Strategies to Modulate Specialized Metabolism in Mediterranean Crops: From Molecular Aspects to Field

Plant specialized metabolites (SMs) play an important role in the interaction with the environment and are part of the plant defense response. These natural products are volatile, semi-volatile and non-volatile compounds produced from common building blocks deriving from primary metabolic pathways and rapidly evolved to allow a better adaptation of plants to environmental cues. Specialized metabolites include terpenes, flavonoids, alkaloids, glucosinolates, tannins, resins, etc. that can be used as phytochemicals, food additives, flavoring agents and pharmaceutical compounds. This review will be focused on Mediterranean crop plants as a source of SMs, with a special attention on the strategies that can be used to modulate their production, including abiotic stresses, interaction with beneficial soil microorganisms and novel genetic approaches.     

Probiotic-Induced Tolerogenic Dendritic Cells: A Novel Therapy for Inflammatory Bowel Disease?

Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) are immune-mediated, chronic relapsing diseases with a rising prevalence worldwide in both adult and pediatric populations. Treatment options for immune-mediated diseases, including IBDs, are traditional steroids, immunomodulators, and biologics, none of which are capable of inducing long-lasting remission in all patients. Dendritic cells (DCs) play a fundamental role in inducing tolerance and regulating T cells and their tolerogenic functions. Hence, modulation of intestinal mucosal immunity by DCs could provide a novel, additional tool for the treatment of IBD. Recent evidence indicates that probiotic bacteria might impact immunomodulation both in vitro and in vivo by regulating DCs’ maturation and producing tolerogenic DCs (tolDCs) which, in turn, might dampen inflammation. In this review, we will discuss this evidence and the mechanisms of action of probiotics and their metabolites in inducing tolDCs in IBDs and some conditions associated with them.     

Fertility-Sparing Approach in Women Affected by Stage I and Low-Grade Endometrial Carcinoma: An Updated Overview

Endometrial cancer (EC) is a deleterious condition which strongly affects a woman’s quality of life. Although aggressive interventions should be considered to treat high-grade EC, a conservative approach should be taken into consideration for women wishing to conceive. In this scenario, we present an overview about the EC fertility-sparing approach state of art. Type I EC at low stage is the only histological type which can be addressed with a fertility-sparing approach. Moreover, no myometrium and/or adnexal invasion should be seen, and lymph-vascular space should not be involved. Regarding the pharmaceutical target, progestins, in particular medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA) or megestrol acetate (MA), are the most employed agent in conservative treatment of early-stage EC. The metformin usage and hysteroscopic assessment is still under debate, despite promising results. Particularly strict and imperious attention should be given to the follow-up and psychological wellbeing of women, especially because of the double detrimental impairment: both EC and EC-related infertility consequences.     

Trapdoor Hard-to-Invert Group Isomorphisms and Their Application to Password-Based Authentication

In the security chain the weakest link is definitely the human one: human beings cannot remember long secrets and often resort to rather insecure solutions to keep track of their passwords or pass-phrases. For this reason it is very desirable to have protocols that do not require long passwords to guarantee security, even in the case in which exhaustive search is feasible. This is actually the goal of password-based key exchange protocols, secure against off-line dictionary attacks: two people share a password (possibly a very small one, say a 4-digit number), and after the protocol execution, they end up sharing a large secret session key (known to both of them, but nobody else). Then an adversary attacking the system should try several connections (on average 5000 for the above short password) in order to be able to get the correct password. Such a large number of erroneous connections can be prevented by various means. Our results can be highlighted as follows. First we define a new primitive that we call trapdoor hard-to-invert group isomorphisms, and give some candidates. Then we present a generic password-based key exchange construction that admits a security proof assuming that these objects exist. Finally, we instantiate our general scheme with some concrete examples, such as the Diffie-Hellman function and the RSA function, but more interestingly the modular square-root function, which leads to the first scheme with security related to the integer factorization problem. Furthermore, the latter variant is very efficient for one party (the server). Our results hold in the random-oracle model.     

Efficient inclusion for a class of XML types with interleaving and counting

Inclusion between XML types is important but expensive, and is much more expensive when unordered types are considered. We prove here that inclusion for XML types with interleaving and counting can be decided in polynomial time in the presence of two important restrictions: no element appears twice in the same content model, and Kleene star is only applied to disjunctions of single elements.     

A demand-assignment algorithm based on a Markov modulated chain prediction model for satellite bandwidth allocation

This article deals with the problem of the design of a control-based demand-assignment algorithm for a satellite access network using a Markov modulated chain traffic prediction model. The objective is to guarantee a target Quality of Service (QoS) to Internet traffic, while efficiently exploiting the air interface. The proposed algorithm is in charge of dynamically partitioning the uplink bandwidth capacity in a satellite spotbeam among the in-progress connections. Such partition is performed aiming at matching the QoS requirements of each connection and maximizing the satellite bandwidth exploitation. A closed-loop Control Theory approach is adopted to efficiently tackle the problem of the delay between bandwidth requests and bandwidth assignments, while minimizing the signaling overhead caused by control messages. The algorithm efficiently copes with both the satellite propagation delay and the delays inherent in the periodic nature of the bandwidth request mechanism. The proposed demand-assignment algorithm and Markov chain traffic prediction model are shown to improve the overall satellite network performance through extensive simulation experiments.     

Bio-inspired solutions for locomotion in the gastrointestinal tract: background and perspectives

This paper illustrates a bio-inspired approach to effective, smooth and safe navigation in the human body and, in particular, in the gastrointestinal tract. This idea originates from the medical need to develop more powerful tools for microendoscopy, which is one of the most challenging frontiers of modern medicine. Understanding motion and perception systems of lower animal forms, such as parasites, worms, insects and snakes, can help to design and fabricate bio-inspired robots able to navigate in tortuous, slippery and difficult-to-access cavities of the human body. A preliminary study of a biomimetic adhesion system for the human tissues is presented in this work and some technological implementations are illustrated and discussed. Finally, some issues concerning the goals of smart and reactive locomotion are considered and the most promising and relevant enabling technologies are discussed.     

Web Filtering: Where,How and Why: Control of Internet use: some considerations about the implications of this type of control in the light of the Italian experience.

A recent study¹ has determined that the average amount of time users spend on the Internet at their workstations is on the order of five and a half hours per week. Italy is in second place after the United Kingdom in use of the Internet from the workplace. When this type of access is available there is also the potential for its abuse. And so it was found that, out of a sample of 200 interviewees, 51% admitted to browsing sites not pertinent to their business during work hours, and, this is how three of the five and half hours are spent. Where exactly? The type of websites visited when one should be working vary from leisure time activities, to shopping, to pornography.So how do companies respond to this problem? In Italy, 55% of the sample admit that they have not yet undertaken any definite actions with regard to this issue, 17% have implemented policies, 7% carry out active system monitoring and 14% use content and surfing filters.