Systemic reuse models for sustainable glass packaging design and innovation

The Italian glass packaging industry is the first in Europe, with 21.3% of production value. It has 14 companies with 39 factories, 7,800 employees and a growing annual turnover of 2.4 billion euros. This trend of production preserves, on the one hand, a good synergy concerning the recycling process, but at the same time, it needs to reduce environmental impacts through reuse practices. This research and analysis work was carried out in collaboration with a company that designs and produces glass packaging, focusing on and evaluating the current reuse and returnable-empty models, outlining the opportunities for a transition towards systemic business that stimulates innovation in new sectors. Subsequently, through a research-through-design approach, a second concept phase defines which guidelines to design packaging within returnable vacuum systems in new sectors and which strategies are feasible to start a transition

The Roles Of MicroRNAs On Tuberculosis Infection: Meaning Or Myth?

The central proteins for protection against tuberculosis are attributed to interferon-γ, tumor necrosis factor-α, interleukin (IL)-6 and IL-1β, while IL-10 primarily suppresses anti-mycobacterial responses. Several studies found alteration of expression profile of genes involved in anti-mycobacterial responses in macrophages and natural killer (NK) cells from active and latent tuberculosis and from tuberculosis and healthy controls. This alteration of cellular composition might be regulated by microRNAs (miRNAs). Albeit only 1% of the genomic transcripts in mammalian cells encode miRNA, they are predicted to control the activity of more than 60% of all protein-coding genes and they have a huge influence in pathogenesis theory, diagnosis and treatment approach to some diseases. Several miRNAs have been found to regulate T cell differentiation and function and have critical role in regulating the innate function of macrophages, dendritic cells and NK cells. Here, we have reviewed the role of miRNAs implicated in tuberculosis infection, especially related to their new roles in the molecular pathology of tuberculosis immunology and as new targets for future tuberculosis diagnostics

Shape Complementarity Optimization of Antibody-Antigen Interfaces: the Application to SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein

Many factors influence biomolecules binding, and its assessment constitutes an elusive challenge in computational structural biology. In this respect, the evaluation of shape complementarity at molecular interfaces is one of the main factors to be considered. We focus on the particular case of antibody-antigen complexes to quantify the complementarities occurring at molecular interfaces. We relied on a method we recently developed, which employs the 2D Zernike descriptors, to characterize investigated regions with an ordered set of numbers summarizing the local shape properties. Collected a structural dataset of antibody-antigen complexes, we applied this method and we statistically distinguished, in terms of shape complementarity, pairs of interacting regions from non-interacting ones. Thus, we set up a novel computational strategy based on \textit{in-silico} mutagenesis of antibody binding site residues. We developed a Monte Carlo procedure to increase the shape complementarity between the antibody paratope and a given epitope on a target protein surface. We applied our protocol against several molecular targets in SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, known to be indispensable for viral cell invasion. We, therefore, optimized the shape of template antibodies for the interaction with such regions. As the last step of our procedure, we performed an independent molecular docking validation of the results of our Monte Carlo simulations.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

miRNA Signatures in Sera of Patients with Active Pulmonary Tuberculosis.

Several studies showed that assessing levels of specific circulating microRNAs (miRNAs) is a non-invasive, rapid, and accurate method for diagnosing diseases or detecting alterations in physiological conditions. We aimed to identify a serum miRNA signature to be used for the diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB). To account for variations due to the genetic makeup, we enrolled adults from two study settings in Europe and Africa. The following categories of subjects were considered: healthy (H), active pulmonary TB (PTB), active pulmonary TB, HIV co-infected (PTB/HIV), latent TB infection (LTBI), other pulmonary infections (OPI), and active extra-pulmonary TB (EPTB). Sera from 10 subjects of the same category were pooled and, after total RNA extraction, screened for miRNA levels by TaqMan low-density arrays. After identification of "relevant miRNAs", we refined the serum miRNA signature discriminating between H and PTB on individual subjects. Signatures were analyzed for their diagnostic performances using a multivariate logistic model and a Relevance Vector Machine (RVM) model. A leave-one-out-cross-validation (LOOCV) approach was adopted for assessing how both models could perform in practice. The analysis on pooled specimens identified selected miRNAs as discriminatory for the categories analyzed. On individual serum samples, we showed that 15 miRNAs serve as signature for H and PTB categories with a diagnostic accuracy of 82% (CI 70.2-90.0), and 77% (CI 64.2-85.9) in a RVM and a logistic classification model, respectively. Considering the different ethnicity, by selecting the specific signature for the European group (10 miRNAs) the diagnostic accuracy increased up to 83% (CI 68.1-92.1), and 81% (65.0-90.3), respectively. The African-specific signature (12 miRNAs) increased the diagnostic accuracy up to 95% (CI 76.4-99.1), and 100% (83.9-100.0), respectively. Serum miRNA signatures represent an interesting source of biomarkers for TB disease with the potential to discriminate between PTB and LTBI, but also among the other categories

