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What moves the young Italian school graduates to enroll at the university? What are the reasons why a growing number of students prefer universities outside their own region? These are the questions that we aim to answer in this paper, taking into account the territorial differences in Italy. The estimated probit models show that, with respect to the geographic areas, the type of high-school attended influences the decision of the Italian students to continue their studies transversally. This brings us to focus on the role of the family context in decision making. Even though the type of school is an «inertial» common factor in decision making, it tends to differ substantially on local basis. In most advanced regions of the country the decision to continue studies seem to suffer most from the external socio-economic context, while in areas with economic development delay, the decision seems independent of the external context and linked to students academic performance and gender differences. The decision path which leads students to prefer universities far from their home region appears more linear. Looking at students who have already decided to start their degree course, «quality» emerges as a strong and statistically significant cross-factor: the lower the quality of the regional universities is, the higher is the possibility that students migrate to other regions. This is a result which clearly calls into question the actual or perceived utility of the «legal value» of academic qualifications.

Utilizzando i dati raccolti con un'indagine diretta presso un campione molto esteso di imprese siciliane di successo, si analizza la percezione degli ostacoli a innovare e le principali determinanti che contribuiscono a spiegare il fenomeno dell'innovazione in Sicilia

This study is on the implementation of a semi-automatic Labelling System (LS) of the Mediterranean Sea seafood harvest to address the increased need for seafood authentication and inherent difficulties of commonly used indirect techniques for estimating fisheries yield and fishing effort. Sensitive data required for anti-counterfeit policies, such as date and catch area, can be acquired and recorded on the label by user-friendly automated software that excludes any possible manipulation by the crew. Based on results obtained from the installation of the LS on bottom commercial trawlers, the system certified the origin of the seafood products and simultaneously provided, indirectly, geospatial fisheries yield and fishing effort data of the main exploited species.

Information and Communication Technologies offer huge potential for moving towards the implementation of the concept of Universalisation of the University. Firstly, ICT provides solutions for virtual mobility, which means giving new opportunities to people who otherwise could not enrol on traditional university courses. Another opportunity offered by ICT for the Universalisation of the University, is that it gives students fram ali over the world the chance to access open repositories of contents available on the Net. Similar considerations can be made about the availability of university professors world wide. This implies that new models of Universal Universities, with both students and teachers geographically distributed, can be activated through ICT. The aim of this paper is to describe strategies that could be adopted in order to achieve the "Universalisation of university" goal. In particular, we discuss the potenti al and problems of using ICT for this purpose. The ideas reported are the result of a research activity we have carried out in Italy concerning the e-Iearning market at University and the obstacles to the growth of this market according to a survey involving students of the last year of high school.

The issue of quality in Distance Learning is one of the most debated topics at an international level, from the point of view both of research and regulations. In fact, elearning requires innovative approaches and changes in the university system, and this transformation must be guided by specific rules in order to guarantee high standards of educational quality. During the last few years, in ltaly the number of on line courses at university has grown rapidly, highlighting the problems of their certification and, above all, of their quality. In ltaly a decree issued by the Ministry of Instruction, University, and Research in 2003, tried to set out some guidelines concerning some technological and methodological criteria which on line courses should follow. Similar initiatives have been activated in other contexts (e.g. in continuous distance learning courses in medicine) stressing different aspects of e-learning processes and highlighting the complexity of the topic. Besides, in a study carried out by our lnstitute we observed the perception of quality that students have concerning university on line courses. In this paper we compare the different perspectives, highlighting the main differences found.

In the last decade, in an attempt to revitalize the Italian university system, several legal reforms have made profound changes in the structure of the academic courses, in the system of course titles and in the curricula of individual degree courses, giving greater autonomy to each university in establishing the courses to be taught, the teaching methods and technologies to be used and the level of professionalism to be reached. The natural consequence of autonomy and flexibility has been a continuing growth in the number of degree courses and a greater variety of educational opportunities. In this paper, we present the results of a research performed in 2005 concerning how potential university students perceive the benefits and risks of choosing an online university, and compare some results with the data gathered 2 years before. Besides, we relate these data to the impact they can have on the online academic education market.

The paper we present here is an attempt to analyse the capacity of Italian universities to provide signals of quali^, about their on line courses through their web sites and Student Help Sewices, by evaluating the availability of items of information which may give a clear indication of the real technological dimension, contents and sewices of the courses.

In this paper we describe a research work aimed at analyzing information about online courses provided by universities through their web sites; the results of this research activity are compared to the information that students perceive as quality elements in online courses,object of investigation in another research. Finally, we conclude with some considerations concerning dgerent ways of providing information about online academic offer and the importance for universities of giving quality signals to the potential students.

