First results of a study of the Etruscan tunnel and other hydraulic works on the Ponte Coperto stream (Cerveteri, Rome, Italy)

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 561-569
Author(s):  
Pio Bersani ◽  
Angelo Canalini ◽  
Walter Dragoni

The Etruscan tunnel called Ponte Coperto is located NW of Rome, near the town of Cerveteri. The Ponte Coperto tunnel, mapped for the first time during the present research and dug mainly in volcanic tuff lying below the lava flow, was built to drain a valley of about 8.5 km2, probably between the VII and VI century B.C. Before the tunnel construction, part of the valley was occupied by a swamp, whose reclamation was carried out by digging a long rectilinear canal of about 800 metres to the tunnel opening. Several hundred metres upstream of the tunnel entrance a secondary canal flows into the main one; this tributary canal drains a secondary valley, next to the principal one. Nowadays the Ponte Coperto tunnel, 170 m long, looks much larger than its original shape due to natural erosion that has widened and deepened it: during the dry season its discharge is negligible, but some calculations show that the peak discharge can be in the order of several dozens of cubic metres per second. The efficiency of the Ponte Coperto system is outstanding, as the hydraulic setup of the area is still that left by the Etruscans engineers more than two millennia ago: the tunnel and the canals keep draining both the surface and the ground waters from the more permeable rocks, and the valley is still healthy and cultivated. The Ponte Coperto system is a good example of the fact that Roman water engineering has its roots in Etruscan technology.

2008 ◽  
pp. 312-316
Author(s):  
Jacek Leociak

The title of this text, From the Book of Madness and Atrocity, published here for the first time, indicates its generic and stylistic specificity, its fragmentary, incomplete character. It suggests that this text is part of a greater whole, still incomplete, or one that cannot be grasped. In this sense Śreniowski refers to the topos of inexpressibility of the Holocaust experience. The text is reflective in character, full of metaphor, and its modernist style does not shun pathos. Thus we have here meditations emanating a poetic aura, not a report or an account of events. The author emphasises the desperate loneliness of the dying, their solitude, the incommensurability of the ghetto experience and that of the occupation, and the lack of a common fate of the Jews and the Poles (“A Deserted Town in a Living Capital”; “A Town within a Town”; “And the Capital? A Capital, in which the town of a death is dying . . . ? Well, the Capital is living a normal life. Under the occupation, indeed . . . .”).


2021 ◽  
Vol 137 (2) ◽  
pp. 451-476
Author(s):  
Imelda Chaxiraxi Díaz Cabrera ◽  
Carolina Jorge Trujillo

Abstract Manuel Alvar published the only linguistic work known on Spanish from the island of La Graciosa (Canary Islands) in 1965, focused on the town of Caleta del Sebo, to document, in the field of Linguistic geography, the ALEICan (Linguistic and ethnographic atlas of the Canary Islands [1975–1978]). Alvar’s studies used to cover the lexical, grammatical (morphology and syntax) and phonetic levels of the segmental type, but he did not consider prosodic aspects of speech which would later be incorporated into a new generation of atlases, which would go from paper format to multimedia. As the main exponent, the AMPER project (Atlas Multimédia Prosodique de l’Espace Roman) was created in 2001 and, within its framework, we intend to describe the melodic characteristics of a group of sentences emitted by a man and a woman from Caleta del Sebo, completing thus the study started by Alvar fifty-five years ago. In this way, the results will show for the first time if there is a prosodic proximity between the eighth island and the seven main islands, which have been widely described in previous works both in formal and in informal speech.


1997 ◽  
Vol 159 ◽  
pp. 333-336
Author(s):  
D. Lutz ◽  
R. Genzel ◽  
E. Sturm ◽  
A.F.M. Moorwood ◽  
E. Oliva ◽  
...  

AbstractWe discuss 2.5–45 µm spectra of the Circinus galaxy and of Cen A, obtained with the Short Wavelength Spectrometer (SWS) on board the Infrared Space Observatory. The large number of detected ionic fine structure lines, observable also in visually obscured sources, provides strong constraints on the shape of the ionizing spectrum, which is found to exhibit a UV bump peaking at ~ 70 eV in the case of Circinus. Pure rotational emission of molecular hydrogen, directly probing warm molecular gas, can for the first time be detected in external galaxies.


