Development of new materials for turbopump bearings

The life requirement for the angular contact ball bearings in the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) high pressure oxygen turbopump (HPOTP) is 7.5 hours. In actual operation, significantly shorter service life was experienced. The objective is to identify bearing materials and/or materials processing techniques offering signficant potential for extending HPOTP bearing performance life. Interactive thermomechanical analysis of the HPOTP bearing-shaft system was performed with the SHABERTH computer program. Bearing fatigue life, ball-race contact stress, heat generation rate, bulk ring temperatures and circumferential stress in the inner rings were quantified as functions of radial load, thrust load and ball-race contact friction. Criteria established from the output of this analysis are being used for material candidate selection

Protocollo di studio prospettico osservazionale dell'anestesia loco-regionale ecoguidata nella chirurgia del piede diabetico

L’ anestesia loco-regionale, nello specifico il blocco periferico del nervo sciatico al poplite, in pazienti diabetici affetti da PNPSD, effettuata con il doppio approccio elettrostimolazione-ecoguida, mediante l’utilizzo di anestetico locale, è risultata efficacie sia in termini di ripresa funzionale dell’arto inferiore sottoposto a chirurgia, sia sul piano analgesico. Infatti la completa ripresa della sensibilità e della motilità è avvenuta entro le sei ore dall’anestesia loco-regionale; la scala VAS=0 misurata intra-operatoriamente e nel post-operatorio è indice dell’effettiva riuscita del blocco nervoso. La procedura è risultata inoltre sicura, in assenza di complicanze, eventi avversi ed alterazioni significative riguardanti la funzionalità e la morfometria nervosa. Non si sono riscontrati né blocchi sensitivi o motori prolungati, a dimostrazione di una posologia adeguata dell’anestetico locale utilizzato; né presenza di parestesie nelle prime sei ore del post-operatorio e neanche durante le tre settimane intercorse tra l’intervento chirurgico ed il primo controllo del follw-up. Dalla registrazione delle terapie domiciliari si evince che tutti i pazienti assumono antiaggreganti, anticoagulanti o doppia antiaggregazione; fattore importante nella scelta del tipo di anestesia da effettuare o meglio sulla predilezione dell’anestesia loco-regionale periferica su un blocco centrale. Dall’analisi dei dati non risulta essere nessuna differenza statisticamente significativa tra le variabili (VCN, soglia di stimolazione, ampiezza del potenziale d’azione, area delle strutture nervose) esaminate nel pre-operatorio e i corrispettivi controlli nel posto-operatorio. I dati ricavati dalle misurazioni effettuate, variabili continue non parametriche, analizzati con il test di Wilcoxon, hanno mostrato un livello di significatività maggiore del limite fissato al 5%

Modern Architecture in the (re)Making of History. Schools and Museums in Greece

Challenging the long-established idea of the Mediterranean as the cradle of modern architecture, this contribution argues that due consideration should be given to moments of profound change, thereby splitting the Mediterranean into its fragments. We may thus restore to its extraordinary cities the many and varied architectural traditions that were able to nurture and blend: the much-debated mediterraneità (Mediterraneity) turns out to be far less ‘monolithic’ in its expression. Along this line of thoughts, schools and museums built in Greece from 1923 to the aftermath of WWII may well reveal the role of architecture, when called upon to express the founding values of a collective identity. The dialectic between tradition and innovation, eclecticism and modernism, uncovers its meaning case by case.This contribution is partly based on research in Greece carried out with funding from the Greek Scholarships Foundation IKY (1999-2000), the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2002), and the A. Onassis Foundation (2006). It is partly based on Pallini, C. (2015). Il moderno nel farsi e rifarsi della storia. Riflessioni sull’architettura della scuola e del museo in Turchia, Grecia, Egitto. In P. Carlotti, D. Nencini & P. Posocco (Eds), Nuovi Mediterranei (pp. 222-241). Milan: Franco Angeli This work was conducted under the project MODSCAPES - Modernist Reinventions of the Rural Landscape (HERA.15.097). This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 649307.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

On the orientation and magnitude of the black hole spin in galactic nuclei

Massive black holes in galactic nuclei vary their mass M and spin vector J due to accretion. In this study we relax, for the first time, the assumption that accretion can be either chaotic, i.e. when the accretion episodes are randomly and isotropically oriented, or coherent, i.e. when they occur all in a preferred plane. Instead, we consider different degrees of anisotropy in the fueling, never confining to accretion events on a fixed direction. We follow the black hole growth evolving contemporarily mass, spin modulus a and spin direction. We discover the occurrence of two regimes. An early phase (M <~ 10 million solar masses) in which rapid alignment of the black hole spin direction to the disk angular momentum in each single episode leads to erratic changes in the black hole spin orientation and at the same time to large spins (a ~ 0.8). A second phase starts when the black hole mass increases above >~ 10 million solar masses and the accretion disks carry less mass and angular momentum relatively to the hole. In the absence of a preferential direction the black holes tend to spin-down in this phase. However, when a modest degree of anisotropy in the fueling process (still far from being coherent) is present, the black hole spin can increase up to a ~ 1 for very massive black holes (M >~ 100 million solar masses), and its direction is stable over the many accretion cycles. We discuss the implications that our results have in the realm of the observations of black hole spin and jet orientations.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

