New Synthetic Endocannabinoid as Anti-Inflammaging Cosmetic Active: an In Vitro Study on a Reconstructed Skin Model

Endocannabinoids have been recently appointed as interesting cosmetic actives in regulating inflammaging, a state of chronic low-grade inflammation, known for being involved in many senescence\u2019s manifestations, included skin aging. The aim of this study was to assess the anti-inflammaging activity of a new synthetic endocannabinoid, Isopalmide\uae, on a reconstructed skin model, on which inflammaging has been reproduced through UVA radiation and light mechanical stress. We tested Isopalmide\uae both as a single active and conveyed in a cosmetic product, in comparison with Anandamide, a well-known natural endocannabinoid with anti-inflammatory action. The anti-inflammaging activity of topically applied products has been assessed, after 6 hours of treatment post-irradiation, through the transcriptional modification of genes involved in the NF-\u3baB pathway and the epigenetic pathway targeting miRs as potential biomarkers of inflammaging: miR-21, miR-126 and miR-146a. The results confirmed the anti-inflammatory action of Anandamide which inhibits NF-\u3baB, while Isopalmide\uae showed its anti-inflammaging activity through the establishment of an inflammatory/anti-inflammatory balance by maintaining NF-\u3baB inactive in the cytoplasm and active in the nucleus. The anti-inflammaging activity was shown also by the cosmetic product containing Isopalmide

THINC: A Remote Display Architecture for Thin-Client Computing

Rapid improvements in network bandwidth, cost, and ubiquity combined with the security hazards and high total cost of ownership of personal computers have created a growing market for thin-client computing. We introduce THINC, a remote display system architecture for high-performance thin-client computing in both LAN and WAN environments. THINC transparently maps high-level application display calls to a few simple low-level commands which can be implemented easily and efficiently. THINC introduces a number of novel latency-sensitive optimization techniques, including offscreen drawing awareness, command buffering and scheduling, non-blocking display operation, native video support, and server-side screen scaling. We have implemented THINC in an XFree86/Linux environment and compared its performance with other popular approaches, including Citrix MetaFrame, Microsoft Terminal Services, SunRay, VNC, and X. Our experimental results on web and video applications demonstrate that THINC can be as much as five times faster than traditional thin-client systems in high latency network environments and is capable of playing full-screen video at full frame rate

THINC: A Virtual and Remote Display Architecture for Desktop Computing and Mobile Devices

THINC is a new virtual and remote display architecture for desktop computing. It has been designed to address the limitations and performance shortcomings of existing remote display technology, and to provide a building block around which novel desktop architectures can be built. THINC is architected around the notion of a virtual display device driver, a software-only component that behaves like a traditional device driver, but instead of managing specific hardware, enables desktop input and output to be intercepted, manipulated, and redirected at will. On top of this architecture, THINC introduces a simple, low-level, device-independent representation of display changes, and a number of novel optimizations and techniques to perform efficient interception and redirection of display output. This dissertation presents the design and implementation of THINC. It also introduces a number of novel systems which build upon THINC's architecture to provide new and improved desktop computing services. The contributions of this dissertation are as follows: - A high performance remote display system for LAN and WAN environments. This system differs from existing remote display technologies in that it focuses on the architecture of the system as a mechanism to improve performance, and not just on the remote display protocol and compression techniques. - A novel mechanism to natively support multimedia content in a remote display system in a way that is both transparent to applications and format independent. - pTHINC, a system to deliver improved remote display support for mobile devices, both in terms of performance and usability, and provide a competitive, and in some cases superior, alternative to native mobile applications. - MobiDesk, a desktop utility computing infrastructure that enables service providers to host desktop sessions in fully virtualized environments. Hosted sessions can be remotely accessed using THINC, they can be migrated across computers to provide high-availability, and can be effectively and efficiently protected from denial of service attacks. - Moving beyond remote display, we show how THINC's architecture can be used to provide continuous, low overhead recording of a desktop. Alongside, we introduce a novel way to leverage desktop accessibility services to allow users to search their recording based on captured text content. We have implemented prototypes for these systems, and evaluated their performance in a number of scenarios, and compared it to representative alternatives whenever possible. Our results demonstrate that THINC can provide superior remote display performance, and can be successfully used as a fundamental building block for new and improved desktop applications and services

MobiDesk: Mobile Virtual Desktop Computing

We present MobiDesk, a mobile virtual desktop computing hosting infrastructure that leverages continued improvements in network speed, cost, and ubiquity to address the complexity, cost, and mobility limitations of today's personal computing infrastructure. MobiDesk transparently virtualizes a user's computing session by abstracting underlying system resources in three key areas: display, operating system and network. MobiDesk provides a thin virtualization layer that decouples a user's computing session from any particular end user device and moves all application logic from end user devices to hosting providers. MobiDesk virtualization decouples a user's computing session from the underlying operating system and server instance, enabling high availability service by transparently migrating sessions from one server to another during server maintenance or upgrades. We have implemented a MobiDesk prototype in Linux that works with existing unmodified applications and operating system kernels. Our experimental results demonstrate that MobiDesk has very low virtualization overhead, can provide a full-featured desktop experience including full-motion video support, and is able to migrate users' sessions efficiently and reliably for high availability, while maintaining existing network connections

Remotely Keyed CryptoGraphics - Secure Remote Display Access Using (Mostly) Untrusted Hardware - Extended Version

