Developing biodiversity assessment on a stand forest type management level in north-eastern Italy

This paper discusses a simple operative proposal, elaborated by a team of advisers to the Forestry Service of the Veneto administrative region (north-eastern Italy), concerning the definition of stand-level forest type biodiversity indicators and biodiversity oriented management provisions. Such tools are conceived to transfer biodiversity conservation understanding in current forest stand management practices. The developed assessment system is targeted to: maintenance and increase of the variability of forest landscape mosaic; conservation of species variability; creation of resource reservoirs. The following criteria and indicators are taken into consideration: spatial pattern (widespreadness, connectedness, species contagion potential), forest structure (uneven aged stands: percent of trees in three broad diameter classes; even aged stands: number of development stages and surface of each development stage), herbs/shrubs species (average, minimum and maximum number of species; average number of short-lived herb/ shrub species recorded in minimal anthropic disturbance conditions; dynamic trend in the number of herb/shrub species), bird species (average, minimum and maximum number of species); overall naturalistic quality (flora; vegetation; fauna). Such indicators are proposed as biodiversity reference standards for each forest type in the considered region: they provide practical baseline information with which forest stand management efficiency in achieving biodiversity targets can be compared

Climate change adaptation strategies in forest management: use of a decision support system for a district forest plan

The forest planning understood as mere management of stands for wood production has currently lost, compared to the past, its relevance and application possibilities; therefore, it is necessary to focus on the multifunctional services of forests. Here we present a synthesis of a district forest plan which has been developed through five pillars: (a) mapping of potential forest ecosystem services, (b) involving local stakeholders and experts, (c) exploring strategic scenarios of forest yield, (d) mapping homogeneous forest zones, and (e) capitalising the knowledge of forest working plans. The experts contributed through a decision support system NetSyMoD (Network Analysis-Creative System Modelling-Decision Support) which helps the decision process in the assessment of the scenarios of forest yield. It was possible to appreciate that an increase of yield suits well to climate adaptation in some forest zone and with the contents of forest working plans. This approach may be replicated in other forest districts where there is an history in the application of silvicultural control methods

Real-life data on potential drug-drug interactions in patients with chronic hepatitis C viral infection undergoing antiviral therapy with interferon-free DAAs in the PITER Cohort Study

Background There are few real-life data on the potential drug-drug interactions (DDIs) between anti-HCV direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) and the comedications used. Aim To assess the potential DDIs of DAAs in HCV-infected outpatients, according to the severity of liver disease and comedication used in a prospective multicentric study. Methods Data from patients in 15 clinical centers who had started a DAA regimen and were receiving comedications during March 2015 to March 2016 were prospectively evaluated. The DDIs for each regimen and comedication were assigned according to HepC Drug Interactions (www.hep-druginteractions.org). Results Of the 449 patients evaluated, 86 had mild liver disease and 363 had moderate-to-severe disease. The use of a single comedication was more frequent among patients with mild liver disease (p = 0.03), whereas utilization of more than three drugs among those with moderate-to-severe disease (p = 0.05). Of the 142 comedications used in 86 patients with mild disease, 27 (20%) may require dose adjustment/closer monitoring, none was contraindicated. Of the 322 comedications used in 363 patients with moderate-to-severe liver disease, 82 (25%) were classified with potential DDIs that required only monitoring and dose adjustments; 10 (3%) were contraindicated in severe liver disease. In patients with mild liver disease 30% (26/86) used at least one drug with a potential DDI whereas of the 363 patients with moderate-to-severe liver disease, 161 (44%) were at risk for one or more DDI. Conclusions Based on these results, we can estimate that 30-44% of patients undergoing DAA and taking comedications are at risk of a clinically significant DDI. This data indicates the need for increased awareness of potential DDI during DAA therapy, especially in patients with moderate-to-severe liver disease. For several drugs, the recommendation related to the DDI changes from "dose adjustment/closer monitoring" in mild to moderate liver disease, to "the use is contraindicated" in severe liver disease

Metal-organic framework glasses with permanent accessible porosity.

