Monitoring and understanding crustal deformation by means of GPS and InSAR data

Monitoring deformation of the Earth’s crust by using data acquired by both the GNSS and SAR techniques allows describing crustal movements with high spatial and temporal resolution. This is a key contribution for achieving a deeper and better insight of geodynamic processes. Combination of the two techniques provides a very powerful means, however, before combing the different data sets it is important to properly understand their respective contribution. For this purpose, strictly simultaneous and long time series would be necessary. This is not, in general, a common case due to the relatively long SAR satellites revisit time. A positive exception is represented by the data set of COSMO SKYMed (CSK) images made available for this study by the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The flyover area encompass the city of Bologna and the smaller nearby town of Medicina where permanent GPS stations are operational. At the times of the CSK flyovers, we compared the GPS and SAR Up and East coordinates of a few stations as well as differential tropospheric delays derived by both techniques. The GPS time series were carefully screened and corrected for the presence of discontinuities by adopting a dedicated statistical procedure. The comparisons of both the estimated deformation and the tropospheric delays are encouraging and highlight the need for having available a more evenly sampled SAR data set

Flora vascolare spontanea della citt\ue0 di Modena: analisi del centro storico

Si presentano i risultati del primo studio sistematico sulla flora urbica di Modena. Il censimento qui illustrato \ue8 stato svolto fra il 2014 e il 2018, considerando ogni via e piazza del centro storico cittadino, quest\u2019ultimo inteso come area delimitata dai grandi viali che ricalcano il percorso dei bastioni cinquecenteschi. Sono state rinvenute 344 specie, delle quali 1 nuova per la flora d\u2019Italia, 10 per l\u2019Emilia-Romagna e altre 19 per la provincia di Modena; il 63% di queste nuove segnalazioni \ue8 esotico. Le specie non pi\uf9 ritrovate, segnalate almeno 20 anni fa o testimoniate solo da campioni d\u2019erbario del tardo Ottocento, sono 17. Lo spettro biologico \ue8 dominato dalle terofite (45%), seguite da emicriptofite (28%) e fanerofite (15%). Lo spettro corologico \ue8 dominato da eurasiatiche (28%), mediterranee (24%) e cosmopolite (24%). Le neofite sono il 18% del totale, valore piuttosto basso se rapportato a quanto riferito per altre citt\ue0 della Pianura Padana e dell\u2019Europa centrale: ci\uf2 \ue8 probabilmente dovuto alle ridotte dimensioni del centro storico cittadino, la cui compatta struttura urbanistica d\u2019impronta medievale pare opporre una certa resistenza all\u2019ingresso delle specie alloctone. Le specie invasive sono l\u201911% del totale. Interessante la presenza di 15 specie igrofile, talora indicatrici d\u2019irrigazione o iper-irrigazione di aiuole e tappeti erbosi. Le specie protette (solo a livello regionale) sono soltanto 4, di cui 2 presenti in quanto sfuggite a coltivazione. Considerando l\u2019affinit\ue0 delle specie censite all\u2019ecologia urbana, la lista \ue8 dominata dalle urbano-neutrali (45%) e dalle urbanofile (42%), il che pu\uf2 indicare sia una discreta variet\ue0 di ambienti di crescita, parecchi dei quali in una fase di evoluzione ecologica abbastanza avanzata per la citt\ue0, sia una discreta qualit\ue0 ambientale verosimilmente dovuta, almeno in parte, all\u2019abbondanza e ampiezza delle aree verdi. La ricchezza specifica in ogni via o piazza \ue8 fortemente correlata all\u2019eterogeneit\ue0 ambientale (\u3c1 = 0,794) e moderatamente correlata alla presenza limitrofa di aree verdi (\u3c1 = 0,544) e alla lunghezza della via o ampiezza della piazza (\u3c1 = 0,665 e 0,673, rispettivamente); esiste inoltre una debole correlazione fra presenza di specie orticole o alimentari e presenza, nella stessa via o piazza, di locali di ristorazione (\u3c1 = 0,212). La citt\ue0 si conferma dunque come un ecosistema assai dinamico e di grande ricchezza biologica, utile per capire le strategie ecologiche messe in atto dalle piante per adattarsi a condizioni anche proibitive. Le aree urbane, inoltre, spesso fungono da \uabsnodo\ubb per la diffusione delle specie lungo le infrastrutture viarie, durante il processo di colonizzazione del territorio. La comprensione e il rispetto dei ruoli ecologici delle specie spontanee sono concetti fondamentali per una moderna pianificazione urbanistica volta a migliorare la qualit\ue0 della vita nel suo complesso

Fontana Ranuccio (excavations 2019-2022) and Colle Marino (excavations 2020-2021): Middle Pleistocene chronostratigraphic evidence of the earliest inhabitants in the Anagni basin

Recent fieldwork of the Istituto Italiano di Paleontologia Umana in the Anagni basin (Latin Valley, southern Latium, central Italy) has provided new insights into the dynamics of human settlement and adaptation in this area during the Middle Pleistocene. This paper summarizes the still partially unpublished data on the chronostratigraphy of two important prehistoric sites: Fontana Ranuccio, dating from about 400,000 years ago, and Colle Marino, whose lithic industry has so far been attributed to an early stage of the Middle Pleistocene. At Fontana Ranuccio, stratigraphic studies highlighted the depositional dynamics and the processes involved in the formation of the archeological unit, consisting of partly reworked volcanic material, which can be now divided into distinct sub-units. At Colle Marino, a 35-meter-deep core drilling and an excavation campaign allowed us to verify the nature and provenance of lithic artifacts found on the surface in past decades. Radiometric analyses dated these artifacts from about 700,000 years ago

Tau mutations serve as a novel risk factor for cancer

In addition to its well-recognized role in neurodegeneration, tau participates in maintenance of genome stability and chromosome integrity. In particular, peripheral cells from patients affected by frontotemporal lobar degeneration carrying a mutation in tau gene (genetic tauopathies), as well as cells from animal models, show chromosome numerical and structural aberrations, chromatin anomalies, and a propensity toward abnormal recombination. As genome instability is tightly linked to cancer development, we hypothesized that mutated tau may be a susceptibility factor for cancer. Here we conducted a retrospective cohort study comparing cancer incidence in families affected by genetic tauopathies to control families. Additionally, we carried out a bioinformatics analysis to highlight pathways associated with the tau protein interactome. We report that the risk of developing cancer is significantly higher in families affected by genetic tauopathies, and a high proportion of tau protein interactors are involved in cellular processes particularly relevant to cancer. These findings disclose a novel role of tau as a risk factor for cancer, providing new insights in the various pathological roles of mutated tau

Reasoning About a Service-oriented Programming Paradigm

This paper is about a new way for programming distributed applications: the service-oriented one. It is a concept paper based upon our experience in developing a theory and a language for programming services. Both the theoretical formalization and the language interpreter showed us the evidence that a new programming paradigm exists. In this paper we illustrate the basic features it is characterized by