L'urbanistica corporativa e i piani italiani per le città dell'Albania

Il contributo prende in esame alcuni piani per le città albanesi elaborati dopo l’occupazione militare italiana del 1939 nell’ambito dell’Ufficio Centrale per l’Edilizia e l’Urbanistica. Mentre i piani italiani (innanzitutto quello per Pavia) si confrontano con realtà urbane consolidate, i piani per le città albanesi vengono concepiti parallelamente a un piano di ricostruzione territoriale e infrastrutturale, configurando quello scenario coerente di sviluppo nazionale auspicato dai teorici dell’urbanistica corporativa. Alcuni esempi: Tirana viene completamente trasformata per assume il ruolo e il carattere di una città capitale; Durazzo, teatro di grandi bonifiche e imponenti opere marittime, diventa una moderna città-porto con una zona balneare; il piccolo porto di Santi Quaranta davanti all’isola di Corfù, ribattezzato Porto Edda (1940), viene prefigurato come una stazione turistica, la tappa ideale per visitare i siti archeologici di Fenice e Butrinto riportati alla luce dalla missione archeologica italiana. I piani per le città albanesi hanno in comune l’ingente quantità di indagini preliminari, sul territorio, le infrastrutture, il paesaggio, le attività agricole. La ‘romanità’, un tema ricorrente nell’Italia di quegli anni, viene interpretata in diverso modo, attraverso l’intreccio tra ricerca archeologica e ricostruzione retorica del passato. Il principale tratto comune tra le esperienze italiane e quelle albanesi è la ricerca di una tecnica relativa ai piani di sviluppo regionali, un tema che stava emergendo nel dibattito urbanistico internazionale dell’epoca. Il nostro contributo si conclude mettendo a confronto i piani con le strutture urbane attuali delle relative città

NAFLD: Diagnostic Algorithms for Regulating Patient Fluxes

The global prevalence of NAFLD is estimated to be over 25% and it is already the leading cause of chronic liver disease in industrialized countries, as a consequence of the spread of obesity and metabolic syndrome. The prognosis of NAFLD is generally benign in the absence of fibrosis, but liver fibrosis rapidly progresses in 20% of the cases and can lead to cirrhosis and/or HCC. This review analysis focuses on non-invasive fibrosis testing strategies for patients with NAFLD in order to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of diagnosis and care, regulating secondary care referral fluxes. An integrated management plan between primary care and secondary care with a defined algorithm of non-invasive testing to stratify the risk of NAFLD fibrosis is indispensable to increase the early diagnosis of fibrosis but also decrease unnecessary referrals

The Italian debate after the ‘retreat’

The ‘Italian retreat from modern architecture’ sanctioned by R. Banham (1959), led into the different lines of inquiry undertaken by Italian architects in the Sixties and Seventies, opening the way to mutual exchange between urban studies, planning and design. This articulated debate remains largely overlooked, perhaps because many statements circulated in Italian through handouts, pamphlets and transcripts. Nevertheless, the mutual influence between varied theoretical positions deserves due consideration, partly because this was a period of transition from the major problems of post-war reconstruction to the new demands brought about by the metropolitan dimension acquired by North-Italian cities, facing a new wave of industrialisation and related migratory movements. This paper discusses key factors, and figures, which fed the Italian architectural debate at this crucial stage, with a focus on the contribution made by the School of Architecture of Milano.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Classification of professional values based on motivational content: An exploratory study on Italian Adolescents

This study applies a multidimensional scaling (MSD) technique to investigate the structural validity of the Work Values Inventory for Adolescents with a sample of Italian students. The MSD results indicated the presence of two underlying orthogonal dimensions: individuality versus sociality and conservation versus exploration. Implications for future research are also discussed. © 2011 The Author(s)

Cannabidiol stimulates AML-1a-dependent glial differentiation and inhibits glioma stem-like cells proliferation by inducing autophagy in a TRPV2-dependent manner

Glioma stem-like cells (GSCs) correspond to a tumor cell subpopulation, involved in glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) tumor ini- tiation and acquired chemoresistance. Currently, drug-induced differentiation is considered as a promising approach to eradi- cate this tumor-driving cell population. Recently, the effect of cannabinoids (CBs) in promoting glial differentiation and inhibiting gliomagenesis has been evidenced. Herein, we demonstrated that cannabidiol (CBD) by activating transient receptor potential vanilloid-2 (TRPV2) triggers GSCs differentiation activating the autophagic process and inhibits GSCs proliferation and clonogenic capability. Above all, CBD and carmustine (BCNU) in combination overcome the high resistance of GSCs to BCNU treatment, by inducing apoptotic cell death. Acute myeloid leukemia (Aml-1) transcription factors play a pivotal role in GBM proliferation and differentiation and it is known that Aml-1 control the expression of several nociceptive receptors. So, we evaluated the expression levels of Aml-1 spliced variants (Aml-1a, b and c) in GSCs and during their differentiation. We found that Aml-1a is upregulated during GSCs differentiation, and its downregulation restores a stem cell phenotype in differ- entiated GSCs. Since it was demonstrated that CBD induces also TRPV2 expression and that TRPV2 is involved in GSCs differ- entiation, we evaluated if Aml-1a interacted directly with TRPV2 promoters. Herein, we found that Aml-1a binds TRPV2 promoters and that Aml-1a expression is upregulated by CBD treatment, in a TRPV2 and PI3K/AKT dependent manner. Alto- gether, these results support a novel mechanism by which CBD inducing TRPV2-dependent autophagic process stimulates Aml-1a-dependent GSCs differentiation, abrogating the BCNU chemoresistance in GSCs