Thatcher’s Victims vs. Beveridge’s Sons: The New Cleavage of European Parties

The Rokkans’ theory of cleavages has traditionally been a valid helpful instrument, although questionable, to interpret the nexus between social dynamics and party models. Thanks also to this theo-ry, during the hundred years between 1885 and 1985, European political party classification, at least where their origins are concerned, is reasonably straightforward. At the end of the sixties of ‘900, the per-formance of the political actors in terms of policy stimulated a level of feedback on the social conditions of populations to the point of reducing the impact of the traditional cleavages. The thirty-year “Golden Age” steadily led the population to believe in a world where the affirmation of universalistic social rights was an acquired right regardless of offsetting economic measures. But in the following forty years, with this con-viction still holding, the economic conditions for the sustainability of that model were overturned, and the prospect, therefore, of social benefits for all changed radically. Especially after the 2008 crisis, a new cleavage explodes with such an intensity that it actually squares the interests of the “protected” (state employees with steady jobs, workers of large and medium-sized firms protected by the Unions) with the “non-protected” (the unemployed, self-employed and seasonal labourers), in other words those of the established and non-established. In this framework, if they want to survive, the political parties both old and new, are continually being pressurised by an agitated electorate to realign themselves. And while in the short term gain votes populist and nationalist parties, the nature of the latest cleavage seems there-fore to be a challenge especially for those parties which find themselves managing the “social blocs”, gen-erated from the classic cleavages, and the identity nuclei

A platform technology for dynamic control of cell behavior

Mammalian cells rely on complex and highly dynamic gene networks to maintain cellular homeostasis in response to environmental stimuli and intracellular signals. Efficient cellular reprogramming thus requires integration of exogenous components for cell engineering with endogenous cellular networks through feedback control systems. We explored the use of post-translational tools for superior feedback regulation of dynamic behaviors. Specifically, we demonstrated efficient detection and manipulation of the main cellular stress response system – the Unfolded Protein Response (UPR) – for the design of high producing cell lines for protein manufacturing and for the development of cell therapies for sustained protein production. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Thatcher’s Victims vs. Beveridge’s Sons: The New Cleavage of European Parties

The Rokkans’ theory of cleavages has traditionally been a valid helpful instrument, although questionable, to interpret the nexus between social dynamics and party models. Thanks also to this theo-ry, during the hundred years between 1885 and 1985, European political party classification, at least where their origins are concerned, is reasonably straightforward. At the end of the sixties of ‘900, the per-formance of the political actors in terms of policy stimulated a level of feedback on the social conditions of populations to the point of reducing the impact of the traditional cleavages. The thirty-year “Golden Age” steadily led the population to believe in a world where the affirmation of universalistic social rights was an acquired right regardless of offsetting economic measures. But in the following forty years, with this con-viction still holding, the economic conditions for the sustainability of that model were overturned, and the prospect, therefore, of social benefits for all changed radically. Especially after the 2008 crisis, a new cleavage explodes with such an intensity that it actually squares the interests of the “protected” (state employees with steady jobs, workers of large and medium-sized firms protected by the Unions) with the “non-protected” (the unemployed, self-employed and seasonal labourers), in other words those of the established and non-established. In this framework, if they want to survive, the political parties both old and new, are continually being pressurised by an agitated electorate to realign themselves. And while in the short term gain votes populist and nationalist parties, the nature of the latest cleavage seems there-fore to be a challenge especially for those parties which find themselves managing the “social blocs”, gen-erated from the classic cleavages, and the identity nuclei

Feedback-responsive cell factories for biomanufacturing

Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Zinc Oxide Particles Induce Activation of the Lysosome–Autophagy System

Metal-oxide-based materials are highly versatile and used in a wide variety of applications ranging from medical technology to personal care products. Generally recognized as safe by the US Food and Drug Administration, zinc oxide (ZnO) has been increasingly used in pharmaceutical, cosmetic, food, and commodity chemical industries. As a result, exposure to nano- and micron-sized ZnO particles through occupational processes and consumer products is increasing and has raised concerns over the health effects associated with the large-scale production and commercialization of ZnO-based materials. It is therefore important to investigate the interaction of ZnO particles with biological systems and elucidate the consequent effect on cell physiology. Of particular interest is the autophagic response to zinc oxide particles, as autophagy is the first line of defense activated in response to the uptake of foreign materials. As the main cellular catabolic pathway, the lysosome–autophagy system plays an important homeostatic function and defects or deficiency of this degradation system is associated with the cellular pathogenesis of a number of human diseases, ranging from neurodegenerative disorders to cancer. In this study, we investigated the response of the lysosome–autophagy system to three relevant types of ZnO particles, namely, a polydisperse mixture of bare, micron-sized particles (100–1000 nm) and monodisperse, bare, and coated (with triethoxycaprylylsilane) ZnO nanoparticles (85 nm). To investigate the molecular mechanisms mediating the response of the lysosome–autophagy system to these ZnO particles, we examined a complete set of markers of this pathway and characterized each step, from transcriptional activation to clearance of autophagic cargo. To evaluate the effect of the different types of ZnO particles on the lysosome–autophagy system, biological assays were conducted under conditions that do not cause considerable cytotoxicity. All three types of ZnO particles were found to result in activation of the transcription factor EB, a master regulator of autophagy and lysosomal biogenesis. Cellular exposure to bare and coated nano-sized ZnO enhanced the formation and turnover of autophagosomes and cellular clearance. Cellular exposure to the polydisperse mixture of ZnO particles, however, resulted in enhancement of autophagosome formation, but also in blockage of the autophagic flux. Results from this study underscore the importance of characterizing the autophagic response to ZnO-based materials and contribute significant engineering principles for the future design of nano- and micron-sized ZnO materials with the desired autophagy-modulating properties

