Diversity and Distribution of the Inland Water Decapods of Sicily (Crustacea, Malacostraca)

2022

The current knowledge of Sicilian inland water decapod malacostracans is scarce and an updated synopsis on species distribution is lacking. Therefore, we reviewed the checklist and recent distribution of Sicilian inland water decapods based on published and unpublished records and novel observations with the aim of providing an exhaustive repository, also to be used as a sound baseline for future surveys. Overall, five native decapod species occur in the study area, i.e., the atyid shrimp Atyaephyra desmarestii, the palaemonid shrimps Palaemon adspersus, P. antennarius, and P. elegans, and the freshwater crab Potamon fluviatile, and their current local distributions are described. In additi…

Accessing sub-national cholera epidemiological data for Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo during the seventh pandemic.

2022

Abstract Background Vibrio cholerae is a water-borne pathogen with a global burden estimate at 1.4 to 4.0 million annual cases. Over 94% of these cases are reported in Africa and more research is needed to understand cholera dynamics in the region. Cholera data are lacking, mainly due to reporting issues, creating barriers for widespread research on cholera epidemiology and management in Africa. Main body Here, we present datasets that were created to help address this gap, collating freely available sub-national cholera data for Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The data were collated from a variety of English and French publicly available sources, including the World Health Or…

Effects of a Postural Exercise Program on Vertical Jump Height in Young Female Volleyball Players with Knee Valgus

2022

Background: Although a knee valgus position is related to the increase in injury risk in volleyball players, there is a lack of studies on the relationship between knee valgus and vertical jump (VJ) performance. Hence, the aim of this study was to investigate the effects of a postural exercise program on VJ height in young female volleyball players with knee valgus. Methods: This pilot study included 19 young female volleyball players divided into the following groups: the Valgus Experimental Group (VEG); the Valgus Control Group (VCG); and the Neutral Control Group (NCG). All three groups carried out the same volleyball training program. In addition, only the VEG underwent a 3-month postur…

Partial Data Problems and Unique Continuation in Scalar and Vector Field Tomography

2022

AbstractWe prove that if P(D) is some constant coefficient partial differential operator and f is a scalar field such that P(D)f vanishes in a given open set, then the integrals of f over all lines intersecting that open set determine the scalar field uniquely everywhere. This is done by proving a unique continuation property of fractional Laplacians which implies uniqueness for the partial data problem. We also apply our results to partial data problems of vector fields.

Upgrade of ATLAS hadronic Tile Calorimeter for the High-Luminosity LHC

2022

The Tile Calorimeter (TileCal) is a sampling hadronic calorimeter covering the central region of the ATLAS experiment, with steel as absorber and plastic scintillators as active medium. The High-Luminosity phase of LHC, delivering five times the LHC nominal instantaneous luminosity, is expected to begin in 2028. TileCal will require new electronics to meet the requirements of a 1 MHz trigger, higher ambient radiation, and to ensure better performance under high pile-up conditions. Both the on- and off-detector TileCal electronics will be replaced during the shutdown of 2026-2028. The TileCal upgrade program has included extensive R&D and test beam studies. A Demonstrator module with reverse…

Quantifying mangrove leaf area index from Sentinel-2 imagery using hybrid models and active learning

2022

Mangrove forests provide vital ecosystem services. The increasing threats to mangrove forest extent and fragmentation can be monitored from space. Accurate spatially explicit quantification of key vegetation characteristics of mangroves, such as leaf area index (LAI), would further advance our monitoring efforts to assess ecosystem health and functioning. Here, we investigated the potential of radiative transfer models (RTM), combined with active learning (AL), to estimate LAI from Sentinel-2 spectral reflectance in the mangrove-dominated region of Ngoc Hien, Vietnam. We validated the retrieval of LAI estimates against in-situ measurements based on hemispherical photography and compared aga…