Software that covertly monitors user actions, also known as spyware, has become a first-level security threat due to its ubiquity and the difficulty of detecting and removing it. Such software may be inadvertently installed by a user that is casually browsing the web, or may be purposely installed by an attacker or even the owner of a system. This is particularly problematic in the case of utility computing, early manifestations of which are Internet cafes and thin-client computing. Traditional trusted computing approaches offer a partial solution to this by significantly increasing the size of the trusted computing base (TCB) to include the operating system and other software. We examine the problem of protecting a user accessing specific services in such an environment. We focus on secure video broadcasts and remote desktop access when using any convenient, and often untrusted, terminal as two example applications. We posit that, at least for such applications, the TCB can be confined to a suitably modified graphics processing unit (GPU). Specifically, to prevent spyware on untrusted clients from accessing the user's data, we restrict the boundary of trust to the client's GPU by moving image decryption into GPUs. We use the GPU in order to leverage existing capabilities as opposed to designing a new component from scratch. We discuss the applicability of GPU-based decryption in these two sample scenarios and identify the limitations of the current generation of GPUs. We propose straightforward modifications to future GPUs that will allow the realization of the full approach

Gelatin-based coating enriched with blueberry juice preserves the nutraceutical quality and reduces the microbial contamination of tomato fruit

To preserve quality and extend the shelf life of tomato, a bioactive edible coating was prepared using gelatin wastes from pharmaceutical industry and lyophilised blueberry juice (BJ). The effectiveness of gelatin-coating (G) and G enriched with blueberry juice (GB) was tested, monitoring carotenoids, polyphenols and flavonoids content, the antioxidant activity and the antimicrobial efficiency of coating against the native microflora. After 7 d of storage, coated fruit showed higher phenolic and flavonoids content and increased antioxidant activity, while carotenoids were unaffected by the treatments. The growth of mesophilic bacteria of GB, and the growth of coliform bacteria of G and GB were significantly reduced during the entire period. The results indicate that GB preserved the nutritional quality of tomatoes and that BJ was able to increase the antimicrobial activity of the coating. This paves the way for a possible use of this biodegradable waste polymer as an eco-friendly coating material

Identification of an iron-sulfur cluster that modulates the enzymatic activity in NarE, a Neisseria meningitidis ADP-ribosyltransferase.

In prokaryotes, mono-ADP-ribose transfer enzymes represent a family of exotoxins that display activity in a variety of bacterial pathogens responsible for causing disease in plants and animals, including those affecting mankind, such as diphtheria, cholera, and whooping cough. We report here that NarE, a putative ADP-ribosylating toxin previously identified from Neisseria meningitidis, which shares structural homologies with Escherichia coli heat labile enterotoxin and toxin from Vibrio cholerae, possesses an iron-sulfur center. The recombinant protein was expressed in E. coli, and when purified at high concentration, NarE is a distinctive golden brown in color. Evidence from UV-visible spectrophotometry and EPR spectroscopy revealed characteristics consistent of an iron-binding protein. The presence of iron was determined by colorimetric method and by an atomic absorption spectrophotometer. To identify the amino acids involved in binding iron, a combination of site-directed mutagenesis and UV-visible and enzymatic assays were performed. All four cysteine residues were individually replaced by serine. Substitution of Cys(67) and Cys(128) into serine caused a drastic reduction in the E(420)/E(280) ratio, suggesting that these two residues are essential for the formation of a stable coordination. This modification led to a consistent loss in ADP-ribosyltransferase activity, while decrease in NAD-glycohydrolase activity was less dramatic in these mutants, indicating that the correct assembly of the iron-binding site is essential for transferase but not hydrolase activity. This is the first observation suggesting that a member of the ADP-ribosyltransferase family contains an Fe-S cluster implicated in catalysis. This observation may unravel novel functions exerted by this class of enzyme

Global gene expression analysis of Canine cutaneous mast cell tumor: Could molecular profiling be useful for subtype classification and prognostication?

Prognosis and therapeutic management of dogs with cutaneous mast cell tumors (MCTs) depend on clinical stage and histological grade. However, the prognostic value of this latter is still questionable. In the present study, MCT transcriptome was analyzed to identify a set of candidate genes potentially useful for predicting the biological behavior of MCTs. Fifty-one canine MCT biopsies were analyzed. Isolated and purified total RNAs were individually hybridized to the Agilent Canine V2 4x44k DNA microarray. The comparison of reference differentiated and undifferentiated MCT transcriptome revealed a total of 597 differentially expressed genes (147 down-regulated and 450 up-regulated). The functional analysis of this set of genes provided evidence that they were mainly involved in cell cycle, DNA replication, p53 signaling pathway, nucleotide excision repair and pyrimidine metabolism. Class prediction analysis identified 13 transcripts providing the greatest accuracy of class prediction and divided samples into two categories (differentiated and undifferentiated), harboring a different prognosis. The Principal Component Analysis of all samples, made by using the selected 13 markers, confirmed MCT classification. The first three components accounted for 99.924% of the total variance. This molecular classification significantly correlated with survival time (p = 0.0026). Furthermore, among all marker genes, a significant association was found between mRNA expression and MCT-related mortality for FOXM1, GSN, FEN1 and KPNA2 (p<0.05). Finally, marker genes mRNA expression was evaluated in a cohort of 22 independent samples. Data obtained enabled to identify MCT cases with different prognosis. Overall, the molecular characterization of canine MCT transcriptome allowed the identification of a set of 13 transcripts that clearly separated differentiated from undifferentiated MCTs, thus predicting outcome regardless of the histological grade. These results may have clinical relevance and warrant future validation in a prospective study