MIDDLE EOCENE TO EARLY MIOCENE FORAMINIFERAL BIOSTRATIGRAPHY IN THE EPILIGURIAN SUCCESSION (NORTHERN APENNINES, ITALY)

A quantitative biostratigraphical study was performed on the foraminiferal assemblages from 15 stratigraphic sections of the Epiligurian Succession (Middle Eocene-Early Miocene, Northern Apennines, Italy). This study enabled us to identify the presence of some of the standard bioevents and to note that other bioevents are absent or show a different chronostratigraphic range. Other additional bioevents, identified throughout the area, have therefore been utilised to improve the biostratigraphical resolution of the Epiligurian sediments. These bioevents include the massive extinction of the muricate species at the Bartonian/Priabonian boundary; the increasing abundance of Paragloborotalia opima opima near Subzone P21a/P21b and the Rupelian/Chattian boundaries; and the FO of Globoquadrina dehiscens at the Subzone N4a/N4b boundary.&nbsp

Communicating knowledge, getting attention, and negotiating disagreement via videoconferencing technology: A multimodal analysis

This article takes a multimodal approach to examine how two young men communicate knowledge, shift attention, and negotiate a disagreement via videoconferencing technology. The data for the study comes from a larger ongoing project of participants engaging in various tasks together. Linking micro, intermediate and macro analyses through the various methodological tools employed, the article presents multimodal (inter)action analysis (Norris, 2004, 2011, 2013a, 2013b) as a methodology to gain new insight into the complexity of knowledge communication via videoconferencing technology, which is relevant to many settings from education to employment, from organizations to gaming

Le Peneroplidi dei sedimenti recenti del Mediterraneo e del Golfo Persico

Questa nota riguarda lo studio di popolazioni differenti di Peneroplidi e le loro variazioni morfologiche individuali. I campioni sono stati prelevati, sempre a debole profondità, vicino alla costa. In Sardegna lungo la spiaggia di Golfo Aranci, nel Golfo Persico lungo la spiaggia di Aziziyah (a 1O Km circa a Sud di Alkhobar) e nella laguna interna Rawhat as Sayh

Stepi podobna traviška vegetacija na hribih okoli jezer Vegoritida in Petron v severno centralni Grčiji

The present paper describes the floristic composition and synecology of steppe-like dry grasslands occurring in a Natura 2000 site in North-Central Greece around the two karstic lakes of Vegoritida and Petron. In total, 245 relevés of vascular plant species composition and abundance were sampled and subjected to cluster analysis and ordination analysis. Passive explanatory variables, including environmental parameters as well as indicator values, were used to support the ecological interpretation. Four plant communities were distinguished in the area, namely Artemisia campestris-Dasypyrum villosum, Chrysopogon gryllus-Bothriochloa ischaemum, Satureja montana-Artemisia alba and Stipa capillata-Koeleria macrantha. All communities were classified within the Festuco-Brometea class and the Astragalo-Potentilletalia order. Soil properties (soil reaction, moisture and nutrient content) and meso-climate factors (temperature variation along topographic gradients) were identified as the main factors determining the floristic differentiation among the four communities. The dry grasslands harbor a number of species associated with steppic habitats. We discuss the relict character of the steppe-like vegetation.V članku opisujemo floristično sestavo in sinekologijo stepi podobnih suhih travišč, ki se pojavljajo v Natura 2000 območju v severni centralni Grčiji okoli dveh kraških jezer Vegoritida in Petron. Vzorčili smo 245 vegetacijskih popisov in jih analizirali s klastrsko in ordinacijsko analizo. Rastišče smo interpretirali s pasivnimi pojasnjevalnimi spremenljivkami, kamor smo vključili okoljske spremenljivke in indikatorske vrednosti. Na raziskovanem območju smo ločili štiri rastlinske združbe: Artemisia campestris-Dasypyrum villosum, Chrysopogon gryllus-Bothriochloa ischaemum, Satureja montana-Artemisia alba in Stipa capillata-Koeleria macrantha. Vse združbe smo uvrstili v razred Festuco-Brometea in red Astragalo-Potentilletalia. Lastnosti tal (reakcija tal) in mezo klimatski dejavniki (spreminjanje temperature vzdolž topografskih gradientov) so glavni dejavniki, ki vplivajo na floristične razlike med štirimi rastlinskimi združbami. V suhih traviščih najdemo številne vrste stepskih habitatov. V članku razpravljamo o reliktnem značaju stepi podobne vegetacije

Early detection of gastric cancer using global, genome-wide and IRF4, ELMO1, CLIP4 and MSC DNA methylation in endoscopic biopsies

Clinically useful molecular tools to triage gastric cancer patients are not currently available. We aimed to develop a molecular tool to predict gastric cancer risk in endoscopy-driven biopsies obtained from high-risk gastric cancer clinics in low resource settings.We discovered and validated a DNA methylation biomarker panel in endoscopic samples obtained from 362 patients seen between 2004 and 2009 in three high-risk gastric cancer clinics in Lima, Perú, and validated it in 306 samples from the Cancer Genome Atlas project ( TCGA ). Global, epigenome wide and gene-specific DNA methylation analyses were used in a Phase I Biomarker Development Trial to identify a continuous biomarker panel that combines a Global DNA Methylation Index (GDMI) and promoter DNA methylation levels of IRF4, ELMO1, CLIP4 and MSC.We observed an inverse association between the GDMI and histological progression to gastric cancer, when comparing gastritis patients without metaplasia (mean = 5.74, 95% CI, 4.97-6.50), gastritis patients with metaplasia (mean = 4.81, 95% CI, 3.77-5.84), and gastric cancer cases (mean = 3.38, 95% CI, 2.82-3.94), respectively (p \u3c 0.0001). Promoter methylation of IRF4 (p \u3c 0.0001), ELMO1 (p \u3c 0.0001), CLIP4 (p \u3c 0.0001), and MSC (p \u3c 0.0001), is also associated with increasing severity from gastritis with no metaplasia to gastritis with metaplasia and gastric cancer.Our findings suggest that IRF4, ELMO1, CLIP4 and MSC promoter methylation coupled with a GDMI\u3e4 are useful molecular tools for gastric cancer risk stratification in endoscopic biopsies

