01/24/2012 - Former Charleston Resident Honored Through Music.pdf

La Campagna di Scavo 2011 ha riguardato il necessario restauro di strutture del tempio di Soknopaios, devastato da scavatori clandestini, che, approfittando del disordine politico e sociale seguìto alla rivoluzione in Egitto, hanno compiuto diverse incursioni sul sito

11/09/1989 - Craig Chesner

Rapporto dell'Undicesima Campagna di Scavo della Missione Archeologica del Centro di Studi Papirologici a Soknopaiou Nesos (Fayyum, Egitto)

Is there an immigrant-gender gap in education? An empirical investigation based on PISA data from Italy.

Gender and origin background are widely accepted in the economics of education literature as factors that highly correlate with educational outcomes. However, little attention has been devoted so far to the interaction of these two dimensions. We use Italian data from PISA 2015 to investigate potential immigrant-gender gaps in education. We find that, as expected, girls outperform boys in reading and are outperformed by them in math and science. In addition, immigrant students\u2019 scores are persistently below those of natives. However, interestingly, we find that being immigrant and female does not imply a double disadvantage in math and science. On the contrary, immigrant girls slightly compensate for the immigrant gap in all disciplines. Moreover, the wider gap we find is that of immigrant boys in reading: it ranges from to 0.66 to 2 school years with respect to native boys. Language spoken at home is one of the main cofactors affecting immigrant boy\u2019s scores. Targeted policies should therefore be implemented

Flow Assignment and Processing on a Distributed Edge Computing Platform

The evolution of telecommunication networks toward the fifth generation of mobile services (5G), along with the increasing presence of cloud-native applications, and the development of Cloud and Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) paradigms, have opened up new opportunities for the monitoring and management of logistics and transportation. We address the case of distributed streaming platforms with multiple message brokers to develop an optimization model for the real-time assignment and load balancing of event streaming generated data traffic among Edge Computing facilities. The performance indicator function to be optimised is derived by adopting queuing models with different granularity (packet- and flow-level) that are suitably combined. A specific use case concerning a logistics application is considered and numerical results are provided to show the effectiveness of the optimisation procedure, also in comparison to a “static” assignment proportional to the processing speed of the brokers

Quantitative real time PCR approach to study gene expression profile during prenatal growth of skeletal muscle in pig of Duroc and Pietrain breeds

The quantitative real time-PCR (QRT-PCR) is a very sensitive method used to quantify mRNA level in gene expression analysis. Combining amplification, detection and quantification in a single step, allows a more accurate measurement compared to the traditional PCR end point analysis (Pfaffl, 2001; Bustin, 2002)

A critical review of the mechanisms involved in the occurrence of growth-related abnormalities affecting broiler chicken breast muscles

In the past decade, the poultry industry has faced the occurrence of growth-related muscular abnormalities that mainly affect, with a high incidence rate, the Pectoralis major of the fast-growing genotypes selected for their production performances (high growth rate and breast yield). These myopathies are termed as White Striping, Wooden Breast, and Spaghetti Meat and exhibit distinctive phenotypes. A spatiotemporal distribution has been demonstrated for these disorders as in the early stage they primarily affect the superficial area in the cranial portion of the muscle and, as the birds grow older, involve the entire tissue. Aside from their distinctive phenotypes, these myopathies share common histological features. Thus, it might be speculated that common causative mechanisms might be responsible for the physiological and structural perturbations in the muscle associated with these conditions and might underpin their occurrence. The present review paper aims to represent a critical survey of the outcomes of all the histologic and ultrastructural observations carried out on White Striping, Wooden Breast, and Spaghetti Meat affected muscles. Our analysis has been performed by combining these outcomes with the findings of the genetic studies, trying to identify possible initial causative mechanisms triggering the onset and the time-series of the events ultimately resulting in the development and progression of the growth-related myopathies currently affecting broilers Pectoralis major muscles. Several evidences support the hypothesis that sarcoplasmic reticulum stress, primarily induced an accumulation of misfolded proteins (but also driven by other factors including altered calcium homeostasis and accumulation of fatty acids), may be responsible for the onset of these growth-related myopathies in broilers. At the same time, the development of hypoxic conditions, as a direct consequence of an inadequate vascularization, triggers a time-series sequence of events (i.e., phlebitis, oxidative stress, etc.) resulting in the activation of response mechanisms (i.e., modifications in the energetic metabolism, inflammation, degeneration, and regeneration) which are all strictly related to the progression of these myopathic disorders

Genome-wide association study identifies markers associated with carcass and meat quality traits in Italian Large White pigs

A GWAS was performed using the genotypes obtained by PorcineSNP60 v2 BeadChip and 11 phenotypic traits (carcass lean meat percentage; backfat thickness; Longissimus thoracis muscle thickness; lightness; backfat thickness measured with caliper at the midline; meat pH measured at about 1 h post mortem and 24 h post mortem; CIE L*, a* and b* color parameters; and water-holding capacity). Three markers were associated with three of the phenotypic traits considered: M1GA0009592 (SSC7) with backfat thickness and lean meat content, DIAS0002910 (SSC6) and ALGA0109856 (SSC6) with water-holding capacity. The marker M1GA0009592, associated with backfat thickness, lies in a QTL region near the gene JARID2, which is a transcription factor also involved in the regulation of adipose-derived stem cell pluripotency. The results seem to indicate a possible role of these genomic regions in the regulation of pig carcass fatness (i.e. backfat at last rib) and water-holding capacity

The Real Effect of Warm-Cool Colors

The phenomenon of warmer colors appearing nearer in depth to viewers than cooler colors has been studied extensively by psychologists and other vision researchers. The vast majority of these studies have asked human observers to view physically equidistant, colored stimuli and compare them for relative depth. However, in most cases, the stimuli presented were rather simple: straight colored lines, uniform color patches, point light sources, or symmetrical objects with uniform shading. Additionally, the colors used were typically highly saturated. Although such stimuli are useful in isolating and studying depth cues in certain contexts, they leave open the question of whether the human visual system operates similarly for realistic objects. This paper presents the results of an experiment designed to explore the color-depth relationship for realistic, colored objects with varying shading and contour