Genome-wide association studies in kidney diseases: Quo Vadis

A genome-wide association (GWA) study is a genetic epidemiology approach designed to scan genetic variation across the entire human genome in order to identify genetic associations with phenotypic traits as well as the presence or absence of a disease. Hundreds of thousands of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), the most common form of genetic variant, serve as markers. SNPs are assayed and related to diseases or health-related conditions applying bioinformatics algorithms. This has become feasible thanks to the recent technological improvements in the so-called high-throughput technologies. The analysis identifies regions (loci) with statistically significant differences in allele or genotype frequencies between cases and controls and so the variations are said to be ‘associated’ with the diseas

Luci ed ombre delle norme di rilievo internazional(privat)istico nella recente riforma del processo civile

The purpose of this contribution is to analyse the recent reform of civil procedure, as set out in Legislative Decree no. 149/2022, from the perspective of international law. To this end, the three interventions concerning (i) the procedures for giving effect to foreign judgments, (ii) the law applicable to personal separation and divorce, and (iii) the new type of procedure called ‘revocazione’, that can be activated in the event that a judgment has led to the condemnation of the Italian State by the Strasbourg Court, are taken into consideration. As those are very heterogeneous disciplines, it is difficult to give an overall assessment of these novelties, which are therefore examined individually. However, it is possible to state that the delegated legislator was motivated by the shara-ble intention of responding to critical issues and concrete needs that had already been pointed out in literature and emerged in judicial practice. It is not certain that this result has actually been achieved on all fronts, although it will be necessary to wait for the ap-plication of the new rules, and to assess their interpretation, in order to come to a more complete evaluation

Mitochondrial caseinolytic protease p: A possible novel prognostic marker and therapeutic target in cancer

Caseinolytic protease P (ClpP) is a mitochondrial serine protease. In mammalian cells, the heterodimerization of ClpP and its AAA+ ClpX chaperone results in a complex called ClpXP, which has a relevant role in protein homeostasis and in maintaining mitochondrial functionality through the degradation of mitochondrial misfolded or damaged proteins. Recent studies demonstrate that ClpP is upregulated in primary and metastatic human tumors, supports tumor cell proliferation, and its overexpression desensitizes cells to cisplatin. Interestingly, small modulators of ClpP activity, both activators and inhibitors, are able to impair oxidative phosphorylation in cancer cells and to induce apoptosis. This review provides an overview of the role of ClpP in regulating mitochondrial functionality, in supporting tumor cell proliferation and cisplatin resistance; finally, we discuss whether this protease could represent a new prognostic marker and therapeutic target for the treatment of cancer

Riconoscimento delle sentenze straniere in materia familiare

Le regole di diritto processuale civile internazionale che disciplinano, oggi, il regime di riconoscimento ed esecuzione delle decisioni straniere incidenti sugli status ed i rapporti familiari si caratterizzano per una frammentazione normativa che risulta forse ancor pi\uf9 accentuata di quella relativa alla materia civile e commerciale in termini generali. Non soltanto, infatti, i riferimenti necessari si collocano in un contesto \u201cmultilivello\u201d in cui diviene fondamentale sapersi orientare, cogliendo i precisi limiti applicativi di ciascun regime ed individuando quale di essi risulti prevalente in caso di stratificazione di norme astrattamente idonee a regolare la medesima fattispecie: nello specifico contesto familiare, lo stesso intervento a livello di Unione europea sta divenendo sempre pi\uf9 copioso e frammentato al suo interno, anche in ragione del recente ricorso all\u2019istituto della cd. cooperazione rafforzata, volta a consentire un\u2019integrazione sempre pi\uf9 intensa tra i soli Paesi membri che desiderino farne parte, ma, allo stesso tempo, passibile di creare un complesso sistema normativo a \u201cgeometrie variabili\u201d, a seconda della specifica sotto-categoria del diritto di famiglia volta a volta interessata

Numerical Investigation on mixture formation and combustion process of innovative piston bowl geometries in a swirl-supported light-duty diesel engine

In recent years, several innovative diesel combustion systems were developed and optimized in order to enhance the air and injected fuel mixing for engine e-ciency improvements and to mitigate the formation of fuel-rich regions for soot emissions reduction. With these aims, a three-dimensional computational fl uid dynamics (3D-CFD) numerical study was carried out in order to evaluate the impact of three di erent piston bowl geometries on a passenger car four-cylinder diesel engine, 1.6 liters. Once the numerical model was validated considering the baseline re-entrant bowl, two inno vative bowl geometries were defi ned: one based on the stepped-lip bowl; the other including a number of radial bumps equal to the nozzle holes number. Firstly, the rated power engine operating condition was investigated under nonreacting conditions to evaluate the piston bowl e ects on the in-cylinder mixing. Results highlight for both the innovative piston bowls better air utilization with respect to the re-entrant bowl: The stepped-lip bowl creates a dual toroidal vortex leading to a higher air/fuel mixing, while the radial-bumps bowl signifi cantly a ects the jet-To-jet interaction and promotes the recirculation of the fuel jet downstream to the bump, where the available oxygen enhances the mixing rate. After that, the combustion analysis was carried out for both rated power and partial-load engine operating conditions. Results confi rmed that thanks to the better air-fuel mixing, the combustion process can be improved thanks to the innovative bowl designs, both increasing the engine e-ciency at full-load condition and minimizing the engine-out soot emissions at partial-load operating point

Plasduino: an inexpensive, general purpose data acquisition framework for educational experiments

Based on the Arduino development platform, Plasduino is an open-source data acquisition framework specifically designed for educational physics experiments. The source code, schematics and documentation are in the public domain under a GPL license and the system, streamlined for low cost and ease of use, can be replicated on the scale of a typical didactic lab with minimal effort. We describe the basic architecture of the system and illustrate its potential with some real-life examples.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, presented at the XCIX conference of the Societ\`a Italiana di Fisic

Formation and evolution of clumpy tidal tails around globular clusters

We present some results of numerical simulations of a globular cluster orbiting in the central region of a triaxial galaxy on a set of 'loop' orbits. Tails start forming after about a quarter of the globular cluster orbital period and develop, in most cases, along the cluster orbit, showing clumpy substructures as observed, for example, in Palomar 5. If completely detectable, clumps can contain about 7,000 solar masses each, i.e. about 10% of the cluster mass at that epoch. The morphology of tails and clumps and the kinematical properties of stars in the tails are studied and compared with available observational data. Our finding is that the stellar velocity dispersion tends to level off at large radii, in agreement to that found for M15 and Omega Centauri.Comment: LaTeX 2e, uses AASTeX v5.x, 40 pages with 18 figures. Submitted to The Astronomical Journa