Deformations of coisotropic submanifolds for fibrewise entire Poisson structures

We show that deformations of a coisotropic submanifold inside a fibrewise entire Poisson manifold are controlled by the $L_\infty$-algebra introduced by Oh-Park (for symplectic manifolds) and Cattaneo-Felder. In the symplectic case, we recover results previously obtained by Oh-Park. Moreover we consider the extended deformation problem and prove its obstructedness

Induction of resistance and enhancing agronomic performance in grapevines under greenhouse and in open fields by applications of plasma activated water

The exposure of water to a cold atmospheric pressure plasma (CAP) enables the production of plasma activated water (PAW), having high content of reactive species, whose applications were tested on grapevine plants, both in greenhouse and in vineyard conditions. Two different CAPs were used for PAW production, evaluating their effectiveness as a possible mean to control plant diseases. Grapevines infected with yellows associated with the presence of phytoplasmas were treated evaluating qualitative and quantitative yield parameters, phytoplasma presence, and gene expression. The results show the capability of PAW to enhance plant defence mechanisms and, as demonstrated in the field trials, confirmed its ability to improve the health status of the treated plants. Quantitative (q)RT-PCR analyses allowed to determine the transcription level of genes involved in the plant defence response (phenylalanine ammonia-lyase, pal) and in the plant phytoalexin metabolism of PAW-treated materials. The number of symptomatic grapevine plants in vineyards was significantly reduced by the treatments. Transcriptional and post-transcriptional molecular analyses highlighted the PAW ability to enhance the expression of genes encoding the main enzymes involved in the phytoalexin biosynthetic pathway (flavonoids and stilbenes). The PAW ability to enhance some of the plant defence mechanisms also improving the health status of the treated plants was therefore experimentally demonstrated. After three years of trials the overall results demonstrated the possible use of PAW to reduce the disease severity, induce plant resistance both in open field and greenhouse, improving plant healthy status and grapevine yield production

Transcriptional profiling of phytoplasma infected plants treated with plasma activated water (PAW).

Background. Phytoplasmas are insect-transmitted plant pathogenic prokaryotes, associated with severe diseases in agronomic important crops. Management of these diseases has mainly focused on insect vector chemical control and on infected plant rouging. There is therefore a strong need for effective and friendly control strategies for phytoplasma-associated diseases and the possibility to use plasma activated water (PAW) as sustainable and effective method to them was therefore evaluated. PAW is produced by treating distilled water with atmospheric pressure plasmas, inducing the production of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (RONS) and pH reduction. PAW has good potential for bacterial decontamination, degradation of organic compounds and was shown to positively affect plant growth. Methods. Sterile deionized water (SDW) was exposed to a nanosecond pulsed dielectric barrier discharge, operating in ambient air for 10 min treatment with a peak voltage of 19 kV and a pulse repetition frequency of 1 kHz, which induced production of nitrates, nitrites and peroxides, and a pH decrease. Phytoplasma infected and healthy periwinkles micropropagated shoots were exposed to PAW for about 25 minutes and gene expression studies were then performed. The theses used were: shoots treated with PAW, Fosetyl aluminum (as positive control) and SDW (as negative control), with an exposition of about 25 minutes. Nine shoots for each thesis were then collected at 6 different times after treatment and stored at -80\ub0C. Quantitative RT-PCR analyses were carried out to determine the expression level of genes involved in the plant defense response. Parallel experiments were carried out treating grapevine plants in vineyards previously tested for the phytoplasma presence. Treatments were performed for three years injecting into the plant vascular tissues 10-20 ml of PAW or sterile distilled water (as control) on each selected plant for a total of 60 plants (40 with phytoplasmas and 20 without phytoplasmas). Results. Overexpression of selected genes involved in the phytoalexin metabolism was detected in the periwinkles micropropagated shoots treated with PAW in comparison with the shoots treated with Fosetyl-Al and distilled water. In the field trials, in a relevant number of cases, the PAW-treated symptomatic plants showed reduction of symptoms, while the SDW-treated and untreated plants did not show symptom reduction. No phytotoxicity was observed in the PAW treated grapevine and periwinkle plants. Conclusion. The results obtained showed the capability of PAW to enhance plant defence mechanisms and, as demonstrated in the field trials, confirmed its ability to improve the health status of the treated plant

A supergeometric approach to Poisson reduction

This work introduces a unified approach to the reduction of Poisson manifolds using their description by graded symplectic manifolds. This yields a generalization of the classical Poisson reduction by distributions (Marsden-Ratiu reduction). Further it allows one to construct actions of strict Lie 2-groups and to describe the corresponding reductions.Comment: 40 pages. Final version accepted for publicatio

Leibniz 2-algebras and twisted Courant algebroids

In this paper, we give the categorification of Leibniz algebras, which is equivalent to 2-term sh Leibniz algebras. They reveal the algebraic structure of omni-Lie 2-algebras introduced in \cite{omniLie2} as well as twisted Courant algebroids by closed 4-forms introduced in \cite{4form}. We also prove that Dirac structures of twisted Courant algebroids give rise to 2-term $L_\infty$-algebras and geometric structures behind them are exactly $H$-twisted Lie algebroids introduced in \cite{Grutzmann}.Comment: 22 pages, to appear in Comm. Algebr

Integration of Dirac-Jacobi structures

We study precontact groupoids whose infinitesimal counterparts are Dirac-Jacobi structures. These geometric objects generalize contact groupoids. We also explain the relationship between precontact groupoids and homogeneous presymplectic groupoids. Finally, we present some examples of precontact groupoids.Comment: 10 pages. Brief changes in the introduction. References update

