Arsenic precipitation by an anaerobic arsenic-respiring bacterial strain isolated from the polluted sediments of Orbetello Lagoon, Italy

AIMS: To isolate and characterize an anaerobic bacterial strain from the deeper polluted lagoon sediment able to use as electron acceptors [As(V)] and sulfate (SO4(2-)), using lactate as an electron donor. METHODS AND RESULTS: Methods for isolation from polluted lagoon sediments included anaerobic enrichment cultures in the presence of As(V) and SO4(2-). Reduction of As(V) to As(III) was observed during the growth of the bacterial strain, and the final concentration of As(III) was lower than the initial As(V) one, suggesting the immobilization of As(III) in the yellow precipitate. The precipitate was identified by energy dispersive spectroscopy X-ray as arsenic sulfide. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) revealed rod-shaped bacterial cells embedded in the precipitate, where net-like formations strictly related to the bacterial cells were visible. The surface of the precipitate showed the adhesion of bacterial cells, forming clusters. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) also highlighted precipitates inside the bacterial cells and on their surface. Following 16S rRNA sequencing, the bacterial strain 063 was assigned to the genus Desulfosporosinus. CONCLUSIONS: This study reports, for the first time, the isolation from the polluted lagoon sediments of a strain capable of respiring and using As(V) and SO4(2-) as electron acceptors with lactate as the sole carbon and energy source with the formation of an arsenic sulfide precipitate. SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPACT OF THE STUDY: The identification of these properties provides novel insight into the possible use of the anaerobic strain in bioremediation processes and also adds to the knowledge on the biogeochemical cycling of arsenic

Name-passing calculi and crypto-primitives: A survey

The paper surveys the literature on high-level name-passing process calculi, and their extensions with cryptographic primitives. The survey is by no means exhaustive, for essentially two reasons. First, in trying to provide a coherent presentation of different ideas and techniques, one inevitably ends up leaving out the approaches that do not fit the intended roadmap. Secondly, the literature on the subject has been growing at very high rate over the years. As a consequence, we decided to concentrate on few papers that introduce the main ideas, in the hope that discussing them in some detail will provide sufficient insight for further reading

EChO Payload electronics architecture and SW design

EChO is a three-modules (VNIR, SWIR, MWIR), highly integrated spectrometer, covering the wavelength range from 0.55 $\mu$m, to 11.0 $\mu$m. The baseline design includes the goal wavelength extension to 0.4 $\mu$m while an optional LWIR module extends the range to the goal wavelength of 16.0 $\mu$m. An Instrument Control Unit (ICU) is foreseen as the main electronic subsystem interfacing the spacecraft and collecting data from all the payload spectrometers modules. ICU is in charge of two main tasks: the overall payload control (Instrument Control Function) and the housekeepings and scientific data digital processing (Data Processing Function), including the lossless compression prior to store the science data to the Solid State Mass Memory of the Spacecraft. These two main tasks are accomplished thanks to the Payload On Board Software (P-OBSW) running on the ICU CPUs.Comment: Experimental Astronomy - EChO Special Issue 201

Arsenic-resistant bacteria isolated from contaminated sediments of the Orbetello Lagoon, Italy, and their characterization

AIMS: The aim of this study was to isolate arsenic-resistant bacteria from contaminated sediment of the Orbetello Lagoon, Italy, to characterize isolates for As(III), As(V), heavy metals resistance, and from the phylogenetic point of view. METHODS AND RESULTS: Enrichment cultures were carried out in the presence of 6.75 mmol l(-1) of As(III), allowing isolation of ten bacterial strains. Four isolates, ORAs1, ORAs2, ORAs5 and ORAs6, showed minimum inhibitory concentration values equal or superior to 16.68 mmol l(-1) and 133.47 mmol l(-1) in the presence of As(III) and As(V), respectively. Isolate ORAs2 showed values of 1.8 mmol l(-1) in the presence of Cd(II) and 7.7 mmol l(-1) of Zn(II), and isolate ORAs1 pointed out a value of 8.0 mmol l(-1) in the presence of Cu(II). Analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequences revealed that they can be grouped in the three genera Aeromonas, Bacillus and Pseudomonas. Phylogenetic analysis of the four more arsenic-resistant strains was also performed. CONCLUSION: Isolates are highly resistant to both As(III) and As(V) and they could represent good candidates for bioremediation processes of native polluted sediments. SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPACT OF THE STUDY: This study provides original results on levels of resistance to arsenic and to assigning genera of bacterial strains isolated from arsenic-polluted sediments

CookiExt: Patching the browser against session hijacking attacks

Session cookies constitute one of the main attack targets against client authentication on the Web. To counter these attacks, modern web browsers implement native cookie protection mechanisms based on the HttpOnly and Secure flags. While there is a general understanding about the effectiveness of these defenses, no formal result has so far been proved about the security guarantees they convey. With the present paper we provide the first such result, by presenting a mechanized proof of noninterference assessing the robustness of the HttpOnly and Secure cookie flags against both web and network attackers with the ability to perform arbitrary XSS code injection. We then develop CookiExt, a browser extension that provides client-side protection against session hijacking, based on appropriate flagging of session cookies and automatic redirection over HTTPS for HTTP requests carrying these cookies. Our solution improves over existing client-side defenses by combining protection against both web and network attacks, while at the same time being designed so as to minimise its effects on the user's browsing experience. Finally, we report on the experiments we carried out to practically evaluate the effectiveness of our approach

A logarithmic epiperimetric inequality for the obstacle problem

For the general obstacle problem, we prove by direct methods an epiperimetric inequality at regular and singular points, thus answering a question of Weiss (Invent. Math., 138 (1999), 23--50). In particular at singular points we introduce a new tool, which we call logarithmic epiperimetric inequality, which yields an explicit logarithmic modulus of continuity on the $C^1$ regularity of the singular set, thus improving previous results of Caffarelli and Monneau

Exposure to Endocrine Disruptors and Nuclear Receptors Gene Expression in Infertile and Fertile Men from Italian Areas with Different Environmental Features

Internal levels of selected endocrine disruptors (EDs) (i.e., perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), di-2-ethylhexyl-phthalate (DEHP), mono-(2-ethylhexyl)-phthalate (MEHP), and bisphenol A (BPA)) were analyzed in blood/serum of infertile and fertile men from metropolitan, urban and rural Italian areas. PFOS and PFOA levels were also evaluated in seminal plasma. In peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of same subjects, gene expression levels of a panel of nuclear receptors (NRs), namely estrogen receptor α (ERα) estrogen receptor β (ERβ), androgen receptor (AR), aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR), peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ) and pregnane X receptor (PXR) were also assessed. Infertile men from the metropolitan area had significantly higher levels of BPA and gene expression of all NRs, except PPARγ, compared to subjects from other areas. Subjects from urban areas had significantly higher levels of MEHP, whereas subjects from rural area had higher levels of PFOA in both blood and seminal plasma. Interestingly, ERα, ERβ, AR, PXR and AhR expression is directly correlated with BPA and inversely correlated with PFOA serum levels. Our study indicates the relevance of the living environment when investigating the exposure to specific EDs. Moreover, the NRs panel in PBMCs demonstrated to be a potential biomarker of effect to assess the EDs impact on reproductive health