Plants, as sessile organisms, have evolved complex strategies to cope with adverse environmental conditions. However, crop species have been selected for centuries by humans for traits such as yield and organoleptic features. This selection has been carried out to detriment of other traits, such as the ability to grow under limiting conditions or to resist to pathogen attack. This phenomenon causes severe damages in agriculture, both as yield loss and as deterioration of food-stuffs and harvest ...

The prestigious Science magazine reports about ahighly innovative mathematical method which sheds new light into the dynamics of turbulent flows. The method has been developed by a US-italian team, including researchers from the Istituto Applicazioni Calcolo "Mauro Picone", National Research Council, in Rome, Italy. Turbulent processes play an important role in many engineering applications, for example, in the flow of air around cars or aircraft. Even though the basic equations governing the ...

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 ...

Begun in 2002 as part of the 5th framework project, the network "Fractal structures and self-organization" was finally concluded during 2003 with the realisation of an experimental apparatus with which the properties of granular materials may be studied. This has been possible also through financing from MIUR within the FIRB project "Rheological propoerties of granular materials," in collaboration with the department of physics at "La Sapienza." The apparatus constitutes the first and only ...

In order to supply support to Cultural Heritage experts in their work of objective diagnosis of the degradation of historical buildings, in the past decade various specific methodologies were proposed and developed at the IAC. The activities are partially financed by the national project SIINDA and contracts with the Region of Val d'Aosta. In order to overcome traditional investigation protocols, the research is focussed on the optimization of the attainment of environmental information, ...

The Hurrians represented one of the most important civilisations in the Ancient Near East between the III and II millennia BC. Their culture has passed down to us almost exclusively in the form of written documents. Thousands of cuneiform clay tablets, discovered in various sites in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Anatolia, tell us of the history, literature, religious beliefs and judicial and economic principles of this people, whose rich culture embraced a wide horizon, from north-eastern Iraq as far ...

The direct measurement of wind and turbulence from aerial platforms has been made since several decades, but only recently it has been possible to use small aircrafts, with consequent important perspectives for the atmospheric and biospheric research. In such context, ISAFoM bought and instrumented two SKY Arrow 650 TCNS ERA - constituting one of ` the Large Scale Infratructures' of CNR - equipped with BAT probes (Best Atmospheric Turbulence), developed by NOAA-ATDD (USA) and ARA (Australia), ...

During the past few years, nanotechnology has been recognized as a key field in a number of different applications. Among new molecular structures proposed in such a field, remarkable interest has been gained by those based on carbon nanotubes. In particular, recent investigations focus on functionalization of carbon nanotubes, i. e. on the design of nanotube-based nanostructured systems in which chemical and physical properties can be tuned through the interaction with other molecules. A ...

In the recent years a tremendous increase in economic, environmental and human losses caused by weather hazards, especially floods and droughts, has raised the alarm over the possibility that the recent increases in extraordinary atmospheric events were are due to a changing climate. The analyses till now performed on daily series show a positive trend in the mean amount per wet day (i.e. precipitation intensity) for some areas and a tendency toward higher frequencies of heavy and extreme ...

Pietro Piovani was the first to formulate the general project of a Critical Edition of Vico's Works in 1972, in the second number of "Bollettino del Centro di studi vichiani". His aim was to start up in a new approach to Vico's opus, focused on a remarkable multidisciplinary strain, and to get away from the ecdotical Tradition by Croce and Nicolini, combining philological and philosophical Method. Benedetto Croce started in 1904, with the first redaction of the Bibliografia vichiana, the ...

The activities of the ISPF Milan Section center on two great projects: they are dedicated to the edition and the appreciation of the works by two of the most representative authors in the Italian philosophy and science from Renaissance to Enlightenment. Girolamo Cardano is one of the most important and questioned figure in the European Renaissance. He was engaged in a great project aimed at reforming the encyclopaedia of learning and he made a very remarkable contribution to the scientific and ...

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 ...

The understanding that probiotic foods can have beneficial effects on health has recently led to an increase in consumer demand for such products, and to an increase in their commercial value. Daily intake of probiotic micro-organisms, such as Lactobacilli and Bifidobacteria, contributes to maintaining and improving the balance of intestinal microbe populations, and their presence in high numbers poses a severe obstacle to gastro-intestinal disturbances and improves well-being of the organism by ...

This research is being carried out in the field of autonomous collective robotics. The primary goal of the research is investigating principles to automatically design the controllers of autonomous robots that have to coordinate in order to accomplish common tasks. In the long term this research will lead to applications in areas such as open field and marine monitoring, people rescuing, stock automatic transport, traffic control, material routing. The research is also investigating principles ...

The magnetic anisotropy determines the orientation and the stability of the magnetization which is a crucial parameter for a large part of the technological applications. The possibility of modify the magnetic anisotropy of small clusters by changing the shape, composition and dimensions makes such systems of evident applicative interest. A study of the anisotropy and magnetic momenta of metallic clusters constituted by 1÷100 atoms of Co and deposited onto a crystalline substrate of Pt(111) ...

X-ray Reflectivity (XR) measurements allow an atomic scale determination of the morphological characteristics of thin films, such as their thickness and surface roughness. In the present work, the Energy Dispersive (ED) variant of the conventional XR technique is used in-situ to obtain, for the first time, the (minimal) morphological changes of gas sensing thin films of Ruthenium Phtalocyanine (RuPc)2 upon working. The real-time collection of Reflectivity spectra during the exposure of the films ...

