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The increasing environmental concerns due to the use of fossil fuels have led to the search of renewable and low-impact energetic sources: the use of different biomass prunings for pellet production has proven to be a smart and eco-friendly option that contributes both to energy sustainability and to waste management. Agricultural residues can be an interesting raw material, whose properties have been shown to have a relevant efficiency in the bioenergy sector. In this study 6 types of pellets were obtained by combining 3 different types of prunings such as olive, kiwi and citrus tree residues. The characterization consisted both of physical analysis, such as the evaluation of moisture and ash content, and chemical determination of C, H, N and S content, HHV and LHV determination. Results obtained not only confirmed the high energy value of these materials, but also made it possible to make a qualitative comparison between the different mixed compositions, in view of their possible utilization in the bioenergy field., Proceedings of the 28th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 6-9 July 2020, Virtual, pp. 124-127

This study is aimed to perform a qualitative analysis for the identification of VOCs emitted by the burning of rice straw biomass. VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) are characterized by a high vapor pressure at ordinary pressure and include a large number of classes of compounds, for example: CFC, aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons, terpenes, aldehydes, ketones, alcohols, etc. Such a wide variety of compounds implies various harmful effects both for humans and for the environment. One of the main anthropogenic sources of VOCs is universally recognized in the processes of controlled or uncontrolled combustion of agricultural waste. In particular, it is estimated that about 260 Mt of rice production in the world are burnt uncontrolled directly on the ground or in implants for the production of energy. So a Basmati rice straw (Oryza Sativa) stock was imported from Pakistan and was combusted in a boiler. During this process the gases produced using tubes for thermal desorption were sampled. In this phase Activated Carbon Fiber (ACF) tubes were used. Subsequently the analyzes were conducted with a GC-MS system in full scan mode in order to identify a qualitative profile of the substances emitted., Proceedings of the 27th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 27-30 May 2019, Lisbon, Portugal, pp. 1663-1666

Moving grate furnaces have large diffusion as CHP plants due to economical feasibility and the ability to process low grade biomass fuels. Unfortunately, packed beds combustion is an high complexity combustion phenomenon and as result these plants are strongly affected by regulation issues which almost inhibit to successfully transfer results from numerical studies. However there is considerable margin to improve performances on pollutant emissions and efficiency by utilizing advanced regulation strategies. The most advanced control strategies adopt a model- based approach to deal with intrinsic high non linearity and complexity of the physics on packed bed combustion. In this paper data obtained from several experimental campaigns have been evaluated on the purpose to obtain an effective MIMO black box modeling of different furnace processes. Data are collected via a particular closed loop swinging regulation to exploit high frequency modal response of the furnace. The model used for parametric linear MIMO analysis utilize Finite Response Filters scheme applied on direct measured quantities or soft sensed ones. The resulting transfer functions from system identification procedures allow good prediction on local furnace behaviors and these can be utilized for synthesis of advanced controllers., Proceedings of the 25th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 12-15 June 2017, Stockholm, Sweden, pp. 552-560

The cytokines/related receptors system represents a complex regulatory network that is involved in those chronic inflammatory processes which lead to many diseases as cancers. We developed a Cytokine Receptor Database (CytReD) to collect information on cytokine receptors related to their biological activity, gene data, protein structures and diseases in which these and their ligands are implicated. This large set of information may be used by researchers as well as by physicians or clinicians to identify which cytokines, reported in the literature, are important in a given disease and, therefore, useful for purposes of diagnosis or prognostic.

The paper deals with the experimental activities on a biomass combustion test-bed. More in detail, experimental campaigns have been devoted to investigate the operation of a biomass moving grate furnace.A research-oriented facility based on a moving grate furnace (350kW) has been set up in order to perform experimental activities in a wide range of test configurations. The paper reports the description of the complete biomass-plant and the assessment of the system operation. As first step, the chemical and physical properties of the used wooden biomass have been preliminarily investigated. Once the biomass-fuel has been characterized, investigations have been devoted to point out the operation of the furnace. It has been operated at full load, highlighting the influence of biomass on particulate matter emission., Proceedings of the 25th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 12-15 June 2017, Stockholm, Sweden, pp. 603-610

