Channel-forming activity of syringopeptin 25 A in mercury-supported phospholipid monolayers and negatively charged bilayers

Interactions of the cationic lipodepsipeptide syringopeptin 25 A (SP25A) with mercury-supported dioleoylphosphatidylcholine (DOPC), dioleoylphosphatidylserine (DOPS) and dioeleoylphosphatidic acid (DOPA) self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) were investigated by AC voltammetry in 0.1 M KCl at pH 3, 5.4 and 6.8. SP25A targets and penetrates the DOPS SAM much more effectively than the other SAMs not only at pH 6.8, where the DOPS SAM is negatively charged, but also at pH 3, where it is positively charged just as SP25A. Similar investigations at tethered bilayer lipid membranes (tBLMs) consisting of a thiolipid called DPTL anchored to mercury, with a DOPS, DOPA or DOPC distal monolayer on top of it, showed that, at physiological transmembrane potentials, SP25A forms ion channels spanning the tBLM only if DOPS is the distal monolayer. The distinguishing chemical feature of the DOPS SAM is the ionic interaction between the protonated amino group of a DOPS molecule and the carboxylate group of an adjacent phospholipid molecule. Under the reasonable assumption that SP25A preferentially interacts with this ion pair, the selective lipodepsipeptide antimicrobial activity against Gram-positive bacteria may be tentatively explained by its affinity for similar protonated amino-carboxylate pairs, which are expected to be present in the peptide moieties of peptidoglycan strands

A Method to Select and Optimize Slow Tourism Routes Using a Quality Index Procedure Based on Image Segmentation and DTM Modelling Based on NURBS: The Case Study of Multimodal Access to Inner Places from the Nodes of the Adriatic Coastline’s Infrastructure Bundle

This paper tests a combination of methods that allows for the optimization of a mobility network through the multimodal interchange between fast and slow routes. These routes contribute to mending the relationship between the existing infrastructural networks and the places of interest in the landscape while respecting morphological adaptability. The case study that generated the research question explained above is the Costa dei Trabucchi in Abruzzo, Italy. The choice of a single paradigmatic case study to evaluate the method is based on the need to analyse an edge context with very scarce data, except for the coast. The advantage of this method is the efficiency based on three main conditions: overcoming limitations due to data scarcity, the use of open-source data and the multiscalarity of analyses. The result of this research work is the creation of a useful strategy to identify the most suitable routes in terms of spatial quality and walkability/cyclability. The case study is formed by the territories crossed by a railway line that has recently been decommissioned. The displacement of a railway line creates opportunities to improve the quality and use of the territory locally, with a natural evolution of the track in a greenway, and at the territorial level because it generates a network of better multimodal and sustainable mobility solutions inside and between the surrounding areas

Chapter Thematic mapping for the definition of territorial development strategies in the Province of Biella

The 43rd UID conference, held in Genova, takes up the theme of ‘Dialogues’ as practice and debate on many fundamental topics in our social life, especially in these complex and not yet resolved times. The city of Genova offers the opportunity to ponder on the value of comparison and on the possibilities for the community, naturally focused on the aspects that concern us, as professors, researchers, disseminators of knowledge, or on all the possibile meanings of the discipline of representation and its dialogue with ‘others’, which we have broadly catalogued in three macro areas: History, Semiotics, Science / Technology. Therefore, “dialogue” as a profitable exchange based on a common language, without which it is impossible to comprehend and understand one another; and the graphic sign that connotes the conference is the precise transcription of this concept: the title ‘translated’ into signs, derived from the visual alphabet designed for the visual identity of the UID since 2017. There are many topics which refer to three macro sessions: - Witnessing (signs and history) - Communicating (signs and semiotics) - Experimenting (signs and sciences) Thanks to the different points of view, an exceptional resource of our disciplinary area, we want to try to outline the prevailing theoretical-operational synergies, the collaborative lines of an instrumental nature, the recent updates of the repertoires of images that attest and nourish the relations among representation, history, semiotics, sciences

Multimodal Access to Minor Places in Heritage-Rich Landscapes: GIS Mapping to Define Slow-Tourism Routes from the Stations in the Railway Networks in-between Turin and Milan

