Urban Scale Monitoring Approach for the Assessment of Rising Damp Effects in Venice

In coastal areas, the rising damp of salty water is a well-known degradation factor of historical masonries, leading to visible features such as crusts, masonry erosion, and plaster loss. Venetian masonries are strongly affected by decay caused by rising damp exacerbated by direct contact with salty water. Recurrent flooding due to high tides and an increase in the frequency of flooding events, also related to climate change, raises concern about the impacts. Although several studies have been carried out on probable future scenarios, a valuation of the decay risk due to rising damp at the urban level still needs to be implemented. This paper proposes a non-invasive and economically sustainable approach for evaluating rising damp effects at an urban scale. The approach includes a collection of archive images of masonries affected by rising damp dating back to the 1990s; a visual survey of the actual conservation state of masonries; a classification based on significant descriptors; and a discussion on exposure conditions and conservation states. The descriptors chosen are rising damp levels, biological growth, plaster loss, efflorescence, and brick erosion. The evaluation was implemented in a georeferenced system suitable for future comparisons, thus providing a management tool for the city's preservation

Tiles from Aosta: A Peculiar Glaze Roof Covering

The 18th century roof tiles from the “Casa delle vigne”, located in the Aosta region (north-east Italy), were investigated as an example of a peculiar historical roof covering: ceramic tiles with a lead-based glaze finishing to waterproof them are used to create colourful patterns. A conservation project proposed the integration of the original tiles with new ones, produced according to traditional methods. Ancient and new tiles were analysed with Fiber Optics Reflectance Spectroscopy, micro-Raman, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy and X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometry, Thermogravimetry and Differential Scanning Calorimetry for understanding the composition and the production technology of this manufacture. Their resistance to freezing and thawing cycles was then tested, considering their exposure in the severe alpine climate of Aosta. The use of pure clays with low calcium contents, high firing temperature and lead-rich glazes was found in ancient tiles, able to outstand several freezing-thawing cycles without damages. Iron and copper pigments were used in old yellow and green glazes. Zinc-based pigment, low lead and calcium-rich glazes are used in the new ones, which remained mainly coherent to the ceramic body during the freeze-thaw test

Flare model sensitivity of the Balmer spectrum

Careful studies of various chromospheric spectral signatures are very important in order to explore their possible sensitivity to the modifications of the thermodynamic quantities produced by the flare occurrence. Pioneer work of Canfield and co-workers have shown how the H alpha behavior is able to indicate different changes in the atmospheric parameters structure associated to the flare event. It was decided to study the behavior of the highest Balmer lines and of the Balmer continuum in different solar flare model atmospheres. These spectral features, originating in the deep photosphere in a quiet area, may have a sensitivity different from H alpha to the modification of a flare atmosphere. The details of the method used to compute the Stark profile of the higher Balmer line (n is greater than or equal to 6) and their merging were extensively given elsewhere (Donati-Falchi et al., 1985; Falchi et al., 1989). The models used were developed by Ricchiazzi in his thesis (1982) evaluating the chromospheric response to both the nonthermal electron flux, for energy greater than 20 kev, (F sub 20) and to the thermal conduction, (F sub c). The effect of the coronal pressure values (P sub O) at the apex of the flare loop is also included

Helium Line Formation and Abundance in a Solar Active Region

An observing campaign (SOHO JOP 139), coordinated between ground-based and Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) instruments, has been planned to obtain simultaneous spectroheliograms of the same active region in several spectral lines. The chromospheric lines Ca ii K, H , and Na i D, as well as He i 10830, 5876, 584, and He ii 304 8 lines have been observed. The EUV radiation in the range k < 500 8 and in the range 260 < k < 340 8 has also been measured at the same time. These simultaneous observations allow us to build semiempirical models of the chromosphere and low transition region of an active region, taking into account the estimated total number of photoionizing photons impinging on the target active region and their spectral distribution. We obtained a model that matches very well all the observed line profiles, using a standard value for the He abundance (½He ¼ 0:1) and a modified distribution of microturbulence. For this model we study the influence of the coronal radiation on the computed helium lines. We find that, even in an active region, the incident coronal radiation has a limited effect on the UV He lines, while it is of fundamental importance for the D3 and 10830 8 lines. Finally, we build two more models, assuming values of He abundance ½He ¼ 0:07 and 1.5, only in the region where temperatures are >1 ; 104 K. This region, between the chromosphere and transition region, has been indicated as a good candidate for processes that might be responsible for strong variations of [He]. The set of our observables can still be well reproduced in both cases, changing the atmospheric structure mainly in the low transition region. This implies that, to choose between different values of [He], it is necessary to constrain the transition region with different observables, independent of the He lines.Fil: Mauas, Pablo Jacobo David. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciónes Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio. - Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio; ArgentinaFil: Andretta, V.. Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte; ItaliaFil: Falchi, A.. Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri; ItaliaFil: Falciani, R.. Universita Degli Studi Di Firenze; ItaliaFil: Teriaca, L.. Max-Planck-Institut fur Sonnensystemforschung; AlemaniaFil: Cauzzi, G.. Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri; Itali

