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The mitochondrial carriers are a family of transport proteins that, with a few exceptions, are found in the inner membranes of mitochondria. They shuttle metabolites, nucleotides, and cofactors through this membrane and thereby connect and/or regulate cytoplasm and matrix functions. ATP-Mg is transported in exchange for phosphate, but no protein has ever been associated with this activity. We have isolated three human cDNAs that encode proteins of 458, 468, and 489 amino acids with 66-75% similarity and with the characteristic features of the mitochondrial carrier family in their C-terminal domains and three EF-hand Ca2+-binding motifs in their N-terminal domains. These proteins have been overexpressed in Escherichia coli and reconstituted into phospholipid vesicles. Their transport properties and their targeting to mitochondria demonstrate that they are isoforms of the ATP-Mg/P-i carrier described in the past in whole mitochondria. The tissue specificity of the three isoforms shows that at least one isoform was present in all of the tissues investigated. Because phosphate recycles via the phosphate carrier in mitochondria, the three isoforms of the ATP-Mg/P-i carrier are most likely responsible for the net uptake or efflux of adenine nucleotides into or from the mitochondria and hence for the variation in the matrix adenine nucleotide content, which has been found to change in many physiopathological situations.

PurposeThe paper aims to understand how the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) influenced public employees' perception of smart working and how this approach was used during the pandemic. The authors asked about smart working's positive and negative aspects and how these changed during the pandemic.Design/methodology/approachThe authors explored the strengths and weaknesses of smart working before and after COVID-19. The authors interviewed 27 Italian public employees who had experienced smart working before the pandemic. The questions and discussion aimed to broadly explore the strengths and weaknesses of smart working and smart working's impact on working performance, work relationships and work–life balance (WLB).FindingsSmart working had a widespread and positive impact on organizational flexibility. Smart working improved the response and resilience of Italian public organizations to the pandemic. However, some critical factors emerged, such as the right to disconnect and the impact on WLB.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors suggest that the pandemic exposed the need for public administrations to consolidate work flexibility practices, such as smart working, by paying more attention to the impact of these practices on the whole organization and human resources management (HRM) policies and practices.Originality/valueThis study makes an important contribution to the literature on the public sector by discussing the positive and negative aspects of smart working. The study also provides managerial and policy implications of the use of smart working in public administrations.

In recent years, the diffusion of social media has revolutionized the way people live in society, communicate with each other and work in organizations. In detail, for public administrations, the diffusion and use of social media have meant a necessary rethinking of their work activities to increase the transparency of information and the services’ efficiency to be provided to citizens. However, social media use is strictly linked to the way people use them and the perception of their usefulness for the work activities to be performed. This chapter aims to understand the perception that civil servants have on social media's impact on the transparency and quality of services to citizens. Furthermore, it provides interesting practical and managerial implications on the relationship between organizational change and the use of social media in public organizations and provides literature on the use of information and communication technologies in the public sector.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the effects that the perceived corruption has on students’ behaviours. In more detail, the analysis will explain how the individual and contextual variables influence students’ behaviours and corruption perception. Design/methodology/approach The authors employed a structured questionnaire administered to 200 Italian students attending Bachelor and Master Degrees courses, based on a theoretical background that considers corruption in higher education as the result of the interplay between the various actors and institutions in the field. Findings Findings have both interesting academic and practical implications, since the study advances the literature on corruption in higher education and also advances a framework explaining how contextual and individual characteristics influence students’ behaviours and corruption perception. Originality/value The study presents manifold interesting implications both for academics, practitioners and policy-makers on the impact that students’ corruption perception has on the whole higher education system.

The present paper explores the effectiveness of the implementation and use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the public sector, with a specific focus on the role of social media in improving both public decision-making processes and the quality of public services. We sought to deepen knowledge on this issue by disseminating structured questionnaires to Italian public servants, questioning them about the potentialities and criticalities of social media use in the public sector. Logistic regression analysis was used to analyse the data. The paper has two main goals. First, we aim to explore public servants' evaluation of social media's impact on public decision-making processes. Second, we are interested in understanding the main socio-demographic variables affecting public servants' perceptions about the importance of social media in these processes. This paper enriches the literature on public sector use of ICT and advances topical discussion on organizational change and decision-making processes in public administrations. In so doing, the paper reveals interesting practical and policy implications by highlighting the key aspects affecting social media's effectiveness and usefulness in the decision-making process and its impact on the public services delivered to the citizenry.