The extraordinary richness of the natural and built heritage, widespread in the landscape which surrounds infrastructures, allows searching for new ways to access the places in a more sustainable way, by exploiting multimodal accessibility between train and bike. The current research shows how the territories in-between the cities of Turin and Milan, characterized by a complex historical landscape, could be enhanced in terms of sustainable tourism by exploiting the potential of the existing railway network and the widespread network of local roads, which make many unique places in these territories easily accessible. A GIS method based on a quantitative approach has been defined, to perform the spatial analysis by mapping the most significant nodes in the railway network, in the most attractive heritage areas localized in the surrounding landscape of infrastructures, to trace slow-tourism routes which can be used both by inhabitants and tourists to move across places in a more sustainable way. The research finds the most attractive heritage areas in the surroundings of local railways, and maps slow-tourism routes that connect local railway stations to surrounding heritage, within 15 min of cycling. The GIS-based method can support decision makers in the definition of new territorial development strategies, with the aim of enhancing the livelihood of the inner and fragile areas of the country that are crossed by the railways

MC1R gene analysis applied to breed traceability of beef

Since the breed of origin highly affects the beef price, reliable methods are needed to detect incorrect declarations. As most breeds are standardised for coat colour, the Melanocortin 1 Receptor gene (MC1R), involved in the regulation of eu/pheomelanins synthesis, has been suggested as marker for breed traceability of products of animal origin. The aim of this investigation is to characterise the main breeds reared in the Piedmont Region by MC1R locus and to apply the analysis of the locus to breed traceability of beef cuts purchased in different outlets of the Region. A total of 168 DNA samples of four cattle breeds (Piemontese, Blonde d'Aquitaine, Italian Friesian and Aosta Red Pied) were analysed for MC1R locus by PCR-RFLP. In addition, 28 DNA samples from beef with breed indication were tested. Piemontese and Blonde d'Aquitaine were monomorphic for the E+and eallele, respectively. In the Friesian breed the EdEd genotype was the most frequent, but Edewas also observed (2%). Aosta Red Pied was the most variable breed, with the presence of the three alleles and five genotypes out of six. The comparison of the genotypic distribution in the four breeds clearly indicates that it is possible to distinguish among Piemontese, Blonde d'Aquitaine and Friesian breeds, but the same is not true for Aosta Red Pied, which has genotypes in common with the other breeds. The results on beef samples revealed a high percentage of mislabelling (about 18%), which concerned Friesian breed and crossbreds. These results indicate that MC1R locus is an effective marker in breed traceability of beef, when the involved breeds are characterised by different genotypes. Moreover, compared to other genetic markers, it has the great advantage of not requiring DNA reference sam- ples. This survey, though limited, has revealed a high percentage of incompatibilities. Therefore, the analysis of MC1R locus is recommended in the framework of product certification, at least for random controls within a system aimed at preventing fraud

