The opening of the XXI Spoletoscienza will focus on the properly vital and human aspect of energy as "fuel" in and for the body of every living system, from nerve cells to motor cells, to blood cells. That of resources is in fact a typically bio-chemical theme that invests the best intellectual and medical-scientific research resources in an attempt to understand, as accurately as possible, the ways of the functioning of the energy powerhouse of the cell, the characteristics of biological expenditure, and the strategies for optimizing the energy supply of each and every organism: to starting from the relationship between paleo-diet and evolutionary nutrition or from the study of the damage that a poor energy functioning determines to comparison with the nature of cancer and metabolic syndromes and, in general, in the aging process.
"Oxidative damage from part of free radicals," stresses Claudio Franceschi, immunologist and longevity scholar who will be a guest to Spoleto, "is believed to be one of the main factors in the aging process, capable of determining, therefore, also the length of life. And free radicals are generated mainly in the processes through which the cell produces the energy necessary for its survival. These reactions take place precisely in the mitochondria, cell organelles specifically predisposed to this task of 'power plants,' with the formation of the ATP molecule."

But Energy, in stages of stability and growth as in the period of global crisis we are experiencing, is one of the inescapable issues that questions any aspect of the lives of nations and peoples together to that of each individual. In recent years, the issue of the sustainability of development models has held sway, to extent of the empirical data testifying to the environmental emergency. The issues of sustainability, of adherence to international protocols, have become intertwined with the greater or lesser dependence from foreign sources of supply for many countries, including Italy, and with the difficulty of combining strategic economic needs with environmental ones while even in our country the nuclear dossier is reopened.

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