Invasive catfish in northern Italy and their impacts on waterbirds

2022

Predatory fish have occasionally been observed preying on birds, sometimes repeatedly, but few studies were able to unravel the overall significance of avian prey in fish diet and the predation impacts on bird populations. We used a control/impact study setup, using a Nature Reserve in northern Italy and a nearby control area, to determine: 1) the contribution of waterbirds to wels catfish diet in the Reserve, 2) the population density of wels catfish in the Reserve and control area and 3) the potential impacts of waterbird depredation by wels catfish on waterbird population trends. Our stable isotope Bayesian mixing model indicated that birds contributed 12.2% (5–27.9%, 50% confidence inte…

Size-dependent aggression towards kin in a cannibalistic species.

2022

Abstract In juveniles extreme intraspecies aggression can seem counter-intuitive, as it might endanger their developmental goal of surviving until reproductive stage. Ultimately, aggression can be vital for survival, although the factors (e.g., genetic or environmental) leading to the expression and intensity of this behavior vary across taxa. Attacking (and sometimes killing) related individuals may reduce inclusive fitness; as a solution to this problem, some species exhibit kin discrimination and preferentially attack unrelated individuals. Here, we used both experimental and modeling approaches to consider how physical traits (e.g., size in relation to opponent) and genetic relatedness …

Room temperature synthesis of lanthanum phosphates with controlled nanotexture as host for Ln(III) through the Epoxide Route

2022

AbstractHerein, the Epoxide Route, a one-pot room temperature alkalinization method based on the reaction between a nucleophile and an epoxide, has been employed to synthesize LaPO4 in the form of a Rhabdophane phase. The intrinsic features of this synthetic approach allow the reaction to be followed by pH monitoring, making possible the identification of the different precipitation steps involved in the formation of the solid. Once demonstrated the effectiveness of this chemical methodology, the size and shape of the LaPO4 particles were controlled by varying the identity and proportion of the organic co-solvents employed to perform the reaction. By these means, crystalline particles with …

Activity of bacterial seed endophytes of landrace durum wheat for control of Fusarium foot rot

2022

Five bacterial endophytic isolates obtained from durum wheat seeds (landrace “Timilia reste nere”) and identified as belonging to Pantoea (isolates A1, F7, F15 and G1) and Paenibacillus (isolate B) genera on the basis of 16S rDNA gene sequences, were assayed in vitro and in vivo for their ability to inhibit Fusarium culmorum growth and the disease (Fusarium foot rot) it causes in durum wheat. All isolates significantly reduced in vitro growth of F. culmorum in comparison with the control. After 120 hours of incubation, isolates B and G1 showed the greatest mycelial growth inhibition, i.e., respectively, 76 and 74%. When durum wheat “Simeto” seeds were treated with bacterial isolates singly …

Habitus ferviente en el Polígono Espronceda de Sabadell. Cómo el culto pentecostal rearticula la etnicidad y aumenta la autonomía personal y colectiv…

2022

Este artículo es el resultado de una investigación etnográfica de dos años entre los gitanos pentecostales del barrio de Espronceda en Sabadell. Coincidiendo con la construcción el polígono de viviendas populares Espronceda a principios de los años 60 del siglo pasado, en la zona sur del municipio, una nueva corriente religiosa derivada del pentecosalismo proveniente de Francia, se expande entre la población gitana con un éxito sin precedentes. Acabará adoptando el nombre de Iglesia de Filadelfia y, desde entonces, hasta la actualidad transformará, no solamente las formas de organización de esta población, sempiternamente perseguida, también el sentido vital personal y colectivo. Esto se ll…

The value-relevance of social media activity of Finnish listed companies

2022

Purpose The use of social media tools by companies is common, but the links between the use of multiple social media tools by companies and stock price changes are largely unknown. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the value-relevance of social media activities on Facebook (FB), Instagram (IG), LinkedIn (LI), Twitter (TW) and YouTube (YT). Design/methodology/approach Stock market data and hand-picked social media data in this study were collected from Finland, a small language area with consistent International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) reporting practices, in the expectation of better comparability and lower noise in the data.This study uses correlation, regression and fact…

