Solvent‐Free Non‐Covalent Organocatalysis: Enantioselective Addition of Nitroalkanes to Alkylideneindolenines as a Flexible Gateway to Optically Active Tryptamine Derivatives

A catalytic asymmetric addition of nitroalkanes to alkylideneindolenines, generated in situ from arylsulfonylindoles, is presented. Despite the weakness of the non‐covalent H‐bond interactions between catalyst and substrates, the performance of the bifunctional organocatalyst used was found to be essentially unaffected by the polarity of the reaction medium. Nitroalkanes, mostly used in nearly stoichiometric amounts, could thus function both as solvents and reagents, resulting in a truly solvent‐free reaction. The broad substrate scope shown by the present transformation allowed the preparation of some optically active tryptamine precursors that are not accessible through the previous catalytic asymmetric methods.     

Eco-sustainable routing in optical networks

It is quite easy to foresee that in the next years, the future generation ultra-high speed network infrastructures and equipments will be no longer constrained only by their pure transport capacity, but also by their energy consumption costs and environmental effects. In particular, large network infrastructures are now widely recognized to play a fundamental role in the emission of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, significantly affecting the environmental sustainability of new evolutions in network architectures as well as technological developments in communication devices. In this paper, a novel eco-sustainable routing and wavelength assignment algorithm, based on shortest path routing with an adaptive link weighting function relying on an extension of the OSPF-TE protocol to convey carbon footprint information, has been proposed to decrease the network ecological impact while balancing the traffic load and maintaining acceptable connection-blocking rate. The trade-off between load balancing and carbon footprint is also analyzed to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy within the context of a real world network.     

A prospective study of risk and resilience factors associated with posttraumatic stress symptoms and depression symptoms among Jews and Arabs exposed to repeated acts of terrorism in Israel.

In the first prospective study, to our knowledge, of the impact of ongoing terrorism and political violence, we analyzed nationally representative data from 560 Jews and 182 Arabs in Israel over a 6-month period. Based on Conservation of Resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 1989, 1998), we predicted that exposure to terrorism and political violence would result in psychosocial and economic resource loss and resource lack, which in turn, would be primary predictors of increases in symptoms of posttraumatic stress (PTS) and depression. We also predicted that trauma exposure and PTS symptoms, in particular, would be related to ethnocentrism and support for political violence. Furthermore, based on theory and prior research, we predicted that posttraumatic growth (PTG) would be related to a worsening of symptoms of distress and that distress would be related to increased ethnocentrism and support for extreme political violence for their “cause.” Women, older individuals, and Arabs (compared with Jews) were more likely to have continued psychological distress over time. In addition, using simultaneous equation modeling, we found good fit for a structural model that partially supported our hypotheses. Psychosocial resource loss, PTG, and social support had direct and indirect effects on psychological distress. Political attitudes tended to harden over time but were not prospectively related to PTS or depressive symptoms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Diffuse Axonal Injury: Clinical Prognostic Factors,Molecular Experimental Models and the Impact of the Trauma Related Oxidative Stress. An Extensive Review Concerning Milestones and Advances

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a condition burdened by an extremely high rate of morbidity and mortality and can result in an overall disability rate as high as 50% in affected individuals. Therefore, the importance of identifying clinical prognostic factors for diffuse axonal injury (DAI) in (TBI) is commonly recognized as critical. The aim of the present review paper is to evaluate the most recent contributions from the relevant literature in order to understand how each single prognostic factor determinates the severity of the clinical syndrome associated with DAI. The main clinical factors with an important impact on prognosis in case of DAI are glycemia, early GCS, the peripheral oxygen saturation, blood pressure, and time to recover consciousness. In addition, the severity of the lesion, classified on the ground of the cerebral anatomical structures involved after the trauma, has a strong correlation with survival after DAI. In conclusion, modern findings concerning the role of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and oxidative stress in DAI suggest that biomarkers such as GFAP, pNF-H, NF-L, microtubule associated protein tau, Aβ42, S-100β, NSE, AQP4, Drp-1, and NCX represent a possible critical target for future pharmaceutical treatments to prevent the damages caused by DAI.     