BIM methodologies and technologies find their place in structural engineering issues that deals with huge amount of data to properly gather and organize in order to streamline their retrieval. Current research is interested in investigating new BIM processes and approaches that can add benefits to structural engineering from different perspectives. However, information exchanges constitute a serious obstacle that open formats are trying to solve. This paper provides an overview of trends in using BIM methodologies in structural engineering during the last decade and deepens its latest applications and future likely developments, especially when combined with novel emerging technologies. © Fédération Internationale du Béton – International Federation for Structural Concrete.

Damage detection and assessment are key objectives of structural health monitoring. Inspections timing and results accuracy represent crucial aspects to properly assess the integrity of a structural system over time. The goal of this work consists in the development of an automated damage classification methodology based on machine learning, that is able to process sampled measurements of the dynamic structural response as input and provide a quantitative health assessment of the structure as output. The methodology is validated on a broad set of examples, including both numerical simulations and data recorded on real structures, evidencing high accuracy across all instances. Moreover, the computational experiments show consistency in the assessment of location and severity of the damages even in presence of additive white Gaussian noise.

The USLE-MM estimates event normalized plot soil loss, Ae,N, by an erosivity term given by the runoff coefficient, QR, times the single-storm erosion index, EI30, raised to an exponent b1 > 1. In this investigation, carried out at the three experi-mental sites of Bagnara, Masse and Sparacia, in Italy, the soundness of the USLE-MM scheme with a single exponent for the three sites was tested. The model was parameterized both locally and considering all sites simultaneously. The performances of the fitted models were established by considering all erosive events and also by distinguishing between events of different severity. The b1 exponent varied widely among the three sites (1.05 - 1.44) but using a common exponent (1.18) for these sites was possible. The Ae,N prediction accuracy increased in the passage from the smallest erosion events (Ae,N < 1 Mg ha-1, median error = 3.35) to the largest ones (Ae,N > 10 Mg ha-1, median error = 1.72). The QREI30 term was usable to both predict Ae,N and the expected maximum uncertainty of this prediction. Development of a single USLE-MM model appears possible.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: To describe choroidal vessels in areas of geographic atrophy (GA) secondary to age-related macular degeneration that appear as hyperreflective choroidal vessels (HRCVs) on multicolor (MC) imaging. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Retrospective case series of patients with GA. Multimodal imaging evaluation was performed. RESULTS: HRCVs, which seem to be sclerotic on MC imaging, appeared as hyperautofluorescent on fundus autofluorescence, clearly distinguishable over the background of hypo-autofluorescence, and correlated with late-phase hypocyanescence areas on indocyanine green angiography. Average size of GA areas was significantly larger in eyes with (4.19 mm ± 0.83 mm) compared to eyes without (3.22 mm ± 1.05 mm) HRVCs ( P = .0002). Similarly, mean choroidal thickness (CT) was significantly thinner in eyes with (78.5 µm ± 33.8 µm) compared to eyes without (155.4 µm ± 69.8 µm) HRVCs ( P < .0001). CONCLUSIONS: HRCVs are more clearly distinguishable than other choroidal vessels on MC imaging in GA. HRCV identification is more frequent in eyes with larger areas of atrophy and reduced CT, and thus possibly represent a maker of more advanced GA. [ Ophthalmic Surg Lasers Imaging Retina . 2016;47:1106–1114.]

In years 1950 the first bridges realized with the emerging technique of Prestressed Concrete (PC) were designed and constructed in Italy. In this paper the design of San Nicola bridge erected in Benevento (Italy) and designed by Riccardo Morandi in 1952-1955 is presented in order to analyse its conceptual design. The original design has been examined evidencing a careful process of optimization by adopting an innovative method of construction with precasted segments. The influence of some choices in geometry, static scheme, prestressing procedure on the structural response of the structure are discussed also by simple examples. © Fédération Internationale du Béton – International Federation for Structural Concrete.