Molecular approaches for low-cost point-of-care pathogen detection in agriculture and forestry

Early detection of plant diseases is a crucial factor to prevent or limit the spread of a rising infection that could cause significant economic loss. Detection test on plant diseases in laboratory can be laborious, time consuming, expensive and normally requires specific technical expertise. Moreover in the developing Countries it is often difficult to find laboratories equipped for this kind of analysis. Therefore, in the last years a high effort has been made for the development of fast, specific, sensitive and cost-effective tests that can be successfully used in plant pathology directly in the field, by low-specialized personnel using minimal equipment. Nucleic acid-based methods have proven to be a good choice for the development of detection tools in several fields, such as human/animal health, food safety and water analysis and their application in plant pathogen detection is becoming more and more common. In the present review, the more recent nucleic acid-based protocols for point-of care plant pathogen detection and identification are described and analyzed. All these methods have a high potential for early detection of destructive diseases in agriculture and forestry; they should help making molecular detection for plant pathogens accessible to anyone, anywhere and at anytime. We do not suggest that on site methods should replace completely lab-testing, which remains crucial for more complex researches, such as identification and classification of new pathogens or the study of plant defence mechanisms. Instead, POC analysis can provide a useful, fast and efficient preliminary in field screening that is crucial in the struggle against plant pathogens

Legal determinants of external finance revisited : the inverse relationship between investor protection and societal well-being

This paper investigates relationships between corporate governance traditions and quality of life as measured by a number of widely reported indicators. It provides an empirical analysis of indicators of societal health in developed economies using a classification based on legal traditions. Arguably the most widely cited work in the corporate governance literature has been the collection of papers by La Porta et al. which has shown, inter alia, statistically significant relationships between legal traditions and various proxies for investor protection. We show statistically significant relationships between legal traditions and various proxies for societal health. Our comparative evidence suggests that the interests of investors may not be congruent with the interests of wider society, and that the criteria for judging the effectiveness of approaches to corporate governance should not be restricted to financial metrics

Mechanical Properties of Growing Melanocytic Nevi and the Progression to Melanoma

Melanocytic nevi are benign proliferations that sometimes turn into malignant melanoma in a way that is still unclear from the biochemical and genetic point of view. Diagnostic and prognostic tools are then mostly based on dermoscopic examination and morphological analysis of histological tissues. To investigate the role of mechanics and geometry in the morpholgical dynamics of melanocytic nevi, we study a computation model for cell proliferation in a layered non-linear elastic tissue. Numerical simulations suggest that the morphology of the nevus is correlated to the initial location of the proliferating cell starting the growth process and to the mechanical properties of the tissue. Our results also support that melanocytes are subject to compressive stresses that fluctuate widely in the nevus and depend on the growth stage. Numerical simulations of cells in the epidermis releasing matrix metalloproteinases display an accelerated invasion of the dermis by destroying the basal membrane. Moreover, we suggest experimentally that osmotic stress and collagen inhibit growth in primary melanoma cells while the effect is much weaker in metastatic cells. Knowing that morphological features of nevi might also reflect geometry and mechanics rather than malignancy could be relevant for diagnostic purpose

An angular power spectrum analysis of the DRAO 1.4 GHz polarization survey: implications for CMB observations

The aim of the present analysis is to improve the knowledge of the statistical properties of the Galactic diffuse synchrotron emission, which constrains sensitive CMB anisotropy measurements. We have analysed the new DRAO 1.4 GHz polarization survey together with the Stockert 1.4 GHz total intensity survey and derived the angular power spectra (APSs) of the total intensity, the polarized emission, and their cross-correlation for the entire surveys and for three low-intensity regions. The APSs of the diffuse synchrotron emission are modelled by power laws. For the $E$ and $B$ modes, a slope of $\alpha \sim [-3.0,-2.5]$ for the multipole range $\sim [30,300]$ is found. By the extrapolation of these results to 70 GHz, we can estimate the Galactic synchrotron contamination of CMB anisotropies, and we find results that are compatible with the ones coming from WMAP 3-yr data. In the low-intensity regions, the cosmological primordial B~mode peak at $\ell \sim 100$ should be clearly observable for a tensor-to-scalar ratio T/S \gsim 0.5 and a synchrotron temperature spectral index $\beta \sim -3$. Its detection is also possible for T/S \gsim 0.005 and $\beta \sim -3$, in case a separation of the foreground from the CMB signal could be achieved with an accuracy of $\sim 5-10$. For the TE mode, a mask excluding $|b_{gal}| \le 5^{\circ}$ (for $\beta\sim -3.0$) or $|b_{gal}| \le 20^{\circ}$ (for $\beta\sim -2.8$) from the surveys is sufficient to render the foreground contamination negligible, thus confirming the ability of WMAP to have a clear view of the temperature-polarization correlation peak and antipeak series.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, will appear on A&A Let

