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Origini e diffusione dell’agricoltura in Sardegna: studio dei resti vegetali della preistoria
Get PDFThe main goal of this work is fill in gaps in the existing knowledge on the origins and spread of agriculture in Sardinia through the analyses of archaeological plant remains. Plant use (both domesticated and wild) have allowed exploring the subsistence system of the first farming communities in the island. More specifically, the main goals are: • Identification of the first domesticated plants in Sardinia (cereals, legumes and others) and investigate the pathways and time of agricultural adoption. • Recognizing the wild component in the diet of the first Neolithic communities. • Exploration of agrarian practices (harvesting, crop processing, etc). • Determination the role of Vitis vinifera L., in the past human subsistence. • Develop a model for the adoption and spread of agriculture in the island. In order to accomplish these objectives, plant remains from different sites and periods have been studied.
The material considered for this study is composed of seeds, fruits and other plant remains recovered from 12 archaeological sites.
As far as recovery techniques, archaeological contexts was systematically sampled following standardized protocols. Soil samples were floated so charred material have been separated from the soil fraction. Once in the lab, plant remains have been examined under the stereomicroscope and identified mainly with the help of a reference collection. Atlas of seed identification as well of specialized bibliography also were used. In addition,morphocolorimetric analyses were performed through image analyses to establish parameters for identification. Data obtained through the scanning of prehistoric seeds were integrated in the BG-SAR database.
The study of plant remains have offered the opportunity to explore agrarian practices and crop processing enabling, therefore, a deep insight into the way farming communities manage their crops and use plants for their subsistence going beyond the mere identification of plant species. This research made possible, therefore, to develop a model for the spread of plant cultivation in Sardinia hitherto unknown. The identification of wild plants have facilitated the study of the role of wild resources in human subsistence in Sardinia as a complement to the diet.
Furthermore, the diachronic study on plant use have added time depth to the analyses of human use of plants.
This work has 6 chapters. Chapter 1 exposes the state of the art on the origins and spread of agriculture in Italy. Chapter 2 presents an overview of the present state of research on prehistoric agriculture in Sardinia during the Neolithic. Chapter 3 presents the results of archaeobotanical analyzes from Chalcolithic period in Sardinia, the analysis have focused on the archaeological site of Canelles. Chapter 4 presents data on agriculture practiced in Sardinia during the Bronze Age, in particular, provides an overview on crop plants (cereals and pulses) during the the different periodizations of the Bronze Age in Sardinia. Chapter 5 presents data obtained from morphological comparisons of grape seeds found in the archaeological site of Sa Osa with the seeds of the modern cultivars and wild grapevine from Sardinia
Neurochemical characterization of primary sensory neurons in a rat model of bortezomic-induced peripheral neuropathy
Get PDFPeripheral neuropathies, as the result of nerve damage, are characterized by pain, numbness, and tingling in the extremities and slow nerve conduction. Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy is a major dose-limiting side effect of many other commonly used chemotherapeutic agents, including platinum drugs, taxanes, epothilones and vinca alkaloids, but also newer agents such as bortezomib.
Bortezomib (VELCADE) is a boronic acid dipeptide, which causes a selective blockade of proteasome activity. Bortezomib-induced peripheral neuropathy is an important clinical complication, often difficult to manage or reverse, whose treatment usually involves dose reduction, interruption, or cessation of therapy. Though many animal models of chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy have been designed, knowledge concerning the mechanisms that may underlie neurochemical changes accompanying the onset of bortezomib-induced peripheral neuropathy is still poor. In this study, to analyze the possible neurochemical changes occurring in primary sensory neurons, the effects of a single-dose intravenous administration and a well-established “chronic” schedule (three times/week for 8 weeks) in a rat model of bortezomib-induced peripheral neuropathy have been examined.
