Preserving and Promoting the Urban Landscape. The French and Italian debates of the Post-World War II decades

The issues of promotion and preservation of urban landscapes are increasingly gaining prominence in international cultural and political debates. These issues can lead to tensions, especially for historical cities, partly because the concept of urban landscape as an element of cultural heritage is still to be acknowledged, particularly on a legislative level. Nevertheless, as the paper highlights, this concept was theorized in Europe for the reconstruction of historical cities in the second post-war period. This paper focuses on the French and Italian debates of the post-World War II decades, because they both elaborated concepts of urban landscape which were particularly advanced for the time. This article attempts to demonstrate their possible influence on the contemporary international debate developed by UNESCO between 2005 and 2011. Furthermore, this paper inspects the origins of the concept of the historic centre, developed particularly in Italy during the 1960s, and examines its relationship with the urban landscape. The reasons for the success of the historic centre are highlighted together with the simultaneous failure of the urban landscape at the legislative level, by inspecting the similarities, the divergences, and the historical connection between the two notions

Le informazioni sul Business Model nel bilancio di esercizio - Aspetti teorici ed evidenze empiriche

la presente tesi tratta l'argomento del business model all'interno della documentazione societaria

MULTILATERAL TRAINING METHOD AS A PROACTIVE EDUCATIONAL STRATEGY TO PREVENT BULLYING IN ADOLESCENTS

To date, there is no standard definition of bullying, however, it can be characterized as a type of aggression, systematic and repeated, and based upon an imbalance of power in relationships through repeated verbal, physical and/or social behaviour that intends to cause physical, social and/or psychological harm. Youth with higher levels of resilience and self-efficacy are less likely to engage in aggressive behaviours or be victims of bullying. Previous anti-bullying approaches have often achieved no reduction in bullying behaviour. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the effect of 12 weeks of extracurricular multilateral training on the risk for students (14-16 years) to be involved in bullying. Sixty male students were allocated to an experimental group (n = 30) that performed psychoeducational activities combined with physical exercise training and team games (90 min, 2d·week-1) or control group (n=30). Before and after the intervention, we used CYRM-28 that assessed individual capacities and resources, relationship with primary caregiver, contextual factors and total resilience, and SEQ-C that measured academic, social, emotional, and total self-efficacy. Four participants from the experimental group withdrew. Significant improvements of crucial relevance were found for the resilience and self-efficacy scales (p < 0.05) in the experimental group. We found that extracurricular multilateral training may improve the resilience and self-efficacy in adolescents and make them less likely to engage in aggressive behaviour or be bullied. Multilateral training method should be considered as an effective alternative to the anti-bullying approach, highlighting the crucial role of the Physical Education professionals in the promotion of proactive educational strategies to prevent bullying. Article visualizations

HDAC4 preserves skeletal muscle structure following long-term denervation by mediating distinct cellular responses

BACKGROUND: Denervation triggers numerous molecular responses in skeletal muscle, including the activation of catabolic pathways and oxidative stress, leading to progressive muscle atrophy. Histone deacetylase 4 (HDAC4) mediates skeletal muscle response to denervation, suggesting the use of HDAC inhibitors as a therapeutic approach to neurogenic muscle atrophy. However, the effects of HDAC4 inhibition in skeletal muscle in response to long-term denervation have not been described yet. METHODS: To further study HDAC4 functions in response to denervation, we analyzed mutant mice in which HDAC4 is specifically deleted in skeletal muscle. RESULTS: After an initial phase of resistance to neurogenic muscle atrophy, skeletal muscle with a deletion of HDAC4 lost structural integrity after 4 weeks of denervation. Deletion of HDAC4 impaired the activation of the ubiquitin-proteasome system, delayed the autophagic response, and dampened the OS response in skeletal muscle. Inhibition of the ubiquitin-proteasome system or the autophagic response, if on the one hand, conferred resistance to neurogenic muscle atrophy; on the other hand, induced loss of muscle integrity and inflammation in mice lacking HDAC4 in skeletal muscle. Moreover, treatment with the antioxidant drug Trolox prevented loss of muscle integrity and inflammation in in mice lacking HDAC4 in skeletal muscle, despite the resistance to neurogenic muscle atrophy. CONCLUSIONS: These results reveal new functions of HDAC4 in mediating skeletal muscle response to denervation and lead us to propose the combined use of HDAC inhibitors and antioxidant drugs to treat neurogenic muscle atrophy

