Low Concentration of Sodium Butyrate from Ultrabraid+NaBu suture, Promotes Angiogenesis and Tissue Remodelling in Tendon-bones Injury

Sodium butyrate (NaBu), a form of short-chain fatty acid (SCFA), acts classically as a potent anti-angiogenic agent in tumour angiogenesis models, some authors demonstrated that low concentrations of NaBu may contribute to healing of tendon-bone injury in part at least through promotion of tissue remodelling. Here, we investigated the effects of low-range concentrations of NaBu using in vitro and in vivo assays using angiogenesis as the primary outcome measure and the mechanisms through which it acts. We demonstrated that NaBu, alone or perfused from the UltraBraid+NaBu suture was pro-angiogenic at very low-range doses promoting migration, tube formation and cell invasion in bovine aortic endothelial cells (BAECs). Furthermore, cell exposure to low NaBu concentrations increased expression of proteins involved in angiogenic cell signalling, including p-PKCβ1, p-FAK, p-ERK1/2, p-NFκβ, p-PLCγ1 and p-VEGFR2. In addition, inhibitors of both VEGFR2 and PKCβ1 blocked the angiogenic response. In in vivo assays, low concentrations of NaBu induced neovascularization in sponge implants in mice, evidenced by increased numbers of vessels and haemoglobin content in these implants. The findings in this study indicate that low concentrations of NaBu could be an important compound to stimulate angiogenesis at a site where vasculature is deficient and healing is compromised

Use of ring-expanded diamino- and diamidocarbene ligands in copper catalyzed azide-alkyne "click" reactions

The two-coordinate ring-expanded N-heterocyclic carbene copper­(I) complexes [Cu­(RE-NHC)₂]⁺ (RE-NHC = 6-Mes, 7-<i>o</i>-Tol, 7-Mes) have been prepared and shown to be effective catalysts under neat conditions for the 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition of alkynes and azides. In contrast, the cationic diamidocarbene analogue [Cu­(6-MesDAC)₂]⁺ and the neutral species [(6-MesDAC)­CuCl]₂ and [(6-MesDAC)₂(CuCl)₃] show good activity when the catalysis is performed on water

Visions of an Imagined Venice Suspended Between Memories and New Possibilities

This paper investigates the composition of heterogeneous fragments, excerpts from the inventory of collective memory, and the resulting unpredictable architecture in an urban context. The project focuses on the city of Venice, its medieval urban tissue, its Renaissance and Baroque works. The freedom to assemble figures or fragments, to place them in another context, highlighted the effectiveness and decisiveness of a reading of urban design in which the figurative force is the result of consideration based on the visual relationships between objects. The experiences presented outline certain unreal circumstances, but nevertheless inspire a scale evaluation of the results of planned modifications, and suggest corrections, adjustments and new possibilities. The experimental setting, that some may deem fantastical, is derived from the superimposition of an existing environment and works introduced from other contexts. In this way, the artist can redesign and foreshadow, creating a fictional city that can paradoxically serve as a reference in the development of new possible urban settings. The juxtaposition of well-known architectures to provide form to new spatial connections in the environment verifies new unthought-of opportunities to compose buildings and monuments that modify the space. The inventions resulting from the union of individual architectures into unitary visions that do not organically belong together is a particular iconography in which buildings abandon the passive and ornamental function thanks to which we have got to know them and reacquire an actively elevated role in the project. A similar procedure that tests the possibility of enhancement of the context and the monument was experimented by the greatest architect of romantic classicism, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and can be seen in one of his best known designs called Large composition, how Milan Cathedral should be situated (1810). So the monument of the Lombard city is represented on a hill that overlooks a large city on the coast, perhaps Trieste, in order to test a new version of the relationship, here between architecture and nature. It is one of the most well-known anticipated explorations carried out in the past in a planning method facilitating upstream project verification aimed at the evaluation on the one hand of the impact of a new architecture on the environment, and on the other hand, of the opportunity to enhance a given place

Probing intermetallic coupling in dinuclear N-heterocyclic carbene ruthenium(II) complexes

A series of bimetallic N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) ruthenium(II) complexes were synthesized, which comprise two [RuCl₂(cymene)(NHC)] units that are interlinked via the NHC nitrogens by alkyl chains of different length. Electrochemical characterization revealed two mutually dependent oxidation processes for the complex with a methylene linker, indicating moderate intramolecular electronic coupling of the two metal centers (class II system). The degree of coupling decreases rapidly upon increasing the number of CH₂ units in the linker and provides essentially decoupled class I species when propylene or butylene linkers are used. Electrochemical analyses combined with structural investigations suggest a through-bond electronic coupling. Replacement of the alkyl linker with a p-phenylene group afforded cyclometalated complexes, which were considerably less stable. The electronic coupling in the methylene-linked complex and the relatively robust NHC–ruthenium bond may provide access to species that are switchable on the molecular scale