Search results for " dynamics"

PUBLIC POLICY PLANNING TO ENHANCE THE RESILIENCE OF SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS TO CLIMATE CHANGE: OPERATIONALIZING RESILIENCE CONCEPTS FROM A DYNAMIC P…

This study outlines a system dynamic based approach to the planning for resilience in food systems to climate change. The processes described and the insights gained are novel in the literature since they focus on describing operational aspects of resilience that can be generalized to multiple contexts and problems. On the one hand, the process described offers an aid for researchers and practitioners operationalizing resilience in public sector settings. Simultaneously, the insights gained from multiple stakeholder discussions and modelling work open new questions regarding the general mechanisms driving resilience in food systems. Climate change is threatening the extent to which social, …

The Retirement and Early Retirement in Italy: a System Dynamics approach

2006

The main aim of this study is underline that System Dynamics approach allows the building of a general framework in which psychological, economic, social, legal and organizational variables converge to describe the retirement behaviour and its main unintended consequences. It’s emphasized that organizational commitment and psychological contract breach play a considerable role in the dynamics of retirement behaviour. In the first part of this paper, an analysis of main contributions in the retirement and early retirement fields is outlined. Further, the psychological, social, economical and legal approach to retirement behaviour is also briefly remarked. In the second part, retirement pheno…

Reverse Screening on Indicaxanthin from Opuntia ficus-indica as natural chemoactive and chemopreventive agent

2018

Indicaxanthin is a bioactive and bioavailable betalain pigment extracted from Opuntia ficus indica fruits. Indicaxanthin has pharmacokinetics proprieties, rarely found in other phytochemicals, and it has been demonstrated that it provides a broad-spectrum of pharmaceutical activity, exerting antiproliferative, anti-inflammatory and neuromodulator effects. The discovery of the Indicaxanthin physiological targets plays an important role in understanding the biochemical mechanism. In this study, combined reverse pharmacophore mapping, reverse docking, and text-based database search identified Inositol Trisphosphate 3-Kinase (ITP3K-A), Glutamate carboxypeptidase II (GCPII), Leukotriene-A4 hydro…

Does Intraspecific Variation in rDNA Copy Number Affect Analysis of Microbial Communities?

2021

Amplicon sequencing of partial regions of the ribosomal RNA loci (rDNA) is widely used to profile microbial communities. However, the rDNA is dynamic and can exhibit substantial interspecific and intraspecific variation in copy number in prokaryotes and, especially, in microbial eukaryotes. As change in rDNA copy number is a common response to environmental change, rDNA copy number is not necessarily a property of a species. Variation in rDNA copy number, especially the capacity for large intraspecific changes driven by external cues, complicates analyses of rDNA amplicon sequence data. We highlight the need to (i) interpret amplicon sequence data in light of possible interspecific and intr…

MbCo in Saccharide Solid Amorphous Systems: A Combined FTIR and SAXS Study

2011

Saccharides, and in particular trehalose, are known for their efficiency in protecting biostructures against environmental stress [1], although the preservation mechanism is still debated. Experiments and simulations [2,3] on carboxy-myoglobin (MbCO) showed that the protein dynamics is highly inhibited in dry trehalose matrices, the inhibition being dependent on the water content. In these conditions, a mutual protein-matrix structural and dynamic influence is observed.Here we report a combined FTIR and SAXS study on MbCO embedded in dry amorphous matrices of trehalose and sucrose. FTIR measurements were performed at different protein/sugar ratios, focussing on the stretching band of the bo…

Improving the Downwind Sail Design Process by Means of a Novel FSI Approach

2021

The process of designing a sail can be a challenging task because of the difficulties in predicting the real aerodynamic performance. This is especially true in the case of downwind sails, where the evaluation of the real shapes and aerodynamic forces can be very complex because of turbulent and detached flows and the high-deformable behavior of structures. Of course, numerical methods are very useful and reliable tools to investigate sail performances, and their use, also as a result of the exponential growth of computational resources at a very low cost, is spreading more and more, even in not highly competitive fields. This paper presents a new methodology to support sail designers in ev…

CHECK-LIST DEGLI UCCELLI DELLA R.N.O. “SALINE DI TRAPANI E PACECO” CON LISTA COMMENTATA DEI NON PASSERIFORMES

2018

Update of the checklist of the birds of the Nature Reserve “Saline di Trapani e Paceco” (Sicily). The present work provides an update to the checklist of birds of the “Saline di Trapani e Paceco” published nine years ago by IENTILE (2008). The overall number of bird species increased from 209 to the current value of 229. The present work also includes a quantitative estimate of the breeding and wintering species. A table, detailing the number of individuals of each species present for each month of the year at the Saline di Trapani and Paceco, is included. This work aims at underscoring the importance of the Saline as an Important Bird Area (IBA), as a key area for the migration pathways of…

Dead wood profile of a semi-natural boreal forest – implications for sampling

2019

Dead wood profile of a forest is a useful tool for describing forest characteristics and assessing forest disturbance history. Nevertheless, there are few studies on dead wood profiles, including both coarse and fine dead wood, and on the effect of sampling intensity on the dead wood estimates. In a semi-natural boreal forest, we measured every dead wood item over 2 cm in diameter from 80 study plots. From eight plots, we further recorded dead wood items below 2 cm in diameter. Based on these data we constructed the full dead wood profile, i.e. the overall number of dead wood items and their distribution among different tree species, volumes of different size and decay stage categories. We …

Trait Hedonism and the Distribution of Savoring and Positive Emotion States in Everyday Life.

2022

International audience; The present study aimed at (1) identifying the emotion regulation processes that can explain the trait hedonism positive emotions relationship, and (2) determining whether this relationship varies according to which part of the distribution of positive emotions is considered. To this end, the intensity of the positive emotions felt by 84 adult participants, and the intensity of their engagement in savoring, were assessed twice a day over a month period, using an Experience Sampling Method. Participants’ distributions of these variables were then related to their level of trait hedonism, assessed with a common questionnaire. Results suggested that, as expected, the tr…

cis-Regulation and chromatin dynamics of the hbox12 gene during the embryogenesis of Paracentrotus lividus.

2014

The GRN specifying the dorsal-ventral (D-V) axis of the sea urchin embryo is currently under investigation. An early input for D-V polarity is given by a redox gradient probably generated by an asymmetrical distribution of maternal mitochondria (1). Only on the future ventral side, the oxidizing environment induces the expression of the nodal gene, an essential regulator of D-V polarization (2). By contrast, on the future dorsal side, a reducing environment activates the hypoxia inducible factor (HIF-1α) (3). The hbox12 transcription repressor is an early marker of the dorsal side of the embryo, in which it negatively regulates the expression of nodal (4, 5). Interestingly, by in silico ana…