Topicalized PPs: Movement or External Merge?

Contribution to Linguistic Evidence 202

Les sujets disloqués en trévisan

This paper looks at the discursive function of left-dislocated subjects in an understudied Romance variety, namely Trevigiano. In the interest of comparison, we also consider Ashby’s (1988) corpus on left dislocations in French. We argue that left dislocated subjects in Trevigiano, just like their French counterparts, are topics which serve to activate a new file card in the sense of Heim (1982), and we show that the majority of left-dislocated subjects in Trevigiano introduce a topic shift at the level of the sentence, rather than at the level of the discourse. We then provide examples of how speakers exploit this flexible tool in order to develop and manipulate the different levels of discourse.Le présent article considère la fonction discursive des sujets disloqués à gauche dans une variété romane peu étudiée, à savoir le trévisan. Par souci de comparaison, nous avons également recours au corpus d’Ashby (1988) sur les dislocations en français parlé. Nous soutenons que les sujets disloqués en trévisan, tout comme en français, sont des topiques dont la fonction pragmatique est d’activer un nouveau fichier dans le sens de Heim (1982), et nous démontrons que la majorité des sujets disloqués en trévisan introduisent un transfert de topique au niveau de la proposition et non pas au niveau du discours. Nous fournissons des exemples démontrant comment les locuteurs exploitent cet outil flexible pour développer et gérer les différents niveaux du discours

Retrofit scenarios and economic sustainability. A case-study in the Italian context.

The aim of the paper is to highlight the potentialities for supporting the decision making process and design activities, for the case of retrofit projects with alternative technological solutions to compare. A multidisciplinary approach was adopted, involving the contribution of Real Estate Market and Economic Evaluation of Project, Architectural Technology and Building Physics. A simplified application of the Life Cycle Costing methodology was used, in synergy with energy analyses, to select, among different scenarios, the most viable solution for the retrofitting project of a single house in Northern Italy

Imágenes de América en su literatura: de la utopía al desencanto

Latin American literature presents a lot of images about the continent, specially an utopian image and its reversion, an image of disenchantment caused by the urban violence. Utopian figurations, which appeared firstly in the Indian historians texts, are studied in Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Pedro Henríquez Ureña writings. Then, during last decade of the 20th century, writers such as Fernando Vallejo, Gonzalo Celorio and Hector Abad Faciolince build an opposite image in their novels. They write about urban violence and this subject can be read as a disenchanted view about Latin America.La literatura latinoamricana presenta múltiples imágenes de América Latina, en particular, se aborda la imagen de la utopía y su reversión, una imagen de desencanto cuya raíz está en la violencia urbana. A través de obras de Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez y Pedro Henríquez Ureña se exploran las construcciones utópicas, que ya estaban presentes en la constitución de los discursos y la mirada de los cronistas de Indias. esta figuración se revierte en la literatura especialmente a partir de la década del '90 cuando escritores como Fernando Vallejo, Gonzalo Celorio y Héctor Abad Faciolince, entre otros, se ocupan de tematizar el problema de la violencia en las ciudades modernas y generar así una mirada desancantada sobre América Latina, contracara de las configuraciones idealizadas de la utopía inicial

Black hole mergers: the first light

The coalescence of supermassive black hole binaries occurs via the emission of gravitational waves, that can impart a substantial recoil to the merged black hole. We consider the energy dissipation, that results if the recoiling black hole is surrounded by a thin circumbinary disc. Our results differ significantly from those of previous investigations. We show analytically that the dominant source of energy is often potential energy, released as gas in the outer disc attempts to circularize at smaller radii. Thus, dimensional estimates, that include only the kinetic energy gained by the disc gas, underestimate the real energy loss. This underestimate can exceed an order of magnitude, if the recoil is directed close to the disc plane. We use three dimensional Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations and two dimensional finite difference simulations to verify our analytic estimates. We also compute the bolometric light curve, which is found to vary strongly depending upon the kick angle. A prompt emission signature due to this mechanism may be observable for low mass (10^6 Solar mass) black holes whose recoil velocities exceed about 1000 km/s. Emission at earlier times can mainly result from the response of the disc to the loss of mass, as the black holes merge. We derive analytically the condition for this to happen.Comment: 16 pages, accepted by MNRAS. Animations of the simulations are available at http://jilawww.colorado.edu/~pja/recoil.htm

Hydrolytic Profile of the Culturable Gut Bacterial Community Associated With Hermetia illucens

Larvae of the black soldier fly (BSF) Hermetia illucens (L.) convert organic waste into high valuable insect biomass that can be used as alternative protein source for animal nutrition or as feedstock for biodiesel production. Since insect biology and physiology are influenced by the gut microbiome, knowledge about the functional role of BSF-associated microorganisms could be exploited to enhance the insect performance and growth. Although an increasing number of culture-independent studies are unveiling the microbiota structure and composition of the BSF gut microbiota, a knowledge gap remains on the experimental validation of the contribution of the microorganisms to the insect growth and development. We aimed at assessing if BSF gut-associated bacteria potentially involved in the breakdown of diet components are able to improve host nutrition. A total of 193 bacterial strains were obtained from guts of BSF larvae reared on a nutritious diet using selective and enrichment media. Most of the bacterial isolates are typically found in the insect gut, with major representatives belonging to the Gammaproteobacteria and Bacilli classes. The hydrolytic profile of the bacterial collection was assessed on compounds typically present in the diet. Finally, we tested the hypothesis that the addition to a nutritionally poor diet of the two isolates Bacillus licheniformis HI169 and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia HI121, selected for their complementary metabolic activities, could enhance BSF growth. B. licheniformis HI169 positively influenced the larval final weight and growth rate when compared to the control. Conversely, the addition of S. maltophilia HI121 to the nutritionally poor diet did not result in a growth enhancement in terms of larval weight and pupal weight and length in comparison to the control, whereas the combination of the two strains positively affected the larval final weight and the pupal weight and length. In conclusion, we isolated BSF-associated bacterial strains with potential positive properties for the host nutrition and we showed that selected isolates may enhance BSF growth, suggesting the importance to evaluate the effect of the bacterial administration on the insect performance

