Generation and characterisation of progenitor cell lines from human fetal kidneys

Kidney disease is a global public health burden. Chronic kidney disease, with an incidence increasing annually in the Western world, is a progressive kidney damage that can lead to end-stage renal failure (CKD5), in which kidney function is completely lost. CKD5 treatment options are dialysis, which is not a cure for kidney disease and kidney transplantation limited by the shortage of donor organs. Kidney disease new interventions have two aims: 1. preventing the progression to CKD5 2. creating a healthy organ in vitro with bioengineered scaffolds in order to permanently replace defective kidneys. The first aim involves the utilisation of drug- and cellular- based therapies to delay or to stop the progression to CKD5. However, this aim is made problematic by the paucity of available primary human renal cell lines to be used for new drugs testing and the incapability to accurately assess the efficacy of cellular-based therapies in appropriate animal models. The PhD Thesis illustrates the attempt in meeting this need. The thesis focuses on the generation and characterisation of human progenitor cell lines and further assessment of their potential to be used as cell-based therapy. I have generated human fetal cell lines from healthy kidneys, based on the expression of known markers of renal progenitor cells, CD24 and CD133. I have characterised their gene expression profile over multiple passages, assessing the expression of progenitor and lineage markers and evaluated their capacity to differentiate towards multiple lineages (osteoblasts, adipocytes and renal epithelia). Furthermore, the potential of these cells to be used as therapy has been assessed in mouse model of acute renal injury induced by folic acid after comparing the course of the folic acid-induced renal injury in immunocompetent and immunodeficient mice strains

Il responsabile unico del procedimento nelle dinamiche organizzative delle amministrazioni pubbliche. Tendenze e prospettive

L’articolo analizza il ruolo del Responsabile unico del procedimento (RUP) nelle dinamiche organizzative delle amministrazioni pubbliche con particolare attenzione ai rapporti con altre figure chiave del procedimento contrattuale quali il dirigente dell’unità organizzativa, i componenti della commissione di gara, il direttore dell’esecuzione e il direttore dei lavori. Nel confronto tra RUP ed altri soggetti la disciplina tende, in effetti, a prediligere soluzioni peculiari o case by case che esulano dai rapporti organizzativi tradizionali. In tale complesso quadro di relazioni appare opportuna una valorizzazione del ruolo di coordinamento del RUP anche mediante l’acquisizione delle competenze di project manager e l’utilizzo delle moderne tecnologie digitali al fine di favorire l’accelerazione nell’affidamento dei contratti pubblici auspicata dalle recenti riforme.The article analyzes the role of the sole project manager (RUP) in the organizational dynamics of public administrations with particular attention to relations with other key figures in the contractual procedure such as the manager of the organizational unit, the members of the tender commission, the director of execution and the construction manager. In the comparison between the RUP and other subjects, the discipline tends, in fact, to favor particular or case by case solutions that go beyond traditional organizational relationships. In this complex framework of relations, it appears appropriate to enhance the coordination role of the RUP also through the acquisition of project manager skills and the use of modern digital technologies in order to facilitate the acceleration in the award of public contracts advocated by recent reforms

Rigenerazione urbana e città informale nel contesto europeo. Profili evolutivi, vantaggi e criticità

L’articolo tratta i profili evolutivi, i vantaggi e le criticità della rigenerazione urbana e della città informale nel contesto europeo. Al fine di riqualificare le città, i cittadini utilizzano sia strumenti urbanistici sia iniziative informali, prediligendo il modello che si adatta maggiormente alla realtà sociale e giuridica di riferimento. Sussiste, in particolare, una continuità tra formalità e informalità nelle esperienze europee di rigenerazione urbana che può agevolare il ruolo partecipativo dei cittadini nella cura della città

Il ruolo del privato nei procedimenti per le energie rinnovabili. Uno strumento per lo sviluppo sostenibile?

Il lavoro è volto a valutare se i soggetti direttamente e significativamente coinvolti nella realizzazione di progetti per le energie rinnovabili abbiano un effettivo ruolo nell’ambito dell’adozione del provvedimento di autorizzazione che possa promuovere la sostenibilità ambientale. Del resto, nel settore delle energie rinnovabili può essere determinante instaurare un dialogo tra proponenti privati e decisore pubblico per trovare una mediazione tra gli interessi delle parti e consentire una promozione nella realizzazione dei progetti

Key Performance Indicators for Sustainable Urban Development: Case Study Approach

Abstract Built environment energy efficiency improvement at the urban scale plays a key role to reduce the detrimental environmental impacts. However, the design and implementation of sustainable development scenarios is a complex process involving a large number of decision criteria and actors. An on-going Interreg project, "CesbaMED", emphasizes to employ a common sustainability assessment framework at the urban scale, which is a set of eight regional assessment tools, named CESBA MED SNTool. This tool is an innovative decision-making process, which supports the development of energy efficiency plans for building stock in the context of their surrounding neighbourhoods. Moreover, this tool produces the MED Passport, which compares the sustainability performances of buildings and neighbourhoods. This study aims at presenting the on-going research activities with a specific focus on the selection of the set of relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) among the indicators of CesbaMED project for the case study of the city of Turin (Italy), based on stakeholders' preferences. A workshop was organized to select the criteria and to assign the stakeholders' preferences using the "Delphi" survey method. This method is used in order to investigate the stakeholders' perspectives on the impact of each indicator on the different future sustainable scenarios. The results show that the stakeholders decided to remove and modify some KPIs for the specific case study of Turin with respect to its particularities

