ArCo: the Italian Cultural Heritage Knowledge Graph

ArCo is the Italian Cultural Heritage knowledge graph, consisting of a network of seven vocabularies and 169 million triples about 820 thousand cultural entities. It is distributed jointly with a SPARQL endpoint, a software for converting catalogue records to RDF, and a rich suite of documentation material (testing, evaluation, how-to, examples, etc.). ArCo is based on the official General Catalogue of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities (MiBAC) - and its associated encoding regulations - which collects and validates the catalogue records of (ideally) all Italian Cultural Heritage properties (excluding libraries and archives), contributed by CH administrators from all over Italy. We present its structure, design methods and tools, its growing community, and delineate its importance, quality, and impact

Sulfatide in health and disease. The evaluation of sulfatide in cerebrospinal fluid as a possible biomarker for neurodegeneration

Sulfatide (3-O-sulfogalactosylceramide, SM4) is a glycosphingolipid, highly multifunctional and particularly enriched in the myelin sheath of neurons. The role of sulfatide has been implicated in various biological fields such as the nervous system, immune system, host-pathogen recognition and infection, beta cell function and haemostasis/thrombosis. Thus, alterations in sulfatide metabolism and production are associated with several human diseases such as neurological and immunological disorders and cancers. The unique lipid-rich composition of myelin reflects the importance of lipids in this specific membrane structure. Sulfatide has been shown to be involved in the regulation of oligodendrocyte differentiation and in the maintenance of the myelin sheath by influencing membrane dynamics involving sorting and lateral assembly of myelin proteins as well as ion channels. Sulfatide is furthermore essential for proper formation of the axo-glial junctions at the paranode together with axonal glycosphingolipids. Alterations in sulfatide metabolism are suggested to contribute to myelin deterioration as well as synaptic dysfunction, neurological decline and inflammation observed in different conditions associated with myelin pathology (mouse models and human disorders). Body fluid biomarkers are of importance for clinical diagnostics as well as for patient stratification in clinical trials and treatment monitoring. Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is commonly used as an indirect measure of brain metabolism and analysis of CSF sulfatide might provide information regarding whether the lipid disruption observed in neurodegenerative disorders is reflected in this body fluid. In this review, we evaluate the diagnostic utility of CSF sulfatide as a biomarker for neurodegenerative disorders associated with dysmyelination/demyelination by summarising the current literature on this topic. We can conclude that neither CSF sulfatide levels nor individual sulfatide species consistently reflect the lipid disruption observed in many of the demyelinating disorders. One exception is the lysosomal storage disorder metachromatic leukodystrophy, possibly due to the genetically determined accumulation of non-metabolised sulfatide. We also discuss possible explanations as to why myelin pathology in brain tissue is poorly reflected by the CSF sulfatide concentration. The previous suggestion that CSF sulfatide is a marker of myelin damage has thereby been challenged by more recent studies using more sophisticated laboratory techniques for sulfatide analysis as well as improved sample selection criteria due to increased knowledge on disease pathology

Constraining dark energy fluctuations with supernova correlations

We investigate constraints on dark energy fluctuations using type Ia supernovae. If dark energy is not in the form of a cosmological constant, that is if the equation of state is not equal to -1, we expect not only temporal, but also spatial variations in the energy density. Such fluctuations would cause local variations in the universal expansion rate and directional dependences in the redshift-distance relation. We present a scheme for relating a power spectrum of dark energy fluctuations to an angular covariance function of standard candle magnitude fluctuations. The predictions for a phenomenological model of dark energy fluctuations are compared to observational data in the form of the measured angular covariance of Hubble diagram magnitude residuals for type Ia supernovae in the Union2 compilation. The observational result is consistent with zero dark energy fluctuations. However, due to the limitations in statistics, current data still allow for quite general dark energy fluctuations as long as they are in the linear regime.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, matches the published versio

Does fish farming affect natural Baltic fish communities?

In 1985 and 1986, a SW Finnish archipelago area was monitored for fish (using gillnets and seine), in order to investigate potential effects of salmonid fish farming on natural fish communities (population- and community level, growth and food choice). The results indicate some structural change eg. in total abundance and biomass values (increasing), on species composition (towards moore cyprinid-dominated communities), on growth rate (increasing) and food choice (increased proportions of fish consumed) of perch, and a general shift towards communities dominated by juveniles and small fish in areas influenced by fish farms

Dental caries and attendance to dental care in Finnish children with operated congenital heart disease. A practice based follow-up study

Purpose Oral health of children with congenital heart disease (CHD) is of utmost importance. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of dental caries and attendance to dental care in Finnish heart-operated CHD patients born in 1997-1999. Methods The cohort of children born in 1997-1999 was selected using a national register on all heart-operated children in Finland. Gender, general health problems, diagnosis, type of the heart defect (shunting, stenotic and complex defects), and number of operations were available and included in the analyses. Dental records from primary health care were collected from municipalities with their permission. The data comprised of the number of dental examinations and data on caries status (dt, DT, dmft, DMFT) at the age of 7 (grade 1), 11 (grade 5) and 15 (grade 8) years and at the most recent examination. The control group consisted of dental data on patients born in 1997-1999 provided by the City of Oulu, Finland (n = 3356). Results Oral patient records of 215/570 children were obtained. The difference between the defect types was statistically significant both for DT (p = 0.046) and DMFT (p = 0.009) at the age of 15 (grade 8). The prevalence of caries did not differ between the study population and the controls. High present and past caries experiences were not associated with higher number of visits to oral health care, especially to oral hygienist, or with oral health promotion. National obligations concerning dental visits were not implemented in all municipalities. Conclusion There seems to be a need for oral health promotion and preventive means implemented by oral hygienists among those with CHD.Peer reviewe

Does the shoe fit? Real versus imagined ecological footprints

Linus Blomqvist, Barry W. Brook, Erle C. Ellis, Peter M. Kareiva, Ted Nordhaus, Michael Shellenberge

Polarization observables of the gamma d --> PiNN reaction in the Delta(1232)-resonance region

Polarization observables of the three charge states of the pion for the $\gamma d\to\pi NN$ reaction with polarized photon beam and/or oriented deuteron target are evaluated over the whole $\Delta$(1232)-resonance region adopting a nonrelativistic model based on time-ordered perturbation theory. Results for the $\pi$-meson spectra, linear photon asymmetry, vector and tensor target asymmetries are presented. Particular attention is given, for the first time, to double polarization asymmetries for which we present results for $T_{20}^{\ell}$ and $T_{2\pm 2}^{\ell}$. We found that all other double polarization asymmetries of photon and deuteron target are vanished.Comment: 17 Pages, 8 Figures, accepted for publication in Int. J. Mod. Phys.

π\piNN coupling and two-pion photoproduction on the nucleon

Effects of non-resonant photoproductions arising from two different $\pi NN$ couplings are investigated in the $\gamma N\to\pi\pi N$ reaction. We find that the pseudoscalar (PS) $\pi NN$ coupling is generally preferable to the pseudovector (PV) $\pi NN$ coupling and particularly the total cross sections are successfully described by the model with the PS $\pi NN$ coupling. In order to see the difference between the two couplings, we also show the results of invariant mass spectra and helicity-dependent cross sections in various isospin channels calculated with the PS and PV couplings.Comment: 35 pages, 11 figures, minor changes and version to be published in Phys.Rev.