The experimental watershed "Bonis" is located in the mountain area of Sila Greca (39°25'15''N, 16°12'38''W), Calabria, Italy, at an elevation ranging between 975 and 1300 m a.s.l.. Almost 93% of the total area (139 hectares) is covered by forest stands, dominated by about 50-years-old Calabrian pine (Pinus laricio Poiret) forests, whose origin is artificial and, secondarily, natural. Also small stands of chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) and riparian forests of common alder (Alnus glutinosa L.) ...

The oceanic lithosphere covers 2/3 of our Planet: understanding how it forms and evolves is a major challenge in the Earth sciences. New crust is continuously being created by partial melting of the upwelling mantle; and the melt rises towards the ocean floor, cools, solidifies and is then 'rafted' away to either side of the ridge by seafloor spreading. Mid-ocean ridge (MOR) topography, structure and composition indicate that near zero age processes of lithosphere formation vary along ridge ...

A working prototype was built that enables a blind person to perceive a painting through touch and hearing, exploiting the phenomenon of synesthesia. Seeing a painting presents for the blind person two problems: form and color. A painting is a 2D representation of a 3D object, which engages the perceiving subject in cognitively reconstructing the full 3D objects. This may be solved through some kind of appropriate tactual experience. Color, however, cannot be tactually perceived: it is a purely ...

Since the construction and publication of river buffalo standard karyotype with six different chromosome banding techniques, the laboratory of Animal Cytogenetics and Gene Mapping of the ISPAAM has been focalised part of its scientific activity in the genetic improvement of river buffalo, a species of great economic importance in the world, with about 130,000 million of heads, and in Italy, with about 220,000, mostly in Campania region (Southern Italy). Our studies have been addressed to both ...

The "replacement problem" has been frequently studied in literature utilising different methodologies. The method traditionally used to solve this problem is to formulate it as a decisional Markovian Process and to optimise it using Dynamic Programming (DP). There are, however, problems associated with the use of DP. The decision to cull is based solely upon the expected performance of the animal in question and that of it's replacement. Therefore, information concerning the cows performance in ...

Traditionally the marine atlases were based on the visual reports taken from ships. On top of the unavoidable errors, these data carry with them a basic flaw, because of the care with which the captains try to avoid as far as possible the stormy areas. Besides these data are concentrated only on the main shipping lanes. More recently, during the last 10-20 years, three new sources of data have become available: buoys, satellites and numerical models. However, notwithstanding the enormous ...

In recent years, growing evidence has indicated that genetic predisposition appears to be an important causal factor of TLE, but positive linkage was obtained only in one form characterized by auditory seizures, which led to the identification of the underlying gene. The difficulty of identifying genes involved in TLE rests mainly on the fact that TLE, like most epileptic diseases, is typically a complex disorder in which more than one gene, with or without the influence of acquired factors, act ...

A meaningful step has been completed in the field of radar-interferometry at ISSIA seat of Bari. The interferometric phase, which is normally measured in the principal component alone (i.e. within a cycle of 6,28 rad), is finally measurable in its entirety, directly correlated to the distance between the interferometer and the observed object such as to other quantities that influence its value, the possibility of subtle displacements of targets on the ground or the atmospheric delay on the ...

The research activity carried on by the Visual Computing Lab in the field of 3D Modeling and Interactive Graphics for applications to Cultural Heritage has led to new, important results. Such results are described in the papers: [A] Adaptive TetraPuzzles: Efficient Out-of-Core Construction and Visualization of Gigantic Multiresolution Polygonal Models P. Cignoni, F. Ganovelli, F. Ponchio e R. Scopigno (ISTI-CNR, Pisa), E. Gobbetti e F. Marton (CRS4, Cagliari) [B] Protected Interactive 3D ...

The objective of the research is to realize an Intelligent Vision Machine, developed in hierarchical levels, for the detection of illegal activities of stealing in archaeological sites. The first level detects the activities, identified as significant movements, in the area of interest giving rise to an alarm at a remote control station where human operators take decisions about the event by using also the transmitted images. The second level analyses the observed activities in order to reduce ...

E-Science has been defined as large scale scientific research carried out through distributed global collaborations enabled by networks, requiring shared access to large data collections, large computing resources, and high-performance visualisation. The benefits to research and society resulting from the ability to process, disseminate, and share information in unprecedented dimensions, has prompted worldwide initiatives to develop the cyberinfrastructure needed to empower e-Science. An example ...

As a result of their importance and value, works of art require the development of non-destructive and non-contact techniques to the greatest extent possible. Moreover, because of the immovable nature of some artworks (mural paintings, sculptures, buildings, etc.), the development of portable instrumentation for in-situ investigation, analysis and monitoring is an important requirement. To date, only some non-contact portable equipments are available in a number that appears low compared to the ...

Internet continuously poses the delicate problem of how and to what extent two equally fundamental rights of citizens can be reconciled: the protection of minors from harmful content on the one hand and the freedom of speech on the other. The fact that this is often transformed into an authentic dilemma is demonstrated from the recent decision of the United States Court of Appeals (June 29, 2004), in which in order to grant the freedom of speech the Court had to indirectly defend the pushers of ...

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 ...