Search

Saffron in the Middle Ages was the most precious spice, a luxury good with an important international trade. Italy was the main producer in Europe, together with Spain and, to a lesser extent, France; Italian saffron was among the most valuable and sought-after qualities. In the Peninsula, the cultivation of saffron was practiced in some territorial contexts, including Apulia, the second center in the Kingdom of Naples after the Abruzzi. This contribution will deal with the cultivation and trade of this spice in Terra d'Otranto between the 15th and 16th centuries. The purpose of the paper is to show the importance assumed by saffron in the economy of this province, a periphery at the center of international commercial circuits, a crop often marginalized by historical research, to the advantage of olive growing. Different sources will be used (fiscal, notarial, historical-geographical, commercial) to illustrate the spread of crocus cultivation and its presence on foreign markets thanks to the presence of foreign merchants, especially Germans. After examining the phenomenon in the province, Casalnuovo in the 16th century was taken into consideration as a case study, for which some notarial deeds were examined from which interesting details emerge. Ultimately, the fiscal aspects of the saffron trade were exposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Resistance nodulation division (RND) family efflux pumps, including the major pump AcrAB-TolC, are important mediators of intrinsic and evolved antibiotic resistance. Expression of these pumps is carefully controlled by a network of regulators that respond to different environmental cues. EnvR is a TetR family transcriptional regulator encoded upstream of the RND efflux pump acrEF. Methods Binding of EnvR protein upstream of acrAB was determined by electrophoretic mobility shift assays and the phenotypic consequence of envR overexpression on antimicrobial susceptibility, biofilm motility and invasion of eukaryotic cells in vitro was measured. Additionally, the global transcriptome of clinical Salmonella isolates overexpressing envR was determined by RNA-Seq. Results EnvR bound to the promoter region upstream of the genes coding for the major efflux pump AcrAB in Salmonella , inhibiting transcription and preventing production of AcrAB protein. The phenotype conferred by overexpression of envR mimicked deletion of acrB as it conferred multidrug susceptibility, decreased motility and decreased invasion into intestinal cells in vitro. Importantly, we demonstrate the clinical relevance of this regulatory mechanism because RNA-Seq revealed that a drug-susceptible clinical isolate of Salmonella had low acrB expression even though expression of its major regulator RamA was very high; this was caused by very high EnvR expression. Conclusions In summary, we show that EnvR is a potent repressor of acrAB transcription in Salmonella , and can override binding by RamA so preventing MDR to clinically useful drugs. Finding novel tools to increase EnvR expression may form the basis of a new way to prevent or treat MDR infections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to shade light on the effects of land inequality on the growth of human capital in the Italian countryside during the 1930s. The initial hypothesis, according to which land inequality contributed to slowing down the process of schooling, was tested by means of specific spatial regression techniques. The results obtained made it possible to highlight how some specific variables of land inequality significantly influenced the literacy rate in rural Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To determine whether expression of efflux pumps and antibiotic susceptibility are altered in Escherichia coli in response to efflux inhibition.Methods: The promoter regions of nine efflux pump genes (acrAB, acrD, acrEF, emrAB, macAB, cusCFBA, mdtK, mdtABC, mdfA) were fused to gfp in pMW82 and fluorescence from each reporter construct was used as a measure of the transcriptional response to conditions in which AcrB was inhibited, absent or made non-functional. Expression was also determined by RT-qPCR. Drug susceptibility of efflux pump mutants with missense mutations known or predicted to cause loss of function of the encoded efflux pump was investigated.Results: Data from the GFP reporter constructs revealed that no increased expression of the tested efflux pump genes was observed when AcrB was absent, made non-functional, or inhibited by an efflux pump inhibitor/competitive substrate, such as PAβN or chlorpromazine. This was confirmed by RT-qPCR for PAβN and chlorpromazine; however, a small but significant increase in macB gene expression was seen when acrB is deleted. Efflux inhibitors only synergized with antibiotics in the presence of a functional AcrB. When AcrB was absent or non-functional, there was no impact on MICs when other efflux pumps were also made non-functional.Conclusions: Absence, loss-of-function, or inhibition of E. coli AcrB did not significantly increase expression of other efflux pump genes, which suggests there is no compensatory mechanism to overcome efflux inhibition and supports the discovery of inhibitors of AcrB as antibiotic adjuvants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A screening procedure was used to identify three bacteriophages, ST27, ST29, ST35 with selective activity for Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium (SL1344) but not SL1344 tolCuaph. The study results provide evidence for the presence of active bacteriophages against the outer membrane protein of tripartite resistance-nodulation-division (RND) efflux pumps which could be used to reduce the numbers of Salmonella cells in animals reared for food production.

In this paper a synthetic indicator to evaluate Italian universities' scientific research using the Scimago Institutions Ranking (SIR) 2014 data is proposed. After having analysed the shape distribution, fitted parameters of some statistical models, calculated an appropriate standardization, some SIR indicators were aggregated to obtain a Synthetic Indicator (from now, SI) of research evaluation. The synthetic indicator obtained has been used to rank Italian Higher Education Institutions (from now, HEIs). This ranking has been compared firstly with the ranking of National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes (ANVUR), based on the Evaluation of Research Quality (VRQ 2004-2010) results, in terms of standardized mark. Following, with the ranking based on the assignments of the competitive allocation model (research share of FFO) yearly attributed to the Italian HEIs by the Ministry of University and Research (MIUR). The analysis results show a moderate positive correlation between SI and the VQR 2004-2010 indicators (r = 0:543), and SI and FFO per capita (r = 0:487). The paper's original contribution deals with a Synthetic Indicator with a Gaussian distribution summarizing the SIR variables along with the highlighting of a convergence between Italian ANVUR evaluation, based on peer-to-peer and bibliometric analysis. However, using only few publications and the analysis proposed in this paper, based on Scopus bibliometric data, and related to all the publications in the same period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]