Unsupervised serious video games on the SmartMe&You home telemonitoring platform may enable the assessment of cognitive fluctuations in older individuals, with or without cognitive deficits. Here, we tested their validity in cognitively unimpaired older adults (Healthy) and patients with mild cognitive impairment and mild to moderate dementia due to Parkinson’s disease (PDCD). Such validity was assessed using Mini-Mental State...

This article presents the outcomes of a national initiative aimed at developing a technical document to support the future Italian National Genomic Strategy, carried out from 2021 to 2024 through the collaboration of 14 research institutions. The project was designed to align with major European genomic initiatives, particularly the “1 + Million Genomes” (1 + MG) Declaration and its supporting programs, including Beyond 1 Mill...

Motivation Pollinators play a crucial role in maintaining Earth's terrestrial biodiversity. However, rapid human‐induced environmental changes are compromising the long‐term persistence of plant‐pollinator interactions. Unfortunately, we lack robust, generalisable data capturing how plant‐pollinator communities are structured across space and time. Here, we present the EuPPollNet (European Plant‐Pollinator Networks) database,...

Marine biodiversity monitoring in the Mediterranean’s increasingly threatened ecosystems is crucial for effective ecosystem conservation and management. Here, we leveraged the Mediterranean International Trawl Survey program (MEDITS) to implement eDNA sampling through the recently tested ‘metaprobe’ procedure and characterize fish assemblages in three separate areas off the Italian coasts: Northern Adriatic Sea (NoAS), Liguria...

The emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants poses challenges to global surveillance efforts, necessitating swift actions in their detection, evaluation, and management. Among the most recent variants, Omicron BA.2.86 and its sub-lineages have gained attention due to their potential immune evasion properties. This study describes the development of a digital PCR assay for the rapid detection of BA.2.86 and its descendant lineages,...

Background and aims Intestinal fibrosis is a common complication of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), namely Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC), but the precise mechanism by which it occurs is incompletely understood hampering the development of effective therapeutic strategies. Here, we aimed at inducing and characterizing an inflammation-mediated fibrosis in patient-derived organoids (PDOs) issued from crypts i...

Cystatin B (CSTB) is a small protease inhibitor protein being involved in cell proliferation and neuronal differentiation. Loss-of-function mutations in CSTB gene cause progressive myoclonic epilepsy 1 (EPM1). We previously demonstrated that CSTB is locally synthesized in synaptic nerve terminals from rat brain and secreted into the media, indicating its role in synaptic plasticity. In this work, we have further investigated t...

The scarcity of freshwater for agriculture in many regions has led to the application of sewage and saline water for irrigation. Irrigation with non-conventional water sources could become a non-harmful process for plant cultivation, and the effects of their use on crops should be monitored in order to develop optimal management strategies. One possibility to overcome potential barriers is to use biostimulants such as Trichode...