Disagio giovanile e contesto familiare: un confronto tra famiglie italiane e famiglie immigrate

L’articolo vuole presentare i risultati di una ricerca condotta allo scopo di esaminare e confrontare lo stile di parenting tra famiglie italiane e famiglie immigrate. La letteratura indica come lo stile di parenting genitoriale può influenzare lo sviluppo psicosociale della prole: dalla qualità della relazione genitore/figlio dipende la qualità dei percorsi di definizione dell’identità personale del soggetto in corso di sviluppo. In ottica di prevenzione primaria, lo stile di parenting può essere assunto come importante elemento atto a prevenire il disagio e la devianza giovanile. Assunta l’ipotesi che l’ambivalenza culturale di cui risente la famiglia immigrata – da un lato il desiderio di mantenere le proprie tradizioni, dall’altro il bisogno di far propri i valori della cultura ospitante per una migliore integrazione – possa influire sullo stile di parenting, la ricerca ha voluto indagare quali differenze tra famiglie italiane e famiglie immigrate rispetto alle dinamiche volte a favorire i processi di crescita psicoemotiva della prole

On Distributed Fuzzy Decision Trees for Big Data

Fuzzy decision trees (FDTs) have shown to be an effective solution in the framework of fuzzy classification. The approaches proposed so far to FDT learning, however, have generally neglected time and space requirements. In this paper, we propose a distributed FDT learning scheme shaped according to the MapReduce programming model for generating both binary and multiway FDTs from big data. The scheme relies on a novel distributed fuzzy discretizer that generates a strong fuzzy partition for each continuous attribute based on fuzzy information entropy. The fuzzy partitions are, therefore, used as an input to the FDT learning algorithm, which employs fuzzy information gain for selecting the attributes at the decision nodes. We have implemented the FDT learning scheme on the Apache Spark framework. We have used ten real-world publicly available big datasets for evaluating the behavior of the scheme along three dimensions: 1) performance in terms of classification accuracy, model complexity, and execution time; 2) scalability varying the number of computing units; and 3) ability to efficiently accommodate an increasing dataset size. We have demonstrated that the proposed scheme turns out to be suitable for managing big datasets even with a modest commodity hardware support. Finally, we have used the distributed decision tree learning algorithm implemented in the MLLib library and the Chi-FRBCS-BigData algorithm, a MapReduce distributed fuzzy rule-based classification system, for comparative analysis. © 1993-2012 IEEE

Artificial disulfide isomerases and uses thereof

The present invention provides artificial enzymes comprising, e.g., an N-terminal domain derived from E. coli FkpA that allows for dimerization and provides a substrate binding region, and a C-terminal thioredoxin domain derived from E. coli DsbA. Similar to DsbC, such de novo designed chimeric (hybrid) FkpA-DsbA enzymes function, as disulfide reductases, oxidases, or isomerases, and chaperones in vivo and in vitro, despite lacking similarity to DsbC-related polypeptide sequence.Board of Regents, University of Texas Syste

A MapReduce solution for associative classification of big data

Associative classifiers have proven to be very effective in classification problems. Unfortunately, the algorithms used for learning these classifiers are not able to adequately manage big data because of time complexity and memory constraints. To overcome such drawbacks, we propose a distributed association rule-based classification scheme shaped according to the MapReduce programming model. The scheme mines classification association rules (CARs) using a properly enhanced, distributed version of the well-known FP-Growth algorithm. Once CARs have been mined, the proposed scheme performs a distributed rule pruning. The set of survived CARs is used to classify unlabeled patterns. The memory usage and time complexity for each phase of the learning process are discussed, and the scheme is evaluated on seven real-world big datasets on the Hadoop framework, characterizing its scalability and achievable speedup on small computer clusters. The proposed solution for associative classifiers turns to be suitable to practically address big datasets even with modest hardware support. Comparisons with two state-of-the-art distributed learning algorithms are also discussed in terms of accuracy, model complexity, and computation time

Ripartire da Dahrendorf: attualità di un inattuale

Ralf Dahrendorf has often been considered a “shallow” and untopical author. In the wake of masters such as Kant, Weber and Popper, he went against the tide, posing as an alternative to the German tradition represented by Hegel, Marx and the Frankfurt Institute. With an open methodological approach and a political key oriented towards social liberalism, also inspired by the works of Thomas Marshall and Amartya Sen, he re-elaborated the concepts of class, conflict, life chances, and produced analyzes that led him to denounce the divorce between capitalism and citizenship rights. The article aims to retrace its intellectual itinerary in order to reconsider its possible relevance in a season marked by great inequality, the crisis of social cohesion and the rise of new collective movements in a populist form. In short, both its forecasts on the need for forms of bottom-up democracy and on the risks of the re-emergence of authoritarian temptations in some political regimes are proving to be founded