Search results for "Mediterranean"

Biodiverse green roofs in Mediterranean climate. Input and lessons learned from Germany and Switzerland

In the realm of the doctoral program in technologies for sustainability and land restoration, this thesis deepens sustainable and ecological solutions for Mediterranean environment after the German tradition and the Swiss school of green roofs for biodiversity. Specific aims were to: (1) assess the effectiveness of the existing green roofs norms in supporting biodiversity; (2) review methodologies and approaches for the implementation of biodiverse green roofs but also their application for ecological design; (3) identify habitat templates in the Mediterranean ecoregion replicable on green roofs; and (4) investigate the long term vegetation development of unmanaged green roofs in order to g…

Diet to Reduce the Metabolic Syndrome Associated with Menopause. The Logic for Olive Oil

2020

The rates of metabolic syndrome are increasing in parallel with the increasing prevalence of obesity, primarily due to its concomitant insulin resistance. This is particularly concerning for women, as the years around menopause are accompanied by an increase in visceral obesity, a strong determinant of insulin resistance. A fall in estrogens and increase in the androgen/estrogen ratio is attributed a determining role in this process, which has been confirmed in other physiological models, such as polycystic ovary syndrome. A healthy lifestyle, with special emphasis on nutrition, has been recommended as a first-line strategy in consensuses and guidelines. A consistent body of evidence has ac…

Fighting the Consequences of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Mindfulness, Exercise, and Nutrition Practices to Reduce Eating Disorders and Promote Sustainabil…

2023

Over the past two years, the world’s population has been tested by the COVID-19 health emergency. This has changed population habits worldwide by encouraging a sedentary lifestyle and overnutrition. Isolation and reduction of social life, for most of the population, was mandatory but it quickly became a new lifestyle. Nowadays, we are encountering the consequences with an increase in nutritional associated disorders and conditions that cause illnesses in the general population. These disorders include diet excesses that lead to obesity and diet deficiencies and malnutrition which could rapidly lead to death. These eating disorders are very complex to manage because they become mental disord…

Taking the acid test: Mediterranean limpets face up to climate change

2014

Impacts of climate change involve the interactions of multiple stressors on intertidal organisms, but rarely are the impacts of these stressors examined together. Many tests are also conducted in artificial, controlled laboratory conditions, without making use of natural opportunities to test performance of organisms under different environmental stressors. Given its small tidal range, the Mediterranean Sea provides such an opportunity, with a very fine scale environmental gradient and species living very close to each other over the tidal gradient. The vertical distribution of the limpets, Patella rustica and P. caerulea overlap in Palermo, Sicily, but despite this they have different ther…

Fatti e Fabule. Geografie more-than-wet del Mediterraneo Nero

2023

A reinvented archetype. The open-air theater on the edge of the city

2020

In southern Italy and in Sicily, over the past forty years, a series of urban redevelopment projects have been carried out, involving the construction of small theaters facing the Mediterranean landscape. !ey are re-invention projects of the archetype of the Greek theater that establish with the external landscape the same “sense of contemplation” expressed by the theaters of antiquity. Despite their privileged position, these theaters are occasionally used in the summer periods for tourist entertainment shows. Shows substantially distant from those of the past, as they lack an “educational” idea aimed at the construction of processes of self-recognition and identification.

ALLERGENS IN THE PARK AND GARDEN FLORA OF SICILY

2017

The ornamental flora of parks and gardens, as we know, generally includes high proportions of exotics. In Italy it arose from Renaissance on and increasingly enriched up to include a large proportion of exotics native to countries under Mediterranean and temperate climates. Similarly the garden flora of Sicily has a large number of mostly Mediterranean and subtropical exotics. Even if very similar on the whole, these floras differ in some floristic, biological and ecological features. Indeed, several succulent families and genera that are rare or missing in Italy are frequent in Sicily, but plants from temperate regions are almost absent in the island. As regards the allergenic patterns ref…

Oxidative stress, oxidative stress-based diseases and Mediterranean diet. Raman spectroscopy monitoring of skin carotenoids in healthy individuals an…

Abstract Evaluating the level of body antioxidants may reveal a more or less severe oxidative stress condition in either healthy people or subjects with pathologies, and can be suggestive for suitable dietary interventions to possibly affect it. In this work taking advantage from the Raman spectroscopic technology to measure the level of skin carotenoids in a simple and non-invasive manner, healthy people (age 15 to 70, n=155) and women who had surgery for breast cancer (BC) (age 38 to 76, n=71) have been screened to assess to what extent an increased intake of fruit and vegetables (healthy people and patients), associated with diets based on a classical Mediterranean style and that did not…

Concentrations of PAHs, PCBs and OC pesticides in intertidal marine gastropods of Sicily (Mediterranean Sea).

2009

Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), organochlorine pesticides (OCs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are toxic organic compounds able to persist in the Environment for long time. They can be accumulated through food webs and this could be a risk to some extent to threat human health and environmental quality. Marine currents represent further important distribution way of POPs through marine habitats and organisms. In Sicily, no much attention has been paid on POPs distribution on coastal habitats, important reservoirs of biodiversity, even if these are strongly influenced by anthropogenic pressure. In this study, concentrations of PCBs…

Occurrence of Centrouropoda almerodai and Uroobovella marginata (Acari: Uropodina) phoretic on the Red Palm Weevil in Malta

2009

The unwanted introduction of the Red Palm Weevil (RPW) coincides with the spread in Malta of two species of Uropodid mites associated with this weevil. Usually, adult RPW carry phoretic forms of C. almerodai which are attached to the underside of elytra, and U. marginata that prefers exposed surfaces of sternum, pygidium, head and legs. These mites use adult RPW to abandon dead palms and to colonize newly infested host-plants. Their role as plant pests is however negligible. Even the plant pathogen conidia, Curvularia which are carried by the mites, seem unable to germinate in palms under laboratory conditions. Both Centrouropoda almerodai and Uroobovella marginata are established in the Ma…