VOC (volatile organic compounds) are the compounds that define the odorous characteristics of fruit, vegetables and more generally of any food. In this work we have chosen to use self-produced ACF adsorbent tubes, a versatile and innovative material, to sample the VOC emitted by an orange with and without peel. It is observed that the orange without peel emits a large amount of VOC, however the peel blocks the vast majority and the aromatic profile of the fruit is due exclusively to the VOC emitted by the peel itself. This makes it possible to state that the orange peel can be considered a natural membrane for the abatement of VOC. The orange peel represents one of the main wastes of the agro-food industry and there are in fact several studies in the literature that show the use of orange peels as a system of abatement of pollutants, mainly in aqueous matrices [1,2,3,4,5]. For the first time in this work, the effects of pollutant abatement were assessed by simulating an energy conversion process using a TGA system at the end of which the analytes emitted by tubes for thermal desorption were sampled, in the presence and absence of a filter in orange peel., Proceedings of the 28th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 6-9 July 2020, Virtual, pp. 822-825

Combustion is a common technique for energy production from different types of biomass as agricultural residues in order to reduce the environmental impacts. Much of the woody biomass used in combustion plants is supplied by the sector of agroforestry, in order to increase energy production from waste material. In Italy olive grove cultivations determines a production of agricultural residual biomass that corresponding to the 45% of the main tree crops and is considered an important biomass source from arboriculture. Therefore, it is important to identify wood chip qualities that are suitable for failure free and low emission combustion. In this investigation, olive wood chip was characterized and compared with other variety of wood chips, then was combusted and the emissions were measured. This work aims to characterize the emissions produced by combustion of olive wood chips that represents a scientific method and a useful tool for the recovery of agricultural lignocellulosic residues that could be used in farms and agro-energy districts in order to provide the disposal of waste biomass destined for open burning and uncontrolled combustion process., Proceedings of the 29th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 26-29 April 2021, Online, pp. 577-580

The use of agricultural residues for energy production determines economic and environmental benefits for the agricultural sector. Among the lignocellulosic biomasses, the residues of agricultural crops such as prunings of olive trees, vines and hazels could be play a key role for the italian agricultural sector. The aim of this work is to evaluate the physical and chemical characteristics of these residues in order to obtain information on the potential use in energy transformation processes such as combustion, pyrolysis and gasification. The analysis of biomass character-ization includes the evaluation of moisture content, ash content, volatile matter, fixed carbon, total solid, lower and higher calorific value and elemental composition in terms of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulphur content. The re-sults show that the moisture content is higher in vine and hazel prunings (18.50 % w/w and 11.80 % w/w) than in ol-ive tree prunings (9.80 % w/w). The ash content is below 3 % w/w for all residues and carbon content ranges from 47 % w/w to 50 % w/w. These results show that the agricultural lignocellulosic residues could be used as resource for combustion processes for production of heat and power or in pyro-gasification processes for production of syngas and biochar that represents a good soil improver., Proceedings of the 27th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 27-30 May 2019, Lisbon, Portugal, pp. 290-293

This paper deals with a problem where the same vehicle performs several routes to serve a set of customers and arc traversal times vary along the planning horizon. The relationship with its time-invariant counterpart is investigated and a procedure to compute lower and upper bounds on the optimal solution value is developed. Computational results on instances, based on the Paris (France) road graph, show the effectiveness of this approach.

Purpose: A new form of autosomal dominant hereditary spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA) has been recently described (SCA48), and here we investigate its conventional MRI findings to identify the presence of a possible imaging feature of this condition. Methods: In this retrospective observational study, we evaluated conventional MRI scans from 10 SCA48 patients (M/F = 5/5; 44.7 ± 7.8 years). For all subjects, atrophy of both supratentorial and infratentorial compartments were recorded, as well as the presence of possible T2-weighted imaging (T2WI) signal alterations. Results: In SCA48 patients, no meaningful supratentorial changes were found, both in terms of volume loss or MRI signal changes. Atrophy of the cerebellum was present in all cases, involving both the vermis and the hemispheres, but particularly affecting the postero-lateral portions of the cerebellar hemispheres. In all patients, with the exception of only one subject (90.0% of the cases), a T2WI hyperintensity of both dentate nuclei was found. The association of such signal alteration with the pattern of cerebellar atrophy resembled the appearance of a crab (“crab sign”). Conclusion: Our findings suggest that SCA48 patients are characterized by cerebellar atrophy, mainly involving the postero-lateral hemisphere areas, along with a T2WI hyperintensity of dentate nuclei. We propose that the association of such signal change, along with the atrophy of the lateral portion of the cerebellar hemispheres, resembled the appearance of a crab, and therefore, we propose the “crab sign” as a neuroradiological sign present in SCA48 patients.

