Recent news of mercury contamination in the Priolo-Agusta-Melilli industrial zone (Sicily) brought to public attention the seriousness of mercury pollution on human health and ecosystems. Mercury pollution is a long standing environmental problem, going back to the 19th century, starting with mercury used in gold extraction in North America; this practice is still widely used in Laos, Vietnam, Tanzania and Venezuela today. Mercury is much used in the manufacturing industry (eg., chlor-alkali ...

HABs (Harmful Algal Blooms) are outbreaks of microalgae toxic to humans, as well as microalgae having a negative impact on the ecosystem through production of ichthyotoxins or causing conditions noxious to the habitat, such as hypoxia to anoxia. Two groups of organisms can be distincted among HAB species: 1) toxin producers, that may contaminate seafood and cause problems to the public health or fish kills and 2) organisms responsible for events known as red tides or discoloured waters, with ...

The control aof the carbon dioxide atmospheric loading, the target of the Kyoto Protocol, is not yet implemented for the resistence to introdure cuts in the use of fossil fuels. The capture of carbon dioxide and its storage in natural sites or its utilization may bring in a new perspective in the use of fossil fuels. Marine biomass represents a form of renewable energy more effective than the terrestyrial for the higher photosynthetic activity of algae with respect to superior plants. To date ...

Neutron stars do not shine like "normal" stars do: isolated neutron stars are visible only because 1) they are born very hot in the SN event which generates them or 2) they slowly lose their rotational energy through radiation processes connected with the superstrong magnetic field co-rotating with the star. Both such thermal and non-thermal processes contribute to neutron star luminosities in X-rays, especially in the .1-to-10 kev energy region. It is precisely for this two-decade range that ...

Our Galaxy is a bright source of gamma-rays that has been observed over many decades of energy. The interstellar medium is probably responsible for most of the Galactic emission below 10 keV, and above 300 keV. However, in the soft gamma-ray domain (>20 keV)the nature of the Galactic emission was still uncertain and a matter of debate. The lack of sensitive, high resolution observations did not allow for the relative contribution of compact sources and the interstellar medium to be ...

La comprensione dei processi geodinamici e l'analisi dei fattori che ne influenzano l'evoluzione rappresenta un traguardo fondamentale nell'ambito delle Scienze della Terra. Tra i vari processi, l'estensione continentale e la formazione delle rift valleys riveste un ruolo di notevole importanza in quanto precede la formazione dei bacini oceanici. L'importanza delle aree di estensione crostale è inoltre legata alla presenza di giacimenti minerari e idrocarburi ed all'elevato impatto sociale ...

Many plants form and emit in the atmosphere foliar volatile organic compounds belonging to the isoprenoid family. It is now known that the isoprenoids emitted by the vegetation are directly formed from photosynthetic carbon through a specific, and entirely chloroplastic, metabolic pathway. But it is still unclear why plants invest on average 2 to 10% of the photosynthetic Carbon for forming these compounds apparently useless in the metabolism and therefore re-emitted in the atmosphere. At the ...

Marble exploitation in the Apuane Alps gives rise to rock wall faces and underground voids of uncommon size and shape. The trend towards gigantism in quarry operations (the height of the faces increases up to 150m, the length of underground voids to 80-120m, their height to 30-50m and their span to 20-40m) is sustained by the higher outputs required and favored by the growing mechanization of the stopes. It is known however that ornamental stones exploitation, both surface and underground, is ...

On December 30th 2002 the inhabited coastal areas of Stromboli Island were hit by a series of tsunami waves up to 10 metre high. Tsunami waves were the effect of at least two destructive landslides which involved the submarine and subaerial Sciara del Fuoco slope, respectively. Sciara del Fuoco is the NW flank of the Stromboli volcano, where the products of the volcanic activity accumulate. At present the NW flank looks like a regular slope above and below the sea level. Actually it is the ...

It is known that changes are taking place in the composition of the atmosphere and in the resulting impact of multipollutants on the environment and land. Cultural heritage is particularly vulnerable to such changes. The results of the EC-financed CARAMEL project, wound up in 2003, showed that carbonaceous particulate has now become the main damage factor on the architectural and archaeological heritage. Measurements performed in a number of European cities (Milan, Rome, Paris, London and ...