The transient.receptor.potential.vanilloid.type.1 (TRPV1) channel and sensory neuropeptides calcitonin.gene-related.peptide (CGRP) and substance.P (SP) were studied in L4-L5 dorsal root ganglia (DRGs), spinal cord and sciatic nerve using western blot (WB), immunohistochemistry, and reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Behavioral measures, performed at the end of the chronic bortezomib-treatment, confirmed a reduction of the mechanical nociceptive threshold, whereas no difference occurred in the thermal withdrawal latency. In the DRGs, TRPV1-, CGRP- and SP-immunoreactive neurons were mostly small- and medium-sized and the proportion of TRPV1- and CGRP-labeled neurons increased after treatment. A bortezomib-induced increase in density of TRPV1- and CGRP-immunoreactive innervation in the dorsal horn was also observed. WB analysis showed a relative increase of TRPV1 in DRG and spinal cord after both acute and chronic bortezomib-administration. Comparative RT-PCR revealed a decrease of TRPV1 and CGRP mRNA relative levels after chronic treatment. The characterization of this animal model of peripheral neuropathy suggests that the neurochemical changes occurring in populations of DRG neurons that are likely involved in pain transmission appear to be an important component of the sensory neuropathy induced by the bortezomib-treatment and may represent the outcome of the molecular machine activated by the drug during the onset and persistence of bortezomib-induced neuropathic pain
Simulation and identification of gene regulatory networks
Get PDFGene regulatory networks are a well-established model to represent the functioning, at gene level, of utterly elaborated biological networks. Studying and understanding such models of gene communication might enable researchers to rightly address costly laboratory experiments,
e.g. by selecting a small set of genes deemed to be responsible for a particular disease, or by indicating with confidence which molecule is supposed to be susceptible to
certain drug treatments. This thesis explores two main aspects regarding gene regulatory networks: (i) the simulation of realistic perturbative and systems genetics experiments in gene networks, and (ii) the inference of gene networks from simulated and real data measurements. In detail, the following themes will be discussed: (i) SysGenSIM, an open source software to produce gene
networks with realistic topology and simulate systems genetics or targeted perturbative experiments;
(ii) two state of the arts algorithms for the structural identification of gene networks from single-gene knockout measurements; (iii) an approach to reverse-engineering
gene networks from heterogeneous compendia; (iv) a methodology to infer gene interactions fromsystems genetics dataset. These works have been positively recognized by the scientific community. In particular, SysGenSIM has been used – in addition to providing valuable test benches for the development of the above inference algorithms – to generate benchmark datasets for international
competitions as the DREAM5 Systems Genetics challenge and the StatSeq workshop.
The identificationmethodologies earned their worth by accurately reverse-engineering gene
networks at established contests, namely the DREAM Network Inference challenges. Results are explained and discussed thoroughly in the thesis
Novel load identification techniques and a steady state self-tuning prototype for switching mode power supplies
Get PDFControl of Switched Mode Power Supplies (SMPS) has been traditionally achieved through analog means with dedicated integrated circuits (ICs). However, as power systems are becoming increasingly complex, the classical concept of control has gradually evolved into the more general problem of power management, demanding functionalities that are hardly achievable in analog controllers. The high flexibility offered by digital controllers and their
capability to implement sophisticated control strategies, together with the programmability of controller parameters, make digital control very attractive as an option for improving the features of dcdc converters. On the other side, digital controllers find their major weak
point in the achievable dynamic performances of the closed loop system. Indeed, analogto-digital conversion times, computational delays and sampling-related delays strongly limit the small signal closed loop bandwidth of a digitally controlled SMPS. Quantization effects set other severe constraints not known to analog solutions. For these reasons, intensive scientific research activity is addressing the problem of making digital compensator stronger competitors against their analog counterparts in terms of achievable performances.
In a wide range of applications, dcdc converters with high efficiency over the whole range of their load values are required. Integrated digital controllers for Switching Mode Power Supplies are gaining growing interest, since it has been shown the feasibility of digital controller
ICs specifically developed for high frequency switching converters. One very interesting potential
benefit is the use of autotuning of controller parameters (on-line controllers), so that the dynamic response can be set at the software level, independently of output capacitor
filters, component variations and ageing. These kind of algorithms are able to identify the output filter configuration (system identification) and then automatically compute the best compensator gains to adjust system margins and bandwidth. In order to be an interesting
solution, however, the self-tuning should satisfy two important requirements: it should not heavily affect converter operation under nominal condition and it should be based on a simple and robust algorithm whose complexity does not require a significant increase of the
silicon area of the IC controller. The first issue is avoided performing the system identification (SI) with the system open loop configuration, where perturbations can be induced in the system before the start up.
Much more challenging is to satisfy this requirement during steady state operations, where perturbations on the output voltage are limited by the regular operations of the converter.
