Combining the conservation of biodiversity with the provision of ecosystem services in urban green infrastructure planning. Critical features arising from a case study in the metropolitan area of Rome

A large number of green infrastructure (GI) projects have recently been proposed, planned and implemented in European cities following the adoption of the GI strategy by the EU Commission in 2013. Although this policy tool is closely related to biodiversity conservation targets, some doubts have arisen as regards the ability of current urban GI to provide beneficial effects not only for human societies but also for the ecological systems that host them. The aim of this work is to review the features that should be considered critical when searching for solutions that simultaneously support biodiversity and guarantee the provision of ecosystem services (ES) in urban areas. Starting from a case study in the metropolitan area of Rome, we highlight the role of urban trees and forests as proxies for overall biodiversity and as main ecosystem service providers. We look beyond the individual functional features of plant species and vegetation communities to promote the biogeographic representativity, ecological coherence and landscape connectivity of new or restored GI elements

Role of the small integrin-binding ligand N-linked glycoprotein (SIBLING), bone sialoprotein (BSP) in bone development and remodeling.

14 pagesInternational audienceMembers of the “small, integrin binding ligand, N-linked glycoprotein” (SIBLING) family, which have both mineral binding and cell binding (integrins) abilities, appear as potent regulators of bone mineralisation and remodeling. Among these, osteopontin (OPN) and bone sialoprotein (BSP) are highly expressed in early bone. Gene knockout of OPN results in increased mineralisation and a resorption defect making mutant mice unable to respond to such challenges as hindlimb unloading. We recently published the phenotype of mice with a knockout of BSP (BSP-/-). We showed that BSP-/- mice are smaller than the wild type counterpart, with a lower bone-formation rate but a higher trabecular volume at 4 month, due to impaired resorption. Lack of BSP results in slower bone repair in a cortical defect model, but does not prevent bone loss due to unloading, in contrast to OPN knockout. These results highlight the specificity of BSP roles in the bone context, as well as the nonredundancy of function of SIBLING family members in skeletal biology

Inner ear ossification and mineralization kinetics in human embryonic development - microtomographic and histomorphological study.

Little is known about middle and inner ear development during the second and third parts of human fetal life. Using ultra-high resolution Microcomputed Tomography coupled with bone histology, we performed the first quantitative middle and inner ear ossification/mineralization evaluation of fetuses between 17 and 39 weeks of gestational age. We show distinct ossification paces between ossicles, with a belated development of the stapes. A complete cochlear bony covering is observed within the time-frame of the onset of hearing, whereas distinct time courses of ossification for semicircular canal envelopes are observed in relation to the start of vestibular functions. The study evidences a spatio-temporal relationship between middle and inner ear structure development and the onset of hearing and balance, critical senses for the fetal adaptation to birth

Gliding and Quasi-harmonic Tremor Behaviour of Raung Volcano: November 2014 Crisis Period Case Study

DOI: 10.17014/ijog.5.1.13-21The seismic activity of Raung Volcano was raised on 11 November 2014. As many as 1709 tremors were recorded followed by continuous tremors appearing in late November 2014. Quasi-harmonic and gliding tremors appeared in a spectrogram on 12 November 2014. The quasi-harmonic tremors refer to tremors that have no fully harmonic form in spectrum. The gliding harmonic tremors refer to harmonic tremors that have frequency jumps with either positive or negative increment. After signal restitution processing, the Maximum Entropy Spectral Analysis (MESA) method was applied in Raung recordings resulting the spectrum and the spectrogram of tremors. The quasi-harmonic tremors have the monotonic spectrum in its head and centre segment, and the harmonic one in its tails. There are twenty-four spectrums that show frequency changes between the monotonic and harmonic. The similarity between the fundamental frequency range of the monotonic and harmonic ones suggests that both signals are excited from a common resonator. The alternating of monotonic and harmonic respectively over this period is qualitatively similar with Julian\u27s synthetic time series about the nonlinear oscillator model. It is suggested that Raung Volcano magma pressure is sizeable to make a chaotic vibration. A pressure increasing in Raung magmatic conduit causes the increasing of P-wave velocity and makes a positive gliding frequency

Causality estimates among brain cortical areas by Partial Directed Coherence: simulations and application to real data

