Evaluation of the Egg Bank of Two Small Himalayan Lakes

High mountain lakes are biodiversity treasures. They host endemic taxa, adapted to live in extreme environments. Among adaptations, production of diapausing eggs allows for overcoming the cold season. These diapausing eggs can rest in the sediments, providing a biotic reservoir known as an egg bank. Here, we estimated changes in abundance of the egg bank in two lakes in the Khumbu Region of the Himalayas, during the last ca. 1100 and 500 years, respectively, by analyzing two sediment cores. We tested viability of the diapausing eggs extracted from different layers of the sediment cores under laboratory conditions. We found that only diapausing eggs of the Monogont rotifer Hexarthra bulgarica nepalensis were able to hatch, thus suggesting that a permanent egg bank is lacking for the other taxa of the lakes, not least for the two Daphnia species described from these sites. Our results confirm previous studies suggesting that in high mountain lakes, the production of diapausing is mainly devoted to seasonal recruitment, therefore leading to a nonpermanent egg bank. The different ability of different taxa to leave viable diapausing eggs in the sediments of high mountain lakes therefore poses serious constraints to capability of buffering risk of biodiversity loss in these extremely fragile environments

Heavy Rainfall Identification within the Framework of the LEXIS Project: The Italian Case Study

LEXIS (Large-scale EXecution for Industry and Society) H2020 project is currently developing an advanced system for Big Data analysis that takes advantage of interacting large-scale geographically-distributed HPC infrastructure and cloud services. More specifically, LEXIS Weather and Climate Large-Scale Pilot workflows ingest data coming from different sources, like global/regional weather models, conventional and unconventional meteorological observations, application models and socio-economic impact models, in order to provide enhanced meteorological information at the European scale. In the framework of LEXIS Weather and Climate Large-scale Pilot, CIMA Research Foundation is running a 7.5 km resolution WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) model with European coverage, radar assimilation over the Italian area, and daily updates with 48 hours forecast. WRF data is then processed by ITHACA ERDS (Extreme Rainfall Detection System - http://erds.ithacaweb.org), an early warning system for the monitoring and forecasting of heavy rainfall events. The WRF model provides more detailed information compared to GFS (Global Forecast Systems) data, the most widely used source of rainfall forecasts, implemented in ERDS also. The entire WRF - ERDS workflow was applied to two of the most severe heavy rainfall events that affected Italy in 2020. The first case study is related to an intense rainfall event that affected Toscana during the afternoon and the evening of 4th June 2020. In this case, the Italian Civil Protection issued an orange alert for thunderstorms, on a scale from yellow (low) to orange (medium) to red (high). In several locations of the northern part of the Region more than 100 mm of rainfall were recorded in 3 hours, corresponding to an estimated return period equal to or greater than 200 years. As far as the 24-hours time interval concerns, instead, the estimated return period decreases to 10-50 years. Despite the slight underestimation, WRF model was able to properly forecast the spatial distribution of the rainfall pattern. In addition, thanks to WRF data, precise information about the locations that would be affected by the event were available in the early morning, several hours before the event affected these areas. The second case study is instead related to the heavy rainfall event that affected Palermo (Southern Italy) during the afternoon of 15th July 2020. According to SIAS (Servizio Informativo Agrometeorologico Siciliano) more than 130 mm of rain fell in about 2.5 hours, producing widespread damages due to urban flooding phenomena. The event was not properly forecasted by meteorological models operational at the time of the event, and the Italian Civil Protection did not issue an alert on that area (including Palermo). During that day, in fact, only a yellow alert for thunderstorms was issued on northern-central and western Sicily. Within LEXIS, no alert was issued using GFS data due to the severe underestimation of the amount of forecasted rainfall. Conversely, a WRF modelling experiment (three nested domain with 22.5, 7.5 and 2.5 km grid spacing, innermost over Italy) was executed, by assimilating the National radar reflectivity mosaic and in situ weather stations from the Italian Civil Protection Department, and it resulted in the prediction of a peak rainfall depth of about 35 mm in 1 hour and 55 mm in 3 hours, roughly 30 km far apart the actual affected area, thus values supportive at least a yellow alert over the Palermo area. Obtained results highlight how improved rainfall forecast, made available thanks to the use of HPC resources, significantly increases the capabilities of an operational early warning system in the extreme rainfall detection. Global-scale low-resolution rainfall forecasts like GFS one are in fact widely known as good sources of information for the identification of large-scale precipitation patterns but lack precision for local-scale applications

Spatially Disaggregated Modelling of Self-Channel NLI in Mixed Fibers Optical Transmission

We simulate and observe the buildup of coherency in self-channel interference. We propose a spatially disaggregated model for non-uniform links with uncompensated and compensated spans. We show that the correlation coefficient can be described by a unique curve

Experimental Validation of QoT Computation in Mixed 10G/100G Networks

We validate experimentally a quality-of-transmission estimator of the non-linear impairment on coherent 100G channels propagating with 10G channels on dispersion-managed links for network planning and path computation. Presented estimations are conservative, spectrally and spatially disaggregated

The Abdominal Circulatory Pump

Blood in the splanchnic vasculature can be transferred to the extremities. We quantified such blood shifts in normal subjects by measuring trunk volume by optoelectronic plethysmography, simultaneously with changes in body volume by whole body plethysmography during contractions of the diaphragm and abdominal muscles. Trunk volume changes with blood shifts, but body volume does not so that the blood volume shifted between trunk and extremities (Vbs) is the difference between changes in trunk and body volume. This is so because both trunk and body volume change identically with breathing and gas expansion or compression. During tidal breathing Vbs was 50–75 ml with an ejection fraction of 4–6% and an output of 750–1500 ml/min. Step increases in abdominal pressure resulted in rapid emptying presumably from the liver with a time constant of 0.61±0.1SE sec. followed by slower flow from non-hepatic viscera. The filling time constant was 0.57±0.09SE sec. Splanchnic emptying shifted up to 650 ml blood. With emptying, the increased hepatic vein flow increases the blood pressure at its entry into the inferior vena cava (IVC) and abolishes the pressure gradient producing flow between the femoral vein and the IVC inducing blood pooling in the legs. The findings are important for exercise because the larger the Vbs the greater the perfusion of locomotor muscles. During asystolic cardiac arrest we calculate that appropriate timing of abdominal compression could produce an output of 6 L/min. so that the abdominal circulatory pump might act as an auxiliary heart

Notulae to the Italian alien vascular flora: 12

In this contribution, new data concerning the distribution of vascular flora alien to Italy are presented. It includes new records, confirmations, exclusions, and status changes for Italy or for Italian administrative regions. Nomenclatural and distribution updates published elsewhere are provided as Suppl. material 1

Structure Determination of 8-Benzyl-5-phenyl-3-oxa-4,8-diazatricyclo[5.2.1.02,6]dec-4-ene and 1-(9-Ethoxy-5-phenyl-3-oxa-4,8-diaza-tricyclo[5.2.1.02,6]dec-4-en-8-yl)-ethanone: Their Synthesis, Chemical Relationship and Comparison with Similar Compounds

The molecular and crystal structures of 8-benzyl- 5-phenyl-3-oxa-4,8-diaza-tricyclo[5.2.1.02,6]dec-4-ene 11a and 1-(9-ethoxy-5-phenyl-3-oxa-4,8-diaza-tricyclo[5.2.1.02,6] dec-4-en-8-yl)-ethanone 13a have been XRD determined. The compounds crystallize in the monoclinic system with space groups P21/n and P21/c, respectively. The synthesis and chemical relationship between the two compounds are reported and their structures are compared with others of the aza-norbornene and isoxazoline families