Search results for "Cultura."

Octopamine and dopamine mediate waggle dance following and information use in honeybees.

2020

Honeybees can be directed to profitable food sources by following waggle dances performed by other bees. Followers can often choose between using this social information or relying on memories about food sources they have visited in the past, so-called private information. While the circumstances that favour the use of either social or private information have received considerable attention, still little is known about the neurophysiological basis of information use. We hypothesized that octopamine and dopamine, two biogenic amines with important functions in reward signalling and learning, affect dance use in honeybees. We orally administered octopamine and dopamine when bees collected fo…

Impacts of chitinase-transformed silver birch on leaf decomposition and soil organisms

2004

Genetically manipulated silver birch (Betula pendula) leaves were used in microcosms experiments to evaluate their impacts on different groups of decomposing soil fauna. Birches were transformed to produce chitinase IV from sugar beet. We compared decomposition rates of leaves, growth and reproduction of soil fauna deriving nutrition from these leaves. Population numbers of collembolans (Folsomia candida and Lepidocyrtus lignorum) and nematodes were measured and decomposition rates of the birch leaves were recorded. Woodlice (Porcellio scaber) juveniles living in the microcosms were weighed at 2- to 4-week intervals to determine growth rate. This study revealed that birch leaves manipulated…

Worldwide Scientific Research on Nanotechnology: A Bibliometric Analysis of Tendencies, Funding, and Challenges

2020

[EN] The main objective of this investigation was to analyze the scientific production in global research on nanotechnology, integrating scientific production, funding of studies, collaborations between countries, and the most cited publications. The source for obtaining the research papers for our analysis was the Science Citation Index Expanded from the Web of Science. A total of 3546 documents were extracted during the period of 1997-2018. Food science & technology, chemistry (applied and analytical), spectroscopy, and agriculture appeared as the main areas where the articles were published. Most prolific and cited journals were Analytical Methods, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemis…

Composition, sun protective and antimicrobial activity of lipophilic bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus L.) and lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea L.) ext…

2021

Abstract Berries of the genus Vaccinium found in bogs and forest of Northern Europe are a valuable source of biologically active substances containing sterols, unsaturated fatty acids, flavanoids, anthocyanins. The presence of these compounds provides various health benefits of berry use – treatment of urinary tract inflammation, controls levels of sugar in the blood, improves cardiovascular health and reduces negative effects of oxidative stress caused by free radicals. The studied bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus L.) and lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea L.) lipids were fractionated using normal-phase chromatography and they were found to contain fatty acids (oleic, linoleic acid), sterols …

The Monumental Olive Trees as Biocultural Heritage of Mediterranean Landscapes: The Case Study of Sicily

2021

Monumental olive trees, with their longevity and their remarkable size, represent an important information source for the comprehension of the territory where they grow and the human societies that have kept them through time. Across the centuries, olive trees are the only cultivated plants that tell the story of Mediterranean landscapes. The same as stone monuments, these green monuments represent a real Mediterranean natural and cultural heritage. The aim of this paper is to discuss the value of monumental trees as “biocultural heritage” elements and the role they play in the interpretation of the historical stratification of the landscape. We present the results of a survey of the most s…

Phycological Herbaria as a Useful Tool to Monitor Long-Term Changes of Macroalgae Diversity: Some Case Studies from the Mediterranean Sea

2020

The Mediterranean Sea is currently experiencing a decline in the abundance of several key species, as a consequence of anthropogenic pressures (e.g., increase in human population, habitat modification and loss, pollution, coastal urbanization, overexploitation, introduction of non-indigenous species and climate change). Herbaria and natural history collections are certainly fundamental for taxonomic studies, but they are also an invaluable, if currently underestimated, resource for understanding ecological and evolutionary responses of species to environmental changes. Macroalgae herbarium collections, which are really consistent (ranging from 200,000 to approximately 500,000 specimens) in …

Does plant diversity influence phosphorus cycling in experimental grasslands?

2011

Plant diversity was shown to influence the N cycle, but plant diversity effects on other nutrients remain unclear. We tested whether plant species richness or the presence/absence of particular functional plant groups influences P partitioning among differently extractable pools in soil, P concentrations in soil solution, and exploitation of P resources (i.e. the proportion of total bioavailable P in plants and soil that was stored in aboveground biomass) by the plant community in a 5-year biodiversity experiment in grassland.The experimental grassland site established in 2002 had 82 plots with different combinations of numbers of species (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 60) and functional groups (grasses,…

Response and effect traits of arable weeds in agro-ecosystems: a review of current knowledge.

2017

25 pages; International audience; Integrating principles of ecological intensification into weed management strategies requires an understanding of the many relationships among weeds, crops and other organisms of agro-ecosystems in a changing context. Extensively used during the last two decades in weed science, trait-based approaches have provided general insights into weed community response to agricultural practices, and recently to understanding the effect of weeds on agro-ecosystem functioning. In this review, we provide a holistic synthesis of the current knowledge on weed response and effect functional traits. Based on the literature and recent advances in weed science, we review cur…

2021

Fisheries exploitation can cause genetic changes in heritable traits of targeted stocks. The direction of selective pressure forced by harvest acts typically in reverse to natural selection and selects for explicit life histories, usually for younger and smaller spawners with deprived spawning potential. While the consequences that such selection might have on the population dynamics of a single species are well emphasized, we are just beginning to perceive the variety and severity of its propagating effects within the entire marine food webs and ecosystems. Here, we highlight the potential pathways in which fisheries-induced evolution, driven by size-selective fishing, might resonate throu…

Pulsed electric field assisted extraction of nutritionally valuable compounds from microalgae Nannochloropsis spp. using the binary mixture of organi…

2015

Abstract This work studies the potential of the pulsed electric field (PEF) assisted extraction of nutritionally valuable compounds from microalgae Nannochloropsis spp. using the binary mixture of organic solvents (dimethyl sulfoxide, DMSO and ethanol, EtOH) and water. The one-stage (E I ) and two stage (E II ) extraction procedures were compared. The procedure E I included the common extraction using the binary mixtures. Two stage (E II ) extraction procedure involved PEF-treatment (20 kV/cm) of microalgae suspension (1% wt.) and extraction in water as the first step. The second step included the common extraction using the binary mixtures. The effects of extraction procedure and concentra…