Scriture Visuali e Narrative tra cinema e letteratura negli anni 1970- 2020: Casi Italiani, Spagnoli e Baschi.

99 p. La introducción y los capítulos 2, 3 y 4 están sujetos a confidencialidad por la autoraHablar de cine vasco trae consigo inevitablemente la pregunta de si es algo diferente al cine español. De hecho, muchos, fuera de España o mejor dicho del País Vasco, ignoran la existencia de un cine vasco que pueda tener características independientes del cine del resto de España o lo consideran un fenómeno de nicho investigado por unos pocos y sin especial interés. En realidad, sin embargo, si en Italia la difusión y conocimiento del cine vasco por parte del público está ligada a unos pocos directores como Alex de la Iglesia o Julio Medem y la visión de sus películas no conduce a una conciencia de un cine vasco que puedan tener características estéticas diferentes a las del cine español, en España está muy extendida la percepción de una autonomía estética vasca respecto a lo que se produce en el resto de la península.La autodeterminación del pueblo vasco y el proyecto político independentista encuentran un apoyo significativo en un proyecto cultural generalizado que tiene en cuenta el cine como medio de comunicación inmediato, incluso antes del reconocimiento o mejor, como se verá más adelante, de la 'construcción' de una literatura. Independientemente de si la definición de cine vasco se refiere a algo producido en territorio vasco o algo en lengua vasca, la 'vasquidad' es reconocible como un elemento fundamental de carácter cultural. El objetivo de esta tesis es rastrear la formación de una conciencia cultural cinematográfica vasca y su evolución, o resultado, especialmente en los últimos diez años y, considerando un punto de vista 'externo', no vasco, de reconocibilidad de la misma

A systems biology approach to shed light on apple fruit development

The research carried out and discussed in the present dissertation is positioned within the “TranscrApple” project (www.transcrapple.com), funded by the Provincia Autonoma di Trento (PAT) within the call “Grandi Progetti 2012”. The general objectives of this project, a significant part of which overlap with the present thesis, deal with the characterization, as wide as possible with the currently available technologies, of the transcriptional events, including those related to small RNAs (not discussed in the present dissertation), the metabolic changes, on a subset of primary and secondary metabolites, and hormones’ cross-talk, through a hormone profiling approach, occurring during apple fruit development. The present thesis is organized in different chapters, mirroring the experimental and temporal rationale effectively pursued to develop the research herein described. The main objective of the present work deals not only with providing an overview of transcripts, metabolites and hormones and their variations during fruit development, but also with the setting up of technical and experimental solutions aimed at using the achieved information within an integrative platform, according to a “systems biology view”. In model species, all this kind of studies are extremely easier, thanks to the availability of ready-to-use bioinformatics tools that are not flexible enough to be used in other species. However, especially in tree crops, this approach is still far from being defined and standardized. Chapter 1 introduces the theme “apple fruit development”, discussing the adoption of apple as a model system that, in the last decade, acquired great importance in terms of research among the fruit species thanks to the availability of its sequenced genome. After a brief introduction on the fundamental information available about the apple fruit growth, taking into account the technological and scientific points of view, few difficulties and gaps that hamper the achievement of a complete overview of the regulatory events coordinating the development and growth of the apple, are discussed in relation to the main quantitative and qualitative parameters characterizing the apple fruit production. Chapter 2 enters into the apple fruit research area; the preliminary phase and the multiple validations (concerning different cultivars and seasons) of transcriptional markers during the main apple developmental stages were shown to be fundamental for choosing, on the base of the expression profiles of these genes, the most representative samples, among those collected also in different seasons. Several markers have been identified, validated and employed, among those available from literature, allowing the selection of samples of cv Golden Delicious (herein considered as model) to be used for the subsequent transcriptional and metabolomic characterization carried out in the present research. Chapter 3 deals with the hormonal profiling survey carried out along the apple fruit development for the first time in this species. The results have allowed not only the achievement of brand new data related to the major hormonal classes, to be employed for further researches, but also the clarification and/or confirmation of new hormonal interactions connected to the fruit development stage or the transition between stages. Moreover, the relevance of this study consists in having achieved, for the first time in apple, quantitative data of an important set of hormones concurrently on the same samples.\ud Chapter 4 concerns the survey on the metabolites and their variations during the apple fruit development. A complete overview of the changes of the different classes of metabolites (mainly sugars, organic acids, aminoacids and polyphenols) is given during the apple developmental cycle. The acquired data have been derived from the same samples already analyzed in the previous chapters, and will be integrated with data of diverse nature, such as the RNAseq. Chapter 5 of the present thesis comes into the “system biology” area, initially among several technical difficulties, then partially solved, and gives an example of an alternative interpretation of the hormonal data put within a correlative network along with the RNAseq results achieved on the same samples

