Civil Society and Conflict Transformation in Abkhazia, Israel/Palestine, Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria and Western Sahara

The paper describes and analyses the role of civil society in five conflict cases – Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, Western Sahara and Israel/ Palestine. It evaluates the relative effectiveness of civil society organisations (CSOs) and assesses the potential and limits of CSO involvement in conflicts. In particular it concentrates on civil society activities in the fields of peace training and education, including formal and non-formal education, as well as research and media work. The research also identifies the obstacles that local third sector is faced with, examining experiences and lessons learned. The study then presents critical assessments of local CSO contributions to conflict transformation and concludes with a set of suggestions for local and mid-level civil society actors involved in these five conflict cases and beyond. This paper is an overview study, to provide ideas and documentation to the more detailed empirical research carried out in the context of the MICROCON Work Package ‘Conflict in the European Neighbourhood’.Civil society, European Union, European Neighbourhood, Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, Western Sahara, Israel/Palestine, violent conflict, conflict transformation

User-friendly mathematical model for the design of sulfate reducing H2/CO2 fed bioreactors

The paper presents three steady-state mathematical models for the design of H2/CO2 fed gas-lift reactors aimed at biological sulfate reduction to remove sulfate from wastewater. Models 1A and 1B are based on heterotrophic sulfate reducing bacteria (HSRB), while Model 2 is based on autotrophic sulfate reducing bacteria (ASRB) as the dominant group of sulfate reducers in the gas-lift reactor. Once the influent wastewater characteristics are known and the desired sulfate removal efficiency is fixed, all models give explicit mathematical relationships to determine the bioreactor volume and the effluent concentrations of substrates and products. The derived explicit relationships make application of the models very easy, fast and no iterative procedures are required. Model simulations show that the size of the H2/CO2 fed gas-lift reactors aimed at biological sulfate removal from wastewater highly depends on the number and type of trophic groups growing in the bioreactor. In particular, if the biological sulfate reduction is performed in a bioreactor where ASRB prevail, the required bioreactor volume is much smaller than that needed with HSRB. This is because ASRB can out-compete methanogenic archarea (MA) for H2 (assuming sulfate concentrations are not limiting), whereas HSRB do not necessarily out-compete MA due to their dependence on homoacetogenic bacteria (HB) for organic carbon. The reactor sizes to reach the same sulfate removal efficiency by HSRB and ASRB are only comparable when methanogenesis is inhibited. Moreover, model results indicate that acetate supply to the reactor influent does not affect the HSRB biomass required in the reactor, but favours the dominance of MA on HB as a consequence of a lower HB requirement for acetate supply

Evaluation of biodegradation kinetic constants for aromatic compounds by means of aerobic batch experiments

Kinetics of aerobic biodegradation have been investigated for twenty aromatic species using sludges collected from the aeration basin of municipal sewage treatment plants. The reproducibility of the results is tested with respect to the sludges period of collection and the wastewater treatment plant where they are taken. The comparison of kinetic constants, estimated for the investigated chemicals, allows to evaluate the reactivity effect of single groups (i.e., -OH, -CH3, -Cl, -NO2) into the aromatic structures. The search for easy structure-reactivity relationships is also attempted by means of contributing group methods

