Joining European Scientific Forces to Face Pandemics

Despite the international guidelines on the containment of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the European scientific community was not sufficiently prepared to coordinate scientific efforts. To improve preparedness for future pandemics, we have initiated a network of nine European-funded Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Actions that can help facilitate inter-, multi-, and trans-disciplinary communication and collaboration.

Information disorders during the COVID-19 infodemic: The case of Italian Facebook

The recent COVID-19 pandemic came alongside with an "infodemic", with online social media flooded by often unreliable information associating the medical emergency with popular subjects of disinformation. In Italy, one of the first European countries suffering a rise in new cases and dealing with a total lockdown, controversial topics such as migrant flows and the 5G technology were often associated online with the origin and diffusion of the virus.

The greater inflammatory pathway-high clinical potential by innovative predictive, preventive, and personalized medical approach

Background and limitations Impaired wound healing (WH) and chronic inflammation are hallmarks of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). However, despite WH being a recognized player in NCDs, mainstream therapies focus on (un)targeted damping of the inflammatory response, leaving WH largely unaddressed, owing to three main factors. The first is the complexity of the pathway that links inflammation and wound healing; the second is the dual nature, local and systemic, of WH; and the third is the limited acknowledgement of genetic and contingent causes that disrupt physiologic progression of WH.

Game of neutrophils: modeling the balance between apoptosis and necrosis

Background: Neutrophils are one of the key players in the human innate immune system (HIIS). In the event of an insult where the body is exposed to inflammation triggering moieties (ITMs), neutrophils are mobilized towards the site of insult and antagonize the inflammation. If the inflammation is cleared, neutrophils go into a programmed death called apoptosis.

Gravitational spin-orbit coupling in binary systems, post-Minkowskian approximation, and effective one-body theory

A novel approach for extracting gauge-invariant information about spin-orbit coupling in gravitationally interacting binary systems is introduced. This approach is based on the "scattering holonomy", i.e. the integration (from the infinite past to the infinite future) of the differential spin evolution along the two worldlines of a binary system in hyperboliclike motion. We apply this approach to the computation, at the first post-Minkowskian approximation (i.e.

High-resolution analysis of the human retina miRNome reveals isomiR variations and novel microRNAs

MicroRNAs play a fundamental role in retinal development and function. To characterise the miRNome of the human retina, we carried out deep sequencing analysis on sixteen individuals. We established the catalogue of retina-expressed miRNAs, determined their relative abundance and found that a small number of miRNAs accounts for almost 90% of the retina miRNome. We discovered more than 3000 miRNA variants (isomiRs), encompassing a wide range of sequence variations, which include seed modifications that are predicted to have an impact on miRNA action.