Canonical sonic Hedgehog signaling in early lung development

The canonical hedgehog (HH) signaling pathway is of major importance during embryonic development. HH is a key regulatory morphogen of numerous cellular processes, namely, cell growth and survival, differentiation, migration, and tissue polarity. Overall, it is able to trigger tissue-specific responses that, ultimately, contribute to the formation of a fully functional organism. Of all three HH proteins, Sonic Hedgehog (SHH) plays an essential role during lung development. In fact, abnormal levels of this secreted protein lead to severe foregut defects and lung hypoplasia. Canonical SHH signal transduction relies on the presence of transmembrane receptors, such as Patched1 and Smoothened, accessory proteins, as Hedgehog-interacting protein 1, and intracellular effector proteins, like GLI transcription factors. Altogether, this complex signaling machinery contributes to conveying SHH response. Pulmonary morphogenesis is deeply dependent on SHH and on its molecular interactions with other signaling pathways. In this review, the role of SHH in early stages of lung development, specifically in lung specification, primary bud formation, and branching morphogenesis is thoroughly reviewed.FEDER funds, through the Competitiveness Factors Operational Program (COMPETE), and by National funds, through the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), under the scope of the project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007038; and by the project NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000013, supported by the Northern Portugal Regional Operational Program (NORTE 2020), under the Portugal 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER). The funders had no role in decision to publish or preparation of the manuscriptinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

“A Genizah finished product for She’elat Ḥalom based on Sefer Ha-Razim.”

The article discusses a rare case of textual correspondence between a section of a Jewish literary book of magic dating back to Late Antiquity, Sefer ha-Razim, and a magical finished product from the XII-XIII centuries preserved among the fragments of the Cairo Genizah

“Computer Assisted Translation of Ancient Texts: The Babylonian Talmud Case Study.”

The article introduces some of the features characterizing the Computer Assisted Translation web application developed to support the translation of the Babylonian Talmud (BT) in Italian. The BT is a late antique Jewish anthological corpus, which, as other ancient texts, presents a number of hurdles related to its intrinsic linguistic and philological nature. The article illustrates the solutions adopted in the system, with particular emphasis on the Translation Memory and the translation suggestion component

The unsung earth: Man’s regeneration and rediscovery of the earth after societal breakdown in Mauro Corona’s La fine del mondo storto

L’articolo affronta il racconto La fine del mondo storto (2010) dello scultore,alpinista e narratore trentino Mauro Corona: l’apologo di Corona descrive lasituazione apocalittica di un mondo in cui, a causa della globalizzazione, “latecnica delle apparenze ha prevalso sulla nostra naturalità” e l’uomo, esauritaogni risorsa, si candida ad auto-immolarsi; non senza la proposta di unohappy ending, cioè l’ utopia di un riscatto e di un rigenerazione basate su unastrategia di ‘decrescita felice’ e su un progetto di riconciliazione con la Natura

“Jewish magic in the syncretic Renaissance: Baking a pizza for the bogeyman”

The article calls attention to the remarkable corpus of manuscripts of Jewish magic penned in pre-modern Italy, showing how they can be used to glimpse the lived religion of Italian Jews and the vibrant encounter between Judaism and Italian Renaissance culture in the overlapping space of magic. The article discusses the textual history of a specific magical technique for becoming invisible which is documented in Jewish sources at least since the fourteenth century. This magical tradition stands out for its (apparently) syncretic nature: it consists in preparing a “pizza” and offering it to a demonic figure—referred to as “the black man”—while standing at a crucifixion site and reciting a magical formula, which may have originally alluded to the Greek myth of Perseus and the Gorgon. Based on a selection of medieval and early modern magical texts in Hebrew and of their parallels in Italian and Byzantine Greek—which are published here for the first time—the article reconstructs the ritual dynamics and magical logic behind this specific magical behavior, unfolding the complex history of cross-cultural borrowings, appropriation, translation and re-translation which characterizes its textual transmission. It shows that, although certain traits of this magical behavior can be traced back to late antique Greco-Egyptian magic, the technique developed in the form known from the existing sources much later and was eventually reshaped in medieval and Renaissance Italy

Fragmented identities: The cultural collision experienced by the African protagonists in the short stories “Mal di...” and “Vado a casa” by Kossi Komla-Ebri

