Elementos Arquiteturais do Substrato da Lagoa dos Patos Revelados por Sísmica de Alta Resolução

A high-resolution seismic survey was performed on the Lagoa dos Patos, southern Brazil. The survey was conducted aboard the research vessel LARUS of the Fundação Universidade Federal do Rio Grande. The seismic profiles were obtained using a 3.5 kilohertz frequency, which provided a rather good penetration depth and resolution of the records. Results of the seismic records allowed the determination and mapping of seismic facies and seismic sequences, as well as related architectural elements, which were identified basically through the configuration patterns of the seismic reflectors. The analysis of the seismic records allowed the identification of the architectural elements that build up the sedimentary pile accumulated in the coastal prism of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, contributing to a better understanding of the geological evolution of the southern Brazilian coastal plain during the Quaternary period.Fil: Weschenfelder, Jair. Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul; BrasilFil: Corrêa, Iran C. S.. Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul; BrasilFil: Aliotta, Salvador. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Instituto Argentino de Oceanografía. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Instituto Argentino de Oceanografía; Argentin

Progetto di una banca dati multidisciplinare: il progetto europeo VOLUME come caso di studio

Il presente lavoro si pone come obiettivo la realizzazione di una banca dati multi-parametrica in grado di archiviare diverse tipologie di dato strumentale. Il sistema proposto, accessibile dal portale dell’INGV della sezione di Catania al link “altre INGV-CT” del menù “Banche dati”, studiato e collaudato all’interno del progetto europeo VOLUME (http://www.volume-project.net/), consente la fruizione dei dati messi a disposizione dalle diverse unità funzionali dell’INGV della sezione di Catania coinvolte nel progetto. I dati, disponibili ai partner del progetto, sono accessibili previa registrazione e successiva validazione dell’utente. L’obiettivo principale di tale progetto è quello di studiare le dinamiche vulcaniche in modo da identificare e caratterizzare fenomeni che possano essere interpretati come possibili precursori di eruzioni. Per perseguire tale obiettivo occorre analizzare ed integrare diverse tipologie di misure, da quelle geofisiche a quelle geochimiche, con il fine di raggiungere una migliore comprensione dei processi in atto all’interno delle aree caratterizzate da vulcanismo attivo. Sebbene i dati archiviati siano relativi al solo vulcano Etna ed il periodo analizzato è relativo agli anni 2002-2003 , il sistema proposto può essere impiegato per la gestione di dati relativi ad altri vulcani e attinenti a qualsiasi intervallo temporale. Il sistema è stato realizzato in modo da fornire una interfaccia web user friendly che permetta agli utenti la navigazione, la visualizzazione e il download dei dati memorizzati all’interno della banca dati. Nei paragrafi successivi verrà presentata una panoramica delle funzionalità implementate per la navigazione del database. In particolare, i dati trattati nel presente report sono stati prodotti e forniti dalle unità funzionali dell’INGV della sezione di Catania (http://www.ct.ingv.it) che hanno partecipato al progetto VOLUME: • Unità Funzionale Sismologia; • Unità Funzionale Vulcanologia e Geochimica; • Unità Funzionale Gravimetria e Magnetismo; • Unità Funzionale Deformazione e Geodesia

Role of virtual break-up of projectile in astrophysical fusion reactions

We study the effect of virtual Coulomb break-up, commonly known as the dipole polarizability, of the deuteron projectile on the astrophysical fusion reaction 3He(d,p)4He. We use the adiabatic approximation to estimate the potential shift due to the E1 transition to the continuum states in the deuteron, and compute the barrier penetrability in the WKB approximation. We find that the enhancement of the penetrability due to the deuteron break-up is too small to resolve the longstanding puzzle observed in laboratory measurements that the electron screening effect is surprisingly larger than theoretical prediction based on an atomic physics model. The effect of the 3He break-up in the 3He(d,p)4He reaction, as well as the 7Li break-up in the 7Li(p,alpha)4He reaction is also discussed.Comment: 9 pages, 2 eps figure

Influence of tumor microenvironment and fibroblast population plasticity on melanoma growth, therapy resistance and immunoescape

Cutaneous melanoma (CM) tissue represents a network constituted by cancer cells and tumor microenvironment (TME). A key feature of CM is the high structural and cellular plasticity of TME, allowing its evolution with disease and adaptation to cancer cell and environmental alter-ations. In particular, during melanoma development and progression each component of TME by interacting with each other and with cancer cells is subjected to dramatic structural and cellular modifications. These alterations affect extracellular matrix (ECM) remodelling, phenotypic profile of stromal cells, cancer growth and therapeutic response. The stromal fibroblast populations of the TME include normal fibroblasts and melanoma‐associated fibroblasts (MAFs) that are highly abun-dant and flexible cell types interacting with melanoma and stromal cells and differently influencing CM outcomes. The shift from the normal microenvironment to TME and from normal fibroblasts to MAFs deeply sustains CM growth. Hence, in this article we review the features of the normal mi-croenvironment and TME and describe the phenotypic plasticity of normal dermal fibroblasts and MAFs, highlighting their roles in normal skin homeostasis and TME regulation. Moreover, we dis-cuss the influence of MAFs and their secretory profiles on TME remodelling, melanoma progres-sion, targeted therapy resistance and immunosurveillance, highlighting the cellular interactions, the signalling pathways and molecules involved in these processes