A Chain of Voices: A "Masters and Slaves" Narrative

2022

Because no less than thirty different narrators take turns to tell us the story of a slave revolt, A Chain of Voices can be read as Brink's attempt at revisiting the classical "slave narrative", turning it into a polyphonic "masters and slaves" narrative in which everyone is given a say. This article examines how this polyphonic, and even multifocal, mode of narration enables Brink to write back to both classical slave narratives and to their twentieth-century counterparts, the neo-slave narratives. What it suggests is that although A Chain of Voices bears many resemblances to neo-slave narratives in terms of form, especially because of its recourse to polyphony, it is also extremely close …

From Undetectable Equals Untransmittable (U=U) to Breastfeeding: Is the Jump Short?

2022

Background: Vertical transmission of HIV infection may occur during pregnancy, at childbirth or through breastfeeding. Recommendations on the safety of breastfeeding of HIV-infected women on effective antiretroviral treatment are not univocal among international guidelines (WHO 2010, EACS 2017, DHHS 2017), leaving space for variability at the patient’s level. Methods: We collected clinical, laboratory and outcome data from 13 HIV-infected pregnant women who, between March 2017 and June 2021, elected to breastfeed their children against specific medical advice. All mothers were on antiretroviral therapy with darunavir or raltegravir plus emtricitabine/tenofovir disoproxil and remained HIV-RN…

Fracture of Honeycombs Produced by Additive Manufacturing

2022

Publisher Copyright: © 2021 World Scientific Publishing Europe Ltd. Lattice materials, such as honeycombs, are remarkable in their ability to combine high stiffness, strength and toughness at low density. In addition, the recent and pervasive development of additive manufacturing technologies makes it easier to produce these cellular materials and opens new possibilities to improve their properties by implementing small modifications to their microstructure. Such developments open new opportunities towards the design of new classes of architectured materials. For example, recent computational studies have shown that honeycombs with lattice density gradients have a fracture energy under tens…

Contrasting Styles of Inter-Caldera Volcanism in a Peralkaline System: Case Studies from Pantelleria (Sicily Channel, Italy)

2022

The recent (<190 ka) volcanic history of Pantelleria is characterized by the eruption of nine peralkaline ignimbrites, ranging in composition from comenditic trachyte to comendite to pantellerite. The ~46 ka Green Tuff (GT) was the last of these ignimbrites, which was followed by many effusive and explosive low-volume eruptions of pantellerite from vents within the caldera moat and along the caldera rim. Although recent studies have shed additional light on the age, petrochemistry, and volcanology of the older ignimbrites, there is very little knowledge of magmatism that occurred between these older ignimbrites, primarily due to the very scarce exposures. In this paper, we present new fi…

Influence of Au, Ag, and Cu Adatoms on Optical Properties of TiO2 (110) Surface: Predictions from RT-TDDFT Calculations

2022

This study was financially supported by Flag-ERA JTC To2Dox project (S.P.) and M-ERA-NET2 project SunToChem (E.A.K.). M.G.B. thanks the support from the Program for the Foreign Experts (Grant No. W2017011) offered by Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications and the National Foreign Experts Program for “Belt and Road Initiative” Innovative Talent Exchange (Grant No. DL2021035001L), Estonian Research Council grant PUT PRG111, European Regional Development Fund (TK141), NCN project 2018/31/B/ST4/00924. Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia, as the Center of Excellence, has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Program H2020-WIDESPREAD-01…

Metal-Organic Frameworks as Unique Platforms to Gain Insight of σ-Hole Interactions for the Removal of Organic Dyes from Aquatic Ecosystems.

