Man as product and producer of vitreous optic: from the mirror phase to the monitor phase, with particular reference to Martin Jay, Bergson, Deleuze and Baudrillard

Drawing an arc from Narcissus’ encounter with his own reflection, tracking through varieties and modalities of glassy surfaces and technologies through history, from the mirror to the lens, microscope and telescope, camera obscura and panopticon, to contemporary techno-cultural phenomena of the ‘digital age’ the concern of this work is to determine how mirrors, lenses, screens and monitors have shaped our social and conceptual modes of existence. The four parts of this dissertation all illustrate how glass technology modalities of vitreous optic has contributed to the development of the various spheres of our life, and vice versa. The general hypothesis shows how intertwined we are with our material production beyond the reductive perspectives of technological determinism and social constructivism; and, more specifically, the thesis argues that the vitreous optics of the contemporary age –the computer game, the smartphone, social media platforms and networks- have profound ramifications that are redefining ‘intelligence’, ‘things’, and ‘technology

Controllable Wave Propagation of Hybrid Dispersive Medium with LC High-Pass Network

ISSN:0277-786

Progression of Left Ventricular Dysfunction and Remodelling under Optimal Medical Therapy in CHF Patients: Role of Individual Genetic Background

Background. Neurohormonal systems play an important role in chronic heart failure (CHF). Due to interindividual heterogeneity in the benefits of therapy, it may be hypothesized that polymorphisms of neurohormonal systems may affect left ventricular (LV) remodelling and systolic function. We aimed to assess whether genetic background of maximally treated CHF patients predicts variations in LV systolic function and volumes. Methods and Results. We prospectively studied 131 CHF outpatients on optimal treatment for at least six months. Echocardiographic evaluations were performed at baseline and after 12 months. Genotype analysis for ACE I/D, β1adrenergic receptor (AR) Arg389Gly, β2AR Arg16Gly, and β2AR Gln27Glu polymorphisms was performed. No differences in baseline characteristics were detected among subgroups. ACE II was a significant predictor of improvement of LV end-diastolic and end-systolic volume (P = .003 and P = .002, respectively) but not of LV ejection fraction (LVEF); β1AR389 GlyGly was related to improvement of LVEF (P = .02) and LV end-systolic volume (P = .01). The predictive value of polymorphisms remained after adjustment for other clinically significant predictors (P < .05 for all). Conclusions. ACE I/D and β1AR Arg389Gly polymorphisms are independent predictors of reverse remodeling and systolic function recovery in CHF patients under optimal treatment

Benzothiazolium-functionalized NU-1000 : a versatile material for carbon dioxide adsorption and cyanide luminescence sensing

The benzothiazolium-decorated NU-1000-BzTz MOF is a versatile material for carbon dioxide storage and cyanide luminescence sensing in aqueous solutions

Future Urban Scenes Generation Through Vehicles Synthesis

In this work we propose a deep learning pipeline to predict the visual future appearance of an urban scene. Despite recent advances, generating the entire scene in an end-to-end fashion is still far from being achieved. Instead, here we follow a two stages approach, where interpretable information is included in the loop and each actor is modelled independently. We leverage a per-object novel view synthesis paradigm; i.e. generating a synthetic representation of an object undergoing a geometrical roto-translation in the 3D space. Our model can be easily conditioned with constraints (e.g. input trajectories) provided by state-of-the-art tracking methods or by the user itself. This allows us to generate a set of diverse realistic futures starting from the same input in a multi-modal fashion. We visually and quantitatively show the superiority of this approach over traditional end-to-end scene-generation methods on CityFlow, a challenging real world dataset

Iron Metabolism in the Disorders of Heme Biosynthesis

Given its remarkable property to easily switch between different oxidative states, iron is essential in countless cellular functions which involve redox reactions. At the same time, uncon- trolled interactions between iron and its surrounding milieu may be damaging to cells and tissues. Heme—the iron-chelated form of protoporphyrin IX—is a macrocyclic tetrapyrrole and a coordina- tion complex for diatomic gases, accurately engineered by evolution to exploit the catalytic, oxygen- binding, and oxidoreductive properties of iron while minimizing its damaging effects on tissues. The majority of the body production of heme is ultimately incorporated into hemoglobin within mature erythrocytes; thus, regulation of heme biosynthesis by iron is central in erythropoiesis. Additionally, heme is a cofactor in several metabolic pathways, which can be modulated by iron- dependent signals as well. Impairment in some steps of the pathway of heme biosynthesis is the main pathogenetic mechanism of two groups of diseases collectively known as porphyrias and congenital sideroblastic anemias. In porphyrias, according to the specific enzyme involved, heme precursors accumulate up to the enzyme stop in disease-specific patterns and organs. Therefore, different por- phyrias manifest themselves under strikingly different clinical pictures. In congenital sideroblastic anemias, instead, an altered utilization of mitochondrial iron by erythroid precursors leads to mito- chondrial iron overload and an accumulation of ring sideroblasts in the bone marrow. In line with the complexity of the processes involved, the role of iron in these conditions is then multifarious. This review aims to summarise the most important lines of evidence concerning the interplay be- tween iron and heme metabolism, as well as the clinical and experimental aspects of the role of iron in inherited conditions of altered heme biosynthesis

Tunable photo-responsive elastic metamaterials

The metamaterial paradigm has allowed an unprecedented space-time control of various physical fields, including elastic and acoustic waves. Despite the wide variety of metamaterial configurations proposed so far, most of the existing solutions display a frequency response that cannot be tuned, once the structures are fabricated. Few exceptions include systems controlled by electric or magnetic fields, temperature, radio waves and mechanical stimuli, which may often be unpractical for real-world implementations. To overcome this limitation, we introduce here a polymeric 3D-printed elastic metamaterial whose transmission spectrum can be deterministically tuned by a light field. We demonstrate the reversible doubling of the width of an existing frequency band gap upon selective laser illumination. This feature is exploited to provide an elastic-switch functionality with a one-minute lag time, over one hundred cycles. In perspective, light-responsive components can bring substantial improvements to active devices for elastic wave control, such as beam-splitters, switches and filters