Is there an effective therapy available for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease?

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is defined as fat accumulation in the liver, ranging from simple steatosis to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Although it used to be considered a benign condition, nowadays it is known to be associated with liver injury and the development of end-stage liver disease. NAFLD is the hepatic manifestation of metabolic syndrome (MS) with an incidence rising in accordance with the increased prevalence of MS, the latter being considered the most common cause of liver enzyme elevation in Western countries. To date, no medications or surgical procedures have been approved for effective treatment of NAFLD, and all of the therapies tested so far must still be regarded as experimental. It is expected that, based on the large amount of data produced in the last few years and the ongoing large multicenter clinical trials, the effective treatment(s) for NASH will soon be defined. Meanwhile, lifestyle interventions and behavior therapy, the only treatments shown to be effective, must be introduced in daily clinical practice and, if possible, supported by public health programs

Analisi sull'ipotesi di estensione generalizzata del Reverse Charge

L’evoluzione della disciplina del reverse charge nel sistema dell’imposta sul valore aggiunto. Profili di coerenza del reverse charge con il meccanismo di funzionamento dell'imposta. Il sistema delle frodi IVA. Verifica sull’effettiva praticabilità di un’estensione generalizzata del modello di inversione contabile. Riflessioni sulle esperienze di alcuni Stati federali nell’imposizione di un’imposta sui consumi.L’evoluzione della disciplina del reverse charge nel sistema dell’imposta sul valore aggiunto. Profili di coerenza del reverse charge con il meccanismo di funzionamento dell'imposta. Il sistema delle frodi IVA. Verifica sull’effettiva praticabilità di un’estensione generalizzata del modello di inversione contabile. Riflessioni sulle esperienze di alcuni Stati federali nell’imposizione di un’imposta sui consumi.LUISS PhD Thesi

Fatigue microstructural evolution in pseudo elastic NiTi alloy

Abstract Shape memory property characterizes the behavior of many Ti based alloys (SMAs). This property is due to a metallurgical phenomenon, which allows to change the lattice structure without boundaries changing as a reversible transition. Equiatomic NiTi alloys are among the most industrially used SMAs: they are characterized by two different mechanical behaviors in terms of shape recovering: • a shape memory effect (SME). This is obtained when the recovery of the initial shape takes place only after heating over a critical temperature, with a consequent crystallographic structure transition; • a pseudoelastic effect (PE). This is obtained when the critical temperature is lower than environmental temperature. In this case, the recovery of the initial shape takes place only after unloading. In recent years, research relating to materials of shape memory has gone in the direction of application in many fields of engineering such as aerospace or mechanical systems. In this work the evolution of microstructural lattice has been studied taking in to account the effect of low cycles fatigue loads

sn and ti influence on damage of bent hot dip galvanizing phases

Abstract: Hot dip galvanizing is the most used technique in the metallic protection field. The coating formation is mainly due to interdiffusion phenomena between iron and zinc atoms. In the last years, the introduction of different elements allows to obtain baths optimized by different characteristics. For example, the presence of Sn in the bath fluidifies the bath and it allows the formation of coatings characterized by an improved homogeneity of thickness. Presence of Ti, allows to obtain different colors of coatings due to different oxidation of Ti in the coatings. In this work a comparison between coatings obtained by the presence of 3%Sn and 0.5%Ti in the baths has been investigated at five different dipping time. In order to analyse the kinetics of coatings formation and the intermetallic phases, longitudinal sections of the bended specimens have been metallographically prepared and observed by means of an optical microscope (LOM). Finally, the mechanical behaviour of all coatings has been investigated using bending tests carried out on specimens

damage micromechanisms in a hot dip galvanized steel

Abstract: Hot-dip galvanizing is one of the most used methods to apply zinc-based coatings on steels in order to provide sacrificial protection against corrosion over all the steel surface. The aim of this work is the analysis of the hot dip zinc coated steel plates mechanical properties by means of a non-standardized bending test performed minimizing both the bending moment differences along the bending axis and the interactions between the clamping system and the specimen coating. Bending tests are performed both on non-coated and on hot dip zinc coated plates, correlating the measured variables (applied load and crosshead displacement) with the bending moment and the specimen bending angle. Tests are characterised by a good repeatability. Results show that the main damaging mechanisms depend on the different mechanical behaviour of the intermetallic phases and on their thickness. For all the investigated coating conditions, radial cracks are observed. They initiate corresponding to the Γ phase and propagate up to the ζ-η interface. The coating thickness increase implies both an increase of the importance of the cracks in δ and ζ phases and the presence of cracks at ζ-η interfaces

DDT - Drug Discovery Tool: a fast and intuitive graphics user interface for Docking and Molecular Dynamics analysis.

Abstract Motivation The ligand/protein binding interaction is typically investigated by docking and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. In particular, docking-based virtual screening (VS) is used to select the best ligands from database of thousands of compounds, while MD calculations assess the energy stability of the ligand/protein binding complexes. Considering the broad use of these techniques, it is of great demand to have one single software that allows a combined and fast analysis of VS and MD results. With this in mind, we have developed the Drug Discovery Tool (DDT) that is an intuitive graphics user interface able to provide structural data and physico-chemical information on the ligand/protein interaction. Results DDT is designed as a plugin for the Visual Molecular Dynamics (VMD) software and is able to manage a large number of ligand/protein complexes obtained from AutoDock4 (AD4) docking calculations and MD simulations. DDT delivers four main outcomes: i) ligands ranking based on an energy score; ii) ligand ranking based on a ligands' conformation cluster analysis; iii) identification of the aminoacids forming the most occurrent interactions with the ligands; iv) plot of the ligands' center-of-mass coordinates in the Cartesian space. The flexibility of the software allows saving the best ligand/protein complexes using a number of user-defined options. Availability and implementation DDT_site_1 (alternative DDT_site_2); the DDT tutorial movie is available here. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online

A simple model to calculate the microstructure evolution in a NiTi SMA

Shape memory alloys (SMAs) are a wide class of materials characterized by the property to recover the initial shape. This property is due to ability of alloys to change the microstructure from a “parent” microstructure (usually called “Austenite”) to a “product” microstructure (usually called “Martensite”). Considering the tensile resistance, SMAs stress strain curves are characterized by a sort of plateau were the transformations from Austenite to Martensite (in loading condition) and from Martensite to Austenite (in unloading condition) take place. In this work a simple model to predict the microstructure modification has been proposed and verified with an equiatomic NiTi alloy characterized by a pseudo-elastic behavior

Improved Zn-based coatings for ipersandelin steel products

The protection of iron-based alloy products against corrosion is fundamental to preserve their mechanical properties in aggressive environments. Hot-dip galvanizing process represents one of the most used techniques to make protective coatings for such products. In order to improve both mechanical and chemical properties of coating, metallic elements may be added to the traditional zinc bath. In the present paper, two types of improved zinc-based coating are proposed: (i) A coating obtained employing a tin addition (3% in weight); (ii) A coating obtained employing aluminium (5% in weight), tin (1% in weight) and copper (0.5% in weight) additions. Firstly, the performance of such two types of coatings is experimentally investigated through bending tests on ipersandelin steel plate specimens, treated through different bath dipping times. The intermetallic phase thicknesses of coatings are measured for each dipping time, in order to evaluate the kinetic formation. Then, a Finite Element (FE) model is proposed in order to simulate the bending behaviour of the above specimens, both employing the measured phase thickness and implementing the loading and boundary conditions of the experimental tests. A numerical non-linear static analysis is performed. A quite satisfactory agreement between experimental and numerical results is observed, especially under plastic behaviour regime