L’articolo propone un’analisi di alcuni personaggi-chiave della narrativa delloscrittore togolese Kossi Komla-Ebri nascenti dal bagaglio personaledell’autore, soffermandosi in particlare sul problema dell’identità dei migrantiafricani spinti verso nuove vite in Europa e delle loro difficoltà a causa diun’integrazione che nega la terra di provenienza. Lo studio si sofferma anchesulla tematica dell’italianità e pone la domanda “Che cosa significa essereitaliani”? o più importante “Che cosa si deve fare per divenire italiani?”.Article text in Italia

Contribution to the cytotaxonomical knowledge of four species of Serapias L. (Orchidaceae)

Abstract Serapias L. includes about thirty entities, but just one (S. lingua) is presently known as polyploid. In this paper we reported, for the first time, the chromosome number of S. gregaria, S. olbia and S. strictiflora, three endemic species of Southwest Europe, that resulted tetraploid with 2n = 72 chromosomes as S. lingua. The strong affinity between these four species revealed by molecular phylogenetic studies based on cpDNA is now supported by their common tetraploid level, so that polyploidy can be considered for this genus a possible mechanism of speciation. The karyotype of another endemic species of Iberian Peninsula, S. perezchiscanoi, was carried out in order to add new karyological data on Serapias orchids

“Immaginazione e modelli onirici tardo antichi nei frammenti magici della Genizah del Cairo.”

The article discusses discussing a small group of magical fragments from the Cairo Genizah – most of which still unpublished – which describe and give instructions on how to perform a specific dream technique known as sheʾelat ḥalom (literally, dream request). Based on the specific content and forms of the dreams associated with the sheʾelat ḥalom, the articles offers a reconstruction of how ancient Jews dreamt – or, more correctly, how they expected to perceive their dreams. The article shows that the dreams associated with the sheʾelat ḥalom were in part shaped according to an oneiric imagination and ideology that can be traced back at least to Late Antiquity

Continual Cross-Dataset Adaptation in Road Surface Classification

Accurate road surface classification is crucial for autonomous vehicles (AVs) to optimize driving conditions, enhance safety, and enable advanced road mapping. However, deep learning models for road surface classification suffer from poor generalization when tested on unseen datasets. To update these models with new information, also the original training dataset must be taken into account, in order to avoid catastrophic forgetting. This is, however, inefficient if not impossible, e.g., when the data is collected in streams or large amounts. To overcome this limitation and enable fast and efficient cross-dataset adaptation, we propose to employ continual learning finetuning methods designed to retain past knowledge while adapting to new data, thus effectively avoiding forgetting. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of this approach over naive finetuning, achieving performance close to fresh retraining. While solving this known problem, we also provide a general description of how the same technique can be adopted in other AV scenarios. We highlight the potential computational and economic benefits that a continual-based adaptation can bring to the AV industry, while also reducing greenhouse emissions due to unnecessary joint retraining.Comment: To be published in Proceedings of 26th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC 2023

Kossi-Komla-Ebri : an African voice in Italian contemporary literature.

Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.The early eighties saw Italy become a landing bay for thousands of immigrants who abandoned their homes in search of a better life. Almost immediately, Italian academics highlighted the importance of this new phenomenon but tended to emphasize the superficial aspects that all immigrants in Italy had in common, aspects linked to the way of life of the newly arrived immigrants which in essence was very different from the Italian way of life. Soon however, the need for the migrants to be heard grew and La Letteratura della Migrazione was born. This world-wide literary phenomenon manifested itself at a much later date in Italy, compared to other European countries, largely due to the fact that a cultural tradition imposed by colonialism did not exist. Paradoxically, it is this very lack of colonial history that has given Italian migrant writers the freedom to express themselves in a style of literature that is original and primarily spontaneous and in many ways different to other Italian writers. It is against this background that Kossi Komla-Ebri writes in Italian, the language he embraces by choice. Although this dissertation focuses initially on the first African migrant writers, it is primarily a detailed study of the characters in Komla-Ebri’s novel Neyla (2002) and in his collection of short stories All’incrocio dei sentieri (2003). In the broader sense, it explores those themes in his narrative common to migrant literature in general, such as the journey, alienation, otherness, loss of identity and the return home. While it is true that these themes represent universal archetypes present in literature since Homer, the study looks predominantly at how Komla-Ebri’s thematic exposition differs from other works in the same general categories. The study shows how in exploring and expounding the constant divide between two continents and two cultures, Komla-Ebri succeeds with great compassion and humanity not only to bridge the gap between diverse identities, but also to break away from the African/migrant writer category