Lab-Scale Treatability Tests for the Thermal Desorption of Hydrocarbon-Contaminated Soils

Within an integrated management plan for contaminated site remediation at a given territorial scale, the performance of treatability tests could be useful and/or expressly requested by the control authority on a site-specific basis to evaluate the overall feasibility of a given remedial option. The thermal desorption process appears to be a favorable treatment technology for organic contaminants. In this context, a particular lab-scale, indirectly heated desorber for treatability tests was originally developed and first applied to natural soils with different textures (silty sand, loam, silt clay, and clayey silt) that were “ad hoc” highly contaminated with diesel oil at various desorption process conditions (heating temperature in the range of 300–390°C, and reactor retention time in the range of 40–120 min). The Italian soil threshold level for heavy hydrocarbons (C > 12) of 50 mg kg^?1 (dry matter) was assumed to be the successful goal of the treatability studies. In addition to the individuation of the favorable desorption process conditions for each soil, also in terms of a composite evaluation of heating temperature and retention time, the comparative experimental results provided useful indications of the possible influence of soil texture, the reduction of initial soil organic matter, and the evaluation of kinetic rate constants.     

Altered Phase-Relationship between Peripheral Oscillators and Environmental Time in Cry1 or Cry2 Deficient Mouse Models for Early and Late Chronotypes

The mammalian circadian system is composed of a light-entrainable central clock in the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) of the brain and peripheral clocks in virtually any other tissue. It allows the organism to optimally adjust metabolic, physiological and behavioral functions to the physiological needs it will have at specific time of the day. According to the resonance theory, such rhythms are only advantageous to an organism when in tune with the environment, which is illustrated by the adverse health effects originating from chronic circadian disruption by jetlag and shift work. Using short-period Cry1 and long-period Cry2 deficient mice as models for morningness and eveningness, respectively, we explored the effect of chronotype on the phase relationship between the central SCN clock and peripheral clocks in other organs. Whereas the behavioral activity patterns and circadian gene expression in the SCN of light-entrained Cry1^-/- and Cry2^-/- mice largely overlapped with that of wild type mice, expression of clock and clock controlled genes in liver, kidney, small intestine, and skin was shown to be markedly phase-advanced or phase-delayed, respectively. Likewise, circadian rhythms in urinary corticosterone were shown to display a significantly altered phase relationship similar to that of gene expression in peripheral tissues. We show that the daily dissonance between peripheral clocks and the environment did not affect the lifespan of Cry1^-/- or Cry2^-/- mice. Nonetheless, the phase-shifted peripheral clocks in light-entrained mice with morningness and eveningness-like phenotypes may have implications for personalized preventive and therapeutic (i.e. chronomodulation-based) health care for people with early and late chronotypes.     

Distribution de Megaporellaboulangeri Deloffre et Beun, 1986 (algue dasycladale) dans le Jurassique du bassin atlantique marocain

The recent biostratigraphic and micropaleontologic works permitted to specify the distribution of Megaporellaboulangeri Deloffre and Beun in the Jurassic of the Moroccan Atlantic basin. The lower limit of the extension of this dasycladale alga, earlier attribued to the Early Kimmeridgian by Deloffre and Beun (1986), is currently placed in the Early Callovian, on the basis of the age provided by Megaporellaboulangeri biozone. The Otternstellaarabica biozone dates the upper limit of the extension of the species of the Early Oxfordian. Megaporellaboulangeri proliferates in the borders of the basin where the internal lagoons facies dominate, however it is absent in the western parts with open sea facies.     

Predicting haplotype carriers from SNP genotypes in Bos taurus through linear discriminant analysis

Background

SNP (single nucleotide polymorphisms) genotype data are increasingly available in cattle populations and, among other things, can be used to predict carriers of specific haplotypes. It is therefore convenient to have a practical statistical method for the accurate classification of individuals into carriers and non-carriers. In this paper, we present a procedure combining variable selection (i.e. the selection of predictive SNPs) and linear discriminant analysis for the identification of carriers of a haplotype on BTA19 (Bos taurus autosome 19) known to be associated with reduced cow fertility. A population of 3645 Brown Swiss cows and bulls genotyped with the 54K SNP-chip was available for the analysis.

Results

The overall error rate for the prediction of haplotype carriers was on average very low (∼≤1%). The error rate was found to depend on the number of SNPs in the model and their density around the region of the haplotype on BTA19. The minimum set of SNPs to still achieve accurate predictions was 5, with a total test error rate of 1.59.

Conclusions

The paper describes a procedure to accurately identify haplotype carriers from SNP genotypes in cattle populations. Very few misclassifications were observed, which indicates that this is a very reliable approach for potential applications in cattle breeding.     

Human-mediated introgression of exotic chukar (Alectoris chukar, Galliformes) genes from East Asia into native Mediterranean partridges

Mediterranean red-legged (Alectoris rufa) and rock (Alectoris graeca) partridge populations are affected by genetic pollution. The chukar partridge (Alectoris chukar), a species only partly native to Europe, is the most frequently introgressive taxon detected in the genome of hybrid partridges. Both theoretical (evolutionary) and practical (resources management) matters spur to get insight into the geographic origin of the A. chukar hybridizing swarm. The phenotypic A. rufa populations colonizing the easternmost part of the distribution range of this species, the islands of Elba (Italy) and Corsica (France), were investigated. The analysis of both mitochondrial (mtDNA: Cytochrome-b gene plus Control Region: 2,250 characters) and nuclear (Short Tandem Repeats, STR; Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA, RAPD) genomes of 25 wild (Elba) and 20 captive (Corsica) partridges, disclosed spread introgression of chukar origin also in these populations. All mtDNA haplotypes of Elba and Corsica partridges along with those we obtained from other A. rufa (total, n = 111: Italy, Spain, France) and A. graeca (n = 6, Italy), were compared with the mtDNA haplotypes of chukars (n = 205) sampled in 20 countries. It was found that the A. chukar genes detected in red-legged (n = 43) and rock partridges (n = 4) of Spain, France and Italy as well as in either introduced (Italy) or native (Greece, Turkey) chukars (n = 35) were all from East Asia. Hence, a well-defined geographic origin of the exotic chukar genes polluting the genome of native Mediterranean A. rufa and A. graeca (inter-specific level) as well as A. chukar (intra-specific level), was demonstrated.     

Bilingualism Accentuates Children's Conversational Understanding

Background

Although bilingualism is prevalent throughout the world, little is known about the extent to which it influences children''s conversational understanding. Our investigation involved children aged 3–6 years exposed to one or more of four major languages: English, German, Italian, and Japanese. In two experiments, we examined the children''s ability to identify responses to questions as violations of conversational maxims (to be informative and avoid redundancy, to speak the truth, be relevant, and be polite).

Principal Findings

In Experiment 1, with increasing age, children showed greater sensitivity to maxim violations. Children in Italy who were bilingual in German and Italian (with German as the dominant language L1) significantly outperformed Italian monolinguals. In Experiment 2, children in England who were bilingual in English and Japanese (with English as L1) significantly outperformed Japanese monolinguals in Japan with vocabulary age partialled out.

Conclusions

As the monolingual and bilingual groups had a similar family SES background (Experiment 1) and similar family cultural identity (Experiment 2), these results point to a specific role for early bilingualism in accentuating children''s developing ability to appreciate effective communicative responses.