The problem of the definition and evaluation of brain connectivity has become a central one in neuroscience during the latest years, as a way to understand the organization and interaction of cortical areas during the execution of cognitive or motor tasks. Among various methods established during the years, the Partial Directed Coherence (PDC) is a frequency-domain approach to this problem, based on a multivariate autoregressive modeling of time series and on the concept of Granger causality. In this paper we propose the use of the PDC method on cortical signals estimated from high resolution EEG recordings, a non invasive method which exhibits a higher spatial resolution than conventional cerebral electromagnetic measures. The principle contributions of this work are the results of a simulation study, testing the performances of PDC, and a statistical analysis (via the ANOVA, analysis of variance) of the influence of different levels of Signal to Noise Ratio and temporal length, as they have been systematically imposed on simulated signals. An application to high resolution EEG recordings during a foot movement is also presented

3D micro-computed tomography of trabecular and cortical bone architecture with application to a rat model of immobilisation osteoporosis

Bone mass and microarchitecture are the main determinants of bone strength. Three-dimensional micro-computed tomogrpahy has the potential to examine complete bones of small laboratory animals with very high resolution in a non-invasive way. In the presented work, the proximal part of the tibiae of hindlimb unloaded and control rats were measured with 3D MicroCT, and the secondary spongiosa of the scanned region was evaluated using direct evaluation techniques that do not require model assumptions. For determination of the complete bone status, the cortex of the tibiae was evaluated and characterised by its thickness. It is shown that with the proposed anatomically conforming volume of interest (VOI), up to an eight-fold volume increase can be evaluated compared to cubic or spherical VOIs. A pronounced trabecular bone loss of −50% is seen after 23 days of tail suspension. With the new evaluation techniques, it is shown that most of this bone loss is caused by the thinning of trabeculae, and to a lesser extent by a decrease in their number. What changes most radically is the structure type: the remaining bone is more rod-like than the control group's bone. Cortical bone decreases less than trabecular bone, with only −18% after 23 day

LTMaker: a tool for semiautomatic reconstruction of the embryonic lineage tree from 4D-microscopy

Studies of animal development using a 4Dmicroscopy system generate an immense amount of image data. In order to properly analyze the recorded embryogenesis, a computer-aided systematic process of categorization of cells from the image data should be accomplished. We present a software tool named LTMaker for the systematic semiautomatic identification of embryonic cells centers and also to determine the underlying linage tree. The program saves the generated data to a file so that further analysis of the embryo can be performed with external tools.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Plant communities of Italy. The vegetation prodrome

The Vegetation Prodrome of Italy was promoted in 2012 by the Italian "Ministry of Environment, Land and Sea Protection", in collaboration with the "Italian Society of Botany", to provide a comprehensive and systematic catalogue and description of Italian plant communities. The Prodrome that is presented in this paper is the first full organic synthesis of the vegetation of Italy at the alliance syntaxonomic level. It fulfils several needs, the main one being a unified and comprehensive national framework that may make an important contribution to the definition of the European Vegetation Prodrome. Syntaxonomy, as well as taxonomy, is sometimes based on considerations that may in part diverge: several authors tend to favour models that are divisive or aggregative to a greater or lesser extent in terms of flora, biogeography and ecology. These different points of view stimulate the scientific debate and allow the adoption of a framework that is more widely supported. The Prodrome includes 75 classes, 2 subclasses, 175 orders, 6 suborders and 393 alliances. The classes were grouped into nine broad categories according to structural, physiognomic and synecological elements rather than to syntaxonomic criteria. The rank, full valid name, any synonymies and incorrect names are provided for each syntaxon. The short declaration highlights the physiognomy, synecology, syndynamics and distribution of the plant communities that belong to the syntaxon. The Prodrome of the Italian Vegetation is linked to the European Strategy for Biodiversity, the European Habitats Directive and the European Working Groups related to the ecosystems and their services. In addition to basic applications, the Prodrome can be used as a framework for scientific research related to the investigation of the relationships between plant communities and the environmental factors that influence their composition and distribution

Defecting or not defecting: how to "read" human behavior during cooperative games by EEG measurements

Understanding the neural mechanisms responsible for human social interactions is difficult, since the brain activities of two or more individuals have to be examined simultaneously and correlated with the observed social patterns. We introduce the concept of hyper-brain network, a connectivity pattern representing at once the information flow among the cortical regions of a single brain as well as the relations among the areas of two distinct brains. Graph analysis of hyper-brain networks constructed from the EEG scanning of 26 couples of individuals playing the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma reveals the possibility to predict non-cooperative interactions during the decision-making phase. The hyper-brain networks of two-defector couples have significantly less inter-brain links and overall higher modularity - i.e. the tendency to form two separate subgraphs - than couples playing cooperative or tit-for-tat strategies. The decision to defect can be "read" in advance by evaluating the changes of connectivity pattern in the hyper-brain network