scholarly journals Biometry and taxonomy of Adriatic <i>Ammonia</i> species from Bellaria–Igea Marina (Italy)

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-223
Author(s):  
Joachim Schönfeld ◽  
Valentina Beccari ◽  
Sarina Schmidt ◽  
Silvia Spezzaferri

Abstract. Living Ammonia species and an inventory of dead assemblages from Adriatic subtidal, nearshore environments were investigated at four stations off Bellaria, Italy. Ammonia falsobeccarii, Ammonia parkinsoniana, Ammonia tepida, and Ammonia veneta were recognized in the living (rose-bengal-stained) fauna, and Ammonia bellaria n. sp. is described herein for the first time. Ammonia beccarii was only found in the dead assemblage. The biometry of 368 living individuals was analysed by using light microscopic and scanning electron microscopic images of three aspects. A total of 15 numerical and 8 qualitative parameters were measured and assessed, 5 of which were recognized to be prone to a certain subjectivity of the observer. The accuracy of numerical data as revealed by the mean residuals of parallel measurements by different observers ranged from 0.5 % to 5.5 %. The results indicated a high degree of intraspecific variability. The test sizes of the individual species were log-normally distributed and varied among the stations. Parameters not related to the growth of the individuals, i.e. flatness of the tests, dimensions of the second-youngest chamber, proloculus, umbilical and pore diameter, sinistral–dextral coiling, and umbilical boss size, were recognized as being species-distinctive in combination. They may well supplement qualitative criteria that were commonly used for species discrimination such as a lobate outline, a subacute or rounded peripheral margin, or the degree of ornamentation on the spiral and umbilical sides. The averages of the measured parameters were often lower than the range of previously published values, mainly because the latter were retrieved from a few adult specimens and not from the whole assemblage as in the present approach. We conclude that the unprecedented high proportions of Ammonia beccarii in the northern Adriatic may well be artificial. A robust species identification without genetic analyses is possible by considering designated biometric parameters. This approach is also applicable to earlier literature data, and their re-assessment is critical for a correct denomination of recent genotypes.

Author(s):  
Daniela Knotová ◽  
Jiří Skládanka ◽  
Jan Pelikán

Within the period of 2010–2011, a set of 14 Czech alfalfa cultivars was evaluated in the research locality Troubsko. On small plots and also in the individual plantations altogether 51 descriptors were evaluated. Statistical differences existing among cultivars in individual trait sunder study were analysed using the method of point and interval estimations of average values. Intraspecific variability was studied on the base of estimation of variation coefficients. A high degree of intraspecific uniformity was found in cultivars ‘Jarka’ and ‘Holyna’ while the lowest one was registered in the cultivar ‘Litava’. Green matter yields ranged from 66.3 t.ha−1 (‘Jitka’) to 77.2 t.ha−1 (‘Holyna’), hay yields from 11.71 t.ha−1 (‘Jitka’) to 15.43 t.ha−1 (‘Jarka’), and yields of seed from 0.19 t.ha−1 (‘Jitka’) to 0.35 t.ha−1 (‘Kamila’). As far as the descriptor “Alfalfa tuft dry matter” was concerned, cultivars ‘Oslava’ and ‘Holyna’ were statistically highly significantly (P < 0.01) better than than cultivars ‘Jitka’ and ‘Vlasta’. As far as the descriptor “Width of the terminal leaflet” was concerned, the cultivar ‘Palava’ was statistically highly significantly better (P < 0.01) than cultivars ‘Vlasta’, ‘Litava’, and ‘Denisa’. The existence of similarity of cultivars under study was determined by means of cluster analysis. It was found out that the highest degree of similarity existed between cultivars ‘Morava’ and ‘Niva’.


Author(s):  
J. Chakraborty ◽  
A. P. Sinha Hikim ◽  
J. S. Jhunjhunwala

Although the presence of annulate lamellae was noted in many cell types, including the rat spermatogenic cells, this structure was never reported in the Sertoli cells of any rodent species. The present report is based on a part of our project on the effect of torsion of the spermatic cord to the contralateral testis. This paper describes for the first time, the fine structural details of the annulate lamellae in the Sertoli cells of damaged testis from guinea pigs.One side of the spermatic cord of each of six Hartly strain adult guinea pigs was surgically twisted (540°) under pentobarbital anesthesia (1). Four months after induction of torsion, animals were sacrificed, testes were excised and processed for the light and electron microscopic investigations. In the damaged testis, the majority of seminiferous tubule contained a layer of Sertoli cells with occasional spermatogonia (Fig. 1). Nuclei of these Sertoli cells were highly pleomorphic and contained small chromatinic clumps adjacent to the inner aspect of the nuclear envelope (Fig. 2).