2022

The combination of high crystallinity and rich host-guest chemistry in metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), have situated them in an advantageous position, with respect to traditional porous materials, to gain insight on specific weak noncovalent supramolecular interactions. In particular, sulfur σ-hole interactions are known to play a key role in the biological activity of living beings as well as on relevant molecular recognitions processes. However, so far, they have been barely explored. Here, we describe both how the combination of the intrinsic features of MOFs, especially the possibility of using single-crystal X-ray crystallography (SCXRD), can be an extremely valuable tool to gain insi…

Analysis of HVSR Data Using a Modified Centroid-Based Algorithm for Near-Surface Geological Reconstruction

2022

Recently, the use of microtremor techniques for subsoil investigation has increased significantly. The HVSR (Horizontal to Vertical Spectral Ratio) technique allows, in many cases, to obtain a seismo-stratigraphic reconstruction of the subsoil and to identify areas with similar seismic behavior. However, the stratigraphic interpretation of the HVSR peaks still remains a subjective choice and linked to a priori information. A non-hierarchical centroid-based algorithm was modified to group HVSR peaks of different measurements that can be attributed to the same generating seismic discontinuity. Some tests performed have shown that the proposed algorithm produces valid results even in the absen…

Biogas Pollution and Mineral Deposits Formed on the Elements of Landfill Gas Engines

2022

Municipal landfills generate a significant amount of high-energy biogas, which can be used as a renewable gaseous fuel. However, it is necessary to improve the quality of this biogas due to the presence of various chemical compounds. The most common pollutants in landfill biogas include volatile compounds of silicon, sulphur, phosphorus and chlorine. The aforementioned elements, as well as other metals, were found both in the deposits and in the engine oil. The paper presents detailed characteristics of the solid residues formed in selected parts of gas engines powered by landfill biogas. Its elemental composition and morphology were investigated in order to determine the structure and infl…

Impact on Glucose Homeostasis: Is Food Biofortified with Molybdenum a Workable Solution? A Two-Arm Study

2022

Diabetes is expected to increase up to 700 million people worldwide with type 2 diabetes being the most frequent. The use of nutritional interventions is one of the most natural approaches for managing the disease. Minerals are of paramount importance in order to preserve and obtain good health and among them molybdenum is an essential component. There are no studies about the consumption of biofortified food with molybdenum on glucose homeostasis but recent studies in humans suggest that molybdenum could exert hypoglycemic effects. The present study aims to assess if consumption of lettuce biofortified with molybdenum influences glucose homeostasis and whether the effects would be due to c…

Motor Learning in Response to Different Experimental Pain Models Among Healthy Individuals: A Systematic Review

2022

Learning new movement patterns is a normal part of daily life, but of critical importance in both sport and rehabilitation. A major question is how different sensory signals are integrated together to give rise to motor adaptation and learning. More specifically, there is growing evidence that pain can give rise to alterations in the learning process. Despite a number of studies investigating the role of pain on the learning process, there is still no systematic review to summarize and critically assess investigations regarding this topic in the literature. Here in this systematic review, we summarize and critically evaluate studies that examined the influence of experimental pain on motor …

Motivations, engagement and adoption of e-WOM in restaurants.

2022

Resumen El objetivo del presente trabajo fue estudiar el efecto que tienen las motivaciones para consultar y escribir e-WOM sobre el compromiso con el e-WOM y la influencia de dicho compromiso en la adopción del e-WOM consultado. Para analizar estas relaciones, se realizó una investigación empírica aplicada en el contexto de los restaurantes. El ámbito geográfico fue Ecuador, con una muestra de 461 consumidores. Se utilizó un modelo de ecuaciones estructurales y se validó la cadena de relaciones. Los resultados confirmaron las relaciones entre estas variables; además, se presentaron implicaciones académicas interesantes para profundizar en el estudio sobre el compromiso con el e-WOM, así co…

An Experimental Comparison between an Ironless and a Traditional Permanent Magnet Linear Generator for Wave Energy Conversion

