Cushion plant morphology controls biogenic capability\ua0and facilitation effects of Silene acaulis along\ua0an elevation gradient

The stress-gradient hypothesis (SGH) predicts that the balance of plant\u2013plant interactions shifts along abiotic environmental gradients, with facilitation becoming more frequent under stressful conditions. However, recent studies have challenged this perspective, reporting that positive interactions are, in some cases, more common at the intermediate level of environmental severity gradients. Here, we test whether and how neighbour effects by Silene acaulis cushions vary along a 700 m wide altitudinal transect, in relation to cushion morphological traits and environmental severity. Field measurements along the gradient, within and outside cushions, included (i) species richness and cover of coexisting vascular plants; (ii) cushion morphology; (iii) above- and below-ground microclimate; and (iv) soil quality. We used the relative interaction index to decouple neighbour trait effects and environmental severity effects on plant diversity at different elevations. The ability of the cushion plant to facilitate heterospecifics shifts considerably along the elevation gradient, being greatest at the intermediate level. On the other hand, Silene morphological traits steadily change along the gradient, from lax, soft and flat-shaped cushion habits at low elevation to tightly knit and dome-shaped habits at high elevation. Cushion morphological changes are associated with mitigating effects on microclimate, indicating that cushions effectively act as a heat-trap at medium and high elevations, while at low elevations the soft and flat cushions avoid excessive heat accumulation by tight coupling with the surrounding atmosphere. At the upper end of the gradient, cushion cespitose\u2013pulvinate compactness and high stem density appear to be critical traits in modulating the net effect of plant\u2013plant interaction, since the space available for hosting other vascular species is considerably reduced. In conclusion, this work provides a mechanistic link between plant morphological traits, associated biogenic microclimate changes and variation in net plant\u2013plant interactions along the explored severity gradient. Our findings support an alternative conceptual model to SGH, with plant facilitation collapsing at the upper extreme of the abiotic stress gradient

Self-DNA Early Exposure in Cultivated and Weedy Setaria Triggers ROS Degradation Signaling Pathways and Root Growth Inhibition

The accumulation of fragmented extracellular DNA reduces conspecific seed germination and plantlet growth in a concentration-dependent manner. This self-DNA inhibition was repeatedly reported, but the underlying mechanisms are not fully clarified. We investigated the species-specificity of self-DNA inhibition in cultivated vs. weed congeneric species (respectively, Setaria italica and S. pumila) and carried out a targeted real-time qPCR analysis under the hypothesis that self-DNA elicits molecular pathways that are responsive to abiotic stressors. The results of a cross-factorial experiment on root elongation of seedlings exposed to self-DNA, congeneric DNA, and heterospecific DNA from Brassica napus and Salmon salar confirmed a significantly higher inhibition by self-DNA as compared to non-self-treatments, with the latter showing a magnitude of the effect consistent with the phylogenetic distance between the DNA source and the target species. Targeted gene expression analysis highlighted an early activation of genes involved in ROS degradation and management (FSD2, ALDH22A1, CSD3, MPK17), as well as deactivation of scaffolding molecules acting as negative regulators of stress signaling pathways (WD40-155). While being the first exploration of early response to self-DNA inhibition at molecular level on C4 model plants, our study highlights the need for further investigation of the relationships between DNA exposure and stress signaling pathways by discussing potential applications for species-specific weed control in agriculture

Placing land cover pattern preferences on the map. Bridging methodological approaches of landscape preferences surveys and spatial pattern analysis

This paper presents an innovative methodological framework – Landscape Preferences Spatial Framework (LPSF) – which is able to translate landscape preferences, as expressed by various users, concerning possible land cover pattern compositions into land cover pattern preference maps. The innovative potential of the contribution lies in the exploration of a comprehensive methodical framework that facilitates the spatial representations of landscape demands by relevant user groups thus bridging the gap between landscape preference research and landscape planning. The LPSF developed here goes beyond the state of the art in translating local scale preference by people into regional scale planning settings. Throughout the paper the development and testing of the LPSF is described and explained. Although the paper focuses on the conceptual framework of the method, it also shows the results of its application in a case study

The Geant4-DNA project

The Geant4-DNA project proposes to develop an open-source simulation software based and fully included in the general-purpose Geant4 Monte Carlo simulation toolkit. The main objective of this software is to simulate biological damages induced by ionising radiation at the cellular and sub-cellular scale. This project was originally initiated by the European Space Agency for the prediction of deleterious effects of radiation that may affect astronauts during future long duration space exploration missions. In this paper, the Geant4-DNA collaboration presents an overview of the whole ongoing project, including its most recent developments already available in the last Geant4 public release (9.3 BETA), as well as an illustration example simulating the direct irradiation of a chromatin fibre. Expected extensions involving several research domains, such as particle physics, chemistry and cellular and molecular biology, within a fully interdiciplinary activity of the Geant4 collaboration are also discussed.Comment: presented by S. Incerti at the ASIA SIMULATION CONFERENCE 2009, October 7-9, 2009, Ritsumeikan University, Shiga, Japa

A chlorophyll-deficient, highly reflective soybean mutant: radiative forcing and yield gaps