Author(s):  
William W. Thomson ◽  
Elizabeth S. Swanson

The oxidant air pollutants, ozone and peroxyacetyl nitrate, are produced in the atmosphere through the interaction of light with nitrogen oxides and gaseous hydrocarbons. These oxidants are phytotoxicants and are known to deleteriously affect plant growth, physiology, and biochemistry. In many instances they induce changes which lead to the death of cells, tissues, organs, and frequently the entire plant. The most obvious damage and biochemical changes are generally observed with leaves.Electron microscopic examination of leaves from bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.) and cotton (Gossipyum hirsutum L.) fumigated for .5 to 2 hours with 0.3 -1 ppm of the individual oxidants revealed that changes in the ultrastructure of the cells occurred in a sequential fashion with time following the fumigation period. Although occasional cells showed severe damage immediately after fumigation, the most obvious change was an enhanced clarity of the cell membranes.


Author(s):  
Shou-kong Fan

Transmission and analytical electron microscopic studies of scale microstructures and microscopic marker experiments have been carried out in order to determine the transport mechanism in the oxidation of Ni-Al alloy. According to the classical theory, the oxidation of nickel takes place by transport of Ni cations across the scale forming new oxide at the scale/gas interface. Any markers deposited on the Ni surface are expected to remain at the scale/metal interface after oxidation. This investigation using TEM transverse section techniques and deposited microscopic markers shows a different result,which indicates that a considerable amount of oxygen was transported inward. This is the first time that such fine-scale markers have been coupled with high resolution characterization instruments such as TEM/STEM to provide detailed information about evolution of oxide scale microstructure.


Author(s):  
Rachel Ablow

The nineteenth century introduced developments in science and medicine that made the eradication of pain conceivable for the first time. This new understanding of pain brought with it a complex set of moral and philosophical dilemmas. If pain serves no obvious purpose, how do we reconcile its existence with a well-ordered universe? Examining how writers of the day engaged with such questions, this book offers a compelling new literary and philosophical history of modern pain. The book provides close readings of novelists Charlotte Brontë and Thomas Hardy and political and natural philosophers John Stuart Mill, Harriet Martineau, and Charles Darwin, as well as a variety of medical, scientific, and popular writers of the Victorian age. The book explores how discussions of pain served as investigations into the status of persons and the nature and parameters of social life. No longer conceivable as divine trial or punishment, pain in the nineteenth century came to seem instead like a historical accident suggesting little or nothing about the individual who suffers. A landmark study of Victorian literature and the history of pain, the book shows how these writers came to see pain as a social as well as a personal problem. Rather than simply self-evident to the sufferer and unknowable to anyone else, pain was also understood to be produced between persons—and even, perhaps, by the fictions they read.


2017 ◽  
Vol 68 (10) ◽  
pp. 2373-2377
Author(s):  
Mihaela Monica Scutariu ◽  
Vlad Danila ◽  
Corina Ciupilan ◽  
Oana Elena Ciurcanu

Anesthesia and the degree of control over the perception of pain depends on the personality of the individual, the socio-economic conditions, potential previous painful experiences and, last but not least, on fatigue and fear of the dentist. The perception of pain in patients is closely connected to their mental state. Pain is defined as a sensation of discomfort, with wide variations, both in quality and intensity, for different people in seemingly identical conditions; an unpleasant sensitive and emotional phenomena connected to the threat of a wound or caused in the tissues or described in the terms of this disease. The essential element of any type of anesthesia is analgesia, an effect which in some cases cannot be achived, due to the patient�s particularities or the physician�s lack of experience in anesthesia. Locoregional anesthesia (LRA) represents the blocking of the nociceptive sensitive and sympathetic autonomic afferents as well as that of motor efferents at the level of peripheral nerves� axons, by means of local anesthetic. To achieve the set purpose, we carried out a study on a representative human sample comprised of 10.123 patients treated in the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Clinic (Ambulatory) from the County Clinic Emergency Hospital St. Spiridon Iasi, between 01.01.2015-31.12.2016. The reason for the exclusion of certain categories of patients in the reseach was: the patients with a special conditions background require individual pre-anesthesia schemes, personalised for the nature of the pre-existing general condition, which must be further approved by the attending specialist physician : cardiologist, internist, diabetologist; children under 18 years old, with a high degree of anxiety; a high precentage of elderly patients, over 60 years old, possess a combination of general issues, thus requiring a special approach. The thoroughness lying at the core of the anesthetic practice, most especially the safegurading of a technical accuracy in the performance of anesthesia [12,], instead of improvisations, the lack of anatomical and stomatological training in general and the resulting inefficiency as such, is the underlying in-depth structuring element of this paper.


