Bioclastic Deposits in the NW Gulf of Naples (Southern Tyrrhenian Sea, Italy): A Focus on New Sedimentological and Stratigraphic Data around the Island of Ischia

Bioclastic deposits in the Gulf of Naples have been studied and compared based on new sedimentological and stratigraphic data, particularly referring to the rhodolith layers. They represent detrital facies deriving mainly from in situ rearrangement processes of organogenic material on rocky sea bottoms. These deposits are composed of medium-coarse-grained sands and bioclastic gravels in a scarce pelitic matrix and crop out at the sea bottom in a portion of the inner shelf located at water depths between −20 m and −50 m. Below water depths of −30 m the bioclastic deposits are rhodolith, characterized by gravels and lithoclastic sands. Rhodolith deposits are often found near the Posidonia oceanica meadows and/or in protected areas near the rocky outcrops. The Ischia Bank represents an excellent natural laboratory for studying the rhodolith layers. On the Ischia Bank, below the Posidonia oceanica meadow, both bioclastic sands immersed in a muddy matrix and volcaniclastic gravels were sampled. Both the Mollusk shells and the volcaniclastic fragments, where the contribution of the silty and sandy fractions is lower than 20%, were colonized by some species of red algae, while in the marine areas with a low gradient a maërl facies was deposited.

Kinetic and Activation Characteristics of Structure Rearrangement Processes in Ethoxylated Isononylphenol Derivates

The paper presents the calculation results of the kinetic and activation characteristics of fast and ultrafast structure rearrangement processes in liquid hydroxyethylated derivates of isononylphenol (ОНФn). Parameters were calculated using the relaxation theory of acoustic spectroscopy of liquids based on the analysis of the acoustic spectra of speed and sound absorption of the hydroxyethylated derivates of isononylphenol. The paper shows that two simple regions of acoustic dispersion can describe the acoustic spectra in the frequency range from 12 MHz to 2 GHz and the temperature range from 253 K to 323 K. The dispersion region data in the hydroxyethylated derivates of isononylphenol correspond to the interconnected reactions of OH ... O bonding and breaking in chain associates and spatially branched network structures. It is noted that the change in the spatial structure of liquid hydroxyethylated derivates of isononylphenol can be considered as a set of the large number of independent (for non-collective processes) and interconnected (for collective processes) local rearrangements of the liquid structure as a result of the thermal motion of molecules. The proposed molecular mechanism of acoustic relaxation and the kinetic model of fast and ultrafast structure rearrangement processes of the hydroxyethylated derivates of isononylphenol made it possible to explain the main experimental results and to calculate the kinetic and activation characteristics of the structure rearrangement processes of the hydroxyethylated derivates of isononylphenol. This model and the kinetic and activation parameters of the hydroxyethylated derivates of isononylphenol can find application in development of various technologies for using nonionic surfactants.

Hypervalent iodine reagent-mediated reactions involving rearrangement processes

We summarize the developments of hypervalent iodine reagents-mediated reactions involving [1,2]-migration, Hofmann rearrangement, Beckmann rearrangement, ring contraction/expansion, [3,3]-sigmatropic/iodonium-Claisen rearrangement and some miscellaneous rearrangements.

Modelling isolated hydrogen impurity in Lu2O3 with muonium spectroscopy

We identified in this experiment two muon configurations in Lu2O3, the oxygen-bound (O-Mu+) ground state and a metastable (energy barrier 0.7(3) eV) atom-like excited state. These configurations are partially not formed immediately after implantation but somewhat delayed due to the requirement of a lattice rearrangement around the muon. These rearrangement processes occur on a timescale of ns to µs and are thus observable in µSR experiments. A special role plays a fairly long-lived (ns to µs) transition state as an intermediate step in the reaction process.

Reconstruction of protein domain evolution using single-cell amplified genomes of uncultured choanoflagellates sheds light on the origin of animals

Understanding the origins of animal multicellularity is a fundamental biological question. Recent genome data have unravelled the role that co-option of pre-existing genes played in the origin of animals. However, there were also some important genetic novelties at the onset of Metazoa. To have a clear understanding of the specific genetic innovations and how they appeared, we need the broadest taxon sampling possible, especially among early-branching animals and their unicellular relatives. Here, we take advantage of single-cell genomics to expand our understanding of the genomic diversity of choanoflagellates, the sister-group to animals. With these genomes, we have performed an updated and taxon-rich reconstruction of protein evolution from the Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor (LECA) to animals. Our novel data re-defines the origin of some genes previously thought to be metazoan-specific, like the POU transcription factor, which we show appeared earlier in evolution. Moreover, our data indicate that the acquisition of new genes at the stem of Metazoa was mainly driven by duplications and protein domain rearrangement processes at the stem of Metazoa. Furthermore, our analysis allowed us to reveal protein domains that are essential to the maintenance of animal multicellularity. Our analyses also demonstrate the utility of single-cell genomics from uncultured taxa to address evolutionary questions. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Single cell ecology’.