Sardinia Radio Telescope (SRT) is the main project of the Istituto di Radioastronomia (IRA), aimed to build one of the world largest single dish radio telescopes. The instrument, a 64m dish of modern design, is intended to operate with multi focal postions in order to cover almost the full frequency spectrum between 300 MHz and 100 GHz. The site is about 30 km from Cagliari, main city in Sardinia Island. SRT will joint the Medicina (Bologna) and Noto (Siracusa) IRA radio telescopes to complete ...

In Italy most of the drinking water comes from groundwater that, according to update surveys, are often polluted by organic chemicals such as chlorinated solvents and pesticides. These pollutants reach groundwater because of rainfalls, over irrigation and/or unauthorized disposals. The removal of such toxic and persistent pollutants at potabilization plants is achieved by specific treatments such as adsorption onto activated carbon or membrane filtration. However, these treatments are ...

The parks of the metropolitan areas constitute a "window" through which it is possible to explore the subsoil. An intersesting characteristic of the metropolitan parks is that they have experienced a generally low anthropic interaction in the historical times. Therefore the subsoil below their surface preserves the geological and environmental features which are the consequence of the processes occurred in that areas along the time. The geologic-physical characterization of the subsoil of the ...

Polar ice caps conserve within them exceptional archives that can be worked upon to reveal important climatic and environmental information. The layers of snow that accumulate year after year contain diverse substances that are transported by the wind in the form of fine particles to remote areas. These are then incorporated into the snow mantle during precipitation and via post-depositional processes overtime. The dust encapsulated in the snow can be of anthropogenic origin, from manmade ...

Object of the study The contamination of aquifers by chlorinated solvents, caused by their widespread use in industrial processes and their improper handling and disposal, is today a major problem. The pollution of water resources by organo-halogenated compounds, started during 50s and continued for several decades, and is common to all the industrialised countries, including Italy. For the Italian legislation the decontamination of the polluted site by the responsible of the pollution or, if ...

Geological-geomorphological framework and site effects at San Giuliano di Puglia (CB) and othter localities struck by the seismic sequence of October-November 2002. Since Oct. 31 2002 a seismic sequence has affected a sector of the Molise Apennines between the Fortore and Biferno river valleys. Although the magnitude of the two main events (Ml 5.4 and 5.3) is lower than that of the large historical earthquakes of the Apennines, some villages experienced significant damage and casualties ...

THE AGRICULTURAL REUSE OF RECLAIMED WASTE-WATERS SLUDGES The wide-spread technologies currently applied to the treatment of municipal waste waters involve high energetic consumptions and produce a huge quantity of sludges containing heavy metals, organic compounds, pathogenous agents as well as appreciable amount of nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. The EU directives, namely EC 91/271/EEC, do not permit the spreading of waste waters sludges on the ground, whereas the ...

When monitoring landsldies (Fig.1) it is of utmost importance obtaining set of data that are: i - continuous; ii - reliable; iii - obtained contemporaneously by means of different techniques and from different sources, in oredr to obtai a model that is as consistent as possible with resect to the real phenomenon to model. Using innovative and technologically advanced instrumentation, allows the continuous monitoring and the gathering of the different parameters that characterize slope movements, ...

In the last few years catastrophic rainfall events have occurred in the Mediterranean area, leading to floods, flash floods and shallow landsliding. These recent events have outlined the urgent need for: · the implementation of forecasting systems able to predict meteorological conditions leading to disastrous runoff occurrences; · some policies for issuing warnings, or alarms, to local authorities and the population. Indeed, early warning systems in urban areas appear to be the only non ...

The research concerned the selection of new Arabidopsis mutants disturbed in the growth of the roots in general, and in particular in gravitropism and circumnutational movements. In the year 2002 the cloning of the AtRHA1 gene, that characterizes the Atrha1 mutant of Arabidopsis, was pursued. This mutant, isolated from the Feldmann collection of T-tagged mutants some years ago, shows in the roots reduced gravitropic response and notable resistance to the plant hormones auxin and ...