To date, only several microporous, and even fewer nanoporous, glasses have been produced, always via post synthesis acid treatment of phase separated dense materials, e.g. Vycor glass. In contrast, high internal surface areas are readily achieved in crystalline materials, such as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). It has recently been discovered that a new family of melt quenched glasses can be produced from MOFs, though they have thus far lacked the accessible and intrinsic porosity of their crystalline precursors. Here, we report the first glasses that are permanently and reversibly porous toward incoming gases, without post-synthetic treatment. We characterize the structure of these glasses using a range of experimental techniques, and demonstrate pores in the range of 4 - 8 Å. The discovery of MOF glasses with permanent accessible porosity reveals a new category of porous glass materials that are elevated beyond conventional inorganic and organic porous glasses by their diversity and tunability

Habituation, an underestimated mental phenomenon: Theory, implications, and applications

The response to a repetitive irrelevant stimulation tends to vanish. This phenomenon, known as habituation, is observed in virtually all animals and for all types of responses. In this target article we will review the theoretical models of habituation, its characteristics, and the related clinical and everyday life implications, with the aim of fostering the interests of researchers in this pivotal phenomenon for the human and animal mind, which is instead often described as a marginal learning process. Habituation instead reflects the operation of crucial cognitive mechanisms, and has been used as a tool to investigate different cognitive/perceptual functions. Furthermore, the notion of habituation can become useful in different clinical domains, and can create an interesting link between the research conducted among different animal species

Climate change adaptation strategies in forest management: Use of the DSS tool in the development of a wide area forest plan

Nowadays the drawing up of a correct forest planning is always more demanding: as a matter of fact it\u2019s necessary to pursue not only a multifunctional forest management that is sustainable at the current stage, but also to foresee the climate change impacts on forest stands in the next future. Besides, there\u2019s another important aspect that we can\u2019t leave out: the involvement of the local actors in the decision process. The public participation becomes essential to develop correctly wide area forest plans, whose policies affect the traditional forest planning at lower level. Veneto Region has tested the processing of a wide area forest plan, that covers the entire territory of a mountain community, using the NetSyMoD methodology (Network Analysis\u2013Creative System Modelling\u2013Decision Support) in order to facilitate the decision process in the adoption of forest management alternative strategies

An Integrated System for Secure Code Distribution in Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper presents a Secure Code Update (SCU) system for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). This solution achieves different security goals. First, through a dedicated authentication protocol it provides protection against the corruption of code images during their dissemination. Authentication routines exploit a lightweight asymmetric T-time signature algorithm [1] and allow the out-of-order reception of data blocks. Second, confidentiality is provided through the implementation of an optimized symmetric encryption suite, designed to leverage the processing capabilities offered by typical IEEE 802.15.4 radios. Last, our solution offers protection against denial of service attacks. In the first part of the paper we present the integration of this security system with the SYNAPSE++ reprogramming protocol [2], focusing on the description of the security suite as weD as on its salient implementation aspects. After this, we present experimental results that demonstrate the effectiveness against security attacks and quantify the loss in performance due to the addition of security components to SYNAPSE++

WebIoT: A web application framework for the internet of things

After the burst of the dot-com bubble in the Fall of 2001, the Internet has become a participative medium, which allows users to interact with one another and with the services from anywhere and at any time. The potential of such a change is still to be fully exploited, and phenomena such as social networks and cloud computing are just two of the many innovative solutions that have been born from the Web 2.0. At the same time, a new class of users is establishing itself in the Internet landscape: in fact, with the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), smart objects are becoming the new, and possibly the biggest, Internet community. In this paper, we propose WebIoT, a novel web application framework, based on Google Web Toolkit, aimed at enhancing the interaction among things and between humans and things. Our framework leverages on the following principles: thing-centric design, modularity and web service communications. We will describe the main components of the framework, their interactions and how simple it is to develop any custom IoT application integrating any number and type of smart things. In particular, we will show how different things can be integrated in the framework, how they interact and how users can exploit these interactions to develop any complex functionality. Finally, we describe a typical HealthCare application for the IoT realized using WebIoT