Human–Robot Interaction for Improving Fuselage Assembly Tasks: A Case Study

In current industrial systems, automation is a very important aspect for assessing manufacturing production performance related to working times, accuracy of operations and quality. In particular, the introduction of a robotic system in the working area should guarantee some improvements, such as risks reduction for human operators, better quality results and a speed increase for production processes. In this context, human action remains still necessary to carry out part of the subtasks, as in the case of composites assembly processes. This study aims at presenting a case study regarding the reorganization of the working activity carried out in workstation in which a composite fuselage panel is assembled in order to demonstrate, by means of simulation tool, that some of the advantages previously listed can be achieved also in aerospace industry. In particular, an entire working process for composite fuselage panel assembling will be simulated and analyzed in order to demonstrate and verify the applicability and effectiveness of human-robot interaction (HRI), focusing on working times and ergonomics and respecting the constraints imposed by standards ISO 10218 and ISO TS 15066. Results show the effectiveness of HRI both in terms of assembly performance, by reducing working times and ergonomics-for which the simulation provides a very low risk index

Β-blockers treatment of cardiac surgery patients enhances isolation and improves phenotype of cardiosphere-derived cells

Β-blockers (BB) are a primary treatment for chronic heart disease (CHD), resulting in prognostic and symptomatic benefits. Cardiac cell therapy represents a promising regenerative treatment and, for autologous cell therapy, the patients clinical history may correlate with the biology of resident progenitors and the quality of the final cell product. This study aimed at uncovering correlations between clinical records of biopsy-donor CHD patients undergoing cardiac surgery and the corresponding yield and phenotype of cardiospheres (CSs) and CS-derived cells (CDCs), which are a clinically relevant population for cell therapy, containing progenitors. We describe a statistically significant association between BB therapy and improved CSs yield and CDCs phenotype. We show that BB-CDCs have a reduced fibrotic-like CD90 + subpopulation, with reduced expression of collagen-I and increased expression of cardiac genes, compared to CDCs from non-BB donors. Moreover BB-CDCs had a distinctive microRNA expression profile, consistent with reduced fibrotic features (miR-21, miR-29a/b/c downregulation), and enhanced regenerative potential (miR-1, miR-133, miR-101 upregulation) compared to non-BB. In vitro adrenergic pharmacological treatments confirmed cytoprotective and anti-fibrotic effects of β1-blocker on CDCs. This study shows anti-fibrotic and pro-commitment effects of BB treatment on endogenous cardiac reparative cells, and suggests adjuvant roles of β-blockers in cell therapy applications

An International Survey on Taking Up a Career in Cardiovascular Research: Opportunities and Biases toward Would-Be Physician-Scientists

Background Cardiovascular research is the main shaper of clinical evidence underpinning decision making, with its cyclic progression of junior researchers to mature faculty members. Despite efforts at improving cardiovascular research training, several unmet needs persist. We aimed to appraise current perceptions on cardiovascular research training with an international survey. Methods and Results We administered a 20-closed-question survey to mentors and mentees belonging to different international institutions. A total of 247 (12%) surveys were available (out of 2,000 invitations). Overall, mentees and mentors were reasonably satisfied with the educational and research resources. Significant differences were found analyzing results according to gender, geographic area, training and full-time researcher status. Specifically, women proved significantly less satisfied than men, disclosed access to fewer resources and less support from mentors (all P Conclusions Several potential biases appear to be present in the way training in cardiovascular research is provided worldwide, including one against women. If confirmed, these data require proactive measures to decrease discriminations and improve the cardiovascular research training quality

Modeling Human Muscular Dystrophies in Zebrafish: Mutant Lines, Transgenic Fluorescent Biosensors, and Phenotyping Assays

: Muscular dystrophies (MDs) are a heterogeneous group of myopathies characterized by progressive muscle weakness leading to death from heart or respiratory failure. MDs are caused by mutations in genes involved in both the development and organization of muscle fibers. Several animal models harboring mutations in MD-associated genes have been developed so far. Together with rodents, the zebrafish is one of the most popular animal models used to reproduce MDs because of the high level of sequence homology with the human genome and its genetic manipulability. This review describes the most important zebrafish mutant models of MD and the most advanced tools used to generate and characterize all these valuable transgenic lines. Zebrafish models of MDs have been generated by introducing mutations to muscle-specific genes with different genetic techniques, such as (i) N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea (ENU) treatment, (ii) the injection of specific morpholino, (iii) tol2-based transgenesis, (iv) TALEN, (v) and CRISPR/Cas9 technology. All these models are extensively used either to study muscle development and function or understand the pathogenetic mechanisms of MDs. Several tools have also been developed to characterize these zebrafish models by checking (i) motor behavior, (ii) muscle fiber structure, (iii) oxidative stress, and (iv) mitochondrial function and dynamics. Further, living biosensor models, based on the expression of fluorescent reporter proteins under the control of muscle-specific promoters or responsive elements, have been revealed to be powerful tools to follow molecular dynamics at the level of a single muscle fiber. Thus, zebrafish models of MDs can also be a powerful tool to search for new drugs or gene therapies able to block or slow down disease progression