Dissipation of field-aligned currents in the topside ionosphere.

Field-aligned currents (FACs) are electric currents parallel to the geomagnetic field and connecting the Earth's magnetosphere to the high-latitude ionosphere. Part of the energy injected into the ionosphere by FACs is converted into kinetic energy of the surrounding plasma. Such a current dissipation is poorly investigated, mainly due to the high electrical conductivity and the small electric field strength expected in direction parallel to the geomagnetic field.

Looking for a proxy of the ionospheric turbulence with Swarm data.

The present work focuses on the analysis of the scaling features of electron density fluctuations in the mid- and high-latitude topside ionosphere under different conditions of geomagnetic activity. The aim is to understand whether it is possible to identify a proxy that may provide information on the properties of electron density fluctuations and on the possible physical mechanisms at their origin, as for instance, turbulence phenomena. So, we selected about 4 years (April 2014-February 2018) of 1 Hz electron density measurements recorded on-board ESA Swarm A satellite.

A stress test to evaluate the usefulness of Akaike information criterion in short-term earthquake prediction.

Akaike information criterion (AIC) has been recently adopted to identify possible earthquake precursors in ionospheric total electron content (TEC). According to the authors of this methodology, their technique allows finding abrupt increases (positive breaks) in vertical TEC rate of change 25-80 min before the occurrence of large earthquakes, highlighting a promising implication of AIC method in Mw > 8 earthquakes alert strategies. Due to the relevance of this matter, a lively scientific debate ensued from these results.

Intracellular delivery of therapeutic antisense oligonucleotides targeting mRNA coding mitochondrial proteins by cell-penetrating peptides.

Cell-penetrating peptides are a promising therapeutic strategy for a wide variety of degenerative diseases, ageing, and cancer. Among the multitude of cell-penetrating peptides, PepFect14 has been preferentially used in our laboratory for oligonucleotide delivery into cells and in vivo mouse models. However, this activity has mainly been reported towards cytoplasm and nuclei, while the mentioned disorders have been linked to mitochondrial defects.