MEDLAB Sicilia Le occasioni per l\u2019innovazione sociale e territoriale MEDLAB in Sicily An opportunity for social and territorial innovation

The volume contains written in italian and english language on the reflections and the final results of international partnership experience by Medlab (project promoted by European Commission, MED Program) concerning the case of Living Labs in Sicily. Gelardi and Salemi showed the action of the regional innovation instruments of urban and regional planning at institutional regional level and in particular the role of experience of international cooperation in the comparison of experiences of different kind of territorial innovation in the Euro-Mediterranean area. Marsh shows as the MedLab project has been to examine the current and potential role of Living Labs within regional development policy and the questions thrown up by considering Living Labs as a policy tool. This means looking at issues of development policy and linking their relevance to broader territorial innovation strategies. In addition, governance issues arise for coordinating different Living Lab initiatives within a territorial domain, with the aim of maximising benefits not only to ICT-based innovation and the local knowledge economy, but also to the fields of application that Living Labs address: the environment, the economy, social and government services, etc. The process has thus involved first looking at how these questions can be addressed from the standpoints of different types of actors and how they can engage in reciprocal learning processes. The idea is to develop a model of \u201cinnovation literacy\u201d for local authorities and policy makers, namely the capacity to structure the demand for and supply of ICT-based innovation in order to maximise the concrete benefits to specific policies and initiatives. The ultimate vision is of a virtuous circle whereby regional development authorities apply the Living Lab model in an increasing array of fields and the ICT industry increasingly recognises the value proposition of engaging in co-design processes in concrete local and regional development initiatives. In the following pages, we explore the experiences developed in the MedLab project according to three issues: a) a first exploration of the concept of \u201cterritorial innovation\u201d at the basis of the MedLab hypothesis, and its potential impact on policy and governance; b) The case story of the formation of the original TLL-Sicily partnership in 2007 and how that experience shaped the MedLab workplan; c) The summative conclusions of the MedLab project, exploring the concept of an emergent macro-regional Living Lab. Giambalvo e Lucido involved the analysis of urban change in a social and economic context particularly full of difficulties as the town of Favara. Their contribution tries to define the processes of social innovation when they born and move the first steps, this contribution aims to collect the challenge born inside the Medlab project \u2013 Mediterranean Living Lab for the Territorial Innovation to reflect on some of the outcomes of the Living Lab approach to support territorial innovation in the geographical areas of Sicily concerned by the pilot cases of MedLab (the spatial planning of the province of Ragusa and the strategic plan of the municipality of Favara). More specifically, the remark starts from a work of research on the field and facilitation of communicative processes aimed to identify what dynamics of social innovation, such as transactions among the social actors and what new micro-economic ecosystems are developing in the municipality of Favara, whose background has been explored and treated as territorial Living Lab. Di Bono e Parisi describe the way of the Province of Ragusa tried to initiate arrangements to create a Living Lab from experience of local planning and addressing to the involvement of the local firm to obtain a dinamic digital mapping of local creativity. In the contribution the autors try to show that the concept of innovation is still evolving and the market is not disappearing from this innovation concept, but it is one of its components; the social dimension is increasingly relevant, as well as the institutional innovation. In fact, public boards, dealing with the themes of territorial innovation, can re-design their role starting from networking open innovation approaches and building up public-private partnerships able to activate technological and social innovation processes in a participatory way. Trapani present a cotribution on theme about the report of launching a citizen initiative for the mobilization of the social capital in the second Constituency of Palermo; it includes the Brancaccio neighborhood very famous for the murder of Father Puglisi. The initiative is designed as an integrated program of architectural, urban, cultural, social, environmental and economic qualification for the development (also for touristic aims) of Castle Maredolce and (oncoming) park close the monument and the nearby gardens. The proposal which is maturing in this period, falls within the framework of infrastructural transformations taking place in the districts of Brancaccio and Bandita and compared to the new role of the metropolitan city in the new economies of the Mediterranean, namely in a context in which Sicily seems to remain more at the edge of Europe and see, in the cautious use of its cultural resources, a way of survival. The proposal initially moves from the definition of projects and visions for the architectural setting and the urban and social redefinition of a new square in front of an important Moorish Castle undergoing restoration. Furthermore, the interest is moved to the second municipal constituency. The integrated urban program consists of interventions which specify the contents of the strategic plan of Palermo for the second constituency. The urban part, specifically, is characterized by the presence of important infrastructure and services for the production of small and medium-sized enterprises. It has been possible to examine the characteristics of the citizens, their expectations in terms of their objectives and concerning the concrete possibilities of integrated planning and design within participatory and urban sphere on the background of the failure of urban traditional planning tools

