An introduction to the early Holocene eolian deposits of Grotta Romanelli, Apulia, Southern Italy

Due to its geographic position and geomorphological configuration, Grotta Romanelli acted as a sediment trap since at least MIS 5. The so-called 'terre brune' sequence is a deposit mainly of eolian origin bearing upper Palaeolithic artefacts and fossil re-mains of vertebrate fauna; it was deposited during the Glacial-Interglacial transition and the Holocene. Sedimentology and mineralogy of this deposit are investigated. The stratigraphic sequence provides a promising archive within which both human and climatic impacts can be studied

An introduction to the early Holocene eolian deposits of Grotta Romanelli, Apulia, Southern Italy

Due to its geographic position and geomorphological configuration, Grotta Romanelli acted as a sediment trap since at least MIS 5. The so-called ‘terre brune’ sequence is a deposit mainly of eolian origin bearing upper Palaeolithic artefacts and fossil remains of vertebrate fauna; it was deposited during the Glacial-Interglacial transition and the Holocene. Sedimentology and mineralogy of this deposit are investigated. The stratigraphic sequence provides a promising archive within which both human and climatic impacts can be studied

Grotta Romanelli (Southern Italy, Apulia): legacies and issues in excavating a key site for the Pleistocene of the Mediterranean

Grotta Romanelli, located on the adriatic coast of southern apulia (Italy), is considered a key site for the Mediterranean Pleistocene for its archaeological and palaeontological contents. The research team had to deal with the consequences of more than 40 years of inactivity in the eld and the combined effect of erosion and legal, as well as illegal, excavations. In this paper, we provide a database of all the information published during the rst 70 years of excavations and highlight the outstanding problems and contradictions between the chronological and geomorphological evidence, the features of the faunal assemblages and the limestone artefacts

Computer Assisted Examination of Infrared and Near Infrared Spectra to Assess Structural and Molecular Changes in Biological Samples Exposed to Pollutants: A Case of Study

We present a computer assisted method for the examination of the structural changes present in the probe organism Vicia faba exposed to inorganic arsenic, detected by means of Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and Fourier transform near infrared (FTNIR) spectroscopy. Like the common ecotoxicological tests, the method is based on the comparison among control and exposed sample spectra of the organisms to detect structural changes caused by pollutants. Using FTIR spectroscopy, we measured and plotted the spectral changes related to the unsaturated to saturated lipid ratio changes (USL), the lipid to protein ratio changes (LPR), fatty and ester fatty acid content changes (FA), protein oxidation (PO) and denaturation, and DNA and RNA changes (DNA-RNA). Using FTNIR spectroscopy, we measured two spectral ranges that belonged to hydrogen bond interactions and aliphatic lipid chains called IntHCONH and Met1overt, respectively. The FTIR results showed that As modified the DNA-RNA ratio and also caused partial protein denaturation in the Vicia faba samples. The FTNIR results supported the FTIR results. The main advantage of the proposed computational method is that it does not require a skilled infrared or near infrared operator, lending support to conventional studies performed by toxicological testing

An Empirical and Semi Blind Algorithm for Resolving Overlapped Peaks in Chromatography: Application to the Analysis of Environmental Samples

In this paper we describe a new algorithm for enhancing the resolution (i.e. deconvolution) of chromatographic peaks strongly overlapped among them, often observed in the analysis of complex environmental samples. The main characteristic of this algorithm does not require an “a priori” knowledge of the statistic moments (i.e. width, retention time and height) of the peak to be quantified so that it is considered an empirical and semi-blind (ESB) algorithm. The efficiency of the ESB algorithm has been verified for synthetic overlapped peaks, for the gas chromatographic (GC) analysis of hydrocarbons from marine sediments and for the planar chromatographic analysis (TLC) of carbohydrates in marine organic matter samples. In all the examined cases, standard errors lower than 25% and quadratic (R2) correlation coefficients higher than 0.85 were obtained, showing the comparability of the ESB algorithm with other deconvolution methods

Computer Assisted Examination of Infrared and Near Infrared Spectra to Assess Structural and Molecular Changes in Biological Samples Exposed to Pollutants: A Case of Study

We present a computer assisted method for the examination of the structural changes present in the probe organism Vicia faba exposed to inorganic arsenic, detected by means of Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and Fourier transform near infrared (FTNIR) spectroscopy. Like the common ecotoxicological tests, the method is based on the comparison among control and exposed sample spectra of the organisms to detect structural changes caused by pollutants. Using FTIR spectroscopy, we measured and plotted the spectral changes related to the unsaturated to saturated lipid ratio changes (USL), the lipid to protein ratio changes (LPR), fatty and ester fatty acid content changes (FA), protein oxidation (PO) and denaturation, and DNA and RNA changes (DNA-RNA). Using FTNIR spectroscopy, we measured two spectral ranges that belonged to hydrogen bond interactions and aliphatic lipid chains called IntHCONH and Met1overt, respectively. The FTIR results showed that As modified the DNA-RNA ratio and also caused partial protein denaturation in the Vicia faba samples. The FTNIR results supported the FTIR results. The main advantage of the proposed computational method is that it does not require a skilled infrared or near infrared operator, lending support to conventional studies performed by toxicological testing

Determination of sea water salinity by ultraviolet spectroscopic measurements

A method for the determination of seawater salinity by ultraviolet (UV) spectroscopy is proposed. The effects of single salt concentrations and of salinity on UV absorption in the 190-250-nm range were investigated. These studies revealed that the absorption spectrum of a solution with a given salinity is due mainly, in order, to KBr>MgCl2>NaCl. The influence of the temperature and salt concentration on UV spectra was studied by using synthetic seawater samples with the salinities ranging from 1 to 50 parts per thousand (parts per thousand). Results showed that, in the absence of interferences, the most sensitive and reliable conditions for measuring the salinity are at 212 nm and al temperatures in the range of 25-30\ub0C. Under these conditions this method shows quite linear calibration curves and allows us to perform salinity determinations in seawater solutions at concentrations as low as 4 parts per thousand. Moreover, it requires no sample pretreatment and offers a precision of 0.20 parts per thousand. The proposed method is very simple and rapid for laboratory and on-board analysis. Finally, the interference of organic matter, nitrite, and, nitrate species with the salinity determinations was investigated. These studies show that organic matter does not interfere at concentrations of carbon lower than 1 mg/L and at 210 nm. Interferences due to NOx- species can be ignored if these species are dissolved in solution at concentrations lower than approximate to 0.2 mg/L and the analyses are carried out at wavelengths lower than 212 nm

The investigation of compositional and structural characteristics of natural marine organic matter: a review

The natural marine Organic Matter (OM) is a complex mixture of carbohydrates, lipids and proteins present in seawater and sediments, able to affect many processes occurring in the marine environment such as the biochemical cycles of marine nutrients and living organisms. As the complexity of environmental studies concerning OM composition requires the application of accurate analytical methods, the aim of this review is the discussion of the most used and updated methods for OM characterisation, including all the analytical steps from sample preparation to the final instrumental analysis by means of spectroscopic and chromatographic techniques. Recent developments on the structural characteristics of OM are also reported