Effect of pre-fermentative steps on thiol precursors in Grillo must

The varietal thiols, namely 3-mercaptohexan-1-ol (3MH), 3-mercaptohexylacetate (3MHA), and 4-mercapto-4-methylpentan-2-one (4MMP), are sulphur-containing aromas associated with the typical flavour of several white wines, such as Sauvignon blanc wine, conferring guava, citrus and passion fruit notes. These compounds occur as non-volatile sulphide precursors in grape berry, where they share their sulphur atom with a cysteine residue. 3MH bound with cysteine (Cys-3MH), glutathione (GSH-3MH) and also cysteine-glycine (CysGly-3MH) has been described, while 4MMP occurs as cysteine (Cys-4MMP) and glutathione (GSH-4MMP) conjugates. S-3-(hexan-1-al)-glutathione (GSH-3MHAl) was also identified, and it can be considered as a thiol precursor. Recently, the presence of thiol precursors was reported in the Italian autochthonous variety Grillo, and their concentrations strongly decreased when must was produced under commercial conditions. This study investigated the influence of pre-fermentative operations on thiol precursor concentrations. Grillo grape was pressed under industrial conditions; must samples were collected after crashing, at draining, at pressing yield of 20%, 40% and 60%, at the end of pressing, during transfer in clarification tank, in a clarification tank and after clarification. The must was either air-exposed or air-free during the pre-fermentative steps. Thiol precursors were determined in SPE-purified must samples by UPLC-HRMS. Cys-3MH, GSH-3MH and GSH-3MHAl strongly decreased after crashing, and small concentrations were found in drained must samples independently of the presence of air. In particular, the crashing played a major role on GSH-3MHAl content; a further decrease of both Cys-3MH and GSH-3MH was found due to the must transfer in clarification tank. In general, precursor amounts were lower in must samples produced in air-free condition, except for clarified musts where the precursor contents were comparable in both air-exposed and air-free conditions. For the must production at industrial conditions particular attention should be given to the grape pressing for limiting the loss of thiol precursors. The air-exposure of must has a limited positive influence on thiol precursors, since the removal of solid parts with the clarification is responsible for their further loss. The proper management of these winemaking steps could allow to preserve major levels of thiol precursors

Case Report: Whole Exome Sequencing Revealed Disease-Causing Variants in Two Genes in a Patient With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Intellectual Disability, Hyperactivity, Sleep and Gastrointestinal Disturbances

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) refers to a broad range of conditions characterized by difficulties in communication, social interaction and behavior, and may be accompanied by other medical or psychiatric conditions. Patients with ASD and comorbidities are often difficult to diagnose because of the tendency to consider the multiple symptoms as the presentation of a complicated syndromic form. This view influences variant filtering which might ignore causative variants for specific clinical features shown by the patient. Here we report on a male child diagnosed with ASD, showing cognitive and motor impairments, stereotypies, hyperactivity, sleep, and gastrointestinal disturbances. The analysis of whole exome sequencing (WES) data with bioinformatic tools for oligogenic diseases helped us to identify two major previously unreported pathogenetic variants: a maternally inherited missense variant (p.R4122H) in HUWE1, an ubiquitin protein ligase associated to X-linked intellectual disability and ASD; and a de novo stop variant (p.Q259X) in TPH2, encoding the tryptophan hydroxylase 2 enzyme involved in serotonin synthesis and associated with susceptibility to attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). TPH2, expressed in central and peripheral nervous tissues, modulates various physiological functions, including gut motility and sleep. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case presenting with ASD, cognitive impairment, sleep, and gastrointestinal disturbances linked to both HUWE1 and TPH2 genes. Our findings could contribute to the existing knowledge on clinical and genetic diagnosis of patients with ASD presentation with comorbidities

Key Recoverability in Wireless Sensor Networks

In case of an adversary that compromises a node in a wireless sensor network (WSN) and obtains its secret material, techniques for the detection of malicious or compromised nodes have been proposed in several papers. However, the ability to recover secure communications after a compromised node has been detected has not been thoroughly investigated. Such an ability allows to evaluate the level of proper functionality, i.e., the ratio of secure links in the network, that can be recovered after a successful attach and the withdrawal of the compromised secret material. This paper defines and discusses for the first time the recoverability property and provides the formulas to compute it for the main state-of-the-art key management schemes. All the formulas are validated through extensive simulation

Low-Cost 3D Supported Interactive Control

Devices for stereoscopic vision are gaining increasing diffusion but their usage is mostly oriented to entertainment. A prototype based on consumer devices and open software to achieve low-cost 3D video supported interactive control is presented here. We believe that our research could stimulate the study and implementation of low-cost general purpose systems that can be used on a wide spectrum of applications, such as, but not limited to, remote operation, education, training and surveillance

Le cure primarie prima e dopo l’emergenza Covid-19. Dalle "Case della Salute" alle "Case della Comunità": una riforma possibile?

The Covid-19 pandemic emergency has further highlighted the centrality of primary care in health systems, fostering a new reform process towards new integrated community services called ‘Case della Comunità’. In the path dependency logic, the new proposal is part of regionalized reform paths, centered on the Case della Salute. The study analyzes three regional experiences (Piemonte, Marche, Puglia), investigating the continuity or fracture paths between implemented and announced reforms. The results highlight the heterogeneity in the implementation processes of the Case della Salute at regional level, both in terms of terminology and in the characteristics of the services, with marked criticalities in the integration paths of primary care with the rest of the community services, confirming the criticality in the transposition and implementation at the regional level of national policies