CARATTERIZZAZIONE DELLA FUNZIONE DI PI3K-GAMMA COME NUOVO BERSAGLIO TERAPEUTICO NELLA FIBROSI CISTICA

La fibrosi cistica (FC) è una malattia genetica a trasmissione autosomica recessiva (AR) causata dalla mutazione del gene CFTR (regolatore della conduttanza transmembrana della fibrosi cistica) che codifica per un canale del Cloro AMP ciclico dipendente. Sebbene la FC si presenti come una malattia multiorgano, l’apparato respiratorio è quello principalmente coinvolto e la cui disfunzione porta alle morte dei pazienti affetti in giovane età. Sono state sviluppate diverse molecole in grado di potenziare o di correggere il canale mutato, ma al momento nessuna di queste ha dimostrato di essere realmente efficace. L’obiettivo di questa ricerca è quello di sviluppare un nuovo trattamento efficace per la FC. Recentemente è stato dimostrato che la fosfoinositide 3-chinasi gamma (PI3K-g) agisce come proteina scaffold regolando negativamente l’AMP ciclico (AMPc). L’ipotesi fondante di questo lavoro è che l’enzima PI3Kγ sia implicato nell’attivazione del canale CFTR mediante la sua attività sull'AMPc, e che interrompendo questa sua regolazione si possa ottenere una maggiore attività del CFTR. In questo contesto, si inserisce il ruolo del peptide derivato dall’enzima PI3K-g, (brevetto n° PCT/IB2015/059880), che è in grado di interrompere questa attività scaffold. Dai risultati ottenuti si evidenzia che il peptide derivato da PI3K-g è in grado di aumentare i livelli di AMPc in un compartimento cellulare ben confinato. Questo si traduce in una maggiore attivazione e funzionalità del CFTR. Nel complesso questi dati mostrano quindi un ruolo importante per il peptide derivato da PI3K-g come un nuovo potenziatore del CFTR

European Union comprehensive approach : what's in a name?

O artigo parte da ideia de que o conceito de abordagem abrangente passou a ser adotado como uma característica distintiva da União Europeia no que respeita à gestão de crises. O novo enquadramento institucional dado pelo Tratado de Lisboa e o crescente número e complexidade dos desafios globais com os quais a União procura lidar, em muito contribuiu para a sua operacionalização. Ao nível conceptual, o âmbito e objeto da abordagem abrangente da União foi parcialmente definida por um Comunicado Conjunto adotado em 2013 e pela Estratégia Global da União a ser apresentada pela Alta Representante em junho de 2016. Contudo importantes divergências entre Estados-membros, bem como entre as clivagens existentes entre instituições europeias e os obstáculos operacionais ainda impedem a sua efetiva implementação. Este artigo tem por objeto analisar a génese, evolução e perspetivas atuais sobre a abordagem abrangente da União com o propósito de incentivar o debate em curso nas instituições europeias e entre as comunidades de peritos. A primeira parte oferece uma perspetiva sobre o desenvolvimento do conceito desde a adoção da Estratégia Europeia de Segurança até à entrada em vigor do Tratado de Lisboa e à adoção pela Comissão Europeia e Alta Representante do Comunicado Conjunto. A segunda parte avalia os esforços e lacunas relativas à sua operacionalização, considerando em particular a questão do desenvolvimento de capacidades na área da segurança, desenvolvimento, programas conjuntos na cooperação para o desenvolvimento e migrações. Conclui com uma perspetiva sobre o futuro da abordagem abrangente da União considerando a adoção da Estratégia Global da União Europeia.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Tactile sensors for robotic applications

In recent years, tactile sensing has become a key enabling technology to implement complex tasks by using robotic systems [...]

Electron Microscopy --Now in Color:Method and Application Development of Energy Dispersive X-ray Imaging for Biology

Human diseases are treated and cured thanks to our understanding of cells and tissues. How the body’s cells behave during health and disease is seen through biomedical imaging. Each cell has millions of proteins that are invisible to the naked eye –200,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Electron microscopy (EM) visualizes even the tiniest proteins and reveals a high-resolution snapshot of the whole cell. Analysis of the gray-scale EM images is subjective. When the interpretation of cellular features is uncertain, additional experiments are required which can take extra days to months. What if we had a way to gather more information from an EM image without having to prepare another sample, or even change the microscope? Luckily, there are many analytical signals in the EM that can be utilized but few have been developed for use in biology. The additional information from the signals is evaluated with the gray-scale EM data as a false-color overlay and together it is termed ColorEM. This thesis describes the development and application of ColorEM with energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis which detects elemental composition through the collection and interpretation of characteristic X-rays. The experimental design for impactful EDX data collection was optimized and applied in this thesis. Applications included barcoded nanoparticles imaged within cells to show how cells degrade and organize cargo and the identification of human cell types and features to study type 1 diabetes. ColorEM is the future for cellular feature identification at EM resolution