Transient Effects of Snow Cover Duration on Primary Growth and Leaf Traits in a Tundra Shrub

With the recent climate warming, tundra ecotones are facing a progressive acceleration of spring snowpack melting and extension of the growing season, with evident consequences to vegetation. Along with summer temperature, winter precipitation has been recently recognised as a crucial factor for tundra shrub growth and physiology. However, gaps of knowledge still exist on long-living plant responses to different snowpack duration, especially on how intra-specific and year-to-year variability together with multiple functional trait adjustments could influence the long-term responses. To fill this gap, we conducted a 3 years snow manipulation experiment above the Alpine treeline on the typical tundra species Juniperus communis, the conifer with the widest distributional range in the north emisphere. We tested shoot elongation, leaf area, stomatal density, leaf dry weight and leaf non-structural carbohydrate content of plants subjected to anticipated, natural and postponed snowpack duration. Anticipated snowpack melting enhanced new shoot elongation and increased stomatal density. However, plants under prolonged snow cover seemed to compensate for the shorter growing period, likely increasing carbon allocation to growth. In fact, these latter showed larger needles and low starch content at the beginning of the growing season. Variability between treatments slightly decreased over time, suggesting a progressive acclimation of juniper to new conditions. In the context of future warming scenarios, our results support the hypothesis of shrub biomass increase within the tundra biome. Yet, the picture is still far from being complete and further research should focus on transient and fading effects of changing conditions in the long term

Hydraulic traits of Juniperus communis L. along elevations and European populations

Plant hydraulics play an important role in determining plant distribution and performance, by influencing their growth and productivity. Knowledge of the hydraulic amplitude and plasticity of species is thus a prerequisite for estimating future performance under climate change. We investigated hydraulic safety and efficiency in Juniperus communis L. to estimate its intra-specific hydraulic variability. We analysed plants growing along an elevational transect (700-2000 m a.s.l., Tyrol, Austria) and plants grown in a common garden experiment from seeds collected in various European regions (France, Austria, Ireland, Germany and Sweden). Vulnerability to drought-induced embolism (i.e. hydraulic safety) was assessed via Cavitron and ultrasonic acoustic emission techniques while specific hydraulic conductivity (i.e. hydraulic efficiency) was measured with a flow meter. Hydraulic safety (water potentials inducing 12, 50 and 88% loss of conductivity) and efficiency did not differ significantly neither across elevations nor between European provenancies. Common juniper proved to a be a species with high resistance to drouht stress and showed surprisingly homogenous hydraulic traits, despite sub-species are formed at higher elevation and plant morphology differed widely across provenancies. Due to its overall high hydraulic safety, this species can be considered as less susceptible to the effects of a warmer climate

The case for Easy Italian : an empirical study on the impact of translators’ strategies on text comprehensibility

Easy Language is an essential instrument of inclusion for people who would otherwise be excluded from access to written information and full participation in society. Translation into Easy Italian is still under-researched. This study aims to fill this gap and advocates for greater attention from the academic community. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used to analyse (1) what strategies translators employ when translating from Standard into Easy Italian, and (2) whether these strategies facilitate reading comprehension of Easy Italian texts to people with intellectual disabilities. It is concluded that, on the one hand, standards for Easy Language are essential to guide the translator’s work. On the other hand, high comprehensibility can only be achieved through a careful consideration of the target communicative situation

Obesita'

Video da CorriereTV sull'aumento dei casi di obesita' in eta' evolutiva in Italia

A change of perspective in Easy Language research : towards a focus on productive writing abilities of people with intellectual disabilities

Easy Language research has, to date, largely focused on the target groups’ receptive abilities in reading comprehension test settings (cf. Bock, 2019; Gutermuth, 2020; Hansen-Schirra et al., 2020; Hansen-Schirra & Gutermuth, 2019, among others). In this exploratory study, Jekat et al. adopt a novel perspective shifting focus to the target groups’ productive abilities. Their analysis of two small-scale corpora of texts produced by German and Italian-speaking adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) clearly suggests that the writing skills of adults with ID might be generally underestimated. Further research is needed to validate these data