Editorial: Yeast cell aging and death

A conspicuous amount of knowledge about the molecular biol- ogy of the cell has come from studies on yeast Saccharomyces cere- visiae, mostly because of its unrivaled qualities as a toolkit for molecular genetics study. The discovery in the late 90’s that this unicellular eukaryote also may activate cell death programs both physiologically, like mammalian apoptotic cell death (Madeo, Frohlich and Frohlich 1997), and under environmental stress, completed the yeast-toolkit. The rst thematic issue on this topic of FEMS Yeast Research four years ago witnessed the no- ticeable amount of research carried out to get a deeper insight into the mechanisms of fundamental biological processes, al- ready discovered in yeast, such as genetic stability and expres- sion, cell cycle, organelle biogenesis and cross-talk. Indeed, it has been possible to study these processes with the added di- mension to discover their function and interrelationships in cell homeostasis maintenance considering also the effect of envi- ronmental cues

External and internal triggers of cell death in yeast

In recent years, yeast was confirmed as a useful eukaryotic model system to decipher the complex mechanisms and networks occurring in higher eukaryotes, particularly in mammalian cells, in physiological as well in pathological conditions. This article focuses attention on the contribution of yeast in the study of a very complex scenario, because of the number and interconnection of pathways, represented by cell death. Yeast, although it is a unicellular organism, possesses the basal machinery of different kinds of cell death occurring in higher eukaryotes, i.e., apoptosis, regulated necrosis and autophagy. Here we report the current knowledge concerning the yeast orthologs of main mammalian cell death regulators and executors, the role of organelles and compartments, and the cellular phenotypes observed in the different forms of cell death in response to external and internal triggers. Thanks to the ease of genetic manipulation of this microorganism, yeast strains expressing human genes that promote or counteract cell death, onset of tumors and neurodegenerative diseases have been constructed. The effects on yeast cells of some of these genes are also presented

"In other wor(l)ds": la distopia in The Handmaid's Tale e Oryx and Crake di Margaret Atwood.

La seguente tesi intende porre l'attenzione sulla narrativa distopica di Margaret Atwood costituita dai romanzi The Handmaid's Tale e Oryx and Crake

Can extremism guarantee pluralism?

Many models have been proposed to explain opinion formation in groups of individuals; most of these models study opinion propagation as the interaction between nodes/agents in a social network. Opinion formation is a complex process and a realistic model should also take into account the important feedbacks that the opinions of the agents have on the structure of the social networks and on the characteristics of the opinion dynamics. In this paper we will show that associating to different agents different kinds of interconnections and different interacting behaviours can lead to interesting scenarios, like the coexistence of several opinion clusters, namely pluralism. In our model agents have opinions uniformly and continuously distributed between two extremes. The social network is formed through a social aggregation mechanism including the segregation process of the extremists that results in many real communities. We show how this process affects the opinion dynamics in the whole society. In the opinion evolution we consider the different predisposition of single individuals to interact and to exchange opinion with each other; we associate to each individual a different tolerance threshold, depending on its own opinion: extremists are less willing to interact with individuals with strongly different opinions and to change significantly their ideas. A general result is obtained: when there is no interaction restriction, the opinion always converges to uniformity, but the same is happening whenever a strong segregation process of the extremists occurs. Only when extremists are forming clusters but these clusters keep interacting with the rest of the society, the survival of a wide opinion range is guaranteed.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figure

On the existence and implications of nonbelieved memories

In this article, we review the state of knowledge about a previously-assumed-to-be-rare memory phenomenon called nonbelieved memories. Nonbelieved memories are a counterintuitive phenomenon in which vivid autobiographical memories are no longer believed to have happened even though vivid recollective features remain present. Such memories stand in contrast to the more typical situation that when events are recollected they are also believed to have genuinely occurred. We review data on the frequency, characteristics, and factors that contribute to the development of naturally occurring and laboratory-induced nonbelieved memories and discuss the relationships of nonbelieved memories with theories of autobiographical remembering and the study of remembering in applied domains

Real-time geophysical applications with Android GNSS raw measurements

The number of Android devices enabling access to raw GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) measurements is rapidly increasing, thanks to the dedicated Google APIs. In this study, the Xiaomi Mi8, the first GNSS dual-frequency smartphone embedded with the Broadcom BCM47755 GNSS chipset, was employed by leveraging the features of L5/E5a observations in addition to the traditional L1/E1 observations. The aim of this paper is to present two different smartphone applications in Geoscience, both based on the variometric approach and able to work in real time. In particular, tests using both VADASE (Variometric Approach for Displacement Analysis Stand-alone Engine) to retrieve the 3D velocity of a stand-alone receiver in real-time, and VARION (Variometric Approach for Real-Time Ionosphere Observations) algorithms, able to reconstruct real-time sTEC (slant total electron content) variations, were carried out. The results demonstrate the contribution that mass-market devices can offer to the geosciences. In detail, the noise level obtained with VADASE in a static scenario-few mm/s for the horizontal components and around 1 cm/s for the vertical component-underlines the possibility, confirmed from kinematic tests, of detecting fast movements such as periodic oscillations caused by earthquakes. VARION results indicate that the noise level can be brought back to that of geodetic receivers, making the Xiaomi Mi8 suitable for real-time ionosphere monitoring

Manipulating cues in involuntary autobiographical memory: verbal cues are more effective than pictorial cues

In two experiments, pictorial cues were compared with their verbal labels to assess their effectiveness in eliciting involuntary autobiographical memories. Cues were relatively complex in Experiment 1 (e.g., relaxing on a beach) and simple objects in Experiment 2 (e.g., a ball). In both experiments, participants went through a vigilance task in which they were presented with frequent nontarget and rare target visual stimuli. Pictures or their corresponding verbal labels were also displayed on both target and nontarget stimuli, but participants were told that these were irrelevant to the task. They were asked to interrupt the vigilance task whenever they became aware of task-unrelated mental contents and to report them. In both experiments, more involuntary memories were elicited in the verbal cue condition, rather than in the pictorial cue condition. This result is discussed in relation to previous work that highlighted the greater effectiveness of verbal cues in memory tasks

Can Extremism Guarantee Pluralism?

Many models have been proposed to explain the opinion formation in a group of individuals; most of these models study the opinion propagation as the interaction between nodes/agents in a social network. Opinion formation is a very complex process and a realistic model should also take into account the important feedbacks that the opinions of the agents have on the structure of the social networks and on the characteristics of the opinion dynamics. In this paper we will show that associating to different agents different kind of interconnections and different interacting behaviour can lead to interesting scenarios, like the co-existence of several opinion clusters, namely pluralism. In our model agents have opinions uniformly and continuously distributed between two extremes. The social network is formed through a social aggregation mechanism including the segregation process of the extremists that results in many real communities. We show how this process affects opinion dynamics in the whole society. In the opinion evolution we consider the different predisposition of single individuals to interact and to to modify each other's opinions; we associate to each individual a different tolerance threshold, depending on its own opinion: extremists are less willing to interact with individuals with strongly different opinions and to change significantly their ideas. A general result is obtained: when there is no interaction restriction, the opinion always converges to uniformity, but the same is happening whenever a strong segregation process of the extremists occurs. Only when extremists are forming clusters but these clusters keep interacting with the rest of the society, the survival of a wide opinion range is guaranteed.Extremists, Segregation, Opinion Dynamics