Is social identity belief independent?

In this paper we aim to disentangle the effects on in-group favoritism driven by beliefs from those stemming from group identity, with the final goal of testing the relative power of three potential explanations of this bias: The Beliefs Driven Explanation (BDE), the Group Identity Explanation (GIE) and the Belief-mediated Group Identity Explanation (BGE). The BDE suggests that in-group favoritism is only driven by the desire not to let others’ expectations down. The GIE claims that people have a preference, per se, for members of their group. According to the BGE, people also have a preference for members of their group, but this is mediated by their second-order beliefs. To this aim, we built an experimental design able to produce exogenous variations in both group membership and expectations, hence providing a genuine test for the rationale of in-group bias. The results of our experiment suggest that beliefs per se are not a significant explanation of in-group favoritism and hence do not provide support to the BDE. Our experimental evidence does not provide support also to the BGE. We conclude that our experiment suggests to single out the GIE as the most powerful explanation of social identity

The allosteric protein interactions in the proton-motive function of mammalian redox enzymes of the respiratory chain

Insight into mammalian respiratory complexes defines the role of allosteric protein interactions in their proton-motive activity. In cytochrome c oxidase (CxIV) conformational change of subunit I, caused by O2 binding to heme a32+-CuB+ and reduction, and stereochemical transitions coupled to oxidation/reduction of heme a and CuA, combined with electrostatic effects, determine the proton pumping activity. In ubiquinone-cytochrome c oxidoreductase (CxIII) conformational movement of Fe-S protein between cytochromes b and c1 is the key element of the proton-motive activity. In NADH-ubiquinone oxidoreductase (CxI) ubiquinone binding and reduction result in conformational changes of subunits in the quinone reaction structure which initiate proton pumping

Soil and pedomesofauna relationships under different forests on a western slope of Etna Volcano

Although the pedofauna influences the processes of pedogenesis and has an important role in the main functional properties of the soil, it has rarely been used as a key-element in defining soil quality. As has been stressed, this is due to the fact that the utility of pedofauna as a soil quality indicator is a function of the definition of soil quality which, in turn, depends on different functions, both biotic and abiotic, performed by the soil. If we consider the biological functions of vegetal, animal and microbiotic activity, the usefulness of the pedofauna, as a diagnostic element of soil quality, reaches its maximum since it is one of the indicators of the biodiversity. Previous work on soil fauna, dealt with the whole fauna both of litter and mineral horizons, and until now the analyses on invertebrate communities in different horizons of a soil profile are fairly rare. The aim of this study was a) consider the diversity and activity of some selected Orders of the mesofauna in some forest Andisols, in relation to the sampling period, the soil horizons and tree species; b) define the relationships between the whole mesofauna and some selected parameters of soil quality, particularly the cation exchange capacity and the organic matter content

The “Soil Genetic Erosion”: a new threat for soils?

During the 1990’s the concept of pedodiversity started to be diffused in the scientific literature and the decrement of the soil diversity in space and time - particularly due to human activity - has been seen as a sort of underhand problem affecting soil ecosystems, considering that different soil types face gradual or drastic reduction or complete loss of their unique “genetic features”. Pedodiversity has received considerable recent interest, especially as peculiar aspect of biodiversity and has been assessed by several authors by applying diversity indices used in ecology. This paper takes into consideration the influence of human activities on the loss of pedodiversity in a Mediterranean area due to large scale farming. In particular it examines the quantitative and qualitative soil changes in a period of 53 years evaluating the loss of soil diversity at soil subgroups level of the USDA Soil Taxonomy system

Conceptual Design of a Small Hybrid Unmanned Aircraft System

UAS (Unmanned Aircraft System) technologies are today extremely required in various fields of interest, from military to civil (search and rescue, environmental surveillance and monitoring, and entertainment). Besides safety and legislative issues, the main obstacle to civilian applications of UAS systems is the short time of flight (endurance), which depends on the equipped power system (battery pack) and the flight mission (low/high speed or altitude). Long flight duration is fundamental, especially with tasks that require hovering capability (e.g., river flow monitoring, earthquakes, devastated areas, city traffic monitoring, and archeological sites inspection). This work presents the conceptual design of a Hybrid Unmanned Aircraft System (HUAS), merging a commercial off-the-shelf quadrotor and a balloon in order to obtain a good compromise between endurance and weight. The mathematical models for weights estimation and balloon static performance analysis are presented, together with experimental results in different testing scenarios and complex environments, which show 50% improvement of the flight duration

