistent with autophagy impairment we observe in TMT-treated microglia the accumulation of p62/SQSTM1, a protein specifically degraded through this pathway. Lithium has been proved effective in limiting neurodegenerations and, in particular, in ameliorating symptoms of TMT intoxication in rodents. In our in vitro model, lithium displays a pro-survival and anti-inflammatory action reducing both cell death and the proinflammatory response of TMT-treated microglia. In particular, lithium exerts these activities without reducing TMT-induced accumulation of light chain 3 protein. In fact, the autophagic block imposed by TMT is unaffected by lithium administration. These results are of interest as defects in the execution of autophagy are frequently observed in neurodegenerative diseases and lithium is considered a promising therapeutic agent for these pathologies. Thus, it is relevant that this cation can still maintain its pro-survival and anti-inflammatory role in conditions of autophagy bloc

Evolution of institutional genres in time: the case of the White House press briefings

Literature on genre analysis mainly focuses on the description of language use in the different professional and institutional domains (Bhatia 2004). Despite the different directions of the studies on genre (Bhatia 1993; Martin and Christie 1997; Swales 1990), a common orientation may be seen in their tendency to describe homogeneous concepts, such as communicative situation, register and function. Nevertheless, genre-specific features are subject to changes due to the ongoing processes of internationalisation and globalisation (Candlin and Gotti 2004; Cortese and Duszak 2005; Crystal 1997). In particular, political and institutional communication genres have been experiencing in-depth transformation in the last few decades, mainly due to evolutions in the media market, fuelled by technological developments and by the economic globalisation (Blumler and Kavanagh 1999). Within the framework of a wider research project titled “Tension and change in English domain-specific genres” funded by the Italian Ministry of Research, the present paper aims to outline, through a corpus-based analysis of lexico-grammatical and syntactic features (Baker 2006), in what ways White House press briefings as a genre have evolved in the last 16 years under the pressure of technological developments and of media market transformation. White House press briefings are meetings between the White House press secretary and the press, held on an almost daily basis. They may be regarded as the main official channel of communication for the White House and therefore play a crucial role in the communication strategies on the world’s most powerful institution (Kumar 2007). Embracing a diachronic perspective, our analysis aims at identifying the main features of the evolution of the briefings as a genre, during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. A corpus (DiaWHoB) including all the briefings from January 1993 to January 2009, available on the American Presidency Project website, has been collected in order to carry out the analysis. The corpus consists of about 4,000 briefings and is made up of more than 18 million words. The scope and size of a specialised corpus of this kind make it a powerful tool to investigate the evolution of the White House press briefing. In order to manage the data more efficiently, the corpus has been annotated by using XML mark-up, which incorporates information about individual speakers and their roles, date, briefing details and text structure. The present research paper outlines the corpus structure and discusses the ways in which the corpus architecture helps in investigating the evolution of the genre, and also presents some preliminary results. In particular, it focuses on some examples of evolution in phraseology within the genre of briefings in order to support the hypothesis that a diachronic corpus-based investigation facilitates comparisons among different speakers thanks to the XML mark-up while providing interesting insight into the evolution of a genre

Roles for the Conserved Spc105p/Kre28p Complex in Kinetochore-Microtubule Binding and the Spindle Assembly Checkpoint

Background: Kinetochores attach sister chromatids to microtubules of the mitotic spindle and orchestrate chromosome disjunction at anaphase. Although S. cerevisiae has the simplest known kinetochores, they nonetheless contain ∼70 subunits that assemble on centromeric DNA in a hierarchical manner. Developing an accurate picture of the DNA-binding, linker and microtubule-binding layers of kinetochores, including the functions of individual proteins in these layers, is a key challenge in the field of yeast chromosome segregation. Moreover, comparison of orthologous proteins in yeast and humans promises to extend insight obtained from the study of simple fungal kinetochores to complex animal cell kinetochores. Principal Findings: We show that S. cerevisiae Spc105p forms a heterotrimeric complex with Kre28p, the likely orthologue of the metazoan kinetochore protein Zwint-1. Through systematic analysis of interdependencies among kinetochore complexes, focused on Spc105p/Kre28p, we develop a comprehensive picture of the assembly hierarchy of budding yeast kinetochores. We find Spc105p/Kre28p to comprise the third linker complex that, along with the Ndc80 and MIND linker complexes, is responsible for bridging between centromeric heterochromatin and kinetochore MAPs and motors. Like the Ndc80 complex, Spc105p/Kre28p is also essential for kinetochore binding by components of the spindle assembly checkpoint. Moreover, these functions are conserved in human cells. Conclusions/Significance: Spc105p/Kre28p is the last of the core linker complexes to be analyzed in yeast and we show it to be required for kinetochore binding by a discrete subset of kMAPs (Bim1p, Bik1p, Slk19p) and motors (Cin8p, Kar3p), all of which are nonessential. Strikingly, dissociation of these proteins from kinetochores prevents bipolar attachment, even though the Ndc80 and DASH complexes, the two best-studied kMAPs, are still present. The failure of Spc105 deficient kinetochores to bind correctly to spindle microtubules and to recruit checkpoint proteins in yeast and human cells explains the observed severity of missegregation phenotypes