In this paper we describe the results of a research study concerning two channels which provide information to students about on line university courses: web sites and Student Help Services. In fact, even though the offers of on-line education widen the choice of academic courses available, they make it more difficult for students to identify the courses which are most suitable for their needs; besides, making an evaluation of the quality of on-line courses from an empirical point of view, as students do, is even more difficult. To carry out our research we used a panel made up of 15 newly graduated students from different regions in Italy, who analysed the university web sites and asked Student Help Services for information according to a predefined check list. A comparison between the data gathered through the two information channels is presented.

During the last few years Italian universities have undergone a considerable transfomalion. The re-engineenng of educational counes and the tenching, financial and administrative indcpendence of thc universities is creating the conditions EURor a growth in compeiitiveness in the market for university education and, consequently. fora gradua1 reduction in the position rents. In order to acquire larger quotas of the market, Italian universities have notably increased the educational oppominiiies on offer and alongside the tradiiional type of face to face education they have beyn to introduce new ieaching methodologies based on the use of the Web. Sincc it is not necessary for the lessons to be adminisiercd and attended at the same time or in the same place. online courses can be made available io al1 Italian students and in this way give rise to a new, highly competitive markei. Following the pilot scheme in 2000 (iun by the Milan Polytechnic), in 2002 therc were 13 online courses for first degrees on offer at different Italian universities. Online courses for higher degrees and masters were even more numerous and diverse. The present paper aims to analyse the supply side of this new educaiional market, in particular its present dimensions and future prospects. Special atteniion is given to the evolution of the nationat regulations applied to online university courses over the course of the last ten years.

In this paper we report on a EU funded project named "Supply Chain Partnership", a pilot project aimed at analyzing the communication, social and technological obstacles to the implementation of effective Supply Chain Management strategies in SMEs. The project involves partners from three European countries; the focus of this paper is on the Italian experience, and concerns two industrial districts located in Sicily: the marble industry and the clothing industry. The authors have performed an in-depth investigation of the obstacles to the development of relationships that are required for the implementation of effective SCM strategies in these two specific economic realities. IT - by reducing the geographical distance between Sicily and the most industrialized part of the country - have proved extremely useful to foster the development of SCM strategies; however, IT are not the solution by themselves. Actually, the social factors underpinning the relational and communication interfaces between SMEs and other important subjects, made even worse by the geographical distance between the different parts of the added-value chain, have proved the main obstacle to the boosting of SCM strategies in Sicily.

The aim of this work was to provide an updated review of the mechanisms of action of glucocorticoids. We carried out a MEDLINE search (1970 to present) using "glucocorticoids" as the keyword, both on its own (subheadings: "genetics, immunology, metabolism, physiology, therapeutic use") and combined with "inflammation", "glucocorticoid response element", "gene expression regulation", "NF-kappa B", "transcription factor AP-1", "receptors, glucocorticoid", "chemokines", "cytokines", "cytokine receptors", "resistance", "sensitivity", "annexin-I", "apoptosis", "repressors" and "activators", respectively. Original, partially unpublished data from our research group was also reported. Although we reviewed the sources available, we did not adopt any statistic procedures for data extraction, as the review deals only with basic research. The results of this review indicate that glucocorticoids act through different mechanisms: they can regulate the transcription of a number of genes (genomic mechanisms), interfere with cell activation factors (mechanisms of repression of cell activation factors), and inhibit cell activation via a direct interaction with the cell membrane and/or some of its components (non-genomic mechanisms). There is some evidence that most of the anti-inflammatory effects of glucocorticoids are mediated by repression of transcriptor factors, whereas their metabolic effects appear to be predominantly mediated by genomic mechanisms. This observation has prompted the search for new steroid compounds endowed with more selective anti-inflammatory properties than those currently available. We conclude that better understanding of the mechanisms of action of steroids may result in the development of new molecules with a better risk/benefit ratio.

To verify the distribution of different types of beta 1 integrin on the plasma membrane of chondrocytes and to correlate the pattern of integrin expression to the severity of osteoarthritis (OA).The articular cartilage of ten OA patients who had undergone surgical knee replacement for "genu varum" were studied. The cartilage was separated into three zones that macroscopically and microscopically showed a decreasing degree of anatomic lesions. After enzymatic digestion, the isolated chondrocytes were immediately challenged with monoclonal antibodies against the beta 1, alpha 1-6 and alpha v chains. The phenotypic study was paralleled by a cell cycle analysis performed by flow cytometry on chondrocytes stained with propidium iodide.Chondrocytes isolated from the articular cartilage of osteoarthritic patients expressed, in different percentages, all the alpha chains (alpha 1-6 and alpha v) of the beta 1 integrins. The alpha chain most frequently expressed was alpha 1, followed by alpha 3, alpha 5, alpha 2 and alpha v, with lesser amounts of alpha 4 and alpha 6. The beta 1 chain was expressed (on average) on the 40% of the chondrocytes regardless of the zone they were isolated from. Differential phenotypic analysis of the three zones showed that beta 1 integrins correlate inversely with the severity of the anatomic lesions and the cycle phase of the chondrocytes (the G0/G1 phase prevailed in the anatomically normal cartilage of the least damaged zone, and the S-phase in the most damaged zone).This study provides evidence of the existence of beta 1 integrins on the surface of chondrocytes from human OA cartilage, all of the alpha chains being represented, although in different percentages. Moreover, an inverse correlation was demonstrated between the severity of the anatomical changes found in the zones and the phenotypic/metabolic changes of the cells. These results, together with the well known inside-out signaling function of the adhesion molecules, highlight the key role of matrix interactions in the pathogenesis of the anatomic changes in OA.