Abundance, diversity and distribution of macrophyte communities in neighboring lakes of different trophic states and morphology in north-central Greece

The role of aquatic vegetation in wetland ecosystems is closely related with their abundance, diversity and distribution, which in turn represents synergy of various environmental factors. The floristic composition of the aquatic vegetation in two neighboring lakes (Vegoritida and Petron) in north-central Greece was investigated by means of 160 relevés, which were recorded using the Braun-Blanquet method. The analysis of relevés based on TWINSPAN clustering showed the existence of 10 plant communities from the Lemnetea, Potametea, Phragmito-Magnocaricetea and Juncetea maritimi classes. The most important environmental factors for the vegetation differentiation in the study area, according to the ordination diagram, are light intensity and water depth of the habitats. The plant species diversity was quantified with species richness, Shannon Diversity and evenness indices at a scale of each relevé, with a sampling size of 20 m2. There was a clear differentiation between the relevés at the more eutrophic Petron Lake and those at Vegoritida Lake. The mean plot diversity was also calculated for each plant community, to enable comparison of the diversity indices among the communities at the plot level

Distributed Information Systems and Data Mining in Self-Organizing Networks

The diffusion of sensors and devices to generate and collect data is capillary. The infrastructure that envelops the smart city has to react to the contingent situations and to changes in the operating environment. At the same time, the complexity of a distributed system, consisting of huge amounts of components fixed and mobile, can generate unsustainable costs and latencies to ensure robustness, scalability, and reliability, with type architectures middleware. The distributed system must be able to self-organize and self-restore adapting its operating strategies to optimize the use of resources and overall efficiency. Peer-to-peer systems (P2P) can offer solutions to face the requirements of managing, indexing, searching and analyzing data in scalable and self-organizing fashions, such as in cloud services and big data applications, just to mention two of the most strategic technologies for the next years. In this thesis we present G-Grid, a multi-dimensional distributed data indexing able to efficiently execute arbitrary multi-attribute exact and range queries in decentralized P2P environments. G-Grid is a foundational structure and can be effectively used in a wide range of application environments, including grid computing, cloud and big data domains. Nevertheless we proposed some improvements on the basic structure introducing a bit of randomness by using Small World networks, whereas are structures derived from social networks and show an almost uniform traffic distribution. This produced huge advantages in efficiency, cutting maintenance costs, without losing efficacy. Experiments show how this new hybrid structure obtains the best performance in traffic distribution and it a good settlement for the overall performance on the requirements desired in the modern data systems

The Māori Land Court: Exploring the Space between Law, Design, and Kaupapa Māori

Aotearoa/New Zealand is currently contemplating legislative reform of Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993, the statutory regime that governs Māori land. With the focus of both Māori and the Crown once again strongly on the Māori land law regime, this thesis takes the opportunity to bring a new perspective to the Māori Land Court, as the legal entity that sits at the centre of that regime. It draws on law’s recent, growing interest in design-based concepts and practices and how these can usefully be brought to bear on legal subject matters. It combines law and design, within a Kaupapa Māori research and theoretical framework, with two overarching objectives: to explore whether a design perspective can enrich our understanding of the relationship between owners of Māori land and the Māori Land Court; and to explore what design might contribute to ongoing and future Court reform. The relationship between owners of Māori land and the Māori Land Court is unique, and many owners of land may not be engaged with the Court or with their land interests, for a range of complex reasons. In illustration of this, many thousands of interests in Māori land have not been succeeded to through the Court, and remain in the ownership of a deceased individual. Design may make a valuable contribution here in that it encourages us to take seriously the notion that courts ought to be designed with all users in mind. This thesis draws on the emerging legal design field being developed by researchers in North America and Europe, and on accounts of Māori design within Aotearoa/New Zealand, to start to make the Western theory appropriate for application in our Indigenous legal spaces. As part of the thesis, a small qualitative research study was undertaken with seven current Māori landowners, who have each recently used the Court to succeed to interests in Māori land. The research methodology was informed by design and Kaupapa Māori. Participants were asked to create collages and respond to exercises pertaining to their interactions with the Court, and then describe to the researcher what they made. The research sought to gain insights into the experience of succeeding to land through the Court. Drawing on the results of that research, the thesis makes suggestions for how we can better attend to the experience of succeeding to Māori land through the Court, and better support those people who do so. The thesis also puts forward a framework for organising the different landowner relationships that surround the Court into three groups, of use, non-use (or potential use), and future-use. This framework may help us to consider how we can design the Māori Land Court system in such a way that all landowners will see its meaning and relevance to their lives. The thesis also considers whether a design perspective might contribute to ongoing Court reform. The Crown has begun to mobilise “co-design” approaches towards policy and law reform in areas that affect Māori, and we may see a similar approach applied to the Māori Land Court in the future. To date, however, co-design approaches have promised more than they have delivered. The thesis suggests that a successful design-oriented reform approach to the Court would be collaborative, convivial, imaginative, experimental, and creative. It would connect with Indigenous political projects of reframing, envisioning, and creating. Furthermore, the field research suggests that Māori stakeholders are willing to engage in creative research methods, and that valuable insights emerge when they are asked to apply their creativity to issues of significance in their lives. These findings may prove useful if a design-based law reform approach is applied to the Māori Land Court in the future