Every year, scientists put on their mittens and collect meteorites in Antarctica. Of the roughly 37,000 meteorites listed as of 2002, about 30,000 come from Antarctica or, to be precise, the ice sheets covering that continent. Antarctica is the best place to collect meteorites because they accumulate on blue ice fields, upstream of topographic barriers. Meteorites fall and become buried in the ice; the ice flows; the ice slows and is lifted up near a barrier; finally, wind ablation exhumes and ...

Researchers of the Institute of Radioastronomy are working in collaboration with collegues at the European Southern Observatory and at MPIA-Heidelberg to observe and interpret optical emission from hot spots in radio galaxies. Part of this work has recently published in Science (Prieto, Brunetti, Mack, 2002, 298, p. 193) and received attention in several magazines and newspapers. Hot spots (HSs) are regions of enhanced radio emission located at the end of the radio lobes of powerful ...

Gamma-Ray-Burst studies have rapidly become one of the hot frontiers in astrophysical research, thanks to the BeppoSAX italian satellite. This mission, managed by the IASF in Rome together with Bologna and Palermo sections, has been launched in 1996 and successfully concluded in 2002, with a wealth of bursts data. It opened an entirely new research chapter: the physics of afterglows, lower energy residual emissions of these cosmic explosions, whose analysis led to the epochal discovery of ...

In 1987, the first observation of neutrinos from the gravitational collapse of a bleu giant in the Magellanic Clouds made the neutrino astrophysics an experimental science. Since then a number of different, more sensitive neutrino telescopes have been constructed and are observing the Galaxy, even in this moment, to search for the most catastrophic phenomena that occur in the universe. At the same time these phenomena as: supernovae, masses captured by black holes and merging binary stars, ...

INTEGRAL (International Gamma Ray Astrophysical Laboratory) has been successfully launched with a Proton rocket October the 17th, 2002 and injected into the predicted highly excentric orbit (10.000km perigee and 153.000km apogee). This ESA satellite is a Space Observatory, opened to the scientific community at large, and is an devoted to high resolution imaging and spectroscopy in the hard X-ray / soft gamma ray range. The mission is currently approved for a duration of 2 years with ...

Anthropogenic emissions, clouds and climate Clouds are the most important factor controlling the albedo (reflectivity) and hence the temperature of our planet. In fact, the surface of the Earth is covered by clouds 60% of the time on average, and clouds reflect the incoming solar radiation and cause cooling at the surface. Man-made aerosols have a strong influence on cloud optical properties, thus strongly affecting the albedo of the Earth. This climatic effect, called the "indirect aerosol ...

Specific biomarkers useful to evaluate the soil degradation level and the soil response (resilience) to regeneration practices have been tested and evaluated by the research group of "Soil Biochemical Fertility" at the Unit of Soil Chemistry of ISE-CNR. The biomarkers are part of an enzymatic pool made up of some hydrolases and oxidoreductases which reflect soil metabolism and are responsible for the mineral nutrient release from natural organic macro-compounds (cellulose, proteins, lipids, ...

In several European countries, TSE (Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies) epidemic in cattle is a major economic problem for the sustainability of breeding activities. Moreover, concern is growing for public health with the transmission of TSE to human beings by consumption of contaminated meat (new variant of the disease). The soil can be contaminated and become a potential reservoir of TSE infectivity as a result of a) accidental dispersion from storage plants of meat and bone meal; b) ...

The issues that confront scientists studying continental margins are complex and range from drainage basin dynamics to sediment transport theory, sea level history and climate change. Many of the scientific concepts employed to understand societal problems like coastal pollution, hydrocarbon and ground water reservoirs, landslide hazards, and coastal erosion are deeply rooted in understanding sediment transport and stratigraphic sequence evolution. Two overarching questions behind these complex ...

Marine biofouling, whose global annual costs have been calculated to be about 6,5 billion of dollars, causes ship velocity reduction and dry docks stopping for hull scraping and antifouling protective coating repainting by new antifouling paints containing toxic biocides that gradually released; from their hulls should avoid fouling settlement but contemporarily contributing to environmental pollution, severely in some cases, especially in coastal areas. The IMO (International Maritime ...