Object-based image analysis for historic maps classification

Heritage maps represent fundamental information for the study of the evolution of a region, especially in terms of landscape and ecologic features. Historical maps present two kinds of hurdle before they can be used in a modern GIS: they must be geometrically corrected to correspond to the datum in use and they must be classified to exploit the information they contain. This study deals the latter problem: the Historical Cadaster Map, created between 1851 and 1861, for the Trentino region in the North of Italy is available as a collection of maps in the ETRS89/UTM 32N datum. The map is a high resolution scan (230 DPI, 24 bit) of the original map and has been used in several ecological studies, since it provides detailed information not only about land property but also about land use. In the past the cadaster map has been manually digitized and for each area a set of attributes has been recorded. Since this approach is time consuming and prone to errors, automatic and semi-automatic procedures have been tested. Traditional image classification techniques, such as maximum likelihood classification, supervised or un-supervised, pixelwise and contextual, do not provide satisfactory results for many reasons: map colors are very variable within the same area, symbols and characters are used to identify cadaster parcels and locations, lines, drawn by hand on the original map, have variable thickness and colors. The availability of FOSS tools for the Object-based Image Analysis (OBIA) has made possible the application of this technique to the cadaster map. This paper describes the use of GRASS GIS and R for the implementation of the OBIA approach for the supervised classification of the historic cadaster map. It describes the determination of the optimal segments, the choice of their attributes and relevant statistics, and their classification. The result has been evaluated with respect to a manually digitized map using Cohens Kappa and the analysis of the confusion matrix. The result of the OBIA classification has also been compared to the classification of the same map using maximum likelihood classification, un-supervised and supervised, both pixelwise and contextual. The OBIA approach has provided very satisfactory results with the ability to automatically remove the background and symbols and characters, creating a ready to be used classified map. This study highlights the effectiveness of the OBIA processing chain available in the FOSS4G ecosystem, and in particular the added value of the interoperability between GRASS GIS and R

Tunneling into granular Pb films in the superconducting and insulating regimes

Tunneling measurements have been performed on both sides of the insulator-superconductor transition in quench-condensed granular Pb films. The results indicate that the Pb film consists of fully superconducting grains with essentially bulk values for the superconducting energy gap and transition temperature, even when the film exhibits insulating behavior in transport measurements. The density of states inferred from measurements in perpendicular magnetic field are consistent with magnetic spin-flip broadening

Management of non-native tree species in forests of the Alpine space

This guide was prepared within the framework of the project ALPTREES (code ASP791), which is co-funded by the European Commission through the INTERREG Alpine Space financial mechanism. The INTERREG Alpine Space programme is a European transnational cooperation programme for the Alpine region. It provides a framework for facilitating cooperation between key economic, social, and environmental players in seven Alpine countries, as well as between various institutional levels. The programme is financed through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as well as through national public and private co-funding in the Partner States

The environmental impacts of different mask options for healthcare settings in the UK

During the COVID-19 pandemic, different strategies emerged to combat shortages of certified face masks used in the healthcare sector. These strategies included increasing production from the original manufacturing sites, commissioning new production facilities locally, exploring and allowing the reuse of single-use face masks via various decontamination methods, and developing reusable mask alternatives that meet the health and safety requirements set out in European Standards. In this article, we quantify and evaluate the life-cycle environmental impacts of selected mask options available for use by healthcare workers in the UK, with the objective of supporting decision- and policy-making. We investigate alternatives to traditional single-use face masks like surgical masks and respirators (or FFP3 masks), including cloth masks decontaminated in washing machines; FFP3 masks decontaminated via vapour hydrogen peroxide, and rigid half masks cleaned with antibacterial wipes. Our analysis demonstrates that: (1) the reuse options analysed are environmentally preferential to the traditional “use then dispose” of masks; (2) the environmental benefits increase with the number of reuses; and (3) the manufacturing location and the material composition of the masks have great influence over the life-cycle environmental impacts of each mask use option, in particular for single-use options

Penta-hepta defect chaos in a model for rotating hexagonal convection

In a model for rotating non-Boussinesq convection with mean flow we identify a regime of spatio-temporal chaos that is based on a hexagonal planform and is sustained by the {\it induced nucleation} of dislocations by penta-hepta defects. The probability distribution function for the number of defects deviates substantially from the usually observed Poisson-type distribution. It implies strong correlations between the defects inthe form of density-dependent creation and annihilation rates of defects. We extract these rates from the distribution function and also directly from the defect dynamics.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, submitted to PR