Soil and forest regeneration after different extraction methods in coppice forests

Coppice is considered the oldest form of sustainable forest management in the Mediterranean area. Generally, it produces rapidly woody biomass and environmental benefits. This research was implemented through an experimental design based on two steps: analyzing the impact of silvicultural treatment (coppice with standards) and logging on forest soil and tree regeneration. It included the soil and regeneration recovery capacity of forests managed as coppice related to different logging systems and treatments applied over a six-year period. The findings demonstrated that tree species regeneration composition was not affected by silvicultural treatment and only slightly by harvesting system. Instead, the physical, chemical and biological soil features were only marginally affected by the silvicultural treatment applied, but strongly impacted by harvesting operations, with clear differences between the systems. The least damaging harvesting system was TLS (Tree Length System) followed by FTS (Full Tree System) and SWS (Short Wood System) that showed a more intense impact. This trend started only six months after harvesting and continued for more than 36 months post-harvesting in a lesser dynamic. The recovery of coppicing was almost complete 36 months after harvesting, without substantial differences between logging systems. Recovery from logging showed a clear positive trend, but 52 months after harvesting only the TLS area had completely recovered. For FTS and SWS, recovery occurred but was very weak

Applications of three-dimensional carbon nanotube

In this paper, we show that it is possible to synthesize carbon-based three-dimensional networks by adding sulfur, as growth enhancer, during the synthesis process. The obtained material is self-supporting and consists of curved and interconnected carbon nanotubes and to lesser extent of carbon fibers. Studies on the microstructure indicate that the assembly presents a marked variability in the tube external diameter and in the inner structure. We study the relationship between the observed microscopic properties and some potential applications. In particular, we show that the porous nature of the network is directly responsible for the hydrophobic and the lipophilic behavior. Moreover, we used a cut piece of the produced carbon material as working electrode in a standard electrochemical cell and, thus, demonstrating the capability of the system to respond to incident light in the visible and near-ultraviolet region and to generate a photocurrent

Corsican pine (Pinus laricio Poiret) stand management: Medium and long lasting effects of thinning on biomass growth

With the aim of acquiring better comprehension of the ecological and productive aspects of the management of pine forests, we monitored logging damage and evaluated the effects of thinning on stand growth 20 years after the treatment in a Pinus laricio Poiret stand in central Italy. The objectives of the present study were to estimate the injury levels to the remaining trees after thinning; to assess logging damage in the long-term by monitoring residual trees at the end of thinning; to evaluate the effect of damage on the radial growth of trees; to assess the stand dynamics in relation to injury levels and the treatment applied in a twenty-year range; to understand a possible treatment return time; and to evaluate the existence of the "thinning shock". The results were that 20 years after treatment, the stand dynamics showed a complete recovery; logging damage did not affect the radial growth of P. laricio over time; a second treatment seem to be sustainable starting from the fifteenth year after the previous treatment; and the thinning shock can be clearly evaluated in the first six to seven years after the treatment

An accurate approach for computational pKa determination of phenolic compounds

Computational chemistry is a valuable tool, as it allows for in silico prediction of key parameters of novel compounds, such as pKa. In the framework of computational pKa determination, the literature offers several approaches based on different level of theories, functionals and continuum solvation models. However, correction factors are often used to provide reliable models that adequately predict pKa. In this work, an accurate protocol based on a direct approach is proposed for computing phenols pKa. Importantly, this methodology does not require the use of correction factors or mathematical fitting, making it highly practical, easy to use and fast. Above all, DFT calculations performed in the presence two explicit water molecules using CAM-B3LYP functional with 6-311G+dp basis set and a solvation model based on density (SMD) led to accurate pKa values. In particular, calculations performed on a series of 13 differently substituted phenols provided reliable results, with a mean absolute error of 0.3. Furthermore, the model achieves accurate results with -CN and -NO2 substituents, which are usually excluded from computational pKa studies, enabling easy and reliable pKa determination in a wide range of phenols