Chromogranin a measurement for assessing the selectivity of adrenal venous sampling in primary aldosteronism.

The assessment of selectivity of blood sampling is a fundamental step for a proper interpretation of the results of adrenal vein sampling (AVS), which is a "must" for identifying the surgically curable subtypes of primary aldosteronism. However, uncertainties remain on how to best achieve this goal

Integrating standardized whole genome sequence analysis with a global mycobacterium tuberculosis antibiotic resistance knowledgebase

Drug-resistant tuberculosis poses a persistent public health threat. The ReSeqTB platform is a collaborative, curated knowledgebase, designed to standardize and aggregate global Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) variant data from whole genome sequencing (WGS) with phenotypic drug susceptibility testing (DST) and clinical data. We developed a unified analysis variant pipeline (UVP) ( https://github.com/CPTR-ReSeqTB/UVP ) to identify variants and assign lineage from MTBC sequence data. Stringent thresholds and quality control measures were incorporated in this open source tool. The pipeline was validated using a well-characterized dataset of 90 diverse MTBC isolates with conventional DST and DNA Sanger sequencing data. The UVP exhibited 98.9% agreement with the variants identified using Sanger sequencing and was 100% concordant with conventional methods of assigning lineage. We analyzed 4636 publicly available MTBC isolates in the ReSeqTB platform representing all seven major MTBC lineages. The variants detected have an above 94% accuracy of predicting drug based on the accompanying DST results in the platform. The aggregation of variants over time in the platform will establish confidence-graded mutations statistically associated with phenotypic drug resistance. These tools serve as critical reference standards for future molecular diagnostic assay developers, researchers, public health agencies and clinicians working towards the control of drug-resistant tuberculosis

Progetto "Acque pulite"

Abstract not availableLe aree montane, soprattutto in territori ricchi di acqua come quello del Verbano Cusio Ossola e del bacino del Lago Maggiore, sono da sempre oggetto di utilizzo per la produzione di energia elettrica da fonti rinnovabili, principalmente attraverso impianti idroelettrici. Il giusto equilibrio tra il mantenimento della qualit? ecologica degli ecosistemi torrentizi e la produzione di energia elettrica da fonti rinnovabili non ? di facile attuazione, soprattutto in assenza di studi e sperimentazioni dedicate. Lo sfruttamento delle acque a scopo idroelettrico pu? determinare l\u27alterazione e, a volte, la perdita di habitat, causando una riduzione della biodiversit?, con effetti negativi maggiori sui taxa pi? sensibili (ad esempio macroinvertebrati e fauna ittica), causando contestualmente, il degrado della qualit? ecologica di parte o addirittura dell\u27intero corso d\u27acqua a seconda delle tipologie di prelievo/i a cui ? stato sottoposto. Diventa quindi importante, nel contesto locale, ma anche nazionale e internazionale, dove le energie rinnovabili sono un punto focale per la futura produzione di energia, trovare il giusto equilibrio tra la qualit? ecologica degli ecosistemi, e la richiesta di energia pulita e di sviluppo economico. E\u27 proprio in questo contesto che nasce l\u27idea del Progetto "Acque Pulite", che grazie alla disponibilit? e al finanziamento di IDROENERGY S.r.l. ha visto la realizzazione di uno studio pilota sul Torrente San Giovanni. Il Torrente San Giovanni ? uno dei principali immissari del Lago Maggiore e per tale motivo risulta importante conoscere la sua qualit? ecologica e gli effetti su di essa delle diverse attivit? umane che insistono all\u27interno del suo bacino. In particolare, con il Progetto "Acque Pulite" si sono voluti verificare gli effetti della presenza di un\u27opera di presa e di una traversa, costruite per scopo idroelettrico, sulla qualit? idro-morfologica, chimica e biologica dei tratti di torrente a monte e a valle di tali opere

