Individuals of the solitary ascidian Styela clava Herdman, 1881 have been recorded for the first time in Italian waters, in Chioggia, within the Lagoon of Venice. This finding represents the third ...record of the species in the Mediterranean Sea. The Lagoon of Venice is a well-known hotspot of introduction of Non-Indigenous Species (NIS) along Italian coasts. It hosts several important vectors of introduction such as commercial shipping, recreational boating, aquaculture facilities and the live seafood trade. Monitoring surveys are a crucial step for the early identification of NIS, especially those characterized by a high invasive potential such as S. clava.
Migraine is a neurological disorder that affects the central nervous system causing painful attacks of headache.
A genetic vulnerability and exposure to environmental triggers can influence the ...migraine phenotype. Migraine interferes
in many facets of people?s daily life including employment commitments and their ability to look after their families resulting
in a reduced quality of life. Identification of the biological processes that underlie this relatively common affliction
has been difficult because migraine does not have any clearly identifiable pathology or structural lesion detectable by current
medical technology. Theories to explain the symptoms of migraine have focused on the physiological mechanisms
involved in the various phases of headache and include the vascular and neurogenic theories. In relation to migraine
pathophysiology the trigeminovascular system and cortical spreading depression have also been implicated with supporting
evidence from imaging studies and animal models. The objective of current research is to better understand the pathways
and mechanisms involved in causing pain and headache to be able to target interventions. The genetic component of
migraine has been teased apart using linkage studies and both candidate gene and genome-wide association studies, in
family and case-control cohorts. Genomic regions that increase individual risk to migraine have been identified in neurological,
vascular and hormonal pathways. This review discusses knowledge of the pathophysiology and genetic basis of
migraine with the latest scientific evidence from genetic studies.
Abstract Fragile X syndrome is the most common monogenetic form of intellectual disability and autism. Although the Fmr1 knockout mouse model recapitulates many aspects of the human FXS condition, ...the establishment of robust social behavioural phenotypes suitable for drug screening has been difficult. Here, we describe a novel social behavioural paradigm, the Automated Tube Test (ATT), for which Fmr1 knockout mice demonstrate a highly reliable and robust phenotype. Fmr1 KO mice show highly dominant behaviour over wild-type littermates in the ATT. Consistent with previous findings, we observed a highly significant, albeit partial, rescue of the altered social behaviour of Fmr1 knockout mice in the ATT, using genetic (mGluR5 deletion) or pharmacological inhibition (mGluR5 antagonist) of mGluR5 signalling independently. Together, our results validate the Automated Tube Test as a robust outcome measure for social behaviour in preclinical research for FXS, and confirm the pathophysiological relevance of mGluR5 signalling. Moreover, our findings highlight the strategy of initiating pharmacological intervention in adulthood as holding significant clinical potential.
•Status of MITICA facility.•SPIDER experimentation started.•First scan of plasma light and spectroscopic signals vs RF power and filter field.•SPIDER short-term planning.
To reach fusion conditions ...and control plasma configuration in ITER, a suitable combination of additional heating and current drive systems is necessary. Among them, two Neutral Beam Injectors (NBI) will provide 33 MW hydrogen/deuterium particles electrostatically accelerated to 1 MeV; efficient gas-cell neutralisation at such beam energy requires negative ions, obtained by caesium-catalysed surface conversion of atoms inside the ion source. As ITER NBI requirements have never been simultaneously attained, a Neutral Beam Test Facility (NBTF) was set up at Consorzio RFX (Italy), including two experiments. MITICA is the full-scale NBI prototype with 1 MeV particle energy. SPIDER, with 100 keV particle energy, aims at testing and optimising the full-scale ion source: extracted beam uniformity, negative ion current density (for one hour) and beam optics (beam divergence <7 mrad; beam aiming direction within 2 mrad). This paper outlines the worldwide effort towards the ITER NBI realisation: the main results of the ELISE facility (IPP-Garching, Germany), equipped with a half-size source, are described along with the status of MITICA; specific issues are investigated by small specific facilities and by joint experiments at QST and NIFS (Japan). The SPIDER experiment, just come into operation, will profit from strong modelling activities, to simulate and interpret experimental scenarios, and from advanced diagnostic instruments, providing thorough plasma and beam characterisation. Finally, the results of the first experiments in SPIDER are presented, aimed at a preliminary source plasma characterisation by plasma light detectors and plasma spectroscopy.
The EU DEMO Plant Electrical System (PES) main scopes are to supply all the plant electrical loads and to deliver to the Power Transmission Grid (PTG) the net electrical power generated. The studies ...on the PES during the Pre-Concept Design (PCD) Phase were mainly addressed to understand the possible issues, related to the special features both of the power generated, with respect to a power plant of the same size, and of the power to be supplied to the electrical loads. For this purpose, the approach was to start the design of the different PES components adopting technologies already utilized in fusion experiments and in Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) to verify their applicability and identify possible limits when scaled to the DEMO size and applied to the specific pulsed operating conditions. This work is not completed, however several issues have been already identified related to the pulsed operation of the turbine generator, the large amount of recirculation power, the very high peaks of active power required for the plasma formation and control, the huge reactive power demand, if thyristor converter technology was adopted to supply the superconducting coils, etc.. The paper gives an overview on the features and scope of the PES and its subsystems, on the main achievements during the Pre-Concept Design (PCD) Phase, on the challenges for the development of the conceptual design in the next framework program and on the plan to face them.
Agricultural soil roughness is pertinent to important agricultural phenomena, such as evaporation, infiltration or compression. Monitoring roughness variations would make possible the improvement of ...tillage operations. In the present work, implementation of the Microsoft Kinect™ RGB-depth camera for dynamic characterization of soil micro-relief is proposed and discussed. The metrological performance and the effect of the operating conditions on three-dimensional reconstruction was analyzed considering both laboratory tests on calibrated reference surfaces and field tests on different agricultural soil surfaces. Data set analysis was made on the basis of surface roughness parameters, as defined by ISO 25178 (2012) series: average roughness, root mean square roughness, skewness and kurtosis. Correlation between different tillage conditions and roughness parameters describing soil morphology was finally discussed.
Recent drug discovery programs aimed at identifying selective metabotropic mGlu receptor ligands by high-throughput functional screening efforts have revealed subtype-selective allosteric modulators ...of mGlu1 and mGlu5 receptors that are structurally unrelated to glutamate. In contrast to competitive ligands, which bind to the glutamate binding site located in the large N-terminal extracellular domain, these modulators act as non-competitive antagonists, inverse agonists or positive modulators by binding to specific residues in the seven-transmembrane domain. More recent studies to assess the potential of these compounds in
in vivo models of nervous system disorders have implicated the mGlu5 receptor subtype as a potentially important therapeutic target for inflammatory pain, anxiety, Parkinson‘s disease and drug abuse, and mGlu1 and mGlu5 receptors as potential targets for anticonvulsant and neuroprotective therapies. Very recent findings indicate an important regulatory role for intracellular proteins interacting with metabotropic glutamate receptors, which might constitute novel drug targets for modulating metabotropic glutamate receptor activity.
Metabotropic glutamate receptors are key players in the modulation of fast synaptic transmission in the brain. The discovery of drugs acting selectively on these receptors in vivo, shed light on a number of possible therapeutic applications.
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