Coarse woody debris variability due to human accessibility to forest

Originally published in Forests (MDPI): Behjou FK, Lo Monaco A*, Tavankar F, Venanzi R, Nikooy M, Picchio R (2018) Coarse woody debris variability as result of human accessibility to forest. Forests 9(9): article number 509 (open access) Corresponding author: Angela Lo Monaco, [email protected] DOI: 10.3390/f9090509 The article can be dowloaded at: https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/9/9/509 Abstract: Coarse woody debris (CWD) plays an important role in supporting biodiversity and assisting ecological processes. Sometimes local people intervene modifying the expected distribution of CWD components, harvested as fuel wood. The effect of the human accessibility (HA) on the volume and characteristics of CWD (snag, downed log and stump) was investigated in the natural uneven-age mixed hardwood stands of the Hyrcanian forests of Iran to quantify the impact on CWD. The HA was classified into three classes (easy, medium and difficult) on the basis of slope class, slope direction to the nearest road and road type. As expected, a negative relationship between the degree of accessibility was found with respect to the main qualitative and quantitative indices referring to CWD. The results showed that the volume of CWD decreased with an increase in human accessibility class (HAC), thus the mean volume of CWD in the difficult, medium and easy accessibility classes were 14.87 m3 ha1, 8.84 m3 ha1 and 4.03 m3 ha1, respectively. The decrease in CWD volume was more associated with the decreasing volume of small diameter of low decayed downed logs. The ratio of snag volume to standing volume, the ratio of downed log volume to the volume of trees and the ratio of CWD volume to standing volume increased with a decrease in HAC, while the ratio of downed log volume to snag volume decreased with a decrease in HAC. No selective behaviour on the botanical species of CWD was recorded. For ecological forest management, the effect of HAC on CWD should be considered. A constant supply of snags and downed logs must be preserved to assure a high level of biodiversity. To balance social needs and biodiversity requirements, an increased level of CWD retention might be needed in areas with easy accessibility. The obtained results may be useful when ecological and socio-economical needs have to be taken into consideration in future policy-making decisions. Keywords: snag; downed log; stump; forest road; uneven-agemixed hardwood stands; Hyrcanian forest

On the use of domain adaptation techniques for bridge damage detection in a changing environment

Structural Health Monitoring of civil infrastructures often suffers from the limited availability of damage labelled data. The work here seeks to overcome this issue by using Transfer Learning approaches, in the form of Domain Adaptation, for leveraging information from a source structure with determined health-state labels to make inferences on an unlabeled monitored structure. The idea is to exploit source data to train a Machine Learning algorithm and achieve improved early-stage damage detection capabilities across a population of bridges. To account for differences in the underlying distributions of each structure, Transfer Learning is seen as a strategy enabling population-level bridge SHM. In this paper, the natural frequencies obtained from multiple vibration measurements are extracted to characterise different domains during pristine and abnormal conditions. Such damage-sensitive features are aligned via Domain Adaptation and used to train a standard classifier within a shared feature space. The methodology is validated on the heterogeneous population composed of the Z24 and S101 bridges. The results prove the effectiveness to successfully exchange damage labels, thus increasing available information for health-state inference for SHM applications with sparce datasets

Central nervous system myeloma and unusual extramedullary localizations: real life practical guidance

Central nervous system localization of multiple myeloma (CNS-MM) accounts for about 1% of all MM during disease course or even rarer at diagnosis. A difference in the origin, i.e., osteodural or primary dural vs leptomeningeal/intraparenchymal, seems to define two distinct types of intracranial myeloma, with different clinical behavior. CNS-MM may occur also as a presentation of MM. Treatment is still unsatisfactory and many treatments have been reported: chemotherapy, intrathecal therapy, and radiotherapy, with dismal prognosis. Other sites of myeloma localization could be also of interest and deserve description. Because of the rarity and aggressiveness of the disease clinicians are often doubtful on how to treat it since there is no general agreement. Moreover, recent drugs such as the anti CD38 monoclonal antibody, immunomodulatory drugs, and proteasome inhibitors have changed the treatment of patients with MM with a significant improvement in overall response and survival. The role of novel agents in CNS MM management and unusual presentations will be discussed as well as the potential role of other new immunomodulatory drugs and proteasome inhibitors that seem to cross the blood-brain barrier. The purpose of this review is to increase awareness of the clinical unusual presentation and neuroradiological findings, give practical diagnostic advice and treatment options algorithm

A spectroscopic and molecular dynamics study on the aggregation process of a long-acting lipidated therapeutic peptide: the case of semaglutide

The aggregation properties of semaglutide, a lipidated peptide drug agonist of the Glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor recently approved for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, have been investigated by spectroscopic techniques (UV-Vis absorption, steady-state and time-resolved fluorescence, and electronic circular dichroism) and molecular dynamics simulations. We show that in the micromolar concentration region, in aqueous solution, semaglutide is present as monomeric and dimeric species, with a characteristic monomer-to-dimer transition occurring at around 20 μM. The lipid chain stabilizes a globular morphology of the monomer and dimer species, giving rise to a locally well-defined polar outer surface where the lipid and peptide portions are packed to each other. At very long times, these peptide clusters nucleate the growth of larger aggregates characterized by blue luminescence and a β-sheet arrangement of the peptide chains. The understanding of the oligomerization and aggregation potential of peptide candidates is key for the development of long acting and stable drugs