The “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” of Endothelial Dysfunction Markers in Human Fertility

Endothelial dysfunction is an early event in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis and represents the first step in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular diseases. The evaluation of endothelial health is fundamental in clinical practice and several direct and indirect markers have been suggested so far to identify any alterations in endothelial homeostasis. Alongside the known endothelial role on vascular health, several pieces of evidence have demonstrated that proper endothelial functioning plays a key role in human fertility and reproduction. Therefore, this state-of-the-art review updates the endothelial health markers discriminating between those available for clinical practice or for research purposes and their application in human fertility. Moreover, new molecules potentially helpful to clarify the link between endothelial and reproductive health are evaluated herein.     

Flight 2 version of in-orbit test transponder (IOTT2) for on-board regenerative satellites

This paper presents the design and realization of regenerative satellite on-board bypass test equipment. Furthermore, two particular examples of an in-orbit test transponder (IOTT) are discussed in detail. The IOTT1, developed for the first 30/20 GHz ITALSAT satellite (F1), was launched in January of 1991. IOTT1 has been a useful tool during satellite assembly, integration and pre-launch tests. IOTT1 was successfully used to fully characterize the multibeam ITALSAT satellite in orbit. In general, the IOTT functions to bypass the demodulator, the baseband switchboard and the modulator of the multibeam package of the ITALSAT spacecraft payload, providing the ability to fully characterize the satellite's transponders using well-established IOT test techniques. This paper describes and compares the design, fabrication and test of both ITALSAT in-orbit test RF bypass transponders (IOTT1 and IOTT2) mounted on board the ITALSAT multibeam spacecraft, (F1) and (F2), respectively. The IOTT1 contains the first MMIC circuitry ever launched into space on a communications satellite. The improved IOTT2, fabricated for the second 30/20 GHz ITALSAT satellite (F2), is schedule for launch in early 1996. These fully space-qualified designs incorporate COMSAT Laboratories' designed and fabricated MMIC K_u-band amplifiers, lightweight waveguide K_u-band channel filters and electronic power conditioner (EPC) and combined IOTT telemetry/command (T&C) circuitry.     

Learning from syntax generalizations for automatic semantic annotation

Nowadays, there is a huge amount of textual data coming from on-line social communities like Twitter or encyclopedic data provided by Wikipedia and similar platforms. This Big Data Era created novel challenges to be faced in order to make sense of large data storages as well as to efficiently find specific information within them. In a more domain-specific scenario like the management of legal documents, the extraction of semantic knowledge can support domain engineers to find relevant information in more rapid ways, and to provide assistance within the process of constructing application-based legal ontologies. In this work, we face the problem of automatically extracting structured knowledge to improve semantic search and ontology creation on textual databases. To achieve this goal, we propose an approach that first relies on well-known Natural Language Processing techniques like Part-Of-Speech tagging and Syntactic Parsing. Then, we transform these information into generalized features that aim at capturing the surrounding linguistic variability of the target semantic units. These new featured data are finally fed into a Support Vector Machine classifier that computes a model to automate the semantic annotation. We first tested our technique on the problem of automatically extracting semantic entities and involved objects within legal texts. Then, we focus on the identification of hypernym relations and definitional sentences, demonstrating the validity of the approach on different tasks and domains.     

Replica Management in the European DataGrid Project

Within the European DataGrid project, Work Package 2 has designed and implemented a set of integrated replica management services for use by data intensive scientific applications. These services, based on the web services model, enable movement and replication of data at high speed from one geographical site to another, management of distributed replicated data, optimization of access to data, and the provision of a metadata management tool. In this paper we describe the architecture and implementation of these services and evaluate their performance under demanding Grid conditions.This work was partially funded by the European Commission program IST- 2000-25182 through the European DataGrid Project.     

De-alloying of rapidly solidified amorphous and crystalline alloys

De-alloying occurs when a less noble metal is selectively removed from an alloy either by chemical or electrochemical means. Under appropriate experimental conditions and for suitable alloy composition, the resulting material is constituted by crystalline ligaments rich in the noble element and pores. The literature reports a substantial amount of information on de-alloying crystalline homogeneous solid solutions, mostly based on noble metals, whereas the process has been attempted in a limited number of cases with amorphous alloys. The latter case is reviewed here and new results are given for an Au-based metallic glass evidencing the role of the critical potential and surface roughness.It can be also of interest to remove selectively from the alloy a single phase leaving a sieve-like matrix. which might itself be porous. The size of the pores and of the remaining solid can be tailored by controlling the grain size of the phases. Examples are given for this second process and experiments are reported on successful selective etching of rapidly solidified Fe–C eutectics.     

Fast on-line implementation of two-dimensional median filtering

A fast two-dimensional median filtering technique is proposed for on-line image-processing applications, using a minicomputer. The histogram of the picture elements enclosed in the filter window (L × L) is computed and the median element is sequentially evaluated by successive corrections of the previous output. A comparison with an efficient sorting method is carried out in terms of computing time and memory requirements.     

Selected non-Saccharomyces wine yeasts in controlled multistarter fermentations with Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Non-Saccharomyces yeasts are metabolically active during spontaneous and inoculated must fermentations, and by producing a plethora of by-products, they can contribute to the definition of the wine aroma. Thus, use of Saccharomyces and non-Saccharomyces yeasts as mixed starter cultures for inoculation of wine fermentations is of increasing interest for quality enhancement and improved complexity of wines. We initially characterized 34 non-Saccharomyces yeasts of the genera Candida, Lachancea (Kluyveromyces), Metschnikowia and Torulaspora, and evaluated their enological potential. This confirmed that non-Saccharomyces yeasts from wine-related environments represent a rich sink of unexplored biodiversity for the winemaking industry. From these, we selected four non-Saccharomyces yeasts to combine with starter cultures of Saccharomyces cerevisiae in mixed fermentation trials. The kinetics of growth and fermentation, and the analytical profiles of the wines produced indicate that these non-Saccharomyces strains can be used with S. cerevisiae starter cultures to increase polysaccharide, glycerol and volatile compound production, to reduce volatile acidity, and to increase or reduce the total acidity of the final wines, depending on yeast species and inoculum ratio used. The overall effects of the non-Saccharomyces yeasts on fermentation and wine quality were strictly dependent on the Saccharomyces/non-Saccharomyces inoculum ratio that mimicked the differences of fermentation conditions (natural or simultaneous inoculated fermentation).     

A small scale H2NG production plant in Italy: Techno-economic feasibility analysis and costs associated with carbon avoidance

Energy conversion from hydrogen represents a viable contribution to sustainable development. For this reason several authors have investigated clean hydrogen production and its end uses. One end use is a hydrogen storage system with a fuel cell to mitigate grid instabilities inherent to renewable power generation or intermittent reactive loads. Another end use is burning hydrogen in internal combustion engines for motive transport or remote power generation. Blending hydrogen with traditional hydrocarbon fuels is also possible.