Water oxygenation and sea bass

The influence of water oxygen concentration on the acid–base balance of sea bass was evaluated. Fish weighing 200–250 g were cultured under different dissolved oxygen concentrations of 64%, 97%, 150% and 250% saturation (92.7, 140.5, 217.5 and 362.7 mmHg respectively) under mild hypoxia, normoxia, mild hyperoxia and high hyperoxia conditions. The results showed that high hyperoxia and mild hypoxia conditions modified some blood parameters significantly when compared with fish held under the normoxia condition, while no differences were shown with respect to the acid–base balance of fish cultured under normoxia and mild hyperoxia conditions. This testifies that the mild hyperoxia condition does not produce physiological disturbances in the acid–base status of sea bass and it could be considered a favourable condition in sea bass land-based farming, mainly in comparison with the mild hypoxia condition, responsible for other physiological problems

How Existential Dependence Can Ground Existential Grounding

Schnieder (2020) argues, against Orilia (2009) and Koslicki (2013), that claims of existential grounding of the form “the fact that x exists is grounded in the fact that y is F” cannot be grounded in claims of existential dependence of the form “x existentially depends on y” and defends the view that the latter claims are grounded, via a definition of existential dependence, in the former. I will firstly argue that Schnieder’s main point against the claim that existential grounding is grounded in existential dependence is not conclusive; I will then put forward a proposal concerning how claims of existential grounding can be grounded in claims of existential dependence. The proposal is a third way between those of Schnieder and Orilia/Koslicki which, although accepting the former’s definition of existential dependence in terms of grounding, makes room for the latter’s idea that existential dependence does the real job in structuring reality

Transmission dynamics of the ongoing chikungunya outbreak in Central Italy. From coastal areas to the metropolitan city of Rome, summer 2017

A large chikungunya outbreak is ongoing in Italy, with a main cluster in the Anzio coastal municipality. With preliminary epidemiological data, and a transmission model using mosquito abundance and biting rates, we estimated the basic reproduction number R0 at 2.07 (95% credible interval: 1.47–2.59) and the first case importation between 21 May and 18 June 2017. Outbreak risk was higher in coastal/rural sites than urban ones. Novel transmission foci could occur up to mid-November

Sedimentology and composition of sands injected during the seismic crisis of May 2012 (Emilia, Italy): clues for source layer identification and liquefaction regime

InMay 2012widespread sand blows formed along buried channels in the eastern sector of the Po Plain (Northern Italy) as a consequence of a series of seismic eventswith main shocks ofMw6.1 and 5.9. At San Carlo (Ferrara) a trench dug a few week after the earthquakes exposed sand dikes cutting through an old Reno River channel– levee system that was diverted in the 18th century and was deposited starting from the 14th century (unit A). This sequence overlies a Holocene muddy floodplain deposits and contains scattered sandy channel deposits (unit B) and a Pleistocene channel sand unit (unit C). Sands with inverse and normal grading, concave layering and vertical lamination coexisting along the dikes suggest multiple rhythmic opening and closing of the fractures that were injected and filled by a slurry of sand during the compression pulses, and emptied during the extension phase. The pulse mechanism may have lasted for several minutes and formed well stratified sand volcanoes structures that formed at the top of the fractures. Sands fromdikes and fromthe various units showwell defined compositional fields from lithoarenitic to quartz-feldspar-rich compositions. Sands from the old Reno levee and channel fill (unit A) have abundant lithic fragments derived fromthe erosion of Apennine sedimentary carbonate and terrigenous successions. Composition of the sand filling the dikes showclear affinities with sand layers of the old Reno River channel (Unit A) and clearly differ from any sand from deeper Holocene and Pleistocene layers (Unit B and C),which are richer in quartz and feldspar and poorer in sedimentary lithic fragments. Sorting related to sediment flux variations did not apparently affect the sand composition across the sedimentary structures. Textural and compositional data indicate that the liquefaction processes originated from a relatively shallow source consisting of channel sands located within Unit A at 6.8.to 7.5 m depth

IEEE 802.15.7-Compliant Ultra-low Latency Relaying VLC System for Safety-Critical ITS

The integration of Visible-Light Communications technology (VLC) in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) is a very promising platform for a cost-effective implementation of revolutionary ITS and cooperative ITS protocols. In this paper, we propose an infrastructure-to-vehicle-to-vehicle (I2V2V) VLC system for ITS, implementing it through a regular LED traffic light serving as a transmitter and a digital Active Decodeand- Relay (ADR) stage for decoding and relaying the received information towards further incoming units. The proposed VLC system targets the challenging and important case of ultra-low latency ADR transmission of short packets, as this is needed for emerging applications of automatic braking, car platooning and other critical automatic and/or assisted driving applications. The experimental validation of the ADR VLC chain, as well as a thorough statistical analysis of errors distribution in the transmission, has been performed for short to medium distances, up to 50 meters. The performances of the designed system are evaluated by measuring the packet error rate (PER) and latency in the whole ADR transmission chain. Our analysis shows that our system attains ultra-low, sub-ms latencies at 99.9% confidence level for PER as high as 5 x 10^-3, yet granting a latency below 10 ms even for distances of 50 m. The demonstrated system prototype is compatible with IEEE 802.15.7 standard

Artificial quantum confinement in LAO3/STO heterostructure

Heterostructures of transition metal oxides (TMO) perovskites represent an ideal platform to explore exotic phenomena involving the complex interplay between the spin, charge, orbital and lattice degrees of freedom available in these compounds. At the interface between such materials, this interplay can lead to phenomena that are present in none of the original constituents such as the formation of the interfacial 2D electron system (2DES) discovered at the LAO3/STO3 (LAO/STO) interface. In samples prepared by growing a LAO layer onto a STO substrate, the 2DES is confined in a band bending potential well, whose width is set by the interface charge density and the STO dielectric properties, and determines the electronic band structure. Growing LAO (2 nm) /STO (x nm)/LAO (2 nm) heterostructures on STO substrates allows us to control the extension of the confining potential of the top 2DES via the thickness of the STO layer. In such samples, we explore the dependence of the electronic structure on the width of the confining potential using soft X-ray ARPES combined with ab-initio calculations. The results indicate that varying the thickness of the STO film modifies the quantization of the 3d t2g bands and, interestingly, redistributes the charge between the dxy and dxz/dyz bands