Seasonal and bathymetric effects on macrofouling invertebrates' primary succession in a mediterraenan non-indigenous species hotspot area

The present study investigates macrofouling development in the Mar Grande of Taranto (Central Mediterranean Sea), a wide confined area that has attracted considerable attention in recent years due to the establishment of numerous non-indigenous species (NIS). Different starting times of a yearly primary succession on artificial substrates were tracked so as to investigate the matching of the development pattern with contingency and/or convergence models, identifying NIS's structural role in the community endpoint. Our results show that during the experiment all assemblages tended to converge towards multiple contingent communities according to starting times and depths. The differences are due to propagule availability which influence further species interactions. Thus the endpoint patterns are defined by a contingent community development determined by the seasonal species pool, their phenologies, pre- and post-settlement events, and species interactions. The most important structuring species was Mytilus galloprovincialis, which was present in almost all the endpoint assemblages, in particular when it recruits at early stages of the community development. Another abundant species at the endpoint was the alien Branchiomma boholense; which was a persistent structural component contributing to an alternative state in which Mytilus galloprovincialis loses its structural importance and where B. boholense becomes dominant, leading to an increase in fouling biodiversity of the endpoint assemblage

Blockchain e smart contracts: sfide e opportunità di un futuro già presente

Questo lavoro analizza i cd. smart contracts, o contratti intelligenti, strumenti che incorporano regole e capacità interpretativa del sistema legale, in un’architettura hardware e software dotata di capacità di esecuzione di un contratto in modo autonomo rispetto alle parti contraenti. Speciale enfasi è dedicata alla caratterizzazione degli smart contracts nell’analisi economica del diritto. La parte iniziale introduce alcune informazioni di contesto sulla tecnologia blockchain, per poi proseguire con la caratterizzazione degli smart contracts nell’analisi economica del diritto e con una loro puntuale definizione normativa. Viene evidenziato, inoltre, il legame tecnologico tra smart contracts e blockchain, insieme ad alcune prospettive di sviluppo legate alla Internet of Things. Dopo un rapido cenno alle tipologie di atti interessati dagli smart contracts e la presentazione di un breve modello di codice, utilizzato per fornire un esempio di implementazione concreta di tali contratti, si passano in rassegna alcuni aspetti critici relativi alla loro applicazione, osservati sotto il profilo degli operatori professionali del diritto. In ultimo, si accenna al vasto dibattito esistente sugli aspetti etici e sociali relativi alla diffusione e all’applicazione della tecnologia blockchain, uno dei paradigmi più rilevanti dell’era digitale in corso e sugli smart contracts, in particolare

The mediating role of positive and negative affect in the relationship between death anxiety and Italian students’ perceptions of distance learning quality during the COVID-19 pandemic

Recent data show that death anxiety and negative affect (NA) have become increasingly relevant because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The constant reminders of mortality through mass media and social media have contributed to this trend. Simultaneously, students have experienced a sudden and radical shift from face-to-face to online teaching, reducing direct human interactions and increasing anxiety. Death anxiety is often associated with mental illnesses and maladaptive mood states such as depression, anxiety, and NA. Despite this, few studies have investigated the effect of death anxiety, positive affect (PA), and NA on students’ perceived quality of distance learning. The present study aims to investigate the association among death anxiety, PA, NA, and the perceived quality of distance learning in a sample of 429 students attending university or training courses. Positive and negative affect were assessed through the positive and negative affect scales; death anxiety was measured through the death anxiety scale, and the perceived quality of distance learning was evaluated through the perceived quality of distance learning questionnaire. Zero-order correlation coefficients were calculated among the examined variables. To study the mediating role of positive and negative affect in the relationship between students’ perceptions of distance learning quality and death anxiety, we employed multiple regression analyses. Our findings indicate a significant association between death anxiety and cognitive–emotive reactions to distance learning. Lower levels of death anxiety are associated with PA, while higher levels are related to NA. Moreover, PA and NA act as mediators in the relationship between death anxiety and a positive reaction to distance learning. In conclusion, our findings highlight that PA and NA partially mediate the relationship between death anxiety and the perceived quality of distance learning

Non-indigenous polychaetes along the coasts of Italy: a critical review

Non-indigenous species (NIS) represent one of the most relevant threats to biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and human activities, and their occurrence and spread have been the subject of numerous works and revisions. However, the information available is rather confused for several taxa, including polychaetes, which are characterised by having a high number of cryptogenic and questionable species. This work aims at providing a revised checklist of alien polychaetes occurring along the coasts of Italy, based on the examination of newly collected and deposited material and on the critical analysis of published and gray literature, and whenever possible on the re-examination of historical material. Of the 86 polychaete species reported as NIS in Italian waters, 25 are confirmed as alien species, while 3 are cryptogenic, and 40 should be considered questionable. Finally, 18 species were excluded from non-indigenous species checklists, either because they are native, or because they represent misidentifications of other species. The high number of cryptogenic and questionable species points at the need of molecular studies and taxonomic revisions for the majority of polychaete taxa reported as NIS, in order to clarify their taxonomy, origin, introduction pathways and spreading patterns

An Integrated Big and Fast Data Analytics Platform for Smart Urban Transportation Management