The main advantage of steady state SI methods, is the detection of possible non-idealities occurring during the converter operations. In this way, the system dynamics can be consequently adjusted with the compensator parameters tuning. The resource saving issue, requires
the development of äd-hocßelf-tuning techniques specifically tailored for integrated digitally controlled converters. Considering the flexibility of digital control, self-tuning algorithms can be studied and easily
integrated at hardware level into closed loop SMPS reducing development time and R & D costs. The work of this dissertation finds its origin in this context. Smart power management is accomplished by tuning the controller parameters accordingly to the identified converter
configuration.
Themain difficult for self-tuning techniques is the identification of the converter output filter
configuration. Two novel system identification techniques have been validated in this dissertation. The open loop SI method is based on the system step response, while dithering
amplification effects are exploited for the steady state SI method. The open loop method can be used as autotunig approach during or before the system start up, a step evolving reference voltage has been used as system perturbation and to obtain the output filter information
with the Power Spectral Density (PSD) computation of the system step response.
The use of ¢§ modulator is largely increasing in digital control feedback. During the steady state, the finite resolution introduces quantization effects on the signal path causing low frequency contributes of the digital control word. Through oversampling-dithering capabilities
of ¢§ modulators, resolution improvements are obtained. The presented steady state identification techniques demonstrates that, amplifying the dithering effects on the signal path, the output filter information can be obtained on the digital side by processing with the PSD computation the perturbed output voltage. The amount of noise added on the output voltage does not affect the converter operations, mathematical considerations have been
addressed and then justified both with a Matlab/Simulink fixed-point and a FPGA-based closed loop system.
The load output filter identification of both algorithms, refer to the frequency domain. When the respective perturbations occurs, the system response is observed on the digital side and processed with the PSD computation. The extracted parameters are the resonant frequency
ans the possible ESR (Effective Series Resistance) contributes,which can be detected as maximumin
the PSD output. The SI methods have been validated for different configurations of buck converters on a fixed-point closed loop model, however, they can be easily applied to further converter configurations. The steady state method has been successfully integrated
into a FPGA-based prototype for digitally controlled buck converters, that integrates a PSD computer needed for the load parameters identification. At this purpose, a novel VHDL-coded full-scalable hybrid processor for Constant Geometry FFT (CG-FFT) computation has been designed and integrated into the PSD computation system. The processor is based on a variation of the conventional algorithm used for FFT, which is the Constant-Geometry FFT (CG-FFT).Hybrid CORDIC-LUT scalable architectures, has been introduced as alternative approach for the twiddle factors (phase factors) computation needed during the FFT algorithms execution. The shared core architecture uses a single
phase rotator to satisfy all TF requests. It can achieve improved logic saving by trading off with computational speed. The pipelined architecture is composed of a number of stages equal to the number of PEs and achieves the highest possible throughput, at the expense of
more hardware usage
Charge-Modulated Field-Effect Transistor: technologies and applications for biochemical sensing
Get PDFThe research activity described in the attached dissertation focused on the development, fabrication and characterization of field-effect transistor-based biochemical sensor (bioFET) developed in different technologies. Such a research field has been attracting a significant interest in the last decades, as electronic sensors can represent as valuable, portable and low cost alternative to the bulk, expensive laboratory instrumentation. Among the biochemical reactions, genetic processes have been thoroughly investigated in literature: in particular, DNA hybridization detection represents a basic biological reaction for several, more sophisticated analysis in medical, pharmaceutical and forensic fields.
The development of the research activity was centered on a specific biosensor, namely Charge-Modulated Field-Effect Transistor (CMFET), originally proposed in 2005 by the Electronic Department at the University of Cagliari. In particular, the aim of the activity was to make a significant step forward with respect to the results already presented in literature for DNA hybridization detection, employing two different technologies: CMOS process and organic electronics.
As regards CMOS process, the activity mainly focused on the testing of a Lab-on-a-Chip (LoC), hosting several CMFET structures, developed and fabricated before but never tested. The activity carried out allowed to develop a precise electrical model of the device, validated by actual measurements, by which the basic performances of the device were derived. Subsequently, the application of the LoC for DNA hybridization detection was demonstrated: a reliable biochemical protocol for the modification of the chip surface with DNA strands was developed, as well as a precise measurement procedure. A complete evaluation of the sensitivity and selectivity of the device with respect to DNA hybridization was obtained; from the obtained results, several consideration about the relationship between the chip layout and the performances of the device were inferred. In conclusion, a road-map for the development of a new chip, customized for the application as DNA hybridization sensor, was developed.
