Entre défiance et amitié... Des relations politiques, diplomatiques et militaires tourmentées entre le roi de France et le prince-évêque de Liège au bas Moyen Âge (XIIIe-XVe siècles)

audience: researcher, professional, studen

Iron Behaving Badly: Inappropriate Iron Chelation as a Major Contributor to the Aetiology of Vascular and Other Progressive Inflammatory and Degenerative Diseases

The production of peroxide and superoxide is an inevitable consequence of aerobic metabolism, and while these particular "reactive oxygen species" (ROSs) can exhibit a number of biological effects, they are not of themselves excessively reactive and thus they are not especially damaging at physiological concentrations. However, their reactions with poorly liganded iron species can lead to the catalytic production of the very reactive and dangerous hydroxyl radical, which is exceptionally damaging, and a major cause of chronic inflammation. We review the considerable and wide-ranging evidence for the involvement of this combination of (su)peroxide and poorly liganded iron in a large number of physiological and indeed pathological processes and inflammatory disorders, especially those involving the progressive degradation of cellular and organismal performance. These diseases share a great many similarities and thus might be considered to have a common cause (i.e. iron-catalysed free radical and especially hydroxyl radical generation). The studies reviewed include those focused on a series of cardiovascular, metabolic and neurological diseases, where iron can be found at the sites of plaques and lesions, as well as studies showing the significance of iron to aging and longevity. The effective chelation of iron by natural or synthetic ligands is thus of major physiological (and potentially therapeutic) importance. As systems properties, we need to recognise that physiological observables have multiple molecular causes, and studying them in isolation leads to inconsistent patterns of apparent causality when it is the simultaneous combination of multiple factors that is responsible. This explains, for instance, the decidedly mixed effects of antioxidants that have been observed, etc...Comment: 159 pages, including 9 Figs and 2184 reference

Supernumerary Robotic Fingers to Compensate and Augment Human Manipulation Abilities

In this presentation we introduce the studies and the main results that the SIRSLab research group of the University of Siena carried out in the topic of human augmentation with supplementary robotic limbs. In particular we will present a wearable extra finger that allows to augment hand manipulation capabilities. The device has been successfully tested as a compensation and rehabilitation tool in Activities of Daily Living (ADL) by patients with impaired hand function, as for instance stroke patients. Beside the robotic extra finger we developed and tested different wearable interface to control it