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This paper uses the case of ELEA 9000, the first Olivetti computer series, to demonstrate the close relationship between industrial design, semiotics, ergonomics and the history of computing. A focus on the Olivetti ELEA series invites scholars to reconsider the history of computer interface design well before the emergence of HCI as a widely recognized field of research. The console and racks of the mainframe computer were designed in Italy by architect Ettore Sottsass Jr. (1917–2007) along with Dutch designer Andries van Onck (1928–2018) at the end of the 1950s. Aiming to launch the ELEA computer on the international market, Olivetti developed the idea of a visual language for human–computer interaction that could be learned by any operator, regardless of their native language. Sottsass and Olivetti assigned the task of designing this sign system to Tomás Maldonado (1922–2018), director of the Hochschule für Gestaltung design school in Ulm, Germany. Together with Gui Bonsiepe (b. 1934), Maldonado designed a visual language that incorporated grammatical and syntactic reasoning. Later discarded, the sign system for ELEA prefigured the contemporary use of icons in computer interfaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the beginning of the 1960s, several Western European computer firms faced financial issues and pressure from U.S. competitors. A series of negotiations attempted to create a consortium of European manufacturers, and while some of these had a positive outcome, in general they did not succeed; by 1964 IBM had more than a 60% share of the European computer market and General Electric acquired two of the most prominent companies in Europe. This case study examines negotiations during the years 1962–1964, focusing on contacts between U.K. manufacturers English Electric, LEO Computers, and ICT, and Italian Olivetti, French Bull, and German Siemens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current strategies for glioma treatment are only partly effective because of the poor selectivity for tumoral cells. Hence, the necessity to identify novel approaches is urgent. Recent studies highlighted the effectiveness of the bacterial protein cytotoxic necrotizing factor 1 (CNF1) in reducing tumoral mass, increasing survival of glioma-bearing mice and protecting peritumoral neural tissue from dysfunction. However, native CNF1 needs to be delivered into the brain, because of its incapacity to cross the blood–brain barrier (BBB) per se, thus hampering its clinical translation. To allow a non-invasive administration of CNF1, we here developed a chimeric protein (CTX-CNF1) conjugating CNF1 with chlorotoxin (CTX), a peptide already employed in clinics due to its ability of passing the BBB and selectively binding glioma cells. After systemic administration, we found that CTX-CNF1 is able to target glioma cells and significantly prolong survival of glioma-bearing mice. Our data point out the potentiality of CTX-CNF1 as a novel effective tool to treat gliomas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]