As regards the Organic CMFET (OCMFET), the activity comprised design, fabrication and testing of devices particularly conceived as disposable DNA hybridization sensors for field-measurement kits. Such a task required the development of innovative technological processes for the fabrication of high-performances organic transistors, i.e. transistors capable to be operated at low voltages (about 1 V) with quasi-ideal electrical performances. In particular, a highly reliable fabrication process, compatible with plastic electronics and easily up-scalable to an industrial size, was determined. Consequently, novel OCMFET were fabricated and tested. World record results in terms of sensitivity and selectivity among the organic transistor-based DNA sensors were reproducibly obtained. Thanks to the reliability of the results, the performances of the OCMFET were carefully studied, and design rules for the optimization of the device were inferred; an optimized, low voltage OCMFET allowed to further enhance the result, determining final performances even better than the one of silicon-based sensors. Finally, thanks to an innovative analysis on the influence of the device polarization to the characteristics of the bioreceptor layer at a micro-nanometrical size, a physical effect related to a tilting of the DNA molecules with respect to the surface was observed. This feature, possibly related to the CMFET working principle, can allow to overcome a general limitation of the bioFET technologies that have limited so far the application of these devices in vivo, thus opening novel possible applications for the CMFET working principle beyond the measurements in vitr
Dopamine responsiveness in Nucleus Accumbens Shell and Core and Prefrontal Cortex during operant behavior for sucrose
Get PDFDopamine is implicated in the responsiveness to rewarding properties of natural and pharmacological stimuli. Conditioned stimuli (CS), linked to rewards such as food or drugs of abuse (uncontidioned stimuli, US), are essential to support the motivated behaviour. The role of mesocortical and mesolimbic DA in response to food CS after instrumental paradigm still remains unclear.
The aim of our study was to investigate by microdialysis the impact of instrumental food CSs and US on behaviour and on basal DA in three terminal DA areas: shell and core of nucleus accumbens (NAc) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFCX), using a food self-administration paradigm.
Rats were trained to acquire sucrose self-administration under a Fixed Ratio 1 (FR 1) or FR5 variable time out schedule of responding.
After training, animals were able to self-administer sucrose pellets and microdialysis coupled with self-administration experiments were performed..
The main finding of our study was that NAc shell DA has been activated not only by the conditioned cues but also by food after the instrumental conditioning. When both stimuli are presented in the same moment the increase of DA is strengthened and prolonged. DA response was obtained in NAc core only during US presentation. mPFCX has been activated by each component of motivated behaviour, except for the response to CS using a FR5 schedule.
We can conclude that DA in the NAc shell plays an important role on the acquisition and expression of motivated behaviour in food consumption, whereas NAc core and PFCX are less implicated.
This study provides a robust and reproducible model for a parametric study of the relationship between behaviour and DA transmission in the NAc shell and core and in the mPFCX
Disturbo bipolare e cefalea a grappolo: identificazione di geni e pathway molecolari e loro potenziale coinvolgimento nella risposta alla terapia con sali di litio tramite analisi dei profili di espressione genome‑wide
Get PDFCluster headache (CH) and bipolar disorder (BD) are pathological conditions affecting 1% and 1.5% of the general population, respectively. Albeit the pathogenesis has not yet been completely elucidated, family and twin studies have suggested a genetic basis for both disorders, with an estimated heritability of 80% for BD and up to 60% for CH. Though BD and CH are very different diseases, they show important clinical similarities, such as a temporal pattern of disturbances, dysregulation of the wake-‐sleep cycle, neuroendocrine derangements, and more important positive clinical response to lithium and valproate treatments in a significant proportion of treated patients. In the present study, we sought to explore whether BD and CH patients responders to lithium share common molecular pathways potentially involved in predisposing to positively respond to prophylactic lithium treatment. To this aim, we carried out a transcriptome study in lymphoblastoid cell lines from 10 BD type I patients, responders to lithium, 8 CH patients responders to lithium treatment and 10 healthy subjects (CO). Expression profiles were measured by Affymetrix GeneChip Human Gene ST 1.0 covering 36,079 transcripts. Expression levels of BD and CH patients were compared with CO using a t-‐test, in order to identify commonly dysregulated genes. Pathway analysis was performed based on the hypergeometric test for over representation of specific Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG). A total of 544 and 1172 genes were differentially expressed in BD versus CO and CH versus CO respectively. Filtering criteria were based on corrected p value < 0.05 and a Fold Change (FC) ≥ |1.3|. Among these genes, 314 were commonly altered both in CH and BD compared to CO. The most significant dysregulated gene in BD and CH was RNA binding motif (RNP1, RRM) protein 3 (RBM3), a gene implicated in sleep regulation and in the temperature entrained circadian gene expression (corrected p value of 6,30x 10-‐09 in BD vs CO and 1,88x 10-‐09 in CH vs CO). Pathway analysis showed that Protein processing in endoplasmic reticulum pathway was one of the most significantly enriched in BD and CH when compared to CO. In conclusion, data from this pilot microarray study may provide useful and relevant information for a better understanding of the molecular underpinnings of lithium response and on the neurobiology of BD and CH
Simulation of low-velocity impact damage in sandwich composites
Get PDFComposite materials have been increasingly used in many wind energy and transport applications due to their high strength, stiffness and excellent corrosion resistance. One of the main limitations of composites is their high susceptibility to impact-induced damage, which may result in significant strength reduction or even structural collapse. A detailed understanding of the extent and nature of impact damage is thus greatly needed for damage tolerance based structural design and a reliable estimation of the residual strength of a damaged structure.