(c) 20xx IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.[EN] Smart urban transportation management can be considered as a multifaceted big data challenge. It strongly relies on the information collected into multiple, widespread, and heterogeneous data sources as well as on the ability to extract actionable insights from them. Besides data, full stack (from platform to services and applications) Information and Communications Technology (ICT) solutions need to be specifically adopted to address smart cities challenges. Smart urban transportation management is one of the key use cases addressed in the context of the EUBra-BIGSEA (Europe-Brazil Collaboration of Big Data Scientific Research through Cloud-Centric Applications) project. This paper specifically focuses on the City Administration Dashboard, a public transport analytics application that has been developed on top of the EUBra-BIGSEA platform and used by the Municipality stakeholders of Curitiba, Brazil, to tackle urban traffic data analysis and planning challenges. The solution proposed in this paper joins together a scalable big and fast data analytics platform, a flexible and dynamic cloud infrastructure, data quality and entity matching algorithms as well as security and privacy techniques. By exploiting an interoperable programming framework based on Python Application Programming Interface (API), it allows an easy, rapid and transparent development of smart cities applications.This work was supported by the European Commission through the Cooperation Programme under EUBra-BIGSEA Horizon 2020 Grant [Este projeto e resultante da 3a Chamada Coordenada BR-UE em Tecnologias da Informacao e Comunicacao (TIC), anunciada pelo Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnologia e Inovacao (MCTI)] under Grant 690116.Fiore, S.; Elia, D.; Pires, CE.; Mestre, DG.; Cappiello, C.; Vitali, M.; Andrade, N.... (2019). An Integrated Big and Fast Data Analytics Platform for Smart Urban Transportation Management. IEEE Access. 7:117652-117677. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2936941S117652117677

The LANDSUPPORT geospatial decision support system (S-DSS) vision: Operational tools to implement sustainability policies in land planning and management

Nowadays, there is contrasting evidence between the ongoing continuing and widespread environmental degradation and the many means to implement environmental sustainability actions starting from good policies (e.g. EU New Green Deal, CAP), powerful technologies (e.g. new satellites, drones, IoT sensors), large databases and large stakeholder engagement (e.g. EIP-AGRI, living labs). Here, we argue that to tackle the above contrasting issues dealing with land degradation, it is very much required to develop and use friendly and freely available web-based operational tools to support both the implementation of environmental and agriculture policies and enable to take positive environmental sustainability actions by all stakeholders. Our solution is the S-DSS LANDSUPPORT platform, consisting of a free web-based smart Geospatial CyberInfrastructure containing 15 macro-tools (and more than 100 elementary tools), co-designed with different types of stakeholders and their different needs, dealing with sustainability in agriculture, forestry and spatial planning. LANDSUPPORT condenses many features into one system, the main ones of which were (i) Web-GIS facilities, connection with (ii) satellite data, (iii) Earth Critical Zone data and (iv) climate datasets including climate change and weather forecast data, (v) data cube technology enabling us to read/write when dealing with very large datasets (e.g. daily climatic data obtained in real time for any region in Europe), (vi) a large set of static and dynamic modelling engines (e.g. crop growth, water balance, rural integrity, etc.) allowing uncertainty analysis and what if modelling and (vii) HPC (both CPU and GPU) to run simulation modelling 'on-the-fly' in real time. Two case studies (a third case is reported in the Supplementary materials), with their results and stats, covering different regions and spatial extents and using three distinct operational tools all connected to lower land degradation processes (Crop growth, Machine Learning Forest Simulator and GeOC), are featured in this paper to highlight the platform's functioning. Landsupport is used by a large community of stakeholders and will remain operational, open and free long after the project ends. This position is rooted in the evidence showing that we need to leave these tools as open as possible and engage as much as possible with a large community of users to protect soils and land

Acute Delta Hepatitis in Italy spanning three decades (1991–2019): Evidence for the effectiveness of the hepatitis B vaccination campaign

Updated incidence data of acute Delta virus hepatitis (HDV) are lacking worldwide. Our aim was to evaluate incidence of and risk factors for acute HDV in Italy after the introduction of the compulsory vaccination against hepatitis B virus (HBV) in 1991. Data were obtained from the National Surveillance System of acute viral hepatitis (SEIEVA). Independent predictors of HDV were assessed by logistic-regression analysis. The incidence of acute HDV per 1-million population declined from 3.2 cases in 1987 to 0.04 in 2019, parallel to that of acute HBV per 100,000 from 10.0 to 0.39 cases during the same period. The median age of cases increased from 27 years in the decade 1991-1999 to 44 years in the decade 2010-2019 (p < .001). Over the same period, the male/female ratio decreased from 3.8 to 2.1, the proportion of coinfections increased from 55% to 75% (p = .003) and that of HBsAg positive acute hepatitis tested for by IgM anti-HDV linearly decreased from 50.1% to 34.1% (p < .001). People born abroad accounted for 24.6% of cases in 2004-2010 and 32.1% in 2011-2019. In the period 2010-2019, risky sexual behaviour (O.R. 4.2; 95%CI: 1.4-12.8) was the sole independent predictor of acute HDV; conversely intravenous drug use was no longer associated (O.R. 1.25; 95%CI: 0.15-10.22) with this. In conclusion, HBV vaccination was an effective measure to control acute HDV. Intravenous drug use is no longer an efficient mode of HDV spread. Testing for IgM-anti HDV is a grey area requiring alert. Acute HDV in foreigners should be monitored in the years to come

The cumacean genus Iphinoe (Crustacea: Peracarida) from Italian waters and I. daphne n. sp. from the northwestern Adriatic Sea, Mediterranean

Mazziotti, Cristina, Lezzi, Marco (2020): The cumacean genus Iphinoe (Crustacea: Peracarida) from Italian waters and I. daphne n. sp. from the northwestern Adriatic Sea, Mediterranean. Zootaxa 4766 (2): 331-357, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4766.2.