HortScience ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 492f-493
Author(s):  
Roberto F. Vieira ◽  
James E. Simon ◽  
Peter Goldsbrough ◽  
Antonio Figueira

Essential oils extracted from basil (Ocimum spp.) by steam distillation are used to flavor foods, oral products, in fragrances, and in traditional medicines. The genus Ocimum contains around 30 species native to the tropics and subtropics, with some species naturalized and/or cultivated in temperate areas. Interand intraspecific hybridization have created significant confusion in the botanical systematics of this genus. Taxonomy of basil (O. basilicum) is also complicated by the existence of numerous varieties, cultivars, and chemotypes within the species that do not differ significantly in morphology. In this study we are using RAPD markers and volatile oil composition to characterize the genetic diversity among the most economically important Ocimum species. We hypothesize that the genetic similarity revealed by molecular markers will more accurately reflect the morphological and chemical differences in Ocimum than essential oil composition per se. Preliminary research using five Ocimum species, four undetermined species, and eight varieties of O. basilicum (a total of 19 accessions) generated 107 polymorphic fragments amplified with 19 primers. RAPDs are able to discriminate between Ocimum species, but show a high degree of similarity between O. basilicum varieties. The genetic distance between nine species and among 55 accessions within the species O. americanum, O. basilicum, O. campechianum, O. × citriodorum, O. gratissimum, O. kilimandscharium, O. minimum, O. selloi, and O. tenuiflorum will be analyzed by matrix of similarity and compared to the volatile oil profile. This research will for the first time apply molecular markers to characterize the genetic diversity of Ocimum associate with volatile oil constituent.


Author(s):  
David Willetts

Universities have a crucial role in the modern world. In England, entrance to universities is by nation-wide competition which means English universities have an exceptional influence on schools--a striking theme of the book. This important book first investigates the university as an institution and then tracks the individual on their journey to and through university. In A University Education, David Willetts presents a compelling case for the ongoing importance of the university, both as one of the great institutions of modern society and as a transformational experience for the individual. The book also makes illuminating comparisons with higher education in other countries, especially the US and Germany. Drawing on his experience as UK Minister for Universities and Science from 2010 to 2014, the author offers a powerful account of the value of higher education and the case for more expansion. He covers controversial issues in which he was involved from access for disadvantaged students to the introduction of L9,000 fees. The final section addresses some of the big questions for the future, such as the the relationship between universities and business, especially in promoting innovation.. He argues that the two great contemporary trends of globalisation and technological innovation will both change the university significantly. This is an authoritative account of English universities setting them for the first time in their new legal and regulatory framework.


Author(s):  
Dominic Scott

This chapter presents a reading of Plato’s Republic. The Republic is among Plato’s most complex works. From its title, the first-time reader will expect a dialogue about political theory, yet the work starts from the perspective of the individual, coming to focus on the question of how, if at all, justice contributes to an agent’s happiness. Only after this question has been fully set out does the work evolve into an investigation of politics—of the ideal state and of the institutions that sustain it, especially those having to do with education. But the interest in individual justice and happiness is never left behind. Rather, the work weaves in and out of the two perspectives, individual and political, right through to its conclusion. All this may leave one wondering about the unity of the work. The chapter shows that, despite the enormous range of topics discussed, the Republic fits together as a coherent whole.


2020 ◽  
pp. 239965442096524
Author(s):  
Mariska JM Bottema ◽  
Simon R Bush ◽  
Peter Oosterveer

The Thai aquaculture sector faces a range of production, market and financial risks that extend beyond the private space of farms to include public spaces and shared resources. The Thai state has attempted to manage these shared risks through its Plang Yai (or ‘Big Area’) agricultural extension program. Using the lens of territorialization, this paper investigates how, through the Plang Yai program, risk management is institutionalized through spatially explicit forms of collaboration amongst farmers and between farmers and (non-)state actors. We focus on how four key policy instruments brought together under Plang Yai delimited multiple territories of risk management over shrimp and tilapia production in Chantaburi and Chonburi provinces. Our findings demonstrate how these policy instruments address risks through dissimilar but overlapping territories that are selectively biased toward facilitating the individual management of production risks, whilst enabling both the individual and collective management of market and financial risks. This raises questions about the suitability of addressing aquaculture risks by controlling farmer behavior through state-led designation of singular, spatially explicit areas. The findings also indicate the multiple roles of the state in territorializing risk management, providing a high degree of flexibility, which is especially valuable in landscapes shared by many users, connected to (global) value chains and facing diverse risks. In doing so we demonstrate that understanding the territorialization of production landscapes in a globalizing world requires a dynamic approach recognizing the multiplicity of territories that emerge in risk management processes.


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