L’INSTABILITÀ DEL SISTEMA PARLAMENTARE:PATOLOGIA ITALIANA E ANOMALIA SPAGNOLA

European parliamentary democracies have been going through a certain instability that has been rooted in a crisis of the political system, in general, and of the party system, in particular, and has inevitably had repercussions on the relationship between government and parliament. Various variables and contingent factors contributed to this, such as economic crises or emergency situations related to terrorism, environment and health. The convergence of all these factors has fed, both in Italy and abroad, the birth of populisms that have exploited the socio-political crisis to set themselves up as the bastion of democracy, ending up, on the contrary, by undermining its stability. The resulting party fragmentation inevitably reflected on the resilience of governments, parliaments and the balance of their relationship, especially in parliamentary regimes, as can be seen not only in Italian events, but especially in those in Spain, where the transformations of the party system undermined the stable institutional balances that had been characterising the system since its birth. Reflecting in a comparative key, we would like to attempt to highlight the different responses of the two systems to the emergencies and the birth of the new political movements – which in Spain represented an absolute innovation in a system that tended to be bipartisan –, especially from the point of view of the political- institutional balances between government and parliament in the perspective of the parliamentary form of government

Total synthesis of natural disaccharide sambubiose

A practical and robust synthetic method to obtain the natural disaccharide sambubiose (2O-β-D-xylopyranosyl-D-glucopyranose) is reported, exploring the key step in the synthesis, i.e., stereoselective O-glycosylation. Specifically, the best combinations of glycoside donors and acceptors were identified, stereospecific control of the reaction was achieved by screening several catalysts and protection/deprotection steps were evaluated and improved. The best result was obtained by coupling allyl 3,5,6-tri-O-benzyl-β-D-glucofuranoside with 2,3,4-tri-O-acetyl-Dxylopiranosyl-α-trichloro acetimidate in the presence of trimethylsilyl triflate as a catalyst giving the corresponding protected target compound as a correct single isomer. The latter was transformed accordingly into the desired final product by deprotection steps (deallylation, deacetylation, and debenzylation). Sambubiose was synthesized into a satisfactory and higher overall yield than previously reported and was also characterized

Exploring the ecology of bifidobacteria and their genetic adaptation to the mammalian gut

The mammalian gut is densely inhabited by microorganisms that have coevolved with their host. Amongst these latter microorganisms, bifidobacteria represent a key model to study host–microbe interaction within the mammalian gut. Remarkably, bifidobacteria naturally occur in a range of ecological niches that are either directly or indirectly connected to the animal gastrointestinal tract. They constitute one of the dominant bacterial members of the intestinal microbiota and are among the first colonizers of the mammalian gut. Notably, the presence of bifidobacteria in the gut has been associated with several health-promoting activities. In this review, we aim to provide an overview of current knowledge on the genetic diversity and ecology of bifidobacteria. Furthermore, we will discuss how this important group of gut bacteria is able to colonize and survive in the mammalian gut, so as to facilitate host interactions

Radiation-free Microwave Technology for Breast Lesion Detection using Supervised Machine Learning Model

Mammography is the gold standard technology for breast screening, which has been demonstrated through different randomized controlled trials to reduce breast cancer mortality. However, mammography has limitations and potential harms, such as the use of ionizing radiation. To overcome the ionizing radiation exposure issues, a novel device (i.e. MammoWave) based on low-power radio-frequency signals has been developed for breast lesion detection. The MammoWave is a microwave device and is under clinical validation phase in several hospitals across Europe. The device transmits non-invasive microwave signals through the breast and accumulates the backscattered (returned) signatures, commonly denoted as the S21 signals in engineering terminology. Backscattered (complex) S21 signals exploit the contrast in dielectric properties of breasts with and without lesions. The proposed research is aimed to automatically segregate these two types of signal responses by applying appropriate supervised machine learning (ML) algorithm for the data emerging from this research. The support vector machine with radial basis function has been employed here. The proposed algorithm has been trained and tested using microwave breast response data collected at one of the clinical validation centres. Statistical evaluation indicates that the proposed ML model can recognise the MammoWave breasts signal with no radiological finding (NF) and with radiological findings (WF), i.e., may be the presence of benign or malignant lesions. A sensitivity of 84.40% and a specificity of 95.50% have been achieved in NF/WF recognition using the proposed ML model

UWB device for breast microwave imaging: phantom and clinical validations

Microwave imaging has received increasing attention in the last decades, motivated by its application in diagnostic imaging. Such effort has been encouraged by the fact that, at microwave frequencies, it is possible to distinguish between tissues with different dielectric properties. In such framework, a novel microwave device is presented here. The apparatus, consisting of two antennas operating in air, is completely safe and non-invasive since it does not emit any ionizing radiation and it can be used for breast lesion detection without requiring any breast crushing. We use Huygens Principle to provide a novel understanding into microwave imaging; specifically, the algorithm based on this principle provides images which represent homogeneity maps of the dielectric properties (dielectric constant and/or conductivity). The experimental results on phantoms having inclusions with different dielectric constants are presented here. In addition, the capability of the device to detect breast lesions has been verified through clinical examinations on 51 breasts. We introduce a metric to measure the non-homogeneous behaviour of the image, establishing a modality to detect the presence of inclusions inside phantoms and, similarly, the presence of a lesion inside a breast

Penetrating particle ANalyzer (PAN)

PAN is a scientific instrument suitable for deep space and interplanetary missions. It can precisely measure and monitor the flux, composition, and direction of highly penetrating particles ($> \sim$100 MeV/nucleon) in deep space, over at least one full solar cycle (~11 years). The science program of PAN is multi- and cross-disciplinary, covering cosmic ray physics, solar physics, space weather and space travel. PAN will fill an observation gap of galactic cosmic rays in the GeV region, and provide precise information of the spectrum, composition and emission time of energetic particle originated from the Sun. The precise measurement and monitoring of the energetic particles is also a unique contribution to space weather studies. PAN will map the flux and composition of penetrating particles, which cannot be shielded effectively, precisely and continuously, providing valuable input for the assessment of the related health risk, and for the development of an adequate mitigation strategy. PAN has the potential to become a standard on-board instrument for deep space human travel. PAN is based on the proven detection principle of a magnetic spectrometer, but with novel layout and detection concept. It will adopt advanced particle detection technologies and industrial processes optimized for deep space application. The device will require limited mass (~20 kg) and power (~20 W) budget. Dipole magnet sectors built from high field permanent magnet Halbach arrays, instrumented in a modular fashion with high resolution silicon strip detectors, allow to reach an energy resolution better than 10\% for nuclei from H to Fe at 1 GeV/n

Novel microwave apparatus for breast lesions detection: Preliminary clinical results

This paper presents preliminary results of an innovative microwave imaging apparatus for breast lesions detection. Specially, a Huygens Principle based method is employed to process the microwave signals and to build the respective microwave images. The apparatus has been first tested on phantoms. Next, its performance has been verified through clinical examinations on 22 healthy breasts and on 29 breast having lesions, using as gold standard the output of the radiologist study review obtained using conventional techniques. Specifically, we introduce a metric, which is the ratio between maximum and average of the image intensity (MAX/AVG). We found that MAX/AVG of microwave images can be used for classifying breasts containing lesions. In addition, using MAX/AVG as classification parameter, receiver operating characteristic curves have been empirically determined. Furthermore, for one randomly selected breast having lesion, we have demonstrated that the localisation of the inclusion acquired through microwave imaging is compatible with mammography images