In this thesis, fracture mechanics based progressive damage models, cohesive interface elements and crushable foam models were used to predict the structural response and internal failure mechanisms of sandwich composites subjected to low-velocity impact; various failure modes typically observed in composites including delaminations, fibre fracture and matrix cracking were simulated and implemented into ABAQUS/Explicit through user-defined subroutines VUMAT.
Numerical simulations were assessed and validated by a series of experimental analyses carried out through low-velocity impact tests (using drop-weight testing machine) and damage calibration tests (using X-radiography, Ultrasonics and optical microscopy of polished cross-sections). Good agreements were obtained between experiments and predictions not only in terms of structural responses as well as regarding the shape and size of internal damage under various investigated cases
Sistemi e dispositivi meccanici applicati a processi fisici e chimici
Get PDFThe present Ph.D. thesis focuses on the development of innovative mechanochemical reactors and the improvement of existing ones.
Mechanochemistry is the branch of Chemistry that relates to the effects of nonhydrostatic stresses and plastic strain on the chemical reactivity of molecules, crystals,
and other aggregates of matter. Mechanochemical transformations occur on a local basis in the presence of unbalanced mechanical stresses, which result in non-Equilibrium thermodynamic conditions. Transformations are typically driven by ball milling, a powder metallurgy technique based on the occurrence of collisions between milling tools inside a reactor. At each collision, a fraction of the powder charge inside the reactor is trapped between colliding surfaces and submitted to a mechanical load. This induces cold-welding, fracturing and plastic deformation processes mediated by the generation, migration, and interaction of lattice defects. Depending on the nature of the powder and of its surroundings, the microstructural refinement can be accompanied by
unusual physical and chemical transformations with no thermal counterpart.
In the light of this peculiarity, mechanical activation processes show great promise in different fields of science and technology. However, their considerable potential did not find yet a definite industrial exploitation due to the unfortunate limitations affecting the performance of mechanical activation devices in terms of energy efficiency and production rates.
Meeting the demand for improved mechanochemical reactors enabling innovative fundamental research and large-scale applications necessarily implies a deep revision of
the reactor design. On the one hand, it is highly desirable to enhance the collision frequency and increase the amount of powder processed per unit time while saving energy and costs. On the other, fundamental experimental observables in frictional and collisional regimens must be rendered accessible to direct investigation. These contrasting requests definitely invoke atypical lines of approach in Mechanical Engineering, which makes any research in the field challenging.
In this work, attention has been focused on a few main research issues, namely the ad hoc equipment of the reactor of a commercial ball mill following a previous
investigation of the milling tools dynamics, and the development of three reactor prototypes addressing specific research needs. Complementary activities have been also
carried out within the framework of collaborative research programmes
Implementation and management of an Environmental Data System for climatological research
Get PDFThe implementation of an Environmental Data System (EDS) for the Share Geonetwork
web-platform dedicated to the management and sharing of climatological data acquired
from sensors, stations and from physical or chemical analysis from single researcher or
scientific institution is the main issue of this PhD research activities. Purpose of this
research is:
1. the implementation of the EDS for a webGIS service platform dedicated to the
management and sharing of climatological data acquired by high elevation stations
(SHARE GeoNetwork project, promoted by the Ev-K2 CNR Committee) and data
derived from chemical and physics characterization about non-polar ice cores and
marine sediment core ("Project of Strategic Interest - PNR 2011-2013 NextData.").