2022

Permanent Magnet Linear Generators (PMLGs) are currently being studied for sea wave energy harvesting. Typically, a PMLG consists of an iron-made armature and a moving translator. The permanent magnets adoption produces parasitic effects, such as cogging force, and the machine weight increment. A solution could be the adoption of an ironless configuration, accepting a power density reduction. This paper investigates the use of ironless PMLGs in sea wave energy conversion systems by an experimental comparative analysis between an iron PMLG prototype and an ironless PMLG prototype, which share the same geometry. The main electrical and mechanical parameters (resistance, mass, and magnetic fie…

The Mediating Role of Endocrine Factors in the Positive Relationship Between Fat Mass and Bone Mineral Content in Children Aged 9-11 Years: The Physi…

2022

IntroductionWe aimed to investigate whether the relationship between fat mass and bone mineral content (BMC) is mediated by insulin, leptin, adiponectin, dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate, testosterone and estradiol in children aged 9-11 years.Materials and MethodsWe utilised cross-sectional data from the Physical Activity and Nutrition in Children study (n = 230 to 396; 112 to 203 girls). Fat mass and BMC were assessed with dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. Endocrine factors were assessed from fasted blood samples. We applied the novel 4-way decomposition method to analyse associations between fat mass, endocrine factors, and BMC.ResultsFat mass was positively associated with BMC in girls (ß…

Soil Bacterial Community Along an Altitudinal Gradient in the Sumaco, a Stratovolcano in the Amazon Region

2022

Our study is a pioneering exploration of the microbiome in the soil of the Sumaco stratovolcano and an assessment of the effects of an elevational gradient and related physicochemical soil parameters on richness and community structure. The Sumaco, as an isolated Amazonian stratovolcano, may be among one of the least studied ecosystems in Ecuador and perhaps the Amazon region. Universal patterns remain unresolved or available information inconclusive to establish a supported consensus on general governing processes by which elevation and its associated environmental gradients may determine the microbial richness and community structure. We tested a recent proposal on how microbial diversity…

Rapid Weight Loss Coupled with Sport-Specific Training Impairs Heart Rate Recovery in Greco-Roman Wrestlers

2022

Wrestling is a sport that can be classified with the use of alternating aerobic–anaerobic metabolism with moderate but high-impact energy expenditure. Heart rate recovery (HRR) is the difference between heart rate during exercise and a certain amount of time after the start of recovery. The goal of this study was to determine the difference in HRR between two phases: high-intensity sport-specific training (HISST) combined with rapid weight loss (RWL)—phase 1 (P1) and HISST only—phase 2 (P2). Ten national-level wrestlers were included in this study. All participants underwent HISST along with RWL procedures for P1. Seven days later, during P2, an identical training session …

Aqueous system-level processes and prokaryote assemblages in the ferruginous and sulfate-rich bottom waters of a post-mining lake

2022

Abstract. In the low-nutrient, redox-stratified Lake Medard (Czechia), reductive Fe(III) dissolution outpaces sulfide generation from microbial sulfate reduction (MSR) and ferruginous conditions occur without quantitative sulfate depletion. The lake currently has marked overlapping C, N, S, Mn and Fe cycles occurring in the anoxic portion of the water column. This feature is unusual in stable, natural, redox-stratified lacustrine systems where at least one of these biogeochemical cycles is functionally diminished or undergoes minimal transformations because of the dominance of another component or other components. Therefore, this post-mining lake has scientific value for (i) testing emergi…

Conspiracy beliefs, regulatory self-efficacy and compliance with COVID-19 health-related behaviors: The mediating role of moral disengagement

2022

Although recent studies on the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have highlighted the negative effects of moral disengagement on intentions to comply with COVID-19 containment measures, little is known about the mediating role of moral disengagement in the relationship between regulatory self-efficacy in complying with the containment measures, beliefs in conspiracy theories and compliance with COVID-19 health-related behaviors. Data were collected from 1164 young adults (women, N = 796; 68.4%; mean age 25.60 ± 4.40 years) who completed an online survey from 15th May to 22nd June 2021. Results of the multi-group path analyses indicated that higher beliefs in conspiracy theories were assoc…