This paper presents an updated and comprehensive review of discrete optimization techniques for solving time-dependent problems, i.e. decision problems in which activities and resources have to be scheduled over time. Known compact models with continuous variables representing arrival/service/departure times are either (i) nonlinear or (ii) linear with a weak relaxation. This is why practitioners (and a consistent part of the scientific literature) make use of a discretization of time which introduces an approximation. Such extended Integer Programming (IP) formulations rely on binary variables indexed by time (time-indexed models, TI). Their size may be huge, and so they tend to be out of reach for the current IP solver technology.

Given a graph whose arc traversal times vary over time, the Time-Dependent Travelling Salesman Problem amounts to find a Hamiltonian tour of least total duration. In this paper we exploit a new degree of freedom in the Cordeau et al. (2014) speed decomposition. This approach results in a parameterized family of lower bounds. The parameters are chosen by fitting the traffic data. The first model is nonlinear and difficult to solve. Hence, we devise a linearization which gives rise to a compact Mixed Integer Linear Programming model. Then, we develop an optimality condition which allows to further reduce the size of the model. Computational results show that, when embedded into a branch-and-bound procedure, this lower bounding mechanism allows to solve to optimality a larger number of instances than state-of-the-art algorithms.

Marine sponges are an excellent source of bioactive secondary metabolites for pharmacological applications. In the present study, we evaluated the chemistry, cytotoxicity and metabolomics of an organic extract from the Mediterranean marine sponge Geodia cydonium, collected in coastal waters of the Gulf of Naples. We identified an active fraction able to block proliferation of breast cancer cell lines MCF-7, MDA-MB231, and MDA-MB468 and to induce cellular apoptosis, whereas it was inactive on normal breast cells (MCF-10A). Metabolomic studies showed that this active fraction was able to interfere with amino acid metabolism, as well as to modulate glycolysis and glycosphingolipid metabolic pathways. In addition, the evaluation of the cytokinome profile on the polar fractions of three treated breast cancer cell lines (compared to untreated cells) demonstrated that this fraction induced a slight anti-inflammatory effect. Finally, the chemical entities present in this fraction were analyzed by liquid chromatography high resolution mass spectrometry combined with molecular networking.

BACKGROUND: Thyroid fine-needle aspiration (FNA) samples belonging to the follicular neoplasm/suspicious for malignancy classes are controversial. The authors identified UbcH10 as a marker useful in the diagnosis of several neoplasms, including thyroid cancer. Here, analysis of UbcH10 expression by quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and immunohistochemistry was applied to FNAs. METHODS: A series of 84 follicular neoplasm/suspicious for malignancy FNAs with histological follow-up (30 malignant) was prospectively collected. UbcH10 immunostaining was performed on cell blocks and compared with that of the proliferation marker Ki-67. At the mRNA level, UbcH10 was compared with CCND2 and PCSK2 expression, these latter being the best performing components of the previously reported 3-gene assay; to determine the diagnostic accuracy, the area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve for each gene individually and in combination was evaluated. RESULTS: UbcH10 and Ki-67 shared a similar pattern; although UbcH10 expression was higher in malignant than in benign lesions (P < .001), staining was sporadic, and the cutoff value derived by the ROC analysis was too low (1.25%) for routine application. Conversely, UbcH10 expression assessment by quantitative RT-PCR was effective. UbcH10 mRNA levels associated with malignant histology were significantly higher than those associated with benign histology (P = .02). The AUC was 0.74 for UbcH10, 0.81 for CCDN2, 0.62 for PCSK2, and 0.84 for UbcH10 and CCND2 combination. CONCLUSIONS: UbcH10 quantitative RT-PCR analysis, rather than immunohistochemistry, is useful to increase the detection of malignancy in thyroid FNAs. UbcH10 may be added as a panel component in quantitative RT-PCR–based assays. Cancer (Cancer Cytopathol) 2010. © 2010 American Cancer Society.

