Constraining the onset of flexural subsidence and the rate of forebulge-foredeep migration in the foreland basin system of the central-southern Apennine belt (Italy) by Sr-isotope stratigraphy

In fold and thrust belts developing at convergent margins, the migration of the advancing wedge is accompanied by bulging of the downgoing plate, followed by the development of a foredeep basin filled by a thick succession of syn-orogenic sediments. The transition from forebulge to foredeep marks a key moment in the evolution of the orogenic system. In deep-water environments, the record of this transition is typically complete and progressive. Conversely, in the shallow-water/continental environment of many collisional systems, the uplift of the forebulge area can imply emersion and erosion, obliterating the stratigraphic record of key steps of the evolution of the orogenic system. The Apennines are a retreating collisional belt where the foreland basin system, in large domains, is floored by a subaerial forebulge unconformity developed due to bulge uplift and erosion. This unconformity is overlain by a diachronous sequence of three lithostratigraphic units made of: (i) shallow-water carbonates, (ii) hemipelagic marls and shales, and (iii) siliciclastic turbidites. Typically, the latter have been interpreted regionally as the onset of syn-orogenic deposition in the foredeep depozone, while little attention has been given to the underlying units. Accordingly, the rate of migration of the southern Apennine foreland basin-belt system has been constrained, so far, exclusively considering the age of the turbidites, which largely postdate the onset of sedimentation in the foredeep depozone. This thesis provides new high-resolution ages obtained by strontium isotope stratigraphy applied to the low-Mg calcite of bivalve shells sampled at the base of the first syn-orogenic deposits overlying the Eocene-Cretaceous pre-orogenic substratum. This new regional dataset of high-resolution ages obtained from the detailed analysis of 203 samples collected from 15 sites (37 sub-sites) across the central-southern Apennines, integrated with previously published data, provide a comprehensive spatial-temporal evolutive model of the Apennine belt and foreland basin system from the early Miocene to the Recent. In particular, this dataset indicates progressive rejuvenation of the strata sealing the forebulge unconformity toward the outer portions of the belt. Plotting the data on a restored section of the pre-orogenic Adria passive margin reveals that the age of the forebulge unconformity linearly scales with the position of the analyzed sites in their pre-orogenic position, pointing to an overall constant velocity of migration of the forebulge wave in the last 25 Myr. A comparative analysis of previously used datasets reveals that dating the base of the post-bulging carbonates represents the best tool to constrain the style and rate of the foreland flexuring

«Una montagna aspra e erta» e «un bellissimo piano e dilettevole»: Il modello narrativo del Decameron e La galeria del Marino nelle Vite di Bellori

Il boccacciano «orrido cominciamento» Nella galleria delle Vite (1672), abilmente costruita e raccontata dal Bellori lungo l’asse vincente che va dalla figura centrale e positiva di Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), l’uomo mandato dalla provvidenza nel tempo della decadenza delle arti per farle risorgere, alla perfezione dell’artista-filosofo Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), la biografia del Caravaggio (1571-1610) porta inevitabilmente i segni del ruolo negativo, contrastivo e perdente assegnato dal..

Automatic recognition of structures in obituaries

Obituaries are a less common text type in research that contains a lot of information about people, events in history and culture. The information that can be obtained by zoning such obituaries enables new research, e.g., in social studies. Our work focuses on the question if the structuring of obituaries is possible and viable. Therefore we created a corpus for this work containing 20058 obituaries of which 1008 were annotated manually by us. We implemented four models, a CNN text classifier and three variations of a Bi-LSTM sequence labeler, to see if the zoning procedure is possible and which among the models performs best for this task. The CNN text classifier showed the most promising results together with the variant of the Bi-LSTM model using a Bag-of-Word model

Counteracting resistance to chemo-radiotherapy and to targeted therapy in solid tumors

Control of mutant BRAF (V600E) metastatic melanomas by the selective BRAF inhibitor (BRAF-I), vemurafenib, is limited by the the lack of complete response due to intrinsic resistance and the often rapid development of acquired resistance . By utilizing melanoma cell lines with acquired BRAF-I resistance, we demonstrate for the first time an association between BRAF-I resistance and PDGFRα upregulation in vitro and in vivo. PDGFRα inhibition by PDGFRα-specific shRNA restores melanoma cells’ sensitivity to BRAF-I in vitro. These effects are mediated by inhibition of ERK and AKT activation, which is associated with BRAF-I resistance. Combining vemurafenib with a PDGFRα inhibitor (sunitinib or imatinib) in vitro and in vivo demonstrate a significantly greater anti-proliferative and pro-apoptotic effect than either agent individually. These effects reflect the inhibition of ERK and AKT activation, which inhibits the proliferation and induces apoptosis. We corroborated this finding by demonstrating PDGFRα upregulation in melanomas harvested from patients who demonstrated disease progression following treatment with BRAF-I. Furthermore, analysis of matched biopsies of BRAF-I treated melanoma patients before treatment, after 1-2 weeks of treatment and at the time of disease progression demonstrated that PDGFRα upregulation correlated with less tumor regression (based on RECIST criteria) and a shorter time to disease progression. Our results demonstrate that PDGFRα inhibitors (sunitinib or imatinib) in combination with vemurafenib can overcome BRAF-I resistance mediated by PDGFRα. Although we could not associate baseline PDGFRα with clinical outcome, our data suggest that monitoring patients for early up regulation of PDGFRα may identify those for whom combination therapy would be most appropriate