Spectrophotometric properties of dwarf planet Ceres from the VIR spectrometer on board the Dawn mission

We study the spectrophotometric properties of dwarf planet Ceres in the VIS-IR spectral range by means of hyper-spectral images acquired by the VIR imaging spectrometer on board the NASA Dawn mission. Disk-resolved observations with a phase angle within the $7^{\circ}<\alpha<132^{\circ}$ interval were used to characterize Ceres' phase curve in the 0.465-4.05 $\mu$m spectral range. Hapke's model was applied to perform the photometric correction of the dataset, allowing us to produce albedo and color maps of the surface. The $V$-band magnitude phase function of Ceres was fitted with both the classical linear model and H-G formalism. The single-scattering albedo and the asymmetry parameter at 0.55$\mu$m are $w=0.14\pm0.02$ and $\xi=-0.11\pm0.08$, respectively (two-lobe Henyey-Greenstein phase function); the modeled geometric albedo is $0.094\pm0.007$; the roughness parameter is $\bar{\theta}=29^{\circ}\pm6^{\circ}$. Albedo maps indicate small variability on a global scale with an average reflectance of $0.034 \pm 0.003$. Isolated areas such as the Occator bright spots, Haulani, and Oxo show an albedo much higher than average. We measure a significant spectral phase reddening, and the average spectral slope of Ceres' surface after photometric correction is $1.1\%k\AA^{-1}$ and $0.85\%k\AA^{-1}$ at VIS and IR wavelengths, respectively. Broadband color indices are $V-R=0.38\pm0.01$ and $R-I=0.33\pm0.02$. H-G modeling of the $V$-band magnitude phase curve for $\alpha<30^{\circ}$ gives $H=3.14\pm0.04$ and $G=0.10\pm0.04$, while the classical linear model provides $V(1,1,0^{\circ})=3.48\pm0.03$ and $\beta=0.036\pm0.002$. The comparison with spectrophotometric properties of other minor bodies indicates that Ceres has a less back-scattering phase function and a slightly higher albedo than comets and C-type objects. However, the latter represents the closest match in the usual asteroid taxonomy.Comment: 14 pages, 20 figures, published online on Astronomy and Astrophysics on 13 February 2017. Revised to reflect minor changes in text and figures made in proofs, updated value of V-R and R-

Financial sustainability and profitability of supercritical CO2 pasteurization of liquid products: A case study

This work presents an analysis of a supercritical CO2 (SC-CO2) pasteurization process, focusing on the financial and economic parameters that make the process sustainable at an industrial level. A small company processing 5,000,000 bottles of apple juice per year has been chosen as a case study. Investment and operating costs have been estimated based on data collected from the market and the relevant economic literature. The financial sustainability assessment was performed through the Discounted Cash Flow methodology, proving that SC-CO2 pasteurization is profitable on a 10-year horizon. The Net Present Value is strictly positive and the Internal Rate of Return higher than the cost of funding. The sensitivity analysis shows the robustness of this study to possible changes in the model parameters. Overall, this work demonstrates SC-CO2 pasteurization to be profitable and, considering the current growth of the high-nutritional value fruit juice market, it suggests positive financial returns for both incumbents and new entrants

Peak functional ability and age at loss of ambulation in Duchenne muscular dystrophy

AIM: To correlate the North Star Ambulatory Assessment (NSAA) and timed rise from floor (TRF) recorded at age of expected peak with age at loss of ambulation (LOA) in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). METHOD: Male children with DMD enrolled in the UK North Start Network database were included according to the following criteria: follow-up longer than 3 years, one NSAA record between 6 years and 7 years 6 months (baseline), at least one visit when older than 8 years. Data about corticosteroid treatment, LOA, genotype, NSAA, and TRF were analysed. Age at LOA among the different groups based on NSAA and TRF was determined by log-rank tests. Cox proportional hazard models were used for multivariable analysis. RESULTS: A total of 293 patients from 13 different centres were included. Mean (SD) age at first and last visit was 5 years 6 months (1 year 2 months) and 12 years 8 months (2 years 11 months) (median follow-up 7 years 4 months). Higher NSAA and lower TRF at baseline were associated with older age at LOA (p<0.001). Patients scoring NSAA 32 to 34 had a probability of 0.61 of being ambulant when older than 13 years compared with 0.34 for those scoring 26 to 31. In multivariable analysis, NSAA, TRF, and corticosteroid daily regimen (vs intermittent) were all independently associated with outcome (p=0.01). INTERPRETATION: Higher functional abilities at peak are associated with older age at LOA in DMD. This information is important for counselling families. These baseline measures should also be considered when designing clinical trials

First mineralogical maps of 4 Vesta

Before Dawn arrived at 4 Vesta only very low spatial resolution (~50 km) albedo and color maps were available from HST data. Also ground-based color and spectroscopic data were utilized as a first attempt to map Vesta’s mineralogical diversity [1-4]. The VIR spectrometer [5] onboard Dawn has ac-quired hyperspectral data while the FC camera [6] ob-tained multi-color data of the Vestan surface at very high spatial resolutions, allowing us to map complex geologic, morphologic units and features. We here re-port about the results obtained from a preliminary global mineralogical map of Vesta, based on data from the Survey orbit. This map is part of an iterative map-ping effort; the map is refined with each improvement in resolution