Search results for " Continent"
showing 10 items of 182 documents
Vegetation and climate record from Abric Romaní (Capellades, northeast Iberia) during the Upper Pleistocene (MIS 5d−3)
2019
This study addresses the pollen record of Abric Romani archaeological site and the climate evolution of the last interglacial and glacial stadials in the Iberian Peninsula. The new pollen record spans the interval from 110,000 to 55,000 years ago. In general, the glacial/stadial vegetation is characterized by a steppe and herbaceous communities indicating dry and cold climatic conditions, whereas the vegetation optimum of past interglacials can be described as pine-oaks with mediterranean forest indicating milder and moister climatic conditions. During the first half of the MIS 5a and the MIS 5c, the region was warmer, which is characterized by temperate forests. However, the existence of A…
Quaternary marine and continental unconformity-bounded stratigraphic units of the NW Sicily coastal belt
2017
In the coastal sector of NW Sicily, the regional correlation of relevant unconformities recognised within the Quaternary sedimentary successions allowed the mapping of seven unconformity-bounded stratigraphic units (UBSUs). The regional unconformities are marine or subaerial erosional surfaces, as well as non-depositional surfaces, locally marked by paleosoils. The erosional surfaces were produced from marine abrasion, surface water overland/concentrated flow, river erosion, karst solution, mass movement, or wind erosion. The main lithofacies of the Quaternary UBSUs consist of: (a) marine and coastal bioclastic calcarenites, (b) aeolian sandstones, (c) river deposits, (d) colluvial deposits…
Geology of Monte Gallo (Palermo Mts, NW Sicily)
2016
The promontory of Monte Gallo (Palermo, NW Sicily) is a spectacular site where Upper Triassic-Eocene carbonate platform rocks and Quaternary continental to marine deposits are well exposed. A Mesozoic-Paleogene rock succession allows the potential visitor to easily detect the features and the evolution of the Panormide carbonate platform, a shallow-water paleogeographic domain of the Southern Tethyan margin. Quaternary deposits, as well many landforms, enable the visitor to directly identify the interplay between climate changes, tectonics and fluctuations of marine level that occurred during the Quaternary Period. A detailed geological map (1:15,000 mapping scale) is presented, accompanied…
Spatial variability of soft-bottom macrobenthic communities in northern Sicily (Western Mediterranean): Contrasting trawled vs. untrawled areas
2016
13 páginas, 9 tablas, 5 figuras
Occurrence of ‘blue’ and ‘frost’ rings reveal frost sensitivity of eastern Baltic provenances of Scots pine
2020
Abstract Assisted gene flow is advised as one of the most effective means to sustain the productivity of forests under warming climate via application of the provenances (genotypes) capable to utilize longer vegetation season. Nevertheless in the temperate and boreal zones, the extension of vegetation period also subjects trees to effects of frosts, which can have severe economic impact under warming climate. In this study, wood anatomical anomalies related to late frosts in spring (‘frost’ rings) and early frosts in late summer (‘blue’ rings) for the eastern Baltic provenances of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) with a contrasting field performance were analysed retrospectively. Three tria…
The HLA-DQβ1 insertion is a strong achalasia risk factor and displays a geospatial north-south gradient among Europeans.
2016
Idiopathic achalasia is a severe motility disorder of the esophagus and is characterized by a failure of the lower esophageal sphincter to relax due to a loss of neurons in the myenteric plexus. Most recently, we identified an eight-amino-acid insertion in the cytoplasmic tail of HLA-DQβ1 as strong achalasia risk factor in a sample set from Central Europe, Italy and Spain. Here, we tested whether the HLA-DQβ1 insertion also confers achalasia risk in the Polish and Swedish population. We could replicate the initial findings and the insertion shows strong achalasia association in both samples (Poland P=1.84 × 10(-04), Sweden P=7.44 × 10(-05)). Combining all five European data sets - Central E…
Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies discovers multiple loci for chronic lymphocytic leukemia
2016
Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is a common lymphoid malignancy with strong heritability. To further understand the genetic susceptibility for CLL and identify common loci associated with risk, we conducted a meta-analysis of four genome-wide association studies (GWAS) composed of 3,100 cases and 7,667 controls with follow-up replication in 1,958 cases and 5,530 controls. Here we report three new loci at 3p24.1 (rs9880772, EOMES, P=2.55 × 10−11), 6p25.2 (rs73718779, SERPINB6, P=1.97 × 10−8) and 3q28 (rs9815073, LPP, P=3.62 × 10−8), as well as a new independent SNP at the known 2q13 locus (rs9308731, BCL2L11, P=1.00 × 10−11) in the combined analysis. We find suggestive evidence (P<5 × 10−…
Genome-wide association meta-analysis of corneal curvature identifies novel loci and shared genetic influences across axial length and refractive err…
2020
Corneal curvature, a highly heritable trait, is a key clinical endophenotype for myopia - a major cause of visual impairment and blindness in the world. Here we present a trans-ethnic meta-analysis of corneal curvature GWAS in 44,042 individuals of Caucasian and Asian with replication in 88,218 UK Biobank data. We identified 47 loci (of which 26 are novel), with population-specific signals as well as shared signals across ethnicities. Some identified variants showed precise scaling in corneal curvature and eye elongation (i.e. axial length) to maintain eyes in emmetropia (i.e. HDAC11/FBLN2 rs2630445, RBP3 rs11204213); others exhibited association with myopia with little pleiotropic effects …
Elusive active faults in a low strain rate region (Sicily, Italy): Hints from a multidisciplinary land-to-sea approach
2022
Low Strain Rate regions (LSRrs), i.e., areas undergoing tectonic deformation at rates of 1 mm/yr or less, often host important cities and highly vulnerable anthropogenic assets, and due to their subdued topography and relatively infrequent seismicity, are often considered low seismic hazard areas. Despite this, infrequent but high-magnitude earthquakes in such regions suggest that identifying active structures in the LSRr is one of the primary challenges for both the scientific community and modern societies. In such regions, one of the main issues in identifying active faults is the lack of valuable outcrop data due to erosional/sedimentation rates overwhelming the fault deformation, causi…