Flooding Responses on Grapevine: A Physiological, Transcriptional, and Metabolic Perspective

Studies on model plants have shown that temporary soil flooding exposes roots to a significant hypoxic stress resulting in metabolic re-programming, accumulation of toxic metabolites and hormonal imbalance. To date, physiological and transcriptional responses to flooding in grapevine are poorly characterized. To fill this gap, we aimed to gain insights into the transcriptional and metabolic changes induced by flooding on grapevine roots (K5BB rootstocks), on which cv Sauvignon blanc (Vitis vinifera L.) plants were grafted. A preliminary experiment under hydroponic conditions enabled the identification of transiently and steadily regulated hypoxia-responsive marker genes and drafting a model for response to oxygen deprivation in grapevine roots. Afterward, over two consecutive vegetative seasons, flooding was imposed to potted vines during the late dormancy period, to mimick the most frequent waterlogging events occurring in the field. Untargeted transcriptomic and metabolic profiling approaches were applied to investigate early responses of grapevine roots during exposure to hypoxia and subsequent recovery after stress removal. The initial hypoxic response was marked by a significant increase of the hypoxia-inducible metabolites ethanol, GABA, succinic acid and alanine which remained high also 1 week after recovery from flooding with the exception of ethanol that leveled off. Transcriptomic data supported the metabolic changes by indicating a substantial rearrangement of primary metabolic pathways through enhancement of the glycolytic and fermentative enzymes and of a subset of enzymes involved in the TCA cycle. GO and KEGG pathway analyses of differentially expressed genes showed a general down-regulation of brassinosteroid, auxin and gibberellin biosynthesis in waterlogged plants, suggesting a general inhibition of root growth and lateral expansion. During recovery, transcriptional activation of gibberellin biosynthetic genes and down-regulation of the metabolic ones may support a role for gibberellins in signaling grapevine rootstocks waterlogging metabolic and hormonal changes to the above ground plant. The significant internode elongation measured upon budbreak during recovery in plants that had experienced flooding supported this hypothesis. Overall integration of these data enabled us to draft a first comprehensive view of the molecular and metabolic pathways involved in grapevine\u2019s root responses highlighting a deep metabolic and transcriptomic reprogramming during and after exposure to waterlogging

Auditory cortical responses in the cat to sounds that produce spatial illusions

Humans and cats can localize a sound source accurately if its spectrum is fairly broad and flat(1-3), as is typical of most natural sounds. However, if sounds are filtered to reduce the width of the spectrum, they result:in illusions of sources that are very different from the actual locations, particularly in the up/down and front/back dimensions(4-6). Such illusions reveal that the auditory system relies on specific characteristics of sound spectra to obtain cues for localization(7). In the-auditory cortex of cats, temporal firing patterns of neurons can signal the locations of broad-band sounds(8-9). Here we show that such spike patterns systematically mislocalize sounds that have been passed through a narrow-band filter. Both correct and incorrect locations signalled by neurons can be predicted quantitatively by a model of spectral processing that also predicts correct and incorrect localization judgements by human listeners(6). Similar cortical mechanisms, if present in humans, could underlie human auditory spatial perception.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/62778/1/399688a0.pd

Decoding neural responses to temporal cues for sound localization

The activity of sensory neural populations carries information about the environment. This may be extracted from neural activity using different strategies. In the auditory brainstem, a recent theory proposes that sound location in the horizontal plane is decoded from the relative summed activity of two populations in each hemisphere, whereas earlier theories hypothesized that the location was decoded from the identity of the most active cells. We tested the performance of various decoders of neural responses in increasingly complex acoustical situations, including spectrum variations, noise, and sound diffraction. We demonstrate that there is insufficient information in the pooled activity of each hemisphere to estimate sound direction in a reliable way consistent with behavior, whereas robust estimates can be obtained from neural activity by taking into account the heterogeneous tuning of cells. These estimates can still be obtained when only contralateral neural responses are used, consistently with unilateral lesion studies. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.01312.001