Moving Toward a Strategy for Addressing Climate Displacement of Marine Resources: A Proof-of-Concept

Realistic predictions of climate change effects on natural resources are central to adaptation policies that try to reduce these impacts. However, most current forecasting approaches do not incorporate species-specific, process-based biological information, which limits their ability to inform actionable strategies. Mechanistic approaches, incorporating quantitative information on functional traits, can potentially predict species- and population-specific responses that result from the cumulative impacts of small-scale processes acting at the organismal level, and can be used to infer population-level dynamics and inform natural resources management. Here we present a proof-of-concept study using the European anchovy as a model species that shows how a trait-based, mechanistic species distribution model can be used to explore the vulnerability of marine species to environmental changes, producing quantitative outputs useful for informing fisheries management. We crossed scenarios of temperature and food to generate quantitative maps of selected mechanistic model outcomes (e.g., Maximum Length and Total Reproductive Output). These results highlight changing patterns of source and sink spawning areas as well as the incidence of reproductive failure. This study demonstrates that model predictions based on functional traits can reduce the degree of uncertainty when forecasting future trends of fish stocks. However, to be effective they must be based on high spatial- and temporal resolution environmental data. Such a sensitive and spatially explicit predictive approach may be used to inform more effective adaptive management strategies of resources in novel climatic conditions

Substrate Micropatterning as a New in Vitro Cell Culture System to Study Myelination

Artículo de publicación ISIMyelination is a highly regulated developmental process whereby oligodendrocytes in the central nervous system and Schwann cells in the peripheral nervous system ensheathe axons with a multilayered concentric membrane. Axonal myelination increases the velocity of nerve impulse propagation. In this work, we present a novel in vitro system for coculturing primary dorsal root ganglia neurons along with myelinating cells on a highly restrictive and micropatterned substrate. In this new coculture system, neurons survive for several weeks, extending long axons on defined Matrigel tracks. On these axons, myelinating cells can achieve robust myelination, as demonstrated by the distribution of compact myelin and nodal markers. Under these conditions, neurites and associated myelinating cells are easily accessible for studies on the mechanisms of myelin formation and on the effects of axonal damage on the myelin sheath.Regenerative Medicine and Nanomedicine Initiative of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) RMF-7028 FONDECYT 1080252 CIHR Ministry of Industry of Canada Rio Tinto Alcan Molson Foundatio

An Expanded Multi-scale Monte Carlo Simulation Method for Personalized Radiobiological Effect Estimation in Radiotherapy: a feasibility study