Batch production plants provide a wide range of scheduling problems. In pharmaceutical industries a batch process is usually described by a recipe, consisting of an ordering of tasks to produce the desired product. In this research work we focused on pharmaceutical production processes requiring the culture of a microorganism population (i.e. bacteria, yeasts or antibiotics). Several sources of uncertainty may influence the yield of the culture processes, including (i) low performance and quality of the cultured microorganism population or (ii) microbial contamination. For these reasons, robustness is a valuable property for the considered application context. In particular, a robust schedule will not collapse immediately when a cell of microorganisms has to be thrown away due to a microbial contamination. Indeed, a robust schedule should change locally in small proportions and the overall performance measure (i.e. makespan, lateness) should change a little if at all. In this research work we formulated a constraint programming optimization (COP) model for the robust planning of antibiotics production. We developed a discrete-time model with a multi-criteria objective, ordering the different criteria and performing a lexicographic optimization. A feasible solution of the proposed COP model is a schedule of a given set of tasks onto available resources. The schedule has to satisfy tasks precedence constraints, resource capacity constraints and time constraints. In particular time constraints model tasks duedates and resource availability time windows constraints. To improve the schedule robustness, we modeled the concept of (a, b) super-solutions, where (a, b) are input parameters of the COP model. An (a, b) super-solution is one in which if a variables (i.e. the completion times of a culture tasks) lose their values (i.e. cultures are contaminated), the solution can be repaired by assigning these variables values with a new values (i.e. the completion times of a backup culture tasks) and at most b other variables (i.e. delaying the completion of at most b other tasks). The efficiency and applicability of the proposed model is demonstrated by solving instances taken from a real-life pharmaceutical company. Computational results showed that the determined super-solutions are near-optimal., {"references":["C. T. Maravelias and I. E. Grossmann, \"Using milp and cp for the\nscheduling of batch chemical processes,\" in Integration of AI and OR\nTechniques in Constraint Programming for Combinatorial Optimization\nProblems. Springer, 2004, pp. 1–20.","T. Maravelias and I. E. Grossmann, \"A hybrid milp/cp decomposition\napproach for the scheduling of batch plants,\" in Proceedings of CP-AI-OR,\n2003.","M. Hegyh´ati, T. Majozi, T. Holczinger, and F. Friedler, \"Practical\ninfeasibility of cross-transfer in batch plants with complex recipes:\nS-graph vs milp methods,\" Chemical Engineering Science, vol. 64, no. 3,\npp. 605–610, 2009.","W. T. Hess, A. Kurtz, and D. Stanton, \"Kirk-othmer encyclopedia of\nchemical technology,\" John Wiley & Sons Ltd., New York, 1995.","E. Hebrard, B. Hnich, and T. Walsh, \"Super solutions in constraint\nprogramming,\" in Integration of AI and OR Techniques in Constraint\nProgramming for Combinatorial Optimization Problems. Springer, 2004,\npp. 157–172.","\"Project of the future: Industry 4.0,\" http://www.bmbf.de/en/19955.php."]}

Understanding the dynamics of the complex interaction network of cytokines, defined as ''cytokinome'', can be useful to follow progression and evolution of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) from its early stages as well as to define therapeutic strategies. Recently we have evaluated the cytokinome profile in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and/or chronic hepatitis C (CHC) infection and/or cirrhosis suggesting specific markers for the different stages of the diseases. Since T2D has been identified as one of the contributory cause of HCC, in this paper we examined the serum levels of cytokines, growth factors, chemokines, as well as of other cancer and diabetes biomarkers in a discovery cohort of patients with T2D, chronic hepatitis C (CHC) and/or CHC-related HCC comparing them with a healthy control group to define a profile of proteins able to characterize these patients, and to recognize the association between diabetes and HCC. The results have evidenced that the serum levels of some proteins are significantly and differently up-regulated in all the patients but they increased still more when HCC develops on the background of T2D. Our results were verified also using a separate validation cohort. Furthermore, significant correlations between clinical and laboratory data characterizing the various stages of this complex disease, have been found. In overall, our results highlighted that a large and simple omics approach, such as that of the cytokinome analysis, supplemented by common biochemical and clinical data, can give a complete picture able to improve the prognosis of the various stages of the disease progression. We have also demonstrated by means of interactomic analysis that our experimental results correlate positively with the general metabolic picture that is emerging in the literature for this complex multifactorial disease.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common type of liver cancer and is still one of the most fatal cancers. Hence, it needs to identify always new putative markers to improve its diagnosis and prognosis. The selenium is an essential trace mineral implicated as a key factor in the early stage of cancer and exerts its biological function through the selenoproteins. In the last years our group has been studying the involvement of some selenoproteins in HCC. However, no many data are reported in literature about the correlation between HCC and the glutathione peroxidases (GPXs), both selenium and non selenium-containing GPXs. In this paper we have evaluated the GPX4 and GPX7 expression in some paraffin-embedded tissues from liver biopsy of patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV)-related cirrhosis and HCC by immunohistochemistry and RT-qPCR analysis. Our results evidenced that i) GPX4 and GPX7 had a statistically significant over-expression in HCC tissues compared to cirrhotic counterparts used as non tumor tissues, and ii) their expression was higher in grade III HCC tissues with respect to grade I-II samples. Therefore, we propose to use GPX4 and GPX7 as possible markers for improving HCC diagnosis/prognosis.