2. the development of an automatic system useful to validate MODIS product over
Hymalaya using Ev-K2 CNR Committee high-altitude data (presentation of a case
study).
1. The web-platform will provide basically three types of services:
(a) structured metadata archive, data and results from high-altitude and marine
environments researches and projects;
(b) access to meteo-climatic and atmospheric composition data, past climate in-
formation from ice and sediment cores, biodiversity and ecosystem data, mea-
surements of the hydrological cycle, marine re-analyses and climate projec-
tions at global and regional scale;
(c) dedicated webGIS for georeferenced data collected during the research.
2. In particular the elaboration process is performed by the use of Python script on
the MODIS/Terra Snow Cover Daily L3 Global 500m Grid (MOD10A1) data and
metadata (snow cover, snow albedo, fractional snow cover, and Quality Assessment
(QA) data in compressed HDF-EOS format) and radiative data (Short (SWR) and
Long (LWR)Wave Radiation) from Nepal Climate Observatory-Pyramid (NCO-P)
.
Methods
1. High elevation environmental and territorial data and metadata are cataloged in a
single integrated platform to get access to the information heritage of the SHARE
project, using open source tools: Geonetwork for the metadata catalog and webGIS
resources, and the open source Weather and Water Database (WDB), developed
by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, for the database information system
implementation. A specific database, named WDBPALEO, formed by IDB (Ice
Core Database) and SDB (Sea-Core Database), has been developed for the collec-
tion of paleoclimatological data from ice cores extracted from glaciers in non-polar
ice cores and marine sediment cores. The storage structure of the data is based on
the architecture of WDB. In the first phase of the project, the database WDB has
been modified to input data from high altitudes meteorological stations in Nepal,
Pakistan, Africa and Italy. Moreover, the need to have a tested database able to
contain data of different nature has led to the modification of the program source
to store data of different nature and with unlimited temporal extension such as ice
and sediment cores.
2. For data elaboration and comparison a temporal scale of two months has been
used. NCO-P records SWR and LWR (both upwelling and downwelling, useful
to calculate daily short wave albedo) since 2003. Corresponding time interval
of MOD10A1 data have been downloaded from http://reverb.echo.nasa.gov/
reverb. From Pyramid data Short-Wave albedo has been calculated for each day
of the pre-monson period (April and May) and compared with the mean value of
4 neighborhood snow albedo pixels where the Pyramid station is located.
Results and Conclusions
1. The tool that is being studied and developed proposes an environment for the
research, dedicated mainly to high-altitude studies, allowing researchers to access
the wealth of resources that are acquired by the climatological stations. With
regards to remote sensing data processing, the system gives the opportunity to
free access to the data relevant either for atmospheric corrections or ground data
calibrations. Moreover, into SHARE GeoNetwork, a specific topic is dedicated to
the description of the new technologies developed in the SHARE Project. The core
of the system is the catalog of metadata based on GeoNetwork open source appli-
cation, proposed on the principles of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and
International and Open Standards for services and protocols (from ISO/TC211
and OGC). A new hierarchical structure has been implemented into SHARE for
the description of metatada of the stations, sensors and measures. Also , fol-
lowing the scope of the NEXTDATA project a methodology to recover, store,
access and disseminate data derived from chemical and physics characterization
about non-polar ice cores and marine sediment core has been developed. They
give precious information about the evolution of anthropogenic pollution, climate
variability and about the composition of middle troposphere. With an accurate
bibliography research we managed to collect a great amount of ice core and sed-
iment core data and metadata that were essential to study a suitable methodol-
ogy to reach this goal. Data collected in the spatial geographic database were
integrated in an information system through specific web services. The first re-
lease of SHARE Geonetwork is working from 2011 and it is accessible for public
at http://geonetwork.evk2cnr.org. Second release, recently published is ac-
cessible at: http://geonetwork.evk2cnr.org/index.php, with data navigation,
visualization and dowload.
2. The Python code, with Modis reprojection tool, collected and modifed should be
useful to manage and elaborate a large amount of data, giving a clear methodology
for the validation of MODIS data and products, in particular using Open Source
tools. A moderate correlation exists (0.50) between the calculated albedo and
the MOD10A1 albedo product. In order to improve the results of this study the
data were subdivided into three groups on the base of the acquisition date. The
correlation between these new groups of data appear increased, guessing the solar
zenith angle in
uences in the MODIS snow albedo retrieval. It will be necessary
further statistical evidences to confirm this correlation