PALEOCLIMATIC AND PALEOCEANOGRAPHIC CHANGES AND THEIR IMPACT ON PLANKTIC FORAMINIFERA IN THE LIGURIAN SEA DURING THE LATE QUATERNARY

Planktic foraminifera are among the most powerful proxies for reconstructing past oceanographic and environmental conditions, as their calcareous shells simultaneously record ecological, geochemical, and morphometric responses to water mass properties. These microscopic organisms have the capacity to respond rapidly to environmental changes, making them ideal indicators of both shortterm variability and long-term climatic trends. Their abundance, species composition, shell chemistry, and morp...

Targeting the DNA damage response and replication stress to overcome resistance to targeted therapies in colorectal cancer

Molecular therapies targeting the EGFR/MAPK pathway have improved clinical outcomes in colorectal cancer (CRC). However, primary and acquired resistance continue to limit durable responses. Oncogenic signaling activates stress response pathways that allow cancer cells to adapt to therapeutic pressure, while simultaneously generating exploitable vulnerabilities. Among these, defects in the DNA damage response (DDR) and replication stress (RS) pathways, which are essential for cancer cell survi...

Higher-spin Massive String Interactions

This thesis develops a systematic and fully covariant framework for constructing and studying interactions of massive higher-spin states in bosonic string theory. Central to this work is a reformulation of the traditional DDF (Del Giudice–Di Vecchia–Fubini) construction in terms of framed DDF operators, defined using a local Lorentz frame (vielbein) that cleanly separates global and gauge degrees of freedom. This approach yields DDF and Brower operators with genuine zero conformal dimension, ...

Biodiversity and agro-biodiversity for climatic resilience promotion in rice farming

This Ph.D. thesis explores the interconnections between biodiversity and agro-biodiversity in rice agrosystems in North Western Italy (NWI) through a multi-scale and multidimensional approach. This work is the result of collaboration between the Rete Semi Rurali (RSR) and the Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology (DBIOS) of the University of Turin. Current Ph.D. research compares organic and conventional rice farming systems in NWI, from the point of view of biodiversity and agro-bi...

Large- and intermediate-scale anisotropies of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays

Unveiling the sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays remains one of the main challenges in high-energy astrophysics. During their propagation, these charged particles are deflected by extragalactic and Galactic magnetic fields, making it difficult to establish a clear correlation with their potential sources. In this thesis, I investigate large- and intermediate-scale anisotropies in the distribution of ultra-high-energy cosmic-ray arrival directions using a full-sky approach. I apply the h...

The Role of Internal Variability and External Forcing in Shaping AMOC Tipping

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is a critical component of the climate system, responsible for the large-scale redistribution of heat and freshwater, and potentially vulnerable to an abrupt transition to a collapsed state under anthropogenic warming. Its future stability arises from a complex interplay between external forcings, such as increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, and the system’s internal climate variability. While most modelling studies focus on identify...

Towards Natural-Sounding Artificial Polyglot Voices: from Voice Conversion to Text-to-Speech via Generative Speech Modeling

Reproducible Computational Frameworks for Single-Cell and Long-Read Functional Genomics

Genomic and transcriptomic technologies have advanced rapidly in recent years, becoming essential tools for modern biological and medical research. As data volume and complexity continue to grow, there is an increasing demand for computational pipelines that are reproducible, accessible, and rigorously tested, while remaining aligned with the latest experimental methodologies. In this work, I addressed several open challenges in contemporary bioinformatics through the development of reproduci...

Innovative strategies for cardioprotection in critical conditions: heart transplantation, sepsis, aging and cancer