La comunicazione politica nei manifesti della campagna elettorale 2008

Il presente lavoro si propone di prendere in esame i criteri comunicativi adottati dai principali partiti nei manifesti elettorali prodotti in occasione delle elezioni politiche del 2008. Dopo una breve parte propedeutica sulla comunicazione politica ed un excursus sulla storia del manifesto politico si procede ad analizzare dettagliatamente i manifesti elettorali dei principali partiti: Il Popolo della Libertà, Alleanza Nazionale, Lega Nord, La Destra, Partito Democratico, Italia dei Valori, Unione di Centro, Partito Socialista, La Sinistra, l’Arcobaleno. L’analisi si basa sui manifesti che è stato possibile rintracciare sui siti internet dei partiti e nella Rete in generale. I principali campi di indagine sono: il tipo di immagini scelte dai partiti a suffragio delle loro proposte politiche, la grafica, i colori e il lessico adottato per attirare l’attenzione dell’elettore e convincerlo ad orientare il suo voto in una determinata direzion

Nitrides as ammonia synthesis catalysts and as potential nitrogen transfer reagents

In this article, an overview of the application of selected metal nitrides as ammonia synthesis catalysts is presented. The potential development of some systems into nitrogen transfer reagents is also described

A computational study of the heterogeneous synthesis of hydrazine on Co3Mo3N

Periodic and molecular density functional theory calculations have been applied to elucidate the associative mechanism for hydrazine and ammonia synthesis in the gas phase and hydrazine formation on Co3Mo3N. We find that there are two activation barriers for the associative gas phase mechanism with barriers of 730 and 658 kJ/mol, corresponding to a hydrogenation step from N2 to NNH2 and H2NNH2 to H3NNH3, respectively. The second step of the mechanism is barrierless and an important intermediate, NNH2, can also readily form on Co3Mo3N surfaces via the Eley–Rideal chemisorption of H2 on a pre-adsorbed N2 at nitrogen vacancies. Based on this intermediate a new heterogeneous mechanism for hydrazine synthesis is studied. The highest relative barrier for this heterogeneous catalysed process is 213 kJ/mol for Co3Mo3N containing nitrogen vacancies, clearly pointing towards a low-energy process for the synthesis of hydrazine via a heterogeneous catalysis route

Prediction and measurement of direct-normal solar irradiance: A closure experiment

Direct-normal solar irradiance (DNSI), the total energy in the solar spectrum incident on a plane perpendicular to the Sun`s direction on a unit area at the earth`s surface in unit time, depends only on the atmospheric extinction of sunlight without regard to the details of extinction--whether absorption or scattering. Here the authors describe a set of closure experiments performed in north-central Oklahoma, wherein measured atmospheric composition is input to a radiative transfer model, MODTRAN-3, to predict DNSI, which is then compared to measured values. Thirty six independent comparisons are presented; the agreement between predicted and measured values falls within the combined uncertainties in the prediction (2%) and measurement (0.2%) albeit with a slight bias ({approximately} 1% overprediction) that is independent of the solar zenith angle. Thus these results establish the adequacy of current knowledge of the solar spectrum and atmospheric extinction as embodied in MODTRAN-3 for use in climate models. An important consequence is the overwhelming likelihood that the atmospheric clear-sky absorption is accurately described to within comparable uncertainties

Heterogeneities in leishmania infantum infection : using skin parasite burdens to identify highly infectious dogs

Background: The relationships between heterogeneities in host infection and infectiousness (transmission to arthropod vectors) can provide important insights for disease management. Here, we quantify heterogeneities in Leishmania infantum parasite numbers in reservoir and non-reservoir host populations, and relate this to their infectiousness during natural infection. Tissue parasite number was evaluated as a potential surrogate marker of host transmission potential. Methods: Parasite numbers were measured by qPCR in bone marrow and ear skin biopsies of 82 dogs and 34 crab-eating foxes collected during a longitudinal study in Amazon Brazil, for which previous data was available on infectiousness (by xenodiagnosis) and severity of infection. Results: Parasite numbers were highly aggregated both between samples and between individuals. In dogs, total parasite abundance and relative numbers in ear skin compared to bone marrow increased with the duration and severity of infection. Infectiousness to the sandfly vector was associated with high parasite numbers; parasite number in skin was the best predictor of being infectious. Crab-eating foxes, which typically present asymptomatic infection and are non-infectious, had parasite numbers comparable to those of non-infectious dogs. Conclusions: Skin parasite number provides an indirect marker of infectiousness, and could allow targeted control particularly of highly infectious dogs

Binding MOAD, a high-quality protein–ligand database

Binding MOAD (Mother of All Databases) is a database of 9836 protein–ligand crystal structures. All biologically relevant ligands are annotated, and experimental binding-affinity data is reported when available. Binding MOAD has almost doubled in size since it was originally introduced in 2004, demonstrating steady growth with each annual update. Several technologies, such as natural language processing, help drive this constant expansion. Along with increasing data, Binding MOAD has improved usability. The website now showcases a faster, more featured viewer to examine the protein–ligand structures. Ligands have additional chemical data, allowing for cheminformatics mining. Lastly, logins are no longer necessary, and Binding MOAD is freely available to all at http://www.BindingMOAD.org

Representation of target-bound drugs by computed conformers: implications for conformational libraries

BACKGROUND: The increasing number of known protein structures provides valuable information about pharmaceutical targets. Drug binding sites are identifiable and suitable lead compounds can be proposed. The flexibility of ligands is a critical point for the selection of potential drugs. Since computed 3D structures of millions of compounds are available, the knowledge of their binding conformations would be a great benefit for the development of efficient screening methods. RESULTS: Integration of two public databases allowed superposition of conformers for 193 approved drugs with 5507 crystallised target-bound counterparts. The generation of 9600 drug conformers using an atomic force field was carried out to obtain an optimal coverage of the conformational space. Bioactive conformations are best described by a conformational ensemble: half of all drugs exhibit multiple active states, distributed over the entire range of the reachable energy and conformational space. A number of up to 100 conformers per drug enabled us to reproduce the bound states within a similarity threshold of 1.0 Å in 70% of all cases. This fraction rises to about 90% for smaller or average sized drugs. CONCLUSION: Single drugs adopt multiple bioactive conformations if they interact with different target proteins. Due to the structural diversity of binding sites they adopt conformations that are distributed over a broad conformational space and wide energy range. Since the majority of drugs is well represented by a predefined low number of conformers (up to 100) this procedure is a valuable method to compare compounds by three-dimensional features or for fast similarity searches starting with pharmacophores. The underlying 9600 generated drug conformers are downloadable from the Super Drug Web site [1]. All superpositions are visualised at the same source. Additional conformers (110,000) of 2400 classified WHO-drugs are also available