“We Became Rich and We Lost Everything”: Ethnobotany of Remote Mountain Villages of Abruzzo and Molise, Central Italy

Profound socioeconomic changes affected mountains of Central Italy during the last century and many traditional agro-pastoral activities were abandoned. A few ethnobotanical studies in this area have specifically documented local wild plants used decades ago, but without analyzing in-depth how and why Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) has eroded or changed over time. In this study, we 1) document ethnobotanical uses of four high-altitude remote villages of Central Italy, 2) discuss how these uses have changed over time, comparing them with fieldwork that was conducted 40 years earlier; and 3) assess how plant uses have changed across space, particularly whether the remoteness of villages or the occurrence of Sacred Natural Sites (SNS) have affected TEK linked to wild plants. Sixty semi-structured interviews revealed the use of 83 taxa belonging to 35 families. We did not find any relationship between SNS and the richness of TEK, as these SNS were not inhabited by monastic communities that could have shared their scholarly knowledge. There was not a relationship between remoteness and richness of TEK. The common statement emerging from the field, “We became rich and lost everything”, revealed how socio-economic changes resulted in the rapid abandonment of traditional practices, while the ubiquity of pharmacies may have contributed to the erosion of ethnomedicinal knowledge

Scholarly vs. Traditional Knowledge: Effects of Sacred Natural Sites on Ethnobotanical Practices in Tuscany, Central Italy

Sacred Natural Sites (SNSs), found in all inhabited continents, are cultural landscapes of spiritual significance for local communities. As they are believed to influence Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), we documented the use of wild and semi-domesticated plants for food and medicine in four villages located at different distances from SNSs in Central Italy. Results may indicate that SNSs, which have been managed and inhabited for centuries by monastic communities, have had a restrictive impact on local TEK, as the communities located near SNSs reported fewer traditional uses for plants than those living further from the same SNSs. One possible explanation is that the Scholarly Knowledge (SK) held by the monastic communities of SNSs competed with the TEK of the surrounding villages and this resulted in a smaller body of plant-related folk knowledge, practices and beliefs retained by the people living in the vicinity of SNSs. Further studies should address the past and current mechanisms of competition and/or osmosis between TEK and SK in terms of both daily practices and beliefs/theoretical knowledge

Blended divergences: local food and medicinal plant uses among Arbëreshë, Occitans, and autochthonous Calabrians living in Calabria, Southern Italy

A study focusing on traditional uses of wild plants for gastronomic and medicinal purposes was carried out among three linguistic communities in Calabria, southern Italy. Ninety interviews with local elderly informants were conducted among Occitans and Arbëreshë, two linguistic minorities, and the dominant culture of autochthonous Calabrians. We recorded 85 taxa belonging to 39 botanical families and 66 different detailed use-reports including 35 culinary and 31 medicinal uses. Our overall data show the permanence of traditional ecological knowledge related to wild and semi-domesticated food and medicinal plants; however, high similarity indices among the three communities demonstrate that traditional ecological knowledge is following the pathway of homogenization and standardization toward the dominant culture, facilitated by a context of linguistic erosion, limited intergenerational transmission, and a centuries-old diffusion with Calabrian culture. Moreover, our study calls for further field surveys in isolated areas of Calabria to analyze how traditional ecological practices can be key tools in the development of local small-scale economies through the promotion of artisanal food entrepreneurship of wild food plant transformation

Many-core applications to online track reconstruction in HEP experiments

Interest in parallel architectures applied to real time selections is growing in High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments. In this paper we describe performance measurements of Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) and Intel Many Integrated Core architecture (MIC) when applied to a typical HEP online task: the selection of events based on the trajectories of charged particles. We use as benchmark a scaled-up version of the algorithm used at CDF experiment at Tevatron for online track reconstruction - the SVT algorithm - as a realistic test-case for low-latency trigger systems using new computing architectures for LHC experiment. We examine the complexity/performance trade-off in porting existing serial algorithms to many-core devices. Measurements of both data processing and data transfer latency are shown, considering different I/O strategies to/from the parallel devices.Comment: Proceedings for the 20th International Conference on Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP); missing acks adde

Visual analytics in histopathology diagnostics: a protocol-based approach

Computer-Aided-Diagnosis (CAD) systems supporting the diagnostic process are widespread in radiology. Digital Pathology is still behind in the introduction of such solutions. Several studies investigated pathologists' behavior but only a few aimed to improve the diagnostic and report process with novel applications. In this work we designed and implemented a first protocol-based CAD viewer supported by visual analytics. The system targets the optimization of the diagnostic workflow in breast cancer diagnosis by means of three image analysis features that belong to the standard grading system (Nottingham Histologic Grade). A pathologist's routine was tracked during the examination of breast cancer tissue slides and diagnostic traces were analyzed from a qualitative perspective. Accordingly, a set of generic requirements was elicited to define the design and the implementation of the CAD-Viewer. A first qualitative evaluation conducted with five pathologists shows that the interface suffices the diagnostic workflow and diminishes the manual effort. We present promising evidence of the usefulness of our CAD-viewer and opportunities for its extension and integration in clinical practice. As a conclusion, the findings demonstrate that it is feasibile to optimize the Nottingham Grading workflow and, generally, the histological diagnosis by integrating computational pathology data with visual analytics techniques

Interactions of human galectins with Trypanosoma cruzi: binding profile correlate with genetic clustering of lineages