Universe ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Xiang Liu ◽  
Xin Wang ◽  
Ning Chang ◽  
Jun Liu ◽  
Lang Cui ◽  
...  

Two dozens of radio loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs) have been observed with Urumqi 25 m radio telescope in order to search for intra-day variability (IDV). The target sources are blazars (namely flat spectrum radio quasars and BL Lac objects) which are mostly selected from the observing list of RadioAstron AGN monitoring campaigns. The observations were carried out at 4.8 GHz in two sessions of 8–12 February 2014 and 7–9 March respectively. We report the data reduction and the first results of observations. The results show that the majority of the blazars exhibit IDV in 99.9% confidence level, some of them show quite strong IDV. We find the strong IDV of blazar 1357 + 769 for the first time. The IDV at centimeter-wavelength is believed to be predominately caused by the scintillation of blazar emission through the local interstellar medium in a few hundreds parsecs away from Sun. No significant correlation between the IDV strength and either redshift or Galactic latitude is found in our sample. The IDV timescale along with source structure and brightness temperature analysis will be presented in a forthcoming paper.


2008 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 479-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharlene R. da S. Torreias ◽  
Ulisses G. Neiss ◽  
Neusa Hamada ◽  
Ruth L. Ferreira-Keppler ◽  
Frederico A.A. Lencioni

The last-stage larva of Bromeliagrion rehni Garrison in De Marmels & Garrison, 2005 is described and illustrated and bionomics and habitat information on this species are provided. The study was conducted in the Reserva Florestal Adolpho Ducke, located near Manaus, state of Amazonas, Brazil.Twelve samplings were done between April, 2003 and April, 2005: six in the rainy season and six in the dry season. In each sampling month, 12 bromeliads (Guzmania brasiliensis Ule, 1907, Bromeliaceae) were collected, six of which were terrestrial and six epiphytic, yielding144 samples. A total of 75 specimens of B. rehni were collected. The relationship between larval B. rehni abundance and the measured environmental parameters (volume (ml), pH, season and stratum) was significant (ANCOVA, F = 5.296, d.f. = 130, p < 0.001). Larvae were most abundant in the rainy season (p < 0.01) and water volume was positively related to the abundance of B. rehni. Larvae of B. rehni can be distinguished from those of B. fernandezianum (the only species in the genus with described larvae) by the number of setae in the prementum and by the color of the apical region of the femur. The association of this species with phytotelmata of G. brasiliensis is reported here for the first time.


2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vreni Jean-Richard ◽  
Lisa Crump ◽  
Abbani Alhadj Abicho ◽  
Ali Abba Abakar ◽  
Abdraman Mahamat II ◽  
...  

Mobile pastoralists provide major contributions to the gross domestic product in Chad, but little information is available regarding their demography. The Lake Chad area population is increasing, resulting in competition for scarce land and water resources. For the first time, the density of people and animals from mobile and sedentary populations was assessed using randomly defined sampling areas. Four sampling rounds were conducted over two years in the same areas to show population density dynamics. We identified 42 villages of sedentary communities in the sampling zones; 11 (in 2010) and 16 (in 2011) mobile pastoralist camps at the beginning of the dry season and 34 (in 2011) and 30 (in 2012) camps at the end of the dry season. A mean of 64.0 people per km2 (95% confidence interval, 20.3-107.8) were estimated to live in sedentary villages. In the mobile communities, we found 5.9 people per km2 at the beginning and 17.5 people per km2 at the end of the dry season. We recorded per km2 on average 21.0 cattle and 31.6 small ruminants in the sedentary villages and 66.1 cattle and 102.5 small ruminants in the mobile communities, which amounts to a mean of 86.6 tropical livestock units during the dry season. These numbers exceed, by up to five times, the published carrying capacities for similar Sahelian zones. Our results underline the need for a new institutional framework. Improved land use management must equally consider the needs of mobile communities and sedentary populations.


