N USE AND PARTITIONING IN CORIANDER (CORIANDRUM SATIVUM L.) AFTER ORGANIC AND CONVENTIONAL N FERTILIZATION

In coriander, a well known spice herb, many studies concerning the effect of N fertilization have been conducted in special areas where the cultivation of such plant has a major importance, such as India. Limited information is available as concerns the response of coriander to N fertilization under Mediterranean climatic conditions, above all when organic N fertilizers (mandatory when organic cropping management is chosen) are used. This work refers about some observations realised from 2004 to 2006 by an experiment on organic and mineral N fertilization techniques in coriander, carried on in the experimental farm “Sparacia” (Cammarata, AG, Sicily). Similarly to what suggested for other species, each year at harvest time, for each fertilizer treatment, seeds yield and plant biomass were weighed and the respective N content was determined in order to compare N plant uptake with total and mineral N measured in the soil before and after cropping cycle. From such data a few indices were calculated in order to get information about the efficiency of use by plants of the tested N forms. Some differences in N partitioning and use efficiency according to treatment were noticed, suggesting an overall higher efficiency of N chemical fertilizers

EFFECTS OF ORGANIC AND CONVENTIONAL N-FERTILIZATION ON QUALITY TRAITS IN CORIANDER (CORIANDRUM SATIVUM L.)

In organic cropping management of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, the best quality expression is crucial to gain satisfactory incomes. Coriander (Coriandrum sativum L.) is an annual herbaceous plant with a commercial value due to the typical scent of its fruits (commonly termed “seeds”), rich in a pale yellow oil (1-2% in small-sized types, 0.2-0.5% in large-sized ones). Several studies have been done for determining the composition of volatile fraction of Coriander, which was found to vary also as a consequence of cropping techniques, including nitrogen fertilization. In order to gain useful information about the effects, if present at all, of organic N fertilization on Coriander quality in terms of volatiles composition pattern, a three-year trial (2004-2006) was carried out using different types and rates of organic and conventional N fertilizers. Volatile composition of fruits was obtained by means of GC-MS and data were evaluated by multivariate statistical analysis. The most representative compound are linalool, followed by camphor, geranyl acetate and geraniol. The group partition was mainly due to different quantitative ratio of compounds; the differences in volatile composition, however, followed a scheme more resembling the cropping year than the fertilization management

Public Private Partnership in Italian Health Care Management An Organizational Maturity Assessment Model

This work aims to analyze a specific phenomenon of innovation in health management: public private partnerships within the Italian healthcare sector. The object of the study is to measure the degree of organizational maturity (OM) of the forms of public-private partnerships (PPP) analyzing and measuring key managerial processes, in terms of innovation in meeting the partnership‘s goals/targets. The analysis is based on the identification of key processes relevant to the management of partnerships, to check which systems of governance are able to meet different stakeholder interests. We therefore built a conceptual standard for analysis of the OM through a field survey based on visits, participant observation, analysis of documents and semi-structured interviews with the management

Submodular Functions and Valued Constraint Satisfaction Problems over Infinite Domains

Valued constraint satisfaction problems (VCSPs) are a large class of combinatorial optimisation problems. It is desirable to classify the computational complexity of VCSPs depending on a fixed set of allowed cost functions in the input. Recently, the computational complexity of all VCSPs for finite sets of cost functions over finite domains has been classified in this sense. Many natural optimisation problems, however, cannot be formulated as VCSPs over a finite domain. We initiate the systematic investigation of infinite-domain VCSPs by studying the complexity of VCSPs for piecewise linear homogeneous cost functions. We remark that in this paper the infinite domain will always be the set of rational numbers. We show that such VCSPs can be solved in polynomial time when the cost functions are additionally submodular, and that this is indeed a maximally tractable class: adding any cost function that is not submodular leads to an NP-hard VCSP

Antiplasmodial activity of p-substituted benzyl thiazinoquinone derivatives and their potential against parasitic infections

