Androgen receptor gene polymorphisms lean mass and performance in young men

[EN] The exon-1 of the androgen receptor (AR) gene contains two repeat length polymorphisms which modify either the amount of AR protein inside the cell (GGN(n), polyglycine) or its transcriptional activity (CAG(n), polyglutamine). Shorter CAG and/or GGN repeats provide stronger androgen signalling and vice versa. To test the hypothesis that CAG and GGN repeat AR polymorphisms affect muscle mass and various variables of muscular strength phenotype traits, the length of CAG and GGN repeats was determined by PCR and fragment analysis and confirmed by DNA sequencing of selected samples in 282 men (28.6 +/- 7.6 years). Individuals were grouped as CAG short (CAG(S)) if harbouring repeat lengths of 21. GGN was considered short (GGN(S)) or long (GGN(L)) if GGN 23, respectively. No significant differences in lean body mass or fitness were observed between the CAG(S) and CAG(L) groups, or between GGN(S) and GGN(L) groups, but a trend for a correlation was found for the GGN repeat and lean mass of the extremities (r=-0.11, p=0.06). In summary, the lengths of CAG and GGN repeat of the AR gene do not appear to influence lean mass or fitness in young men.

Contractive-like mapping principles in ordered metric spaces and application to ordinary differential equations

[EN] The purpose of this paper is to present a fixed point theorem for generalized contractions in partially ordered complete metric spaces. We also present an application to first-order ordinary differential equations.

Modeling physiological processes in plankton on enzyme kinetic principles

[EN] Many ecologically important chemical transformations in the ocean are controlled by biochemical enzyme reactions in plankton. Nitrogenase regulates the transformation of N2 to ammonium in some cyanobacteria and serves as the entryway for N2 into the ocean biosphere. Nitrate reductase controls the reduction of NO3 to NO2 and hence new production in phytoplankton. The respiratory electron transfer system in all organisms links the carbon oxidation reactions of intermediary metabolism with the reduction of oxygen in respiration. Rubisco controls the fixation of CO2 into organic matter in phytoplankton and thus is the major entry point of carbon into the oceanic biosphere. In addition to these, there are the enzymes that control CO2 production, NH4 excretion and the fluxes of phosphate. Some of these enzymes have been recognized and researched by marine scientists in the last thirty years. However, until recently the kinetic principles of enzyme control have not been exploited to formulate accurate mathematical equations of the controlling physiological expressions. Were such expressions available they would increase our power to predict the rates of chemical transformations in the extracellular environment of microbial populations whether this extracellular environment is culture media or the ocean. Here we formulate from the principles of bisubstrate enzyme kinetics, mathematical expressions for the processes of NO3 reduction, O2 consumption, N2 fixation, total nitrogen uptake.

Riconfigurazione delle linee di assemblaggio manuale presso una azienda produttrice di macchine per l'agricoltura: applicazione delle 5S e dei principi di Lean Production nella transizione in ottica Pull

“Lean Thinking” non è semplicemente una nuova metodologia organizzativa, ma rappresenta un nuovo modo di ragionare, teso ad accrescere la flessibilità dell’impresa attraverso un ripensamento dell’intero flusso di creazione del valore, dalla progettazione fino alla gestione degli ordini. Questo lavoro presenta i risultati che un’azienda produttrice di macchine per l’agricoltura, la Gallignani di Russi, ha ottenuto in campo logistico e produttivo, grazie all’applicazione dei principi della Lean Production.

Logiche e modelli operativi del Lean Manufacturing: il caso di un'impresa del settore meccanico

Il cambiamento organizzativo costituisce oggi un elemento fondamentale per la sopravvivenza dell'impresa. Un approccio al cambiamento è costituito dal Total Quality Management (o Qualità Totale). La Qualità Totale pone il cliente e la sua soddisfazione al centro delle decisioni aziendali. Ciò presuppone un coinvolgimento di tutto il personale dell'impresa nell'attività di miglioramento continuo. Un sistema di gestione della Qualità Totale è rappresentato dalla Lean Manufacturing. Infatti, i punti essenziali della Lean Manufacturing sono il focus sul cliente, l'eliminazione degli sprechi ed il miglioramento continuo. L'obiettivo è la creazione di valore per il cliente e, quindi, l'eliminazione di ogni forma di spreco. E' necessario adottare un'organizzazione a flusso e controllare continuamente il valore del flusso nell'ottica del miglioramento continuo. Il Lead Time costituisce l'indicatore principale della Lean Manufacturing.I risultati principali della Lean Manufacturing sono: aumento della produttività, miglioramento della qualità del prodotto, riduzione dei lead time e minimizzazione delle scorte ed aumento della rotazione. Tutto ciò è applicato ad un caso aziendale reale. Il caso si compone di un'analisi dei processi di supporto, dell'analisi del capitale circolante (analisi dello stock e del flusso attuale e futuro) e dell'analisi del sistema di trasporto, con l'obiettivo di ridurre il più possibile il lead time totale del sistema.

Middleware principles and design for the integration of ubiquitos mobile services

Nowadays, in Ubiquitous computing scenarios users more and more require to exploit online contents and services by means of any device at hand, no matter their physical location, and by personalizing and tailoring content and service access to their own requirements. The coordinated provisioning of content tailored to user context and preferences, and the support for mobile multimodal and multichannel interactions are of paramount importance in providing users with a truly effective Ubiquitous support. However, so far the intrinsic heterogeneity and the lack of an integrated approach led to several either too vertical, or practically unusable proposals, thus resulting in poor and non-versatile support platforms for Ubiquitous computing. This work investigates and promotes design principles to help cope with these ever-changing and inherently dynamic scenarios. By following the outlined principles, we have designed and implemented a middleware support platform to support the provisioning of Ubiquitous mobile services and contents. To prove the viability of our approach, we have realized and stressed on top of our support platform a number of different, extremely complex and heterogeneous content and service provisioning scenarios. The encouraging results obtained are pushing our research work further, in order to provide a dynamic platform that is able to not only dynamically support novel Ubiquitous applicative scenarios by tailoring extremely diverse services and contents to heterogeneous user needs, but is also able to reconfigure and adapt itself in order to provide a truly optimized and tailored support for Ubiquitous service provisioning.