Vegetable gardens for educational purposes: a specific toolkit for didactic contexts

[EN] The paper reports on how urban agriculture, as a sharing system, is becoming a way to increase aggregation, grouping, relationships in a local context, which could turn into an educational and emotional resource within the urban context. This paper will examine the design of community gardens within semi-public spaces in didactic context (schools, associations, learning spaces). One of the research objectives is to improve the quality of urban landscapes by answering citizens’ need for social interaction and fostering the role that community plays in it. Through co-design sessions with different communities related to specific schools, the design output aims at the creation of a systemic space made by a vegetable garden and his convivial spaces. This would strengthen internal local connections, and trigger positivity and better learning performances among users. The expected result is a set of design tools and guidelines that allow these realities to deal with the creation of vegetable gardens by defining the layouts, the functions and the experiences.http://ocs.editorial.upv.es/index.php/HEAD/HEAD18Mastrantoni, C.; Mazzarello, M. (2018). Vegetable gardens for educational purposes: a specific toolkit for didactic contexts. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 1297-1306. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD18.2018.8194OCS1297130

Towards a new “urban sensitivity”.The role of design as support to social innovation

reserved2In an urban and social context where individualism and anonymity are increasingly asserting themselves, the role of design is fundamental to define innovative ways to share and “build” urban relationships. These models try to involve citizens as users, spectators, actors, as agents of change: they become protagonists of the construction of urban fragments that could be described as preciously "uncertain", structurally "undecided" and seemingly "weak". They use a molecular approach: considering the micro as a way to renew the macro, giving value to gestures and dreams of the individual. The paper focuses on the Adaptable Self-managed Itinerant Pavilion (PAAI), a changeable and flexible space that doesn’t leave indelible marks in the territory: with the ambition to build a collective consciousness that might be intangible, it is long lasting. It's part of the “CampUS” research, whose name emphasizes the word “us” representing a challenge, an opportunity, a goal and a tool.mixedDi Prete, Barbara; Mazzarello, MartinaDi Prete, Barbara; Mazzarello, Martin

‘Science for Citizens Campus’. New Methods for Research and Learning Environments.

This paper focuses on the evolving requirements of learning and research environments based on an on-field ongoing research aimed at defining a meta-design project for the ‘Science for Citizens Campus’, the new State University of Milan facilities to be settled in the former Milano Expo 2015 site. The specific aim of this work is to present the innovative research methodology which has been purposely conceived - being the strategic design of the process an instrumental component to achieve the final result

The effect of co-location on human communication networks

The ability to rewire ties in communication networks is vital for large-scale human cooperation and the spread of new ideas. We show that lack of researcher co-location during the COVID-19 lockdown caused the loss of more than 4,800 weak ties -- ties between distant parts of the social system that enable the flow of novel information -- over 18 months in the email network of a large North American university. Furthermore, we find that the re-introduction of partial co-location through a hybrid work mode led to a partial regeneration of weak ties. We quantify the effect of co-location in forming ties through a model based on physical proximity, which is able to reproduce all empirical observations. Results indicate that employees who are not co-located are less likely to form ties, weakening the spread of information in the workplace. Such findings could contribute to a better understanding of the spatio-temporal dynamics of human communication networks, and help organizations that are moving towards the implementation of hybrid work policies evaluate the minimum amount of in-person interaction necessary for a productive work environment.Comment: 19 pages, ~2500 words, 6 main figures. Supplementary information included as appendix. v3/v4 cleaned supplementary info. First two authors are co-firs

Berberine Affects Mitochondrial Activity and Cell Growth of Leukemic Cells from Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Patients

B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) results from accumulation of leukemic cells that are subject to iterative re-activation cycles and clonal expansion in lymphoid tissues. The effects of the well-tolerated alkaloid Berberine (BRB), used for treating metabolic disorders, were studied on ex-vivo leukemic cells activated in vitro by microenvironment stimuli. BRB decreased expression of survival/proliferation-associated molecules (e.g. Mcl-1/Bcl-xL) and inhibited stimulation-induced cell cycle entry, irrespective of TP53 alterations or chromosomal abnormalities. CLL cells rely on oxidative phosphorylation for their bioenergetics, particularly during the activation process. In this context, BRB triggered mitochondrial dysfunction and aberrant cellular energetic metabolism. Decreased ATP production and NADH recycling, associated with mitochondrial uncoupling, were not compensated by increased lactic fermentation. Antioxidant defenses were affected and could not correct the altered intracellular redox homeostasis. The data thus indicated that the cytotoxic/cytostatic action of BRB at 10-30 μM might be mediated, at least in part, by BRB-induced impairment of oxidative phosphorylation and the associated increment of oxidative damage, with consequent inhibition of cell activation and eventual cell death. Bioenergetics and cell survival were instead unaffected in normal B lymphocytes at the same BRB concentrations. Interestingly, BRB lowered the apoptotic threshold of ABT-199/Venetoclax, a promising BH3-mimetic whose cytotoxic activity is counteracted by high Mcl-1/Bcl-xL expression and increased mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation. Our results indicate that, while CLL cells are in the process of building their survival and cycling armamentarium, the presence of BRB affects this process

Characterizing Features of Human Circulating B Cells Carrying CLL-Like Stereotyped Immunoglobulin Rearrangements

Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) is characterized by the accumulation of monoclonal CD5+ B cells with low surface immunoglobulins (IG). About 40% of CLL clones utilize quasi-identical B cell receptors, defined as stereotyped BCR. CLL-like stereotyped-IG rearrangements are present in normal B cells as a part of the public IG repertoire. In this study, we collected details on the representation and features of CLL-like stereotyped-IG in the IGH repertoire of B-cell subpopulations purified from the peripheral blood of nine healthy donors. The B-cell subpopulations were also fractioned according to the expression of surface CD5 molecules and IG light chain, IGκ and IGλ. IG rearrangements, obtained by high throughput sequencing, were scanned for the presence of CLL-like stereotyped-IG. CLL-like stereotyped-IG did not accumulate preferentially in the CD5+ B cells, nor in specific B-cell subpopulations or the CD5+ cell fraction thereof, and their distribution was not restricted to a single IG light chain type. CLL-like stereotyped-IG shared with the corresponding CLL stereotype rearrangements the IGHV mutational status. Instead, for other features such as IGHV genes and frequency, CLL stereotyped-IGs presented a CLL-like subset specific behavior which could, or could not, be consistent with CLL stereotyped-IGs. Therefore, as opposed to the immuno-phenotype, the features of the CLL stereotyped-IG repertoire suggest a CLL stereotyped subset-specific ontogeny. Overall, these findings suggest that the immune-genotype can provide essential details in tracking and defining the CLL cell of origin