The Central Park in between Torino and Milano

This paper aims at discussing a possible legacy of Expo Milano 2015 by proposing a new idea of park based on different layered landscapes in the Region between Torino and Milano. This works is part of a wider research program developed at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of the Politecnico di Milano. The first research phase is focused on the analysis of the Region – moreover similar to most italian human landscapes - where: the cities and the villages (especially in their historical centers) are characterized by an outstanding spatial quality; vast portions of the open spaces, both natural or exploited for agricultural uses, are well set, maintained and already considered as parks, either by being formally protected or by being in fact used as leisure areas and therefore included within public and private actions of informal attention and care, responding to a more and more pressing demand from inhabitants (insiders) and “users” like the tourists (ousiders); several fringe areas like those between the built centers, their peripheries and the countryside, the borders of the infrastructures, the industrial settlements, the areas surrounding shopping centers are dramatically lacking in terms of spatial design. The case study is of particular interest, for the presence of two of the major cities of the Po valley, emerging from a system of medium sized and small cities, and where different entities are overlapping to create a complex layered landscape: • a bundle of infrastructure belonging to the “long and fast” network of European corridors, intersecting just in the middle of the area; • a thick network of “short and slow” regional railways conceived and built in the years 1850-1930s; • historical paths across the Alps (via Francigena); • a system of parks along the rivers and other unique protected areas like those of the morainic landscape around Ivrea, the Baragge, the remains of the planitial forest emerging from the rice fields nearby Trino, Ticino river, Groane Park, the agricultural park around south Milano and others; • close connections with Unesco sites (vineyard landscapes, Sacri Monti, the candidate site of Ivrea and Olivetti); • canals for irrigation and energy production (with the monumental Canale Cavour among all); • strongly structured agricultural landscapes (rice fields, orchards, vineyards); • important super-places like factories (Pirelli in Settimo Torinese), shopping malls (Settimo Cielo, Vicolungo Outlet), logistic poles, Malpensa airport, Fiera Milano and the Expo 2015 site. Considering the fact that the whole system, including the infrastructural network is today mature and complete in terms of infrastructure and settlement, the whole Region can be considered as an ideal ground of action, to improve its spatial quality by enhancing a system of inter metropolitan parks, well innervated in terms of accessibility. There is a concrete opportunity to re-connect and rethink the whole landscape, by producing a new kind of public inter metropolitan “Central Park”, considering the infrastructures and the in between left-over spaces as the most meaningful places where to intervene, even with light projects based on the improvement of the existing physical asset. To achieve this goal, two main perceptive and design approaches are proposed, to re-think of the role of the infrastructural system as a positive element of a complex human landscape: • to consider the landscape of infrastructures as it is perceived by travelers moving along it and by the inhabitants of the crossed territories improving in both cases their experience; • to improve the spatial quality of the places of interface between infrastructure and its environment (natural, agricultural and built) like the “banks” of the highways and railways, the stations on the regional railways network and the service areas placed along the main road and highways and to be considered as gates to this system of parks. • To consider the Torino Milano Region as a place of experimentation of a new kind of inter metropolitan park is possible, also considering that the event of the Expo 2015 in Milano has produced, as a positive legacy, some landscape design approaches and solutions (waterway through the Groane Park, parks and other linear open spaces around the site) that could be applied to other, somehow similar, areas like the logistic poles of Novara, Biandrate or Abbadia di Stura, the Vicolungo and Settimo Cielo shopping malls and others. As a framework, to support this idea could also refer to recent developments of the idea of smartness, extending it from the urban scale to the regional one, by experimenting the use of the ICTs and of specific digital services in marginal places as a tool to integrate the traditional spatial design actions, so to create better living conditions and contribute to better relationships between people and places

Estimaciones de la fuerza de mordida y su relación con las características de la dieta

La fuerza de mordida (FM) es un parámetro biomecánico que indica la cantidad de fuerza que se aplica durante la masticación de un determinado tipo de alimento. En este trabajo se compararon las FM de seis poblaciones de humanos modernos que difieren en las características de sus dietas. A partir de fotografías de la base del cráneo se digitalizaron puntos morfológicos que determinan la forma de los músculos masticadores y permiten las estimaciones de los brazos de carga y resistencia para el cálculo de la FM. Los resultados indican que existen diferencias en la FM de los grupos clasificados como dieta dura (DD) y los asignados a la una dieta blanda (DB) a nivel de la mordida de corte (incisivos centrales), pero no de la mordida trituradora (mordida bilateral). También queda en evidencia que las diferencias más grandes vienen dadas por las diferencias poblacionales, luego por el tipo de dieta (DD o DB) y finalmente por la diferencia entre sexos, todas estas diferencias son también más evidentes en la mordida de corte que en la trituradora. Finalmente, algunas distinciones entre individuos de distintos sexos, indicarían que la división de trabajo trajo aparejada una diferencia en el consumo de alimentos.The bite force is a biomechanical parameter that indicates the amount of force applied during the mastication of a type of food. In this paper, we compared the bite force of six modern human populations which differ in the diets characteristics. Morphological points were digitized on skull base photographs, determining the shape of the masticatory muscles and allowing estimates of load and resistance arms in order to measure the bite force. The results indicate differences in the bite force between groups with a hard diet and those with a soft diet as regards the cutting bite (central incisors), but not the crushing one (bilateral bite). Also, the greatest differences are due to population differences in the first place, followed by the type of diet (hard or soft ones) and, finally, the difference between sexes. These differences are also more evident in the cutting bite than in the crushing one. Finally, some distinctions between males and females would indicate that the division of work entailed differences in food consumption.Fil: Paschetta, Carolina Andrea. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Nacional Patagónico; ArgentinaFil: Gonzalez Jose, Rolando. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Nacional Patagónico; Argentin