Sunlight absorbed at the Earth’s surface is re-emitted as longwave radiation. Increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases trap an increasing fraction of such heat, leading to global climate change. Here we show that when a chlorophyll (Chl)-deficient soybean mutant is grown in the field, the fraction of solar-irradiance which is reflected, rather than absorbed, is consistently higher than in commercial varieties. But, while the effect on radiative forcing during the crop cycle at the scale of the individual experimental plot was found to be large (−4.1± 0.6 W m−2 ), global substitution of the current varieties with this genotype would cause a small increase in global surface albedo, resulting in a global shortwave radiative forcing of −0.003 W m−2 , corresponding to 4.4 Gt CO2eq. At present, this offsetting effect would come at the expense of reductions to yields, probably associated with different dynamic of photosynthetic response in the Chl-deficient mutant. The idea of reducing surface-driven radiative forcing by means of Chl-deficient crops therefore requires that novel high-yielding and high-albedo crops are made available soon.publishedVersio

Litter quality and temperature modulate microbial diversity effects on decomposition in model experiments

The consequences of decline in biodiversity for ecosystem functioning is a major concern in soil ecology. Recent research efforts have been mostly focused on terrestrial plants, while, despite their importance in ecosystems, little is known about soil microbial communities. This work aims at investigating the effects of fungal and bacterial species richness on the dynamics of leaf litter decomposition. Synthetic microbial communities with species richness ranging from 1 to 64 were assembled in laboratory microcosms and used in three factorial experiments of decomposition. Thereafter, the functionality of the different microcosms was determined by measuring their capability to decompose materials with different chemical properties, including two species of litter (Quercus ilex L. and Hedera helix L.), cellulose strips and woody sticks. Incubation was done in microcosms at two temperatures (12°C and 24°C) for 120 days. The number of microbial species inoculated in the microcosms positively affected decomposition rates of Q. ilex and H. helix litters, while relationships found for cellulose and wood were not statistically significant. Diversity effect was greater at higher incubation temperature. We found lower variability of decay rates in microcosms with higher inoculated species richness of microbial communities. Our study pointed out that the relationships between inoculum microbial diversity and litter decomposition is dependent on temperature and litter quality. Therefore, the loss of microbial species may adversely affects ecosystem functionality under specific environmental conditions

Geant4 physics processes for microdosimetry simulation: design foundation and implementation of the first set of models

New physical processes specific for microdosimetry simulation are under development in the Geant4 Low Energy Electromagnetic package. The first set of models implemented for this purpose cover the interactions of electrons, protons and light ions in liquid water; they address a physics domain relevant to the simulation of radiation effects in biological systems, where water represents an important component. The design developed for effectively handling particle interactions down to a low energy scale and the physics models implemented in the first public release of the software are described

Transience analysis of bursty traffic with erbium doped fiber amplifiers

Copyright © [2009] IEEE. Reprinted from ICTON 2009. ISBN 978-1-4244-4826-5. This material is posted here with permission of the IEEE. Internal or personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution must be obtained from the IEEE by writing to [email protected]. By choosing to view this document, you agree to all provisions of the copyright laws protecting it.In this paper, we investigate experimentally the impact of optical amplifiers, namely Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifiers (EDFA) on Optical Burst Switching (OBS) networks, operating at 2.5 Gb/s (typical bit rate for current passive optical networks - PON). Bursts with 212 – 1 and 216 – 1 pseudo random binary sequence (PRBS) were studied, with different idle times. The use of traffic with variable idle time was assessed in order to evaluate the effect on the burst initial amplitude. We also analyzed the performance of the packet based system by measuring the Q factor at the receiver and concluded that the performance is not affected by the type of traffic (variable or fixed idle times)

Effect of orthopedic and functional orthodontic treatment in children with obstructive sleep apnea: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Orthodontic treatment is suggested in growing individuals to correct transverse maxillary deficiency and mandibular retrusion. Since, as a secondary effect, these orthodontic procedures may improve pediatric obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), this systematic review assessed their effects on apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) and oxygen saturation (SaO2). Twenty-five (25) manuscripts were included for qualitative synthesis, 19 were selected for quantitative synthesis. Five interventions were analyzed: rapid maxillary expansion (RME, 15 studies), mandibular advancement (MAA, five studies), myofunctional therapy (MT, four studies), and RME combined with MAA (one study). RME produced a significant AHI reduction and minimum SaO2 increase immediately after active treatment, at six and 12 months from baseline. A significant AHI reduction was also observed six and 12 months after the beginning of MAA treatment. MT showed positive effects, with different protocols. In this systematic review and meta-analysis of data from mainly uncontrolled studies, interceptive orthodontic treatments showed overall favorable effects on respiratory outcomes in pediatric OSA. However, due to the low to very low level of the body evidence, this treatment cannot be suggested as elective for OSA treatment. An orthodontic indication is needed to support this therapy and a careful monitoring is required to ensure positive improvement in OSA parameters

Le Digital Humanities per lo studio e la comunicazione di beni culturali architettonici: il caso dei mausolei di Teodorico e Galla Placidia in Ravenna

The paper presents a series of methodological reflections on the following themes: survey, restitution, analysis and communication. The objective of the research was the critical reading of two of the most famous monuments in Ravenna and UNESCO heritage sites: the Mausoleum of Theodoric (ca. 520 AD) and the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia (before 450 AD). From advanced and integrated survey data, 2D graphs and 3D models were elaborated for hypothesis testing and for the multimedia communication of the scientific contents identified during the work. This second topic of the paper is part of the experiments conducted by the research group on new modes of multimedia communication, interactive and not, based on virtual models as an edutainment tool for enjoying monuments and masterpieces of cultural importance