Molecular diversity of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates from patients with pulmonary tuberculosis in Mozambique

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Mozambique is one of the countries with the highest burden of tuberculosis (TB) in Sub-Saharan Africa, and information on the predominant genotypes of <it>Mycobacterium tuberculosis </it>circulating in the country are important to better understand the epidemic. This study determined the predominant strain lineages that cause TB in Mozambique.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A total of 445 <it>M. tuberculosis </it>isolates from seven different provinces of Mozambique were characterized by spoligotyping and resulting profiles were compared with the international spoligotyping database SITVIT2.</p> <p>The four most predominant lineages observed were: the Latin-American Mediterranean (LAM, n = 165 or 37%); the East African-Indian (EAI, n = 132 or 29.7%); an evolutionary recent but yet ill-defined T clade, (n = 52 or 11.6%); and the globally-emerging Beijing clone, (n = 31 or 7%). A high spoligotype diversity was found for the EAI, LAM and T lineages.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The TB epidemic in Mozambique is caused by a wide diversity of spoligotypes with predominance of LAM, EAI, T and Beijing lineages.</p

First-principles prediction of structure, energetics, formation enthalpy, elastic constants, polarization, and piezoelectric constants of AlN, GaN, and InN: comparison of local and gradient-corrected density-functional theory

A number of diverse bulk properties of the zincblende and wurtzite III-V nitrides AlN, GaN, and InN, are predicted from first principles within density functional theory using the plane-wave ultrasoft pseudopotential method, within both the LDA (local density) and GGA (generalized gradient) approximations to the exchange-correlation functional. Besides structure and cohesion, we study formation enthalpies (a key ingredient in predicting defect solubilities and surface stability), spontaneous polarizations and piezoelectric constants (central parameters for nanostructure modeling), and elastic constants. Our study bears out the relative merits of the two density functional approaches in describing diverse properties of the III-V nitrides (and of the parent species N$_2$, Al, Ga, and In), and leads us to conclude that the GGA approximation, associated with high-accuracy techniques such as multiprojector ultrasoft pseudopotentials or modern all-electron methods, is to be preferred in the study of III-V nitrides.Comment: RevTeX 6 pages, 12 tables, 0 figure

Insight into the mechanism of ferroptosis inhibition by ferrostatin-1

Ferroptosis is a form of cell death primed by iron and lipid hydroperoxides and prevented by GPx4. Ferrostatin-1 (fer-1) inhibits ferroptosis much more efficiently than phenolic antioxidants. Previous studies on the antioxidant efficiency of fer-1 adopted kinetic tests where a diazo compound generates the hydroperoxyl radical scavenged by the antioxidant. However, this reaction, accounting for a chain breaking effect, is only minimally useful for the description of the inhibition of ferrous iron and lipid hydroperoxide dependent peroxidation. Scavenging lipid hydroperoxyl radicals, indeed, generates lipid hydroperoxides from which ferrous iron initiates a new peroxidative chain reaction. We show that when fer-1 inhibits peroxidation, initiated by iron and traces of lipid hydroperoxides in liposomes, the pattern of oxidized species produced from traces of pre-existing hydroperoxides is practically identical to that observed following exhaustive peroxidation in the absence of the antioxidant. This supported the notion that the anti-ferroptotic activity of fer-1 is actually due to the scavenging of initiating alkoxyl radicals produced, together with other rearrangement products, by ferrous iron from lipid hydroperoxides. Notably, fer-1 is not consumed while inhibiting iron dependent lipid peroxidation. The emerging concept is that it is ferrous iron itself that reduces fer-1 radical. This was supported by electroanalytical evidence that fer-1 forms a complex with iron and further confirmed in cells by fluorescence of calcein, indicating a decrease of labile iron in the presence of fer-1. The notion of such as pseudo-catalytic cycle of the ferrostatin-iron complex was also investigated by means of quantum mechanics calculations, which confirmed the reduction of an alkoxyl radical model by fer-1 and the reduction of fer-1 radical by ferrous iron. In summary, GPx4 and fer-1 in the presence of ferrous iron, produces, by distinct mechanism, the most relevant anti-ferroptotic effect, i.e the disappearance of initiating lipid hydroperoxides