A deep learning-based pipeline for whitefly pest abundance estimation on chromotropic sticky traps

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is an essential approach used in smart agriculture to manage pest populations and sustainably optimize crop production. One of the cornerstones underlying IPM solutions is pest monitoring, a practice often performed by farm owners by using chromotropic sticky traps placed on insect hot spots to gauge pest population densities. In this paper, we propose a modular model-agnostic deep learning-based counting pipeline for estimating the number of insects present in pictures of chromotropic sticky traps, thus reducing the need for manual trap inspections and minimizing human effort. Additionally, our solution generates a set of raw positions of the counted insects and confidence scores expressing their reliability, allowing practitioners to filter out unreliable predictions. We train and assess our technique by exploiting PST - Pest Sticky Traps, a new collection of dot-annotated images we created on purpose and we publicly release, suitable for counting whiteflies. Experimental evaluation shows that our proposed counting strategy can be a valuable Artificial Intelligence-based tool to help farm owners to control pest outbreaks and prevent crop damages effectively. Specifically, our solution achieves an average counting error of approximately compared to human capabilities requiring a matter of seconds, a large improvement respecting the time-intensive process of manual human inspections, which often take hours or even days

Population variability in some genes involving the haemostatic system: data on the general population of Corsica (France), Sardinia and Sicily (Italy)

Three different population samples from Corsica (France), Sardinia and Sicily (Italy) were studied using nine genetic markers. For the first time, allele distributions of FGA TaqI, FGB Bcl I, FGB Hind III, PAI-1 Hind III, PLAT TPA-25, GPIIIa Taq I, GPIIb I/D 9bp, FVII HVR4 and FVII -323 10 bp markers, which are thought to be associated with cardiovascular disease risk, were studied in the general population of the three islands. The frequencies of the markers analysed in the present work show some peculiarities: the locus FVII HVR4 is characterized by the presence of a rare allele (H5), found in Corsicans and in Sardinians; the locus FBG BcII shows a low frequency of the B1 allele and the absence of the B1B1 genotype. The frequencies of some alleles have a distribution that is in agreement with the low risk for cardiovascular diseases in south European countries. The results highlight a genetic differentiation between the three Mediterranean islands and the other European populations

Effect of genotyping density on the detection of runs of homozygosity and heterozygosity in cattle

Runs of homozygosity (ROHom) are contiguous stretches of homozygous regions of the genome. In contrast, runs of heterozygosity (ROHet) are heterozygosity-rich regions. The detection of these two types of genomic regions (ROHom and ROHet) is influenced by the parameters involved in their identification and the number of available single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The present study aimed to test the effect of chip density in detecting ROHom and ROHet in the Italian Simmental cattle breed. A sample of 897 animals were genotyped at low density (50k SNP; 397 individuals), medium density (140k SNP; 348 individuals), or high density (800k SNP; 152 individuals). The number of ROHom and ROHet per animal (nROHom and nROHet, respectively) and their average length were calculated. ROHom or ROHet shared by more than one animal and the number of times a particular SNP was inside a run were also computed (SNPROHom and SNPROHet). As the chip density increased, the nROHom increased, whereas their average length decreased. In contrast, the nROHet decreased and the average length increased as the chip density increased. The most repeated ROHom harbored no genes, whereas in the most repeated ROHet four genes (SNRPN, SNURF, UBE3A, and ATP10A) previously associated with reproductive traits were found. Across the 3 datasets, 31 SNP, located on Bos taurus autosome (BTA) 6, and 37 SNP (located on BTA21) exceeded the 99th percentile in the distribution of the SNPROHom and SNPROHet, respectively. The genomic region on BTA6 mapped the SLIT2, PACRGL, and KCNIP4 genes, whereas 19 and 18 genes were mapped on BTA16 and BTA21, respectively. Interestingly, most of genes found through the ROHet analysis were previously reported to be related to health, reproduction, and fitness traits. The results of the present study confirm that the detection of ROHom is more reliable when the chip density increases, whereas the ROHet trend seems to be the opposite. Genes and quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapped in the highlighted regions confirm that ROHet can be due to balancing selection, thus related to fitness traits, health, and reproduction, whereas ROHom are mainly involved in production traits. The results of the present study strengthened the usefulness of these parameters in analyzing the genomes of livestock and their biological meaning