Special Issue on Pesticide Applications in Agricultural Systems

The European Directive 2009/128/EC on the Sustainable Use of Pesticides recognizes the use of Plant Protection Products (PPP) as having great impact on human health and the environment [...

Modelling Spray Pressure Effects on Droplet Size Distribution from Agricultural Nozzles

For spray applications, drop size is the most important feature as it affects all aspects of a phytosanitary treatment: biological efficacy, environmental pollution, and operator safety. In turn, drop size distribution depends on nozzle type, liquid properties, and working pressure. In this research, three nozzles were studied under ordinary working conditions and the effect of pressure on drop size distribution was assessed. The nozzles under test, all from Albuz (France), were an orange hollow cone nozzle ATR 80 (European color code), an air induction flat spray nozzle AVI 11003, and an air induction hollow cone nozzle TVI 8002. The ATR 80 and the TVI 8002 nozzles were tested at four pressure values: 0.3, 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 MPa; the AVI 11003 nozzle was tested at 0.3 and 0.5 MPa. The drop size measurement technique was based on the liquid immersion method by using a custom-made test bench; spray quality parameters were computed by means of suitable functions written in R language. Results showed that an increase in working pressure caused an increase in drop pulverization regardless of the type of nozzle, and drop pulverization was higher for the turbulence nozzle than for the two air induction nozzles. Based on skewness and kurtosis values, the theoretical gamma distribution was the most adapt to fit the experimental data. The scale parameter showed a decreasing trend with the increase in the pressure, a clear index of higher drop pulverization

IL PROCESSO DI BUSINESS PLANNING NELLA VALUTAZIONE D'AZIENDE: IL CASO I.S.E. S.R.L

Il presente lavoro mostra come il business plan sia documento essenziale nella valutazione del capitale economico di un'azienda. Un efficace processo di business planning permette ai valutatori di meglio apprezzare la redditività e le risorse finanziarie future generate dal progetto imprenditoriale, in modo da ridurre l'incertezza circa le stime dei flussi reddituali e finanziari a breve e medio termine necessarie per la valutazione del complesso aziendale. La tesi è sostanzialmente divisa in due parti. La prima parte, di natura prettamente teorica, pone le basi essenziali per le tematiche che saranno poi sviluppate nel caso applicativo. La seconda parte è invece frutto di uno stage presso la ISE S.r.l., per la quale si è giunti alla valutazione del Valore Economico d'azienda partendo dalla redazione di un piano di business riguardante la creazione di una spin-off di uno dei rami aziendali di questa. La redazione del piano ha permesso di meglio comprendere le potenzialità intrinseche nel progetto imprenditoriale, facendo così emergere una stima dei risultati reddituali e finanziari strumentali per la valutazione stand alone. Si è in questo modo giunti ad un valore del capitale economico che supera i limiti delle valutazioni basate sulla proiezione nel futuro dei risultati passati

Inhibition of proton pumping in membrane reconstituted bovine heart cytochrome c oxidase by zinc binding at the inner matrix side

AbstractA study is presented on the effect of zinc binding at the matrix side, on the proton pump of purified liposome reconstituted bovine heart cytochrome c oxidase (COV). Internally trapped Zn2+ resulted in 50% decoupling of the proton pump at level flow. Analysis of the pH dependence of inhibition by internal Zn2+ of proton release in the oxidative and reductive phases of the catalytic cycle of cytochrome c oxidase indicates that Zn2+ suppresses two of the four proton pumping steps in the cycle, those taking place when the 2 OH− produced in the reduction of O2 at the binuclear center are protonated to 2 H2O. This decoupling effect could be associated with Zn2+ induced conformational alteration of an acid/base cluster linked to heme a3