Le imprese femminili in Italia: i risultati di un'indagine esplorativa

Entrepreneurship has usually been considered a male-dominated activity. In 2012, however, 224mout of 400mentrepreneurs worldwide were women (GEM 2012).Female entrepreneurship therefore clearly represents an important component of the business sector at global level. To date, however, the scope of research on such a relevant topic is still confined to the US and Anglo-Saxon countries. Also, academic research on Italian female entrepreneurship is very limited, despite Italy has the highest number of female-owned firms in Europe (Eurostat, 2013). This paper thus contributes to fill this research gap by investigating the characteristics, the main problems and motivations of 310 Italian female-owned firms

Patterning Large-Scale Nanostructured Microarrays on Coverslip for Sensitive Plasmonic Detection of Aqueous Gliadin Traces

(c) The Author/sUser-friendly devices for detecting low gliadin content in commercial foods are of extreme importance for people with gluten diseases. With this concern, the present work proposes a rapid and sensitive optical nanostructured microarrays platform for the detection of gliadin using specific anti-gliadin IgG antibodies immobilized on annealed gold nanostructures (AuNPs) obtained after the high annealing process (550◦C) of gold thin films evaporated on commercial glass coverslips. Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance (LSPR) immunosensing of gliadin in the range of 0.1 ppm to 1000 ppm is successfully achieved. In addition, the biofunctionalization protocol was used for gluten screening in five food complex products.Publishe

Real-time optical manipulation of cardiac conduction in intact hearts

Optogenetics has provided new insights in cardiovascular research, leading to new methods for cardiac pacing, resynchronization therapy and cardioversion. Although these interventions have clearly demonstrated the feasibility of cardiac manipulation, current optical stimulation strategies do not take into account cardiac wave dynamics in real time. Here, we developed an all‐optical platform complemented by integrated, newly developed software to monitor and control electrical activity in intact mouse hearts. The system combined a wide‐field mesoscope with a digital projector for optogenetic activation. Cardiac functionality could be manipulated either in free‐run mode with submillisecond temporal resolution or in a closed‐loop fashion: a tailored hardware and software platform allowed real‐time intervention capable of reacting within 2 ms. The methodology was applied to restore normal electrical activity after atrioventricular block, by triggering the ventricle in response to optically mapped atrial activity with appropriate timing. Real‐time intraventricular manipulation of the propagating electrical wavefront was also demonstrated, opening the prospect for real‐time resynchronization therapy and cardiac defibrillation. Furthermore, the closed‐loop approach was applied to simulate a re‐entrant circuit across the ventricle demonstrating the capability of our system to manipulate heart conduction with high versatility even in arrhythmogenic conditions. The development of this innovative optical methodology provides the first proof‐of‐concept that a real‐time optically based stimulation can control cardiac rhythm in normal and abnormal conditions, promising a new approach for the investigation of the (patho)physiology of the heart

Quartz crystal microbalance genosensing of brettanomyces bruxellensis yeast in wine using a rapid and efficient drop and collect protocol

A miniaturized quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) genosensor is proposed for sensitive and real-time detection of short ssDNA sequences (53 bp) or DNA extracted from Brettanomyces bruxellensis (Brett) yeast cells. The presence of Brett yeast causes a depreciation of the quality of aged fine wines, producing molecules of unpleasant odors and biogenic amines that are harmful to human health. More specifically, standard quartz crystal (S-QCM) and homemade 4 nm gold transmission electron microscopy (TEM)-grid patterned quartz (multi-TEM QCM) are herein proposed for biofunctionalization steps with different ssDNA sequences. By employing a rapid and efficient drop and collect protocol, the specific detection of 1 pg/\ub5L ssDNA Brett of a short sequence and 100 ng/\ub5L DNA of B. bruxellensis extracted from a wine sample (VR2008) is reported

Acoustic multi-detection of Gliadin using QCM crystals patterned with controlled sectors of tem grid and annealed Nanoislands on gold electrode

Celiac diseases are a group of gluten ingestion-correlated pathologies that are widespread and, in some cases, very dangerous for human health. The only effective treatment is the elimination of gluten from the diet throughout life. Nowadays, the food industries are very interested in cheap, easy-to-handle methods for detecting gluten in food, in order to provide their consumers with safe and high-quality food. Here, for the first time, the manufacture of controlled micropatterns of annealed gold nanoislands (AuNIs) on a single QCM crystal (QCM-color) and their biofunctionalization for the specific detection of traces of gliadin is reported. In addition, the modified quartz crystal with a TEM grid and 30 nm Au (Q-TEM grid crystal) is proposed as an acoustic sensitive biosensing platform for the rapid screening of the gliadin content in real food products

Nebulette knockout mice have normal cardiac function, but show Z-line widening and up-regulation of cardiac stress markers

Aims: Nebulette is a 109 kDa modular protein localized in the sarcomeric Z-line of the heart. In vitro studies have suggested a role of nebulette in stabilizing the thin filament, and missense mutations in the nebulette gene were recently shown to be causative for dilated cardiomyopathy and endocardial fibroelastosis in human and mice. However, the role of nebulette in vivo has remained elusive. To provide insights into the function of nebulette in vivo, we generated and studied nebulette-deficient (nebl-/-) mice. Methods and results: Nebl-/- mice were generated by replacement of exon 1 by Cre under the control of the endogenous nebulette promoter, allowing for lineage analysis using the ROSA26 Cre reporter strain. This revealed specific expression of nebulette in the heart, consistent with in situ hybridization results. Nebl-/- mice exhibited normal cardiac function both under basal conditions and in response to transaortic constriction as assessed by echocardiography and haemodynamic analyses. Furthermore, histological, IF, and western blot analysis showed no cardiac abnormalities in nebl-/- mice up to 8 months of age. In contrast, transmission electron microscopy showed Z-line widening starting from 5 months of age, suggesting that nebulette is important for the integrity of the Z-line. Furthermore, up-regulation of cardiac stress responsive genes suggests the presence of chronic cardiac stress in nebl-/- mice. Conclusion: Nebulette is dispensable for normal cardiac function, although Z-line widening and up-regulation of cardiac stress markers were found in nebl-/- heart. These results suggest that the nebulette disease causing mutations have dominant gain-of-function effects

Effect of Troponin Ca2+ Binding Properties on the Kinetics of Myofibril Force Initiation and Relaxation

Digitalitzat per Artypla

The transverse-axial tubular system of cardiomyocytes

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