Malaria is a life-threatening disease and, what is more, the resistance to available antimalarial drugs is a recurring problem. The resistance of Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasites to previous generations of medicines has undermined malaria control efforts and reversed gains in child survival. This paper describes a continuation of our ongoing efforts to investigate the effects against Plasmodium falciparum strains and human microvascular endothelial cells (HMEC-1) of a series of methoxy p-benzyl-substituted thiazinoquinones designed starting from a pointed antimalarial lead candidate. The data obtained from the newly tested compounds expanded the structure-activity relationships (SARs) of the thiazinoquinone scaffold, indicating that antiplasmodial activity is not affected by the inductive effect but rather by the resonance effect of the introduced group at the para position of the benzyl substituent. Indeed, the current survey was based on the evaluation of antiparasitic usefulness as well as the selectivity on mammalian cells of the tested p-benzyl-substituted thiazinoquinones, upgrading the knowledge about the active thiazinoquinone scaffold

The present and future of sustainability disclosure in equity investment funds’ pre-contractual documents: Mapping ESG discourse through STM

To show how pre-contractual documents are currently employed to disclose sustainability and ESG-related information, we map and examine the contents of 945 Key Investor Information Documents (KIIDs) from ten major asset managers, including sustainable and non-sustainable funds. Through a Structural Topic Modelling approach, we infer sustainability-related topics and compare their contents and prevalence in different sections of these documents. Sustainability is a cross-cutting and multifaceted issue, discussed coherently with the SFDR fund classification across multiple sections of the KIID, making the option to convey sustainable information in a single section complex to implement

Generation and Disruption of Subducted Lithosphere in the Central-Western Mediterranean Region and Time-Space Distribution of Magmatic Activity Since the Late Miocene

The long migration of the Balearic Arc (Alpine-Apennine and Alpine- Maghrebian belts) in the Early-Middle Miocene caused the formation of a subducted lithospheric edifice in the western and central Mediterranean regions. Then, since the Late Miocene, this slab was almost completely disrupted, only maintaining a narrow and deformed remnant beneath the southernmost Tyrrhenian basin. This work describes a tentative reconstruction of the tectonic processes that caused the formation of major tears and breakoffs in the original slabs and the consequent disruption of the subducted lithosphere. In particular, it is suggested that this relatively fast process was produced by the collision between the Anatolian-Aegean system and the continental Adriatic domain, which triggered a number of extrusion processes. Possible connections between the proposed tectonic evolution and the spatio-temporal distribution and geochemical signatures of magmatic activity are then discussed. It is supposed that such activity has been mainly conditioned by the occurrence of transtensional tectonics in the wake of escaping orogenic wedges

Best strategy for the development of a seismic prevention plan

An effective mitigation of seismic risk in Italy can hardly be obtained without a tentative recognition of few priority zones, where the limited resources available in the short term can be concentrated. A reliable recognition of the zones where the probability of major earthquakes is highest must be carried out by a deterministic approach, exploiting the profound knowledge acquired about the present seismotectonic context in the zones involved. Some years ago, this kind of procedure led us to identify the central-northern Apennines (i.e. the zone hit by the recent major earthquakes, 2016 and 2017) as the Italian area most prone to next strong shocks. The reliability of the methodology here proposed is also supported by the fact that the implications of the adopted tectonic setting can provide plausible and coherent explanations for the spatio-temporaldistribution of major earthquakes in the central Mediterranean area in the last six centuries

Tentative recognition of the Italian seismic zones most prone to next strong earthquakes (as a tool for reduction of seismic risk)

A large portion of the building heritage in Italy has not been realized to resist the seismic shaking caused by earthquakes occurred in the past. Thus, the limited economic resources now available are largely insufficient to obtain a significant reduction of the seismic risk throughout the whole country. A way to achieve such objective might be identified by exploiting the fact that most probably in the next tens of years only few Italian zones will be hit by strong earthquakes and that, consequently, for such period the restoration of weak buildings and critical infrastructures will be urgent only in a very limited portion of the national territory. Thus, if the present scientific knowledge allowed us to reliably identify the location of the next major shocks, a significant reduction of the of seismic risk in Italy could become economically and operationally feasible. The hope of realizing such very attractive possibility should strongly increase the attention of Civil Protection authorities towards the researches that may provide the information cited above. As a first contribution towards that objective, this report describes a procedure that might allow the recognition of the Italian zone most prone to the next strong earthquake