BIO-DISTRICTS to boost organic production

A bio-district is an area where farmers, citizens, tourist operators, associations and public authorities enter into an agreement for a sustainable management of local resources, based on organic farming. The first bio-district was launched in Italy in 2009. After 4 years, the bio-district now includes 30 municipalities, 400 SMEs, 20 restaurants and 10 tourist establishments and it constitutes a permanent workshop of culturally significant ideas and initiatives

Analysis and modeling of wind directions time series

This work aims at studying some aspects of wind directions in Italy and supplying appropriate models. A comparison is presented between independent mixture and Hidden Markov models, which seem to be appropriate as far as the series we studied

Case study fact sheet. Bio-distretto Cilento - Italy

It is not by chance that the first Italian biodistrict was developed in Cilento, land of nature, culture, history and food traditions. The long‐term commitment and the remarkable efforts of various private and public stakeholders in support of Cilento Bio‐distretto have produced, over time, a number of interesting results. First, some important progress has been experienced in the development in the Cilento area of the organic sector, both in terms of operator numbers and land area. Second, the establishment of short supply chain outlets like, organic farmers’ markets, organic purchase groups and green public procurement and a number of other initiatives specifically targeting tourists have contributed to create stable market outlets for local organic products, thus meeting farmers’ need for viable market opportunities which was originally the intention of the creation of the Bio‐distretto initiative. Third, through its continued active presence in the area and its multiple initiatives, the Bio‐distretto project contributed to the protection of local foods and traditions as well as of the Mediterranean Diet heritage. Fourth, the Bio‐distretto Cilento succeeded in creating relatively permanent socio‐economic links between inland and coastland areas as well as between agriculture and other promising economic sectors in the region. Fifth, as a result of the many initiatives, it is claimed that the turnover of local organic farms and enterprises participating to the Bio‐distretto activities has increased by about 20% on average in these years. Sixth, the presence of Bio‐distretto project contributed to spread the “green economy and lifestyle” culture in the area (differentiated waste collection, renewable energies, bioarchitecture). Seventh, many of the activities carried out under the Bio‐distretto umbrella have managed to test and introduce innovative solutions to local problems and to broaden horizons with innovative projects, like care farming

La metrologia negli edifici pubblici e privati della Sicilia romana: persistenze e innovazioni nei centri di Agrigentum, Lilybaeum e Tyndaris

La presente tesi studia la metrologia relativa ad alcuni edifici chiave, sia pubblici, sia privati, dei centri romani di Agrigentum, Lilybaeum e Tyndaris, cercando di cogliere persistenze o sviluppi nell'uso dei sistemi metrici adoperati. Unendo a questo tipo di ricerca un'analisi storica, politica e architettonica dei tre centri, si cerca di cogliere chi fossero i committenti e quali le maestranze per cui fu utilizzato un dato sistema di misurazione

Temporal trends of heavy metals in sediment core from the gulf of Palermo (Sicily, Italy)

The evaluation of long–term heavy metal concentrations in the Gulf of Palermo was carried out in this study. Measurements of Cr, Cu, Hg, Pb and Zn concentrations were performed by atomic absorption spectrophotometry (AAS) on dated fractions of a sediment core, dated by the 210Pbex method. They are found to cover a time period from 1951 to 2004. The constant sedimentation rate model was used for dating. Specific activities of 137Cs have also been measured in the sediment core sections as a check of the time scale derived by the 210Pbex method. A time-series analysis based on temporal decomposition was used in order to investigate the presence of heavy metal pollution trend. The additive component model, widely used to estimate seasonal and long–term behavior, was chosen for the temporal analysis. Results showed the presence of a specific heavy metal concentration trend. Residual time–autocorrelation has also been taken into account in order to investigate their stochastic properties. Concentrations of some metals (Cu, Hg, and Zn) have been found increasing until the beginning of the 1970s. A peak around the beginning of the 1980s has been found for Cr and Pb. Heavy metal concentration in the sediment core show a significant decreasing after these years. Our results for the concentration time trends are in good agreement with other surveys performed in different areas of the world, and they can be explained in terms of the reduction of anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric emissions. Further investigations on time properties and spatial distributions, are also planned

Energy resolution and throughput of a new real time digital pulse processing system for x-ray and gamma ray semiconductor detectors

New generation spectroscopy systems have advanced towards digital pulse processing (DPP) approaches. DPP systems, based on direct digitizing and processing of detector signals, have recently been favoured over analog pulse processing electronics, ensuring higher flexibility, stability, lower dead time, higher throughput and better spectroscopic performance. In this work, we present the performance of a new real time DPP system for X-ray and gamma ray semiconductor detectors. The system is based on a commercial digitizer equipped with a custom DPP firmware, developed by our group, for on-line pulse shape and height analysis. X-ray and gamma ray spectra measurements with cadmium telluride (CdTe) and germanium (Ge) detectors, coupled to resistivefeedback preamplifiers, highlight the excellent performance of the system both at low and high rate environments (up to 800 kcps). A comparison with a conventional analog electronics showed the better high-rate capabilities of the digital approach, in terms of energy resolution and throughput. These results make the proposed DPP system a very attractive tool for both laboratory research and for the development of advanced detection systems for high-rate-resolution spectroscopic imaging, recently proposed in diagnostic medicine, industrial imaging and security screening

In vivo probing of nascent RNA structures reveals principles of cotranscriptional folding

Defining the in vivo folding pathway of cellular RNAs is essential to understand how they reach their final native conformation. We here introduce a novel method, named Structural Probing of Elongating Transcripts (SPET-seq), that permits single-base resolution analysis of transcription intermediates' secondary structures on a transcriptome-wide scale, enabling base-resolution analysis of the RNA folding events. Our results suggest that cotranscriptional RNA folding in vivo is a mixture of cooperative folding events, in which local RNA secondary structure elements are formed as they get transcribed, and non-cooperative events, in which 5'-halves of long-range helices get sequestered into transient non-native interactions until their 3' counterparts have been transcribed. Together our work provides the first transcriptome-scale overview of RNA cotranscriptional folding in a living organism

Endoscopic Endonasal Resection of a Schwannoma of the Anterior Cranial Fossa.

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