Some investigations into non passive listening

Our knowledge of the function of the auditory nervous system is based upon a wealth of data obtained, for the most part, in anaesthetised animals. More recently, it has been generally acknowledged that factors such as attention profoundly modulate the activity of sensory systems and this can take place at many levels of processing. Imaging studies, in particular, have revealed the greater activation of auditory areas and areas outside of sensory processing areas when attending to a stimulus. We present here a brief review of the consequences of such non-passive listening and go on to describe some of the experiments we are conducting to investigate them. In imaging studies, using fMRI, we can demonstrate the activation of attention networks that are non-specific to the sensory modality as well as greater and different activation of the areas of the supra-temporal plane that includes primary and secondary auditory areas. The profuse descending connections of the auditory system seem likely to be part of the mechanisms subserving attention to sound. These are generally thought to be largely inactivated by anaesthesia. However, we have been able to demonstrate that even in an anaesthetised preparation, removing the descending control from the cortex leads to quite profound changes in the temporal patterns of activation by sounds in thalamus and inferior colliculus. Some of these effects seem to be specific to the ear of stimulation and affect interaural processing. To bridge these observations we are developing an awake behaving preparation involving freely moving animals in which it will be possible to investigate the effects of consciousness (by contrasting awake and anaesthetized), passive and active listening

Grape berry responses to sequential flooding and heatwave events: a physiological, transcriptional, and metabolic overview

Grapevine cultivation, such as the whole horticulture, is currently challenged by several factors, among which the extreme weather events occurring under the climate change scenario are the most relevant. Within this context, the present study aims at characterizing at the berry level the physiological response of Vitis vinifera cv. Sauvignon Blanc to sequential stresses simulated under a semi-controlled environment: flooding at bud-break followed by multiple summer stress (drought plus heatwave) occurring at pre-vèraison. Transcriptomic and metabolomic assessments were performed through RNASeq and NMR, respectively. A comprehensive hormone profiling was also carried out. Results pointed out a different response to the heatwave in the two situations. Flooding caused a developmental advance, determining a different physiological background in the berry, thus affecting its response to the summer stress at both transcriptional levels, with the upregulation of genes involved in oxidative stress responses, and metabolic level, with the increase in osmoprotectants, such as proline and other amino acids. In conclusion, sequential stress, including a flooding event at bud-break followed by a summer heatwave, may impact phenological development and berry ripening, with possible consequences on berry and wine quality. A berry physiological model is presented that may support the development of sustainable vineyard management solutions to improve the water use efficiency and adaptation capacity of actual viticultural systems to future scenario

Ethylene-auxin crosstalk regulates postharvest fruit ripening process in apple

The ripening of climacteric fruits, such as apple, is represented by a series of genetically programmed events orchestrated by the action of several hormones. In this study, we investigated the existence of a hormonal crosstalk between ethylene and auxin during the post-harvest ripening of three internationally known apple cultivars: 'Golden Delicious', 'Granny Smith' and 'Fuji'. The normal climacteric ripening was impaired by the exogenous application of 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP) that affected the production of ethylene and the physiological behaviour of specific ethylene-related quality traits, such as fruit texture and the production of volatile organic compounds. The application of 1-MCP induced, moreover, a de-novo accumulation of auxin. The RNA-Seq wide-transcriptome analysis evidenced as the competition at the level of the ethylene receptors induced a cultivar-dependent transcriptional re-programming. The DEGs annotation carried out through the KEGG database identified as most genes were assigned to the plant hormone signaling transduction category, and specifically related to auxin and ethylene. The interplay between these two hormones was further assessed through a candidate gene analysis that highlighted a specific activation of GH3 and ILL genes, encoding key steps in the process of the auxin homeostasis mechanism. Our results showed that a compromised ethylene metabolism at the onset of the climacteric ripening in apple can stimulate, in a cultivar-dependent fashion, an initial de-novo synthesis and de-conjugation of auxin as a tentative to restore a normal ripening progression

Analysis of Monosodium l-Glutamate in Food Products by High-Performance Thin Layer Chromatography

A simple, fast, specific, and precise high-performance thin layer chromatography method has been developed for the estimation of monosodium l-glutamate (MSG) in food products. Aluminum plates precoated with silica gel 60 GF254were used as stationary phase and a mixture of methanol–chloroform–formic acid in the ratio 5:5:1 (v/v) as mobile phase. Quantification was carried out by postchromatographic derivatization using 1% ninhydrin solution, and the developed spots were scanned by using a densitometer in absorbance mode at 485 nM. The Rfvalue of MSG was 0.64. The results of the analysis have been validated statistically and by the recovery studies. Linearity was observed in the concentration range of 400–1000 nG