Remodeling Pattern of Spinal Canal after Full Endoscopic Uniportal Lumbar Endoscopic Unilateral Laminotomy for Bilateral Decompression: One Year Repe…

2022

Objective: There is limited literature on repetitive postoperative MRI and clinical evaluation after Uniportal Lumbar Endoscopic Unilateral Laminotomy for Bilateral Decompression. Methods: Clinical visual analog scale, Oswestry Disability Index, McNab’s criteria evaluation and MRI evaluation of the axial cut spinal canal area of the upper end plate, mid disc and lower end plate were performed for patients who underwent single-level Uniportal Lumbar Endoscopic Unilateral Laminotomy for Bilateral Decompression. From the evaluation of the axial cut MRI, four types of patterns of remodeling were identified: type A: continuous expanded spinal canal, type B: restenosis with delayed expansio…

Where do recruits come from? Backward Lagrangian simulation for the deep water rose shrimps in the Central Mediterranean Sea

2022

Backward-in-time Lagrangian dispersion models can efficiently reconstruct drifters trajectories by linking known arrival positions to potential sources. This approach was applied to the deep water rose shrimp (Parapenaeus longirostris) in the Strait of Sicily (central Mediterranean Sea). The objective was to identify the potential spawning areas of the larvae that settle in the known nursery grounds of the northern sector of the Strait of Sicily, thus quantifying the extent of the potential contribution to recruitment from the surrounding regions. Numerical simulations were performed over 11 years (2005–2015) and for two different periods (spring/summer and autumn/winter) corresponding to t…

6R7S

2022

WRKY gene family drives dormancy release in onion bulbs

2022

Onion (Allium cepa L.) is an important bulb crop grown worldwide. Dormancy in bulbous plants is an important physiological state mainly regulated by a complex gene network that determines a stop of vegetative growth during unfavorable seasons. Limited knowledge on the molecular mechanisms that regulate dormancy in onion were available until now. Here, a comparison between uninfected and onion yellow dwarf virus (OYDV)-infected onion bulbs highlighted an altered dormancy in the virus-infected plants, causing several symptoms, such as leaf striping, growth reduction, early bulb sprouting and rooting, as well as a lower abscisic acid (ABA) level at the start of dormancy. Furthermore, by compar…

COVID 19 vaccine in the pediatric age: the recommendation of the Italian Pediatric Society

2022

AbstractVaccine is an important and effective tool to protect from preventable infectious diseases. Neverthless, in the COVID-19 pandemic era, scientific and accurate information are required to responde to false and misleading information on efficacy and safety of immunization in the pediatric age.

Reinforcement Learning Your Way: Agent Characterization through Policy Regularization

2022

The increased complexity of state-of-the-art reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms has resulted in an opacity that inhibits explainability and understanding. This has led to the development of several post hoc explainability methods that aim to extract information from learned policies, thus aiding explainability. These methods rely on empirical observations of the policy, and thus aim to generalize a characterization of agents’ behaviour. In this study, we have instead developed a method to imbue agents’ policies with a characteristic behaviour through regularization of their objective functions. Our method guides the agents’ behaviour during learning, which results in a…

Effect of COVID-19 quarantine on cognitive, functional and neuropsychiatric symptoms in patients with mild cognitive impairment and dementia.

2022

Abstract Background During the last two years, COVID-19 affected older people with dementia or mild cognitive impairment (MCI), but conflicting and sparse results are still present. The objective of this study was to investigate the frequency and type of changes in functional, cognitive and behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD), and caregiver’s stress during the period of quarantine in 2020 in patients affected by dementia/MCI living in Palermo, Sicily. Methods Outpatients affected by MCI/dementia were evaluated before and after COVID-19 quarantine. Functional status was investigated using basic and instrumental activities of daily living (ADL); cognitive performance with…