Liquid and vapour phase of lavandin (Lavandula × intermedia) essential oil: chemical composition and antimicrobial activity

Essential oils from Lavandula genus and the obtained hybrids are widely used for different purposes such as perfume production in the cosmetic field and for its biological properties. This is the first study on the liquid and vapour phase of Lavandula × intermedia “Grosso” essential oil grown in the Lazio Region, Italy, investigated using headspace coupled to gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (HS-GC/MS). The results showed the most abundant components were linalool and linalyl acetate, followed by 1,8-cineole and terpinen-4-ol, while lavandulyl acetate and borneol were identified as minor compounds, maintaining the same proportion in both the liquid and vapour phase. Furthermore, we tested lavandin liquid and vapour phase essential oil on gram-negative bacteria (Escherichia coli, Acinetobacter bohemicus, and Pseudomonas fluorescens) and gram-positive bacteria (Bacillus cereus and Kocuria marina)

Modelling and Controlling the Compliance of a Robotic Hand with Soft Finger-pads

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Modeling Adaptation with Klaim

In recent years, it has been argued that systems and applications, in order to deal with their increasing complexity, should be able to adapt their behavior according to new requirements or environment conditions. In this paper, we present an investigation aiming at studying how coordination languages and formal methods can contribute to a better understanding, implementation and use of the mechanisms and techniques for adaptation currently proposed in the literature. Our study relies on the formal coordination language Klaim as a common framework for modeling some well-known adaptation techniques: the IBM MAPE-K loop, the Accord component-based framework for architectural adaptation, and the aspect- and context-oriented programming paradigms. We illustrate our approach through a simple example concerning a data repository equipped with an automated cache mechanism

Apoptotic effects on HL60 human leukaemia cells induced by lavandin essential oil treatment

Recent scientific investigations have reported a number of essential oils to interfere with intracellular signalling pathways and to induce apoptosis in different cancer cell types. In this paper, Lavandin Essential Oil (LEO), a natural sterile hybrid obtained by cross-breeding L. angustifolia × L. latifolia, was tested on human leukaemia cells (HL60). Based on the MTT results, the reduced cell viability of HL60 cells was further investigated to determine whether cell death was related to the apoptotic process. HL60 cells treated for 24 h with LEO were processed by flow cytometry, and the presence of Annexin V was measured. The activation of caspases-3 was evaluated by western blot and immunofluorescence techniques. Treated cells were also examined by scanning and transmission electron microscopy to establish the possible occurrence of morphological alterations during the apoptotic process. LEO main compounds, such as linalool, linalyl acetate, 1,8-cineole, and terpinen-4-ol, were also investigated by MTT and flow cytometry analysis. The set of obtained results showed that LEO treatments induced apoptosis in a dose-dependent, but not time-dependent, manner on HL60 cells, while among LEO main compounds, both terpinen-4-ol and linalyl acetate were able to induce apoptosis

FluoroSpot assay to analyze SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell responses

Monitoring antigen-specific T cell frequency and function is essential to assess the host immune response to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. Here, we present a FluoroSpot assay for concurrently detecting ex vivo antiviral cytokine production by SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells following peptide stimulation. We then detail intracellular cytokine staining by flow cytometry to further validate the FluoroSpot assay results and define the specific T cell subpopulations. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Tiezzi et al. (2023).

A criterion for separating process calculi

We introduce a new criterion, replacement freeness, to discern the relative expressiveness of process calculi. Intuitively, a calculus is strongly replacement free if replacing, within an enclosing context, a process that cannot perform any visible action by an arbitrary process never inhibits the capability of the resulting process to perform a visible action. We prove that there exists no compositional and interaction sensitive encoding of a not strongly replacement free calculus into any strongly replacement free one. We then define a weaker version of replacement freeness, by only considering replacement of closed processes, and prove that, if we additionally require the encoding to preserve name independence, it is not even possible to encode a non replacement free calculus into a weakly replacement free one. As a consequence of our encodability results, we get that many calculi equipped with priority are not replacement free and hence are not encodable into mainstream calculi like CCS and pi-calculus, that instead are strongly replacement free. We also prove that variants of pi-calculus with match among names, pattern matching or polyadic synchronization are only weakly replacement free, hence they are separated both from process calculi with priority and from mainstream calculi.Comment: In Proceedings EXPRESS'10, arXiv:1011.601

Event structures for the reversible early internal pi-calculus

The pi-calculus is a widely used process calculus, which models com-munications between processes and allows the passing of communication links.Various operational semantics of the pi-calculus have been proposed, which canbe classified according to whether transitions are unlabelled (so-called reductions)or labelled. With labelled transitions, we can distinguish early and late semantics.The early version allows a process to receive names it already knows from the en-vironment, while the late semantics and reduction semantics do not. All existingreversible versions of the pi-calculus use reduction or late semantics, despite theearly semantics of the (forward-only) pi-calculus being more widely used than thelate. We define piIH, the first reversible early pi-calculus, and give it a denotationalsemantics in terms of reversible bundle event structures. The new calculus is a re-versible form of the internal pi-calculus, which is a subset of the pi-calculus whereevery link sent by an output is private, yielding greater symmetry between inputsand outputs