Selenium is an essential trace mineral of fundamental importance to human healthy and exerts its biological function through selenoproteins. In particular, Selenoprotein M (SELM) is located in the endoplasmic reticulum and contains the common redox motif of cysteine-X-X-selenocysteine type. It attracts great attention due to its high expression in brain and its potential roles as antioxidant, neuroprotective, and cytosolic calcium regulator. Recently, our group found SELM over-expression  in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cell lines. In this report some paraffin-embedded tissues from liver biopsy of patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV)-related cirrhosis and HCC were immunohistochemically stained and SELM expression scoring was evaluated. Our results evidence for the first time an increase of SELM expression in HCC liver tissues, and its gradual expression raise associated with an increased malignancy grade. Therefore, we propose to use i) SELM as putative marker for HCC as well as ii) simple immunohistochemistry technique to distinguish between the different grades of malignancy.Â

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is among the most aggressive and fatal cancers. Its treatment with conventional chemotherapeutic agents is inefficient, due to several side effects linked to impaired organ function typical of liver diseases. Consequently, there exists a decisive requirement to explore possible alternative chemopreventive and therapeutic strategies. The use of dietary antioxidants and micronutrients has been proposed for HCC successful management. The aim of this work was to test in vitro the effects of lipoic acid, caffeic acid and a new synthesized lipoyl-caffeic conjugate on human hepatoma cell lines in order to assess their effect on tumor cell growth. The results of cytotoxicity assays at different times showed that the cell viability was directly proportional to the molecule concentrations and incubation times. Moreover, to evaluate the pro- or anti-inflammatory effects of these molecules, the cytokine concentrations were evaluated in treated and untreated cellular supernatants. The obtained cytokine pattern showed that, at the increasing of three molecules concentrations, three pro-inflammatory cytokines such as IL-1β, IL-8 and TNF-α decreased whereas the anti-inflammatory cytokine such as IL-10 increased.

The reduced expression of human selenium binding protein-1 (SELENBP1) has been reported for some human cancers. In this work we have estimated a reduced SELENBP1 expression by immunohistochemistry for the first time also in liver tissues of patients with hepatocarcinoma (HCC). Since the structure-function relationships of SELENBP1 are unknown, we have performed computational and experimental studies to have insight on the structural features of this protein focusing our attention on the properties of cysteines to assess their ability to interact with selenium. We have performed CD studies on the purified protein, modeled its three-dimensional structure, studied the energetic stability of the protein by molecular dynamics simulations, and titrated the cysteines by DTNB (5,5'-dithiobis (2-nitrobenzoic acid). The secondary structure content evaluated by CD has been found similar to that of 3D model. Our studies demonstrate that (i) SELENBP1 is an alpha-beta protein with some loop regions characterized by the presence of intrinsically unordered segments, (ii) only one cysteine (Cys57) is enough exposed to solvent, located on a loop and surrounded by charged and hydrophobic residues, and can be the cysteine able to bind the selenium. Furthermore, during the molecular dynamics simulation at neutral pH the loop containing Cys57 opens and exposes this residue to solvent, confirming that it is the best candidate to bind the selenium. Experimentally we found that only one cysteine is titratable by DTNB. This supports the hypothesis that Cys57 is a residue functionally important and this may open new pharmacological perspectives.

Storia dei cristiani in Europa centro-orientale dal 1989 al 2005, con attenzione alle varie confessioni cristiane.