This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Glycobiology following peer review. The version of record Pineda, M.A. et al. Interactions of human galectins with Trypanosoma cruzi: binding profile correlate with genetic clustering of lineages. Glycobiology 25.2 (2015): 197-210 is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/glycob/cwu103We report here the specific interaction between several members of the human galectin family with the three developmental stages of several genetic lineages of the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. We provide data of specific and differential binding of human galectins-1, 3, 4, 7 and 8 to 14 strains of T. cruzi that belong to the six genetic lineages representing the genetic diversity of the parasite. It is shown that galectins preferentially bind forms present in the host, trypomastigotes and amastigotes, compared to the non-infective epimastigote present on the intestinal tract of the vector, reflecting the changes on glycosylation that occur during the metacyclogenesis and amastigogenesis process. Also, it is evidenced that galectin binding to the parasites promotes binding to the host cells and higher infection rates. In addition evidence is provided indicating that the intracellular amastigotes may take over the cytosolic pool of some galectins when released to the extracellular medium. Finaly, by applying unweighted pair group method analysis to the galectin binding profile to either cell-derived trypomastigotes or amastigotes we show that the differential binding profile by the host galectins to the six lineages resembles the clustering based in genetic data. Therefore, the differential binding profile for the six lineages could have implications in the immunopathology of Chagas’ disease, affecting the complex network of immune responses on which galectins mediate, thus providing linkage clues to the notion that different lineages may be related to different clnical forms of the disease.This work was supported by grants from the Fondo de Investigaciones Sanitarias-Ministerio de Sanidad (FIS-PI11/00033) to PB and (FIS-PI11/0095) to MS, and grant ChagasEpiNet (European VII framework Program) to MF. The financial support Network RICET from the FIS, Ministerio de Sanidad and Fundacion Ramon Areces is acknowledge

eHealth literacy scale: a nursing analysis and Italian validation

Background: One of the scales most used to measure quickly and easily eHealth Literacy is the eHealth LiteracyScale (eHEALS); however, there was no validation of this scale in Italian. Therefore, the aim of this study was to adapt and validate the eHealth Literacy Scale (eHEALS) to the italian context. Methods: Italian translation of eHEALS was administered along unit to another two scale for measure lifestyle habits self-esteem and life satisfaction). A sample of 650 university students aged between 18 and 45 years was selected. An exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, analysis of invariance, reliability, stability and bivariate correlations were performed. Results: Exploratory factor analysis revealed a monofactorial structure that explained 67% of variance. Reliability of 0.87 and test-retest correlation of 0.78 was obtained. The questionnaire was invariant by gender. Regarding the criterion validity, a statistically significant and positive correlations between 0.05 and 0.15 with three indicators was obtained (self-esteem, lifestyle habits and life satisfaction). The italian version of the eHEALS tested in this work has shown to be a valid and reliable scale to measure eHealth competence in university students

CMS Software Distribution on the LCG and OSG Grids

The efficient exploitation of worldwide distributed storage and computing resources available in the grids require a robust, transparent and fast deployment of experiment specific software. The approach followed by the CMS experiment at CERN in order to enable Monte-Carlo simulations, data analysis and software development in an international collaboration is presented. The current status and future improvement plans are described.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, latex with hyperref

Characterization of Fungal Melanins from Black Stains on Paper Artefacts

This work was supported by Portuguese funds from FCT/MCTES through the CleanART research project (PTDC/EPH-PAT/0224/2014); the Associate Laboratory for Green Chemistry— LAQV (UIDB/50006/2020 and UIDP/50006/2020); the i3N Associate Laboratory and PTNMR (POCI01-0145-FEDER-007688; UIDB/50025/2020-2023, ROTEIRO/0031/2013–PINFRA/22161/2016); the iMed.ULisboa (UIDB/04138/2020), the fellowship number SFRH/BD/133447/2017 (T.G.P.) and the researcher contracts CEECIND/01474/2018 (S.O.S.) and 2021.03255.CEECIND (M.C.C).Melanins play a fundamental role in the biology and ecology of several fungal species. Unfortunately, this group of amorphous macromolecules also severely (and most times irreversibly) stains cultural heritage objects. Despite efforts made throughout the years, knowledge of the chemical composition and structure of melanins is still insufficient, which hampers the task of safely cleaning these colourants from cultural heritage materials in a targeted way without causing further deterioration. This work aimed therefore to contribute towards enlightening the characteristics of fungal melanins from three fungi that are common paper colonizers: Aspergillus niger, Chaetomium globosum and Cladosporium cladosporioides. The extracted melanins were characterized by FTIR, Raman, UV-vis, Solid-State NMR and MALDI-TOF MS spectroscopies and the effect of inhibitors of DHN-melanin and DOPA-melanin pathways on colony pigmentation and growth was evaluated. Although all the extracted colourants show a predominantly aromatic structure with carbonyl and phenolic groups, some differences between the melanins can be highlighted. Melanins obtained from Ch. globosum and Cl. cladosporioides exhibited similar structures and composition and both presented DHN-melanin characteristics, while A. niger’s melanins revealed a more complex and ordered structure, with a higher prevalence of highly conjugated carbonyls than the others, besides the additional presence of a yellow/green component. These conclusions cannot be overlooked while selecting targeted cleaning methodologies for melanin stains on cultural heritage materials.publishersversionpublishe