This study is on the implementation of a semi-automatic labelling system (LS) of the Mediterranean Sea seafood harvest to address the increased need for seafood authentication and inherent difficulties of commonly used indirect techniques for estimating fisheries yield and fishing effort. Sensitive datarequired for anti-counterfeit policies, such as date and catch area, can be acquired and recorded on the label by user-friendly automated software that excludes any possible manipulation by the crew. Based on results obtained from the installation of the LS on bottom commercial trawlers, the system certified the origin of the seafood products and simultaneously provided, indirectly, geospatial fisheries yield and fishing effort data of the main exploited species.

The occurrence of certain antibacterial antibodies was studied in the sera of 22 healthy donors (HD) and 66 patients with different diseases. The cases investigated included 22 rheumatoid arthritis (RA), 22 non-arthritic-psoriasis (NAP), and 22 psoriatic arthritis (PA) patients. A complement fixation test was used with Yersinia enterocolitica 0:3 type (YEC), Yersinia pseudotuberculosis (YPT), Campylobacter jejuni (CJ), and Campylobacter fetus (CF) antigens; the detection of anti-Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) antibodies was carried out using an immunoperoxidase colorimetric slide test that allowed the detection of isotypes of specific antibodies. It was found that the synthesis of anti-CF, CJ, YEC, and YPT antibodies in NAP patients does not differ significantly from that of the HD group; on the contrary, the antibody levels were statistically higher in PA than in the other disease groups or in the healthy controls, although only anti-CF antibodies seemed to significantly differentiate (p = 0.000003) the PA group from the others. Anti-CT IgA antibody titers were found to be significantly higher in the PA as well as in the RA groups when compared with the controls, while the antibody levels in NAP patients showed no clear-cut difference with respect to those of either the arthritic patients or the healthy controls. By showing that anti-enterobacterial antibodies are increased in PA but not in NAP patients, our data furnish additional support to the thesis of a pathogenic role of bacterial infections in psoriatic arthritis.

To identify the time point of the greatest degree of improvement in daily living activities, pain and depression in patients with osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee during 6 months of treatment with NSAIDs, in order to define compliance and drop-out rate.107 patients were recruited into a multicentre, prospective, randomized, controlled trial comparing two treatments, piroxicam-beta-cyclodextrin (PBCD) and slow release diclofenac (DCL).The greatest improvement in quality of life occurred in both groups after 3 months, with a slight further gain observed by the end of treatment. The Stanford Health Assessment Questionnaire score improved (p0.05 vs baseline) at 3 and 6 months with PBCD and at 6 months with DCL. The Arthritis Impact Measurement Scale score improved (p0.05 vs baseline) after 6 months in both groups. Significant (p0.05 vs baseline) improvement in other psychological and pain scores were recorded in both groups after 3 and 6 months. Compliance with treatment at 3 months was 73% for PBCD and 72% for DCL, and was 60% in both groups at 6 months.The results of this study indicate that the optimal length of time for an NSAID trial in OA patients is 3 months, when assessment of daily living activities is considered as the main outcome criterion.

The etiology of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is still unknown, and many uncertainties regarding its pathogenetic mechanisms persist. During the past decade, various hypotheses have been advanced, yet none of these has been able to explain the complexity of the disease. In light of the most recent research, a sub-division of the pathogenesis of RA, in four phases, has been proposed. The first phase is that of tissue damage, induced by unknown infective or traumatic factors with the liberation of possible arthrogenic antigens that are presented to the immune system. In the second phase the immune and inflammatory mechanisms should begin to function and, if they are effective, they should determine the resolution of the process; the failure of these mechanisms would create a further amplification of the immuno-inflammation response (the third phase). The fourth phase would then be a chronic inflammatory with progressive articular destruction, as well as anatomical and functional damage. This evolution, in response to common pathogenic agents, is dependent upon a particular hereditary genetic asset (not only the HLA system) that is able to control the production of citokines and also upon the neuroendocrine system. The final outcome of the process is, therefore, determinated by multiple interference between the inflammatory/immune system and other systems that also interact with it (the integrated pathogenetic hypothesis). This hypothesis reflects the complexity of the immune/inflammatory system that must be considered to be an acting part of an integrated network of diverse systems. A better knowledge of these interactions needed for the discovery of potential new therapies for RA.