Neutron Tomography at INES: First experimental results

A neutron tomography apparatus has been designed and installed at the Italian neutron experimental station (INES) at ISIS (UK). The instrument has a double aim: an additional opportunity for the INES users and a “bench test” for an instrument component that will be proposed for installation on some of the new neutron scattering instruments of Target Station 2 (TS2) of ISIS. Here, we present the first experimental results achieved with this apparatus

Fusion rate enhancement due to energy spread of colliding nuclei

Experimental results for sub-barrier nuclear fusion reactions show cross section enhancements with respect to bare nuclei which are generally larger than those expected according to electron screening calculations. We point out that energy spread of target or projectile nuclei is a mechanism which generally provides fusion enhancement. We present a general formula for calculating the enhancement factor and we provide quantitative estimate for effects due to thermal motion, vibrations inside atomic, molecular or crystal system, and due to finite beam energy width. All these effects are marginal at the energies which are presently measurable, however they have to be considered in future experiments at still lower energies. This study allows to exclude several effects as possible explanation of the observed anomalous fusion enhancements, which remain a mistery.Comment: 17 pages with 3 ps figure included. Revtex styl

Data mining in the context of monitoring Mt Etna, Italy

The persistent volcanic activity of Mt Etna makes the continuous monitoring of multidisciplinary data a first-class issue. Indeed, the monitoring systems rapidly accumulate huge quantity of data, arising specific problems of an- dling and interpretation. In order to respond to these problems, the INGV staff has developed a number of software tools for data mining. These tools have the scope of identifying structures in the data that can be related to volcanic activity, furnishing criteria for the identification of precursory scenarios. In particular, we use methods of clustering and classification in which data are divided into groups according to a- priori-defined measures of similarity or distance. Data groups may assume various shapes, such as convex clouds or complex concave bodies.The “KKAnalysis” software package is a basket of clustering methods. Currently, it is one of the key techniques of the tremor-based automatic alarm systems of INGV Osservatorio Etneo. It exploits both Self-Organizing Maps and Fuzzy Clustering. Beside seismic data, the software has been applied to the geo- chemical composition of eruptive products as well as a combined analysis of gas-emission (radon) and seismic data. The “DBSCAN” package exploits a concept based on density-based clustering. This method allows discovering clusters with arbitrary shape. Clusters are defined as dense regions of objects in the data space separated by re- gions of low density. In DBSCAN a cluster grows as long as the density within a group of objects exceeds some threshold. In the context of volcano monitoring, the method is particularly promising in the recognition of ash par- ticles as they have a rather irregular shape. The “MOTIF” software allows us to identify typical waveforms in time series, outperforming methods like cross-correlation that entail a high computational effort. MOTIF can recognize the non-imilarity of two patterns on a small number of data points without going through the whole length of data vectors. All the developments aforementioned come along with modules for feature extraction and post-processing. Spe- cific attention is devoted to the obustness of the feature extraction to avoid misinterpretations due to the presence of disturbances from environmental noise or other undesired signals originating from the source, which are not relevant for the purpose of volcano surveillance

Measurement of the 18Ne(a,p_0)21Na reaction cross section in the burning energy region for X-ray bursts

The 18Ne(a,p)21Na reaction provides one of the main HCNO-breakout routes into the rp-process in X-ray bursts. The 18Ne(a,p_0)21Na reaction cross section has been determined for the first time in the Gamow energy region for peak temperatures T=2GK by measuring its time-reversal reaction 21Na(p,a)18Ne in inverse kinematics. The astrophysical rate for ground-state to ground-state transitions was found to be a factor of 2 lower than Hauser-Feshbach theoretical predictions. Our reduced rate will affect the physical conditions under which breakout from the HCNO cycles occurs via the 18Ne(a,p)21Na reaction.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication on Physical Review Letter

Properties and skin compatibility of films based on poly(lactic acid) (PLA) bionanocomposites incorporating chitin nanofibrils (CN)

Nanobiocomposites suitable for preparing skin compatible films by flat die extrusion were prepared by using plasticized poly(lactic acid) (PLA), poly(butylene succinate-co-adipate) (PBSA), and Chitin nanofibrils as functional filler. Chitin nanofibrils (CNs) were dispersed in the blends thanks to the preparation of pre-nanocomposites containing poly(ethylene glycol). Thanks to the use of a melt strength enhancer (Plastistrength) and calcium carbonate, the processability and thermal properties of bionanocomposites films containing CNs could be tuned in a wide range. Moreover, the resultant films were flexible and highly resistant. The addition of CNs in the presence of starch proved not advantageous because of an extensive chain scission resulting in low values of melt viscosity. The films containing CNs or CNs and calcium carbonate resulted biocompatible and enabled the production of cells defensins, acting as indirect anti-microbial. Nevertheless, tests made with Staphylococcus aureus and Enterobacter spp. (Gram positive and negative respectively) by the qualitative agar diffusion test did not show any direct anti-microbial activity of the films. The results are explained considering the morphology of the film and the different mechanisms of direct and indirect anti-microbial action generated by the nanobiocomposite based films