Die Bedeutung der Agrarmarktregelungen für die Stärkeindustrie der Europäischen Gemeinschaft aus italienischer Sicht

The Significance of the Agricultural Market Regulations for the Starch Industries of the European Community from an Italian Point of View. The starch industry has a remarkable agrar-political importance which could be expanded substantially regarding increased considerations for production and yielding of renewable raw materials. Of course, the main condition to reach this target is to be competitive. The combined agrar-policy offers unsure conditions for an economic foresight strategy. Under the consisting political constellation far-sighted policy is complicated for the starch industry in the community, especially regarding the USA – EEC relationship for the agricultural products. To this complex belongs the isoglucose, too, which is one of the most important new products of the starch industry and starting point of a promising technology. Unfortunately, this product is regarded in the EC as menace of actual agricultural structures. Just differentiation of the agricultural offer is able together with new biotechnological processes to create the requirements for very extensive relations between energy and food policy and natural resources, respectively. The EC agricultural policy should face up with this circumstance to maintain the conditions of operation of the common agricultural market.     

Evaluation of the Molecular Landscape in PD-L1 Positive Metastatic NSCLC: Data from Campania,Italy

Background: Immune-checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have increased and improved the treatment options for patients with non-oncogene-addicted advanced stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, the role of ICIs in oncogene-addicted advanced stage NSCLC patients is still debated. In this study, in an attempt to fill in the informational gap on the effect of ICIs on other driver mutations, we set out to provide a molecular landscape of clinically relevant oncogenic drivers in programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) positive NSCLC patients. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed data on 167 advanced stage NSCLC PD-L1 positive patients (≥1%) who were referred to our clinic for molecular evaluation of five driver oncogenes, namely, EGFR, KRAS, BRAF, ALK and ROS1. Results: Interestingly, n = 93 (55.7%) patients showed at least one genomic alteration within the tested genes. Furthermore, analyzing a subset of patients with PD-L1 tumor proportion score (TPS) ≥ 50% and concomitant gene alterations (n = 8), we found that n = 3 (37.5%) of these patients feature clinical benefit with ICIs administration, despite the presence of a concomitant KRAS gene alteration. Conclusions: In this study, we provide a molecular landscape of clinically relevant biomarkers in NSCLC PD-L1 positive patients, along with data evidencing the clinical benefit of ICIs in patient NSCLC PD-L1 positive alterations.     

Details on the Design of a Lockable Spherical Joint for Robotic Applications

The paper proposes the mechanical design of a lockable spherical joint, which is designed to be manually or automatically configured in different kinematic solutions. The device is conceived for being used as a conventional spherical joint or converted in a universal joint, or still downgraded to a revolute pair. Therefore different configurations can be chosen according to user needs. In particular, two of the three axes of revolution, arranged in the typical roll-pitch-roll sequence of robot spherical wrists, can be locked alternately in order to provide two differently arranged universal joints. It can be demonstrated that such behavior allows to activate different mobilities of a class of reconfigurable parallel kinematics manipulators and for this task the device has been dimensioned. The transition between such mobilities occurs exploiting the concept of over-constrained kinematics, which is realized by the lockable joint during the switching phase in order to avoid an instantaneous mobility of the robot.     

Theoretical analysis of reflectometric measurements in optical fiber links affected by polarization-dependent loss

The theory of reflectometric measurements of polarization-dependent effects in optical fiber links is generalized to the case of links with polarization-dependent losses. The results are a clean generalization of the no-loss case. In particular, a new technique for the reflectometric measurement of the mean polarization-dependent loss is proposed. Furthermore, the possibility of characterizing the local birefringence and the local dichroism of the link is discussed.