Compartmentalization of bacterial and fungal microbiomes in the gut of adult honeybees

The core gut microbiome of adult honeybee comprises a set of recurring bacterial phylotypes, accompanied by lineage-specific, variable, and less abundant environmental bacterial phylotypes. Several mutual interactions and functional services to the host, including the support provided for growth, hormonal signaling, and behavior, are attributed to the core and lineage-specific taxa. By contrast, the diversity and distribution of the minor environmental phylotypes and fungal members in the gut remain overlooked. In the present study, we hypothesized that the microbial components of forager honeybees (i.e., core bacteria, minor environmental phylotypes, and fungal members) are compartmentalized along the gut portions. The diversity and distribution of such three microbial components were investigated in the context of the physico-chemical conditions of different gut compartments. We observed that changes in the distribution and abundance of microbial components in the gut are consistently compartment-specific for all the three microbial components, indicating that the ecological and physiological interactions among the host and microbiome vary with changing physico-chemical and metabolic conditions of the gut

Destabilization of the Bacterial Interactome Identifies Nutrient Restriction-Induced Dysbiosis in Insect Guts

Stress-associated dysbiosis of microbiome can have several configurations that, under an energy landscape conceptual framework, can change from one configuration to another due to different alternating selective forces. It has been proposed—according to the Anna Karenina Principle—that in stressed individuals the microbiome are more dispersed (i.e., with a higher within-beta diversity), evidencing the grade of dispersion as indicator of microbiome dysbiosis. We hypothesize that although dysbiosis leads to different microbial communities in terms of beta diversity, these are not necessarily differently dispersed (within-beta diversity), but they form disrupted networks that make them less resilient to stress. To test our hypothesis, we select nutrient restriction (NR) stress that impairs host fitness but does not introduce overt microbiome selectors, such as toxic compounds and pathogens. We fed the polyphagous black soldier fly, Hermetia illucens, with two NR diets and a control full-nutrient (FN) diet. NR diets were dysbiotic because they strongly affected insect growth and development, inducing significant microscale changes in physiochemical conditions of the gut compartments. NR diets established new configurations of the gut microbiome compared to FN-fed guts but with similar dispersion. However, these new configurations driven by the deterministic changes induced by NR diets were reflected in rarefied, less structured, and less connected bacterial interactomes. These results suggested that while the dispersion cannot be considered a consistent indicator of the unhealthy state of dysbiotic microbiomes, the capacity of the community members to maintain network connections and stability can be an indicator of the microbial dysbiotic conditions and their incapacity to sustain the holobiont resilience and host homeostasis

Phenomics and Genomics Reveal Adaptation of Virgibacillus dokdonensis Strain 21D to Its Origin of Isolation, the Seawater-Brine Interface of the Mediterranean Sea Deep Hypersaline Anoxic Basin Discovery

The adaptation of sporeformers to extreme environmental conditions is frequently questioned due to their capacity to produce highly resistant endospores that are considered as resting contaminants, not representing populations adapted to the system. In this work, in order to gain a better understanding of bacterial adaptation to extreme habitats, we investigated the phenotypic and genomic characteristics of the halophile Virgibacillus sp. 21D isolated from the seawater-brine interface (SBI) of the MgCl2-saturated deep hypersaline anoxic basin Discovery located in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. Vegetative cells of strain 21D showed the ability to grow in the presence of high concentrations of MgCl2, such as 14.28% corresponding to 1.5 M. Biolog phenotype MicroArray (PM) was adopted to investigate the strain phenotype, with reference to carbon energy utilization and osmotic tolerance. The strain was able to metabolize only 8.4% of 190 carbon sources provided in the PM1 and PM2 plates, mainly carbohydrates, in accordance with the low availability of nutrients in its habitat of origin. By using in silico DNA-DNA hybridization the analysis of strain 21D genome, assembled in one circular contig, revealed that the strain belongs to the species Virgibacillus dokdonensis. The genome presented compatible solute-based osmoadaptation traits, including genes encoding for osmotically activated glycine-betaine/carnitine/choline ABC transporters, as well as ectoine synthase enzymes. Osmoadaptation of the strain was then confirmed with phenotypic assays by using the osmolyte PM9 Biolog plate and growth experiments. Furthermore, the neutral isoelectric point of the reconstructed proteome suggested that the strain osmoadaptation was mainly mediated by compatible solutes. The presence of genes involved in iron acquisition and metabolism indicated that osmoadaptation was tailored to the iron-depleted saline waters of the Discovery SBI. Overall, both phenomics and genomics highlighted the potential capability of V. dokdonensis 21D vegetative cells to adapt to the environmental conditions in Discovery SBI