Technologies

We propose an optical technique for the fast check of the presence, on the exposed surfaces of persons and objects, of explosives and their precursors, or drugs, or in general materials which are not allowed in restricted environments: airports, courts, places of worship, etc. The technique yields bi-dimensional pictures, with exposure time of < 1 sec, reporting the target substances, and their locations and quantities. The technique already provided laboratory preliminary results, to be completed, and fully validated for sensitivity and selectivity.

The instrumentation is based on the electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) which is a non-invasive geophysical technology used to obtain information on anomalous bodies possibly present in the subsoil. The theoretical basis lies in the different electrical properties of the lithotypes present in the subsoil.

We have identified compounds that show a neuroprotective action in vivo, in models of neurodegenerative diseases (e.g. SMA, Parkinson, Alzheimer, Huntington) in the model organism C. elegans. These compounds consist of: mixtures of 22 natural extracts, 15 natural molecules and 11 synthetic molecules.

Wine is one of the economically most important beverages and may be subject to fraud and mislabelling, although that there are specific and strict rules protecting its authenticity in Europe. Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs), recently identified and characterized thanks to advances in genomics, are considered the newest type of molecular marker for grapevine identification.