Moving Towards Estimating Sons' Lifetime Intergenerational Economic Mobility in the UK

Estimates of intergenerational economic mobility that use point in time measures of income and earnings suffer from lifecycle and attenuation bias. They also suffer from sample selection issues and further bias driven by spells out of work. We consider these issues together for UK data, the National Child Development Study and British Cohort Study, for the first time. When all three biases are considered, our best estimate of lifetime intergenerational economic persistence in the UK is 0.43 for children born in 1970. Whilst we argue that this is the best available estimate to date, we discuss why there is good reason to believe that this is still a lower bound, owing to residual attenuation bias

Correction to: Quality traits of raw and cooked cupped oysters

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In situ remediation of polluted Spolic Technosols using Ca(OH)2 and smectitic marlstone

Technosols are soils developed on non-traditional substrates and containing large quantities of materials mostly due to intensive human industrial activity, such as artefacts. The increasing number of sites affected by Technosols and their impact on the environment as growing media for plants or as source of pollutants require an understanding of their functioning and evolution, above all the knowledge on the transport of toxic substances from contaminated technogenic soils to groundwater. A case study on properties, remediation and evaluation of Technosols made up by vitrified fly ash and glass\u2013ceramics in Italy was carried out. Original technogenic soils, classified as Spolic Technosols (ecotoxic),were pedotechnically in situ remediated by adding smectitic marlstone and Ca(OH)2. Chemical analysis on samples from piezometers showed the presence of harmful heavy metals in groundwater. By means of boreholes and soil profiles the newsoils generated, after remediation, were physically and chemically characterized and classified as Spolic Technosols (calcaric). Analysis on soil toxicity and leaching tests showed the effectiveness of the remediation and the mobility reduction of some potentially harmful elements according to the environmental Italian regulation

Exploring the canal environment in terms of water, bed sediments and vegetation in a reclaimed floodplain of Northern Italy

The Po plain (Italy) is one of the largest floodplains in Europe that needs environmental restoration. To achieve this goal, the knowledge of the 'environment' (water, bed sediments and vegetation) of the canals crossing such floodplain is necessary. The water flow of the canals was kept low for hydraulic safety purposes from October to March (NIR), and high for irrigation purposes from April to September (IR). Within this framework, this study aimed to assess in 9 sites of the east part of Po plain 1) the canals' environment quality in terms of vegetation diversity, and water and bed sediment physicochemical properties; and 2) how these features are influenced by canal managements and landscape properties. Water was monthly sampled both in NIR and IR periods, the bed sediments were sampled in summer and winter pe-riods, while the vegetation was recorded in spring and autumn. The low water flow during NIR worsened the water quality by increasing the concentrations of nutrients and salts. A higher salt and nutrient concentrations were observed both in water and bed sediments of canals crossing areas with fne texture alluvial deposits than in those flowing through medium texture alluvial deposits. Further, higher nutrient and salt concentrations were observed for the ca-nals used as collectors of the water coming from other canals. Despite the differences observed for the bed sediments and water quality, the vegetation type and biodiversity did not show differences among the study sites probably be-cause affected by the land use of the surrounding landscape. Indeed, the canals cross agricultural land which limit the developments of natural vegetation and do not promote plant biodiversity. Overall, the present study found out the key role of landscape properties and canal managements on 'canal environment' quality which need to be consid-ered to perform an appropriate reclamation of such environments

Spatial microbial community structure and biodiversity analysis in "extreme" hypersaline soils of a semiarid Mediterranean area