A perturbative approach to the hydrodynamics of heavy ion collisions

Initial fluctuations in hydrodynamic fields such as energy density or flow velocity give access to understanding initial state and equilibration physics as well as thermodynamic and transport properties. We provide evidence that the fluid dynamic propagation of fluctuations of realistic size can be based on a background-fluctuation splitting and a systematic perturbative expansion in the fluctuating fields. Initial conditions are characterized by a Bessel-Fourier expansion for single events, event-by-event correlations and probability distributions. The evolution equations can be solved order-by-order in the expansion which allows to study the fluid dynamical propagation of single modes, the study of interaction effects between modes, the determination of the associated particle spectra and the generalization of the whole program to event-by-event correlations and distributions.Comment: poceedings of the XXIV Quark Matter conference (2014

How (non-) linear is the hydrodynamics of heavy ion collisions?

We provide evidence from full numerical solutions that the hydrodynamical evolution of initial density fluctuations in heavy ion collisions can be understood order-by-order in a perturbative series in deviations from a smooth and azimuthally symmetric background solution. To leading linear order, modes with different azimuthal wave numbers do not mix. Quadratic and higher order corrections are small and can be understood as overtones with corresponding wave numbers.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Intervenção mediação do professor com a família em instituições educacionais cubanas; Concepção metodológica

El objetivo de esta investigación es proponer una concepción metodológica para el tratamiento de la intervención mediadora del docente con las familias, como acción de la labor preventiva y de la correspondiente atención a la relación necesidades – derechos; conocimientos construidos a través de la Investigación Acción Cooperativa, metodología de corte cualitativo, y el empleo de métodos empíricos. El carácter metodológico que subyace en el trabajo, los recursos digitales elaborados y la transferibilidad de las acciones, propician prácticas educativas mediadoras justas y de calidad, como parte de la atención a la diversidad y favorecen transformaciones positivas en los niños, como resultado de una actuación consecuente de sus padres y mejor preparación de los docentes; reflejo de la condición de saber, saber hacer y de ser. La propuesta, centrada en la teoría pedagógica y vigotskiana, con proyección hacia la defensa de los derechos de los niños, es lo relevante del trabajo; enfoque no difundido ampliamente, según la bibliografía consultada. El mérito de esta práctica está en la concientización de preparar al hombre para los retos que le depara la vidaThe aim of this research is to propose a methodological conception for the treatment of the mediating teacher intervention with families, as the action of the preventive work and the corresponding attention to the needs-rights relationship built through cooperative action, qualitative research methodology, knowledge and use of empirical methods. The underlying methodological work, the elaborated digital resources and transferability of the actions, foster fair mediator and quality educational practices, as part of the attention to diversity and promote positive changes in children as a result of a performance consequent of their parents and better preparation of teachers; reflection of the condition of knowing, knowing how and being. The proposal, focused on the vigotskiana theory of teaching, projecting into the defense of the rights of children, is the relevance of this work; approach not widespread, according to the literature consulted. The merit of this practice is the awareness to prepare man for the challenges life holds for himO objetivo deste trabalho é propor uma metodologia de projeto para o tratamento da intervenção do professor mediador com as famílias, como um trabalho preventivo e atenção às necessidades; construído por meio da ação cooperativa, metodologia de pesquisa qualitativa, conhecimento e uso de métodos empíricos. O trabalho metodológico subjacente, elaborar recursos digitais e promover práticas educacionais de qualidade, como parte da atenção à diversidade e promover mudanças positivas em crianças como resultado de um desempenho consequente de seus pais e uma melhor preparação dos professores; reflexo da condição de saber, saber e ser. A proposta focada no ensino e na teoria vigotskiana, projetando-se para a defesa dos direitos das crianças. O mérito desta prática é a consciência para preparar o homem para os desafios da vid