2010 ◽  
Vol 652 ◽  
pp. 105-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
X.L. Wang ◽  
Thomas Holden ◽  
A.D. Stoica ◽  
K. An ◽  
H.D. Skorpenske ◽  
...  

On Friday June 26, 2009, the neutron beam shutter for the VULCAN diffractometer at the SNS was opened for the first time. Initial measurements to characterize the instrument performance are reported. It is shown that the measurement results are by and large in agreement with design calculations. New research opportunities with VULCAN are discussed.


2003 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 15-18
Author(s):  
Michal Horsák

The molluscs of a previously unexplored site the “Ženklavský les” forest in North Moravia (Czech Republic) were investigated in 2002. Altogether 47 snail species were recorded (46 terrestrial and 1 aquatic). The molluscan fauna was dominated by woodland species including sensitive and endangered ones (e.g., Platyla polita, Sphyradium doliolum, Ruthenica filograna, Vitrea subrimata, and Daudebardia brevipes). The species Vertigo pusilla, and Vestia ranojevici moravica were encountered in the Štramberk environs for the first time and are of regional importance.


2015 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-111
Author(s):  
Ljupche Kochoski ◽  
Zoran Filipov ◽  
Ilcho Joshevski ◽  
Stevche Ilievski ◽  
Filip Davkov

Abstract Science has been searching for a long time for a reliable method for controlling the sex of mammalian offspring. Recently, the application of specific modern cellular methodologies has led to the development of a flow cytometric system capable of differentiating and separating living X- and Y-chromosome-bearing sperm cells in amounts suitable for AI and therefore, commercialization of this sexing technology. The aim of this work was to present the first results of heifers that introduce bovine AI with sex sorted semen, for the first time in Macedonia. Insemination with sex sorted cryopreserved semen (2×106 spermatozoa per dose) imported from the USA was done at two dairy farms in ZK Pelagonija. In total, 74 heifers (Holstein Friesian) were inseminated. Inseminations were carried out in a timely manner following a modified OvSynch protocol. During the insemination, the sperm was deposited into the uterine horn ipsi lateral to the ovary where a follicle larger than 1.6 cm was detected by means of transrectal ultrasound examination. Pregnancy was checked by ultrasound on day 30 after the insemination. Overall, the average pregnancy rate in both farms was 43,24% (40,54% and 45,95%, for farm 1 and farm 2, respectively). All pregnant heifers delivered their calves following a normal gestation length (274,3 days in average) and of the 32 born calves, 30 (93,75%) were female. In conclusion, since the first results from inseminations with sex-sorted semen in dairy heifers in Macedonia are very promising, the introduction of this technique may bring much benefit to the local dairy sector. Average pregnancy rate seems similar with results obtained following ‘regular’ inseminations, notwithstanding the relatively low number of spermatozoa per insemination dose. Due to the latter, we however recommend inseminations only to be carried out by experienced technicians followinga TAI protocol and ultrasound examinations of the ovaries prior to insemination.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 142-147
Author(s):  
Olga E. Tokar

This paper analyzes the current state of landscaping in Ishim. The data on the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of woody plants have been obtained for the first time; the assessment of trees and shrubs state is based on the analysis of the vitality index. A database of green plants within 21 objects in Ishim was created and analyzed. The paper also contains data on the species diversity of trees and shrubs in Ishim. It turned out that the objects under study have trees and shrubs placed in special dividing strips, linearly, in rows or in small compact groups, less often they are planted singly. The species composition is represented by 47 species from 28 genera, 16 families and 2 divisions. The biomorphological structure is represented by trees (25, or 53% of species) and shrubs (22, or 47% of species). The total composition of tree and shrub plantations, determined by the number of trunks (bushes) and the percentage of woody plants, is 2854; the composition of the preserved ones is 2 815 (99%) pieces; the ones assigned for removal are 39 (1%) pcs. The vitality index shows that among 85% of the studied objects of the town at the time of the survey were healthy, among 10% of the objects they were qualified as damaged, among 5% of them were severely damaged. Based on the results of examining crowns and trunks of woody plants, signs of diseases and pests, a plan of measures for the treatment, restoration and preservation of woody plants was drawn up and recommendations were given for caring, sanitary felling and removal of single specimens.


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