In recent years specific attention has been paid on the biotechnological potential of microorganisms in extreme soils, in particular in saline soils. Salinity is one of the most widespread soil degradation processes on the Earth, and saline soils can be defined as extreme soils or border line habitats in which several factors, as high salt content, may limit the growth of organisms. In this study, the physical, chemical and microbiological soil properties were investigated in the shallower horizon of natural salt-affected soils in Sicily (Italy). The main aim of the research was to evaluate the structure and diversity of bacterial and archaeal communities by terminal-restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) according to arbitrary different classes of vegetation and salt crust cover in soils. Furthermore, the structure of microbial communities was assessed considering the heterogeneity of physical-chemical properties of the habitat under investigation, as a function of vegetation, crust cover, and salinity classes. The results provided information on the type of distribution of different microbial community composition and diversity as a function of both vegetation and crust cover as well as salinity classes. In particular, the archaeal community showed a richness and diversity significantly affected by the spatial gradients of soil salinity, conversely, the bacterial one showed a decreasing trend with increasing gradient of soil salinity. The T-RFLP cluster analysis showed the formation of two groups for both bacterial and archaeal community, significantly (. p<. 0.05) influenced by sand and silt content, electrical conductivity (EC. e), vegetation cover percentage, salt crust and for by texture composition. In particular, the discriminant analysis obtained for the different salt crust classes for archaeal community stressed the membership of one of the two clusters to the class with the lower salt crust percentage (0-40%)

IMPACT OF ENGINEERED NANOPARTICLES ON VIRULENCE OF XANTHOMONAS ORYZAE PV ORYZAE AND ON RICE SENSITIVITY AT ITS INFECTION

The present work of nanotoxicity wants to propose a new plant model starting from the rice plant. The model takes into consideration the impact of engineered nanoparticles (Ag, Co, Ni, CeO2, Fe3O4, TiO2) on rice plants that were weakened by infections of Xanthomonas oryzae pv oryzae bacteria. The results indicate that some NPs increase the rice sensitivity to the pathogen while others decrease the virulence of the pathogen towards rice. No-enrichment in component metal concentration is detected in above organs of rice, with exception of Ni-NPs treatment. An imbalance of major elements in infected rice crops treated with NPs was investigated

Assessment of water quality and soil salinity in the agricultural coastal plain (Ravenna, North Italy)

To improve knowledge on salt leaching suitability on different soils, in Arenosols and Cambisols croplands in the coastal area of Ravenna (Italy), soil samples were collected in the non-irrigation winter period and irrigation summer period. Concurrently, waters of the canal network were also investigated. Soil samples were analyzed for pH, carbonate, total organic carbon (TOC), particle size distribution, electrical conductivity (EC), bulk density (BD) and water content at field capacity (FC). Water samples were investigated for pH, EC, biological and chemical oxygen demand, sodium adsorption ratio, phosphorus, nitrogen, sulfates and chlorides. All soils had low TOC concentrations and Arenosols showed the lowest clay content, BD and FC. Soils had similar EC values in winter, but in summer the lowest ones were observed in Arenosols, suggesting that irrigation mitigated salinization in Arenosols, while the high clay content, BD and FC prevented or limited the salt leaching in Cambisols. In summer, the increase of total nitrogen and biological oxygen demand, especially in drainage channels, might suggest the leaching of soluble nutrients and organic matter from soils due to the high irrigation water volumes. Finally, our findings stress the need to consider soil type and properties to contrast soil salinization without negative effects on soil C leaching caused by salt leaching practice

Intergenerational income mobility: Access to top jobs, the low-pay no-pay cycle, and the role of education in a common framework

Studies of intergenerational mobility have typically focused on estimating the average persistence across generations. Here, we use the relatively new unconditional quantile regression technique to consider how intergenerational persistence varies across the distribution of sons’ earnings. We find a J-shaped relationship between parental income and sons’ earnings, with parental income a strong predictor of labour market success for those at the bottom, and to an even greater extent, the top of the earnings distribution. We explore the role of early skills, education and early labour market attachment in shaping this pattern for the first time. Worryingly, we find that the association with childhood parental income dominating that of a high level of education at the top of the distribution of earnings. In this sense education is not as meritocratic as we might hope, as those with the same detailed educational attainment do not achieve equal access to top jobs. Early labour market spells out of work have lasting effects on those at the bottom, alongside parental income