A novel and versatile “bottom-up� approach is developed to estimate the radiobiological effect of clinic radiotherapy. The model consists of multi-scale Monte Carlo simulations from organ to cell levels. At cellular level, accumulated damages are computed using a spectrum-based accumulation algorithm and predefined cellular damage database. The damage repair mechanism is modeled by an expanded reaction-rate two-lesion kinetic model, which were calibrated through replicating a radiobiological experiment. Multi-scale modeling is then performed on a lung cancer patient under conventional fractionated irradiation. The cell killing effects of two representative voxels (isocenter and peripheral voxel of the tumor) are computed and compared. At microscopic level, the nucleus dose and damage yields vary among all nucleuses within the voxels. Slightly larger percentage of cDSB yield is observed for the peripheral voxel (55.0%) compared to the isocenter one (52.5%). For isocenter voxel, survival fraction increase monotonically at reduced oxygen environment. Under an extreme anoxic condition (0.001%), survival fraction is calculated to be 80% and the hypoxia reduction factor reaches a maximum value of 2.24. In conclusion, with biological-related variations, the proposed multi-scale approach is more versatile than the existing approaches for evaluating personalized radiobiological effects in radiotherapy

Rapid and Long-Lasting Increase in Sites for Synapse Assembly during Late-Phase Potentiation in Rat Hippocampal Neurons

Long-term potentiation in hippocampal neurons has stages that correspond to the stages of learning and memory. Early-phase (10–30 min) potentiation is accompanied by rapid increases in clusters or puncta of presynaptic and postsynaptic proteins, which depend on actin polymerization but not on protein synthesis. We have now examined changes in pre- and postsynaptic puncta and structures during glutamate-induced late-phase (3 hr) potentiation in cultured hippocampal neurons. We find that (1) the potentiation is accompanied by long-lasting maintenance of the increases in puncta, which depends on protein synthesis, (2) most of the puncta and synaptic structures are very dynamic, continually assembling and disassembling at sites that are more stable than the puncta or structures themselves, (3) the increase in presynaptic puncta appears to be due to both rapid and more gradual increases in the number of sites where the puncta may form, and also to the stabilization of existing puncta, (4) under control conditions, puncta of postsynaptic proteins behave similarly to puncta of presynaptic proteins and share sites with them, and (5) the increase in presynaptic puncta is accompanied by a similar increase in presumably presynaptic structures, which may form at distinct as well as shared sites. The new sites could contribute to the transition between the early and late phase mechanisms of plasticity by serving as seeds for the formation and maintenance of new synapses, thus acting as local “tags” for protein synthesis-dependent synaptic growth during late-phase plasticity

Postoperative Clinical-Endoscopic Follow-up for GERD and Gastritis After One Anastomosis Gastric Bypass for Morbid Obesity: How, When, and Why

Introduction: The one anastomosis gastric bypass (OAGB) is a widely diffused surgical procedure for morbid obesity. Several studies considered OAGB at risk for biliary reflux and anastomotic ulcers. The aim of the study was to evaluate gastro-esophageal reflux disease (GERD) and esophagitis/gastritis rate after OAGB diagnosed by upper endoscopy (UE), comparing the results with GERD-Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQL) score. Methods: From July 2014 to February 2019, patients underwent OAGB with at least 12-month follow-up were retrospectively evaluated. Clinical evaluation was associated with GERD-HRQL scoring. UE with a mucosal biopsy was also performed. A comparison among clinical scores and endoscopic findings was performed. Results: Two hundred forty-one patients were analyzed in the study. Anthropometric features (BMI, %Excess weight loss, %Total weight loss) were significantly improved. Only 30% of patients with GERD-HQRL>30 showed esophagitis at UE: 11/181 (6.1%) showed grade A erosive esophagitis, 2/181 (1.1%) grade B esophagitis, whereas no patient resulted in grade C/D. Fifty-two patients (28.7%) showed endoscopic remnant gastritis of at least grade 1, with histological gastritis of at least mild grade in 70/181 patients (38.7%). Conclusion: OAGB is a feasible and effective procedure in terms of weight reduction and comorbidities control, but controversies remain about the long-term onset of GERD and bile reflux. The incidence of esophagitis was increased after OAGB. However, the severity and incidence were lower compared to sleeve gastrectomy. Conversely, the incidence of gastritis, ileo-gastric anastomotic inflammation, and HP positivity were not negligible, suggesting the potential benefits of endoscopic surveillance after OAGB