The Shadow of the Italian Colonial Experience: The Impact of Collective Emotions on Intentions to Help the Victims’ Descendants

Recalling the Italian colonial experience elicits the collective emotions of guilt, shame, and ingroup-focused anger. We expected that these emotions would predict different reparation intentions in favor of the colonized populations' descendants. Students and non-students were recruited (N = 152) and asked to rate their emotions of collective guilt, shame, and anger for the violence that their ingroup had perpetrated against colonized people. Results showed that shame affected intentions to provide economic compensation to current inhabitants of the ex-colonies. This relationship was mediated by concerns of damage for the ingroup's image. Anger toward the ingroup predicted intentions to help immigrants from the ex-colonies now living in Italy. Interestingly, empathy toward the outgroup mediated the latter relation. Finally, collective guilt was not reliably associated with any reparation strategy. These findings have implications for theory and for the historical collective memory of Italian colonialism

Picturing the Other: Targets of Delegitimization across Time

Italian Fascist propaganda was compared with contemporary right-wing material to explore how political propaganda depicts specific target groups in different historical periods. Taking the theory of delegitimization as the theoretical framework, we analyzed visual images concerning despised social groups used by the Fascist regime and current images of contemporary targets of social resentment used by Lega Nord (currently part of the governing coalition). Images of Jewish and Black people published in the Fascist magazine La Difesa della Razza were classified according to eight delegitimizing strategies, as were images of immigrants used on Lega Nord propaganda posters. Although the target group has changed, six of the eight strategies of delegitimization were used in both periods. In most cases, overlap was found in the way target groups were portrayed in the past and in the present

Efficient superdense coding in the presence of non-Markovian noise

Many quantum information tasks rely on entanglement, which is used as a resource, for example, to enable efficient and secure communication. Typically, noise, accompanied by loss of entanglement, reduces the efficiency of quantum protocols. We develop and demonstrate experimentally a superdense coding scheme with noise, where the decrease of entanglement in Alice's encoding state does not reduce the efficiency of the information transmission. Having almost fully dephased classical two-photon polarization state at the time of encoding with concurrence $0.163\pm0.007$, we reach values of mutual information close to $1.52\pm 0.02$ ($1.89\pm 0.05$) with 3-state (4-state) encoding. This high efficiency relies both on non-Markovian features, that Bob exploits just before his Bell-state measurement, and on very high visibility ($99.6\%\pm0.1\%$) of the Hong-Ou-Mandel interference within the experimental set-up. Our proof-of-principle results with measurements on mutual information pave the way for exploiting non-Markovianity to improve the efficiency and security of quantum information processing tasks.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. V2: Minor change

Intracranial meningioma in two coeval adult cats from the same litter

In this report we describe the occurrence of intracranial meningioma in two adult cats from the same litter. The location of the meningioma varied: one tumour was at the level of the brainstem, and the other was affecting the temporal and piriform lobes. The cat with the brainstem meningioma was treated with radiotherapy and the littermate had a rostrotentorial craniectomy for tumour removal. Both cats had a histopathological diagnosis of grade I meningioma of a predominantly fibrous subtype. Cases of familial meningioma in cats have not previously been described in the veterinary literature. However, familial meningioma is well described in humans and it is possible that cases are underestimated in animals. We discuss the possible genetic background and other causes, as well as challenges we may face in veterinary medicine in identifying these associations

Ex vivo evaluation of imatinib mesylate for induction of cell death on canine neoplastic mast cells with mutations in c-Kit exon 11 via apoptosis

Several studies of canine spontaneous mast cell tumours have described mutations in the c-kit proto-oncogene. These mutations produce a constitutively activated product and have been suggested to play a role in the malignant transformation of mast cells. We hypothesize that the selective tyrosine kinase inhibitor imatinib mesylate inhibits signal transduction and induces apoptosis when tested in cutaneous canine mast cell tumour samples positive for mutation in c-kit exon 11. Three-dimensional ex vivo cultures of canine grade II mast cell tumour treated with STI-571 at 48, 72, and 96 h and tested for signal transduction and apoptosis using appropriate assays were used. There was a progressive and significant increase in caspase-3 and TUNEL-positive mast cells compared to the untreated cultures. Additionally, a concurrent reduced expression of Ki67 and BCL-2 was observed. Furthermore, the treated cultures showed a marked reduction of Kit expression. Our results demonstrate that STI-571 induces Caspase-dependent apoptosis in a canine neoplastic mast cells possessing mutations in c-kit exon 11. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht