320 research outputs found
First Report of Tomato Brown Rugose Fruit Virus on Tomato Crops in Italy
No full textIn October 2018, virus-like symptoms were observed in four different greenhouses of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) in Ragusa province (Sicily, Italy). Symptoms consisted in mosaic, deformation, and necrosis on young leaves, and discoloration and deformations on young fruits. In total 40 symptomatic samples were collected (10 for each greenhouse). Samples were tested by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) using specific primers for different viruses that incite similar symptoms on tomato plants: Groundnut ringspot virus (Camelo-García et al. 2014), Parietaria mottle virus (Galipienso et al. 2015), Pepino mosaic virus (Panno et al. 2012), Tobacco etch virus (Zhang et al. 2012), Tomato brown rugose fruit virus (Salem et al. 2015), Tomato chlorotic spot virus (Webster et al. 2013), Tomato mosaic virus (Panno et al. 2012), Tomato mottle mosaic virus (Sui et al. 2017), Tomato necrotic spot virus (Bratsch et al. 2018), Tomato necrotic streak virus (Badillo-Vargas et al. 2016), Tomato torrado virus (Panno et al. 2012), and Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (Davino et al. 2008). Thirty-seven out of the 40 samples analyzed yielded fragments of the expected size only for tomato brown rugose fruit virus (ToBRFV). This screening identified ToBRFV as a putative causal agent of this disease. To confirm the presence of this virus, two new primers named ToBRFV-F-5722, 5′-CACAATCGCAACTCCATCGC-3′ (coordinates: 5,722 to 5,742 nt referred to GenBank no. KT383474), and ToBRFV-R-6179, 5′-CAGAGGACCATTGTAAACCGG-3′ (coordinates: 6,179 to 6,200 nt referred to GenBank no. KT383474), based on the sequence of the coat protein gene, were designed. RT-PCR, in one-step format, was performed in 25 μl (final volume) containing 2 μl of total RNA, 20 mM Tris-HCl (pH 8.4), 50 mM KCl, 3 mM MgCl2, 0.4 mM dNTPs, 1 mM of primers, 4U of RNaseOut, 20 U of superscript II reverse transcription-RNaseH, and 2U of Taq DNA polymerase (Thermo Fisher, U.S.A.). RT-PCR was carried out according to the following conditions: 42°C for 45 min; 95°C for 5 min; 40 cycles of 30 s at 95°C, 30 s at 55°C, and 30 s at 72°C; and a final elongation of 10 min at 72°C. The RT-PCR yielded the expected amplicons of 458 bp, confirming the previous results. The amplification products were purified using the UltraClean PCR Clean-Up kit (Mo-Bio, U.S.A.), and the nucleotide sequences were determined in both directions using an ABI PRISM 3100 DNA sequence analyzer (Applied Biosystems, U.S.A.). The sequences obtained from the 37 samples showed 99% identity. BLAST analysis showed an identity >99% with ToBRFV isolates Tom1-Jo (accession no. KT383474) and ToBRFV-IL (accession no. KX619418). Only one sequence was deposited in GenBank (accession no. MK313803). Sap extracts of four samples retrieved from the four different greenhouses were mechanically inoculated into tomato cultivar Marmande (three plants per isolate). Plants were grown in sterilized soil in an insect-proof glasshouse, with a photoperiod of 14 h light at 28/20°C day/night. Symptoms were recorded weekly, with all plants showing the symptoms described for ToBRFV at 30 days postinoculation. Tomato brown rugose fruit virus is a single-stranded positive RNA virus, belonging to the genus Tobamovirus, family Virgaviridae (Salem et al. 2015). Sicily is an important region for horticulture in Southern Europe. This virus represents a serious problem for tomato crops in Sicily and in all regions where tomato is grown, owing to its ability to be transmitted by plant-to-plant contact, by manipulations, and particularly by seeds. To our knowledge, this is the first report of ToBRFV in Italy and in Southern Europe
Enstalé Panno Sou Fénèt
No full textPart of the Education + Action = Wind Damage Mitigation series by Kathleen C. Ruppert, Hal S. Knowles, Karla A. Lenfesty, and SettingsBarbara Haldeman that is now available in Spanish and Haitian Creole.
ABE375HAI/AE419: Enstale Panno Nan Fenèt yo (ufl.edu)
Inula viscosa L. a new host of Cucumber mosaic virus
No full textInula viscosa L. (Asteraceae) is a well-known perennial medicinal herb that grows wild in the Mediterranean area. Both folk and traditional medicines ascribe several uses to this plant, such as antipyretic, antiseptic, etc. In Spring 2007, almost 40% of I. viscosa plants cultivated at the Herb Garden “Augusto Rinaldi Ceroni “ of Casola Valsenio (Emilia Romagna, Italy) showed chlorotic mosaic on leaves. Symptomatic samples were collected and analysed. No spherical or elongated virus-like particles were observed by transmission electron microscopy in leaf extracts using a leaf dip method. By applying PAS-ELISA technique, Cucumber mosaic virus alone was detected in all symptomatic plants (more than 20) tested, using a polyclonal antiserum (PVAS 30, American Type Culture Collection, Manassas, VA, USA). CMV from I. viscosa leaves was mechanically transmitted to Nicotiana tabacum L. “Samsun”, which developed systemic mosaic symptoms. To confirm the association of CMV with the diseased plants, total RNA was extracted from the same samples (RNeasy Plant Mini Kit; Qiagen, Hilden, Germany) and analyzed by RT-PCR using CMV-specific primers MP+ and MP- (Lin et al., 2004). The expected 842 bp fragment was amplified only from samples of symptomatic tissue while no amplification product was observed when water or healthy plants were used as a template. RT-PCR products were cloned and sequenced. The sequence obtained (GenBank Accession No. EU432181) had 99% identity with CMV-TN (GenBank Accession No. AB176847) which induces tomato necrosis disease, and several other isolates of subgroup II. To our knowledge, this is the first report of CMV infecting I. viscosa and it adds a new host to the list of more than 1,000 species infected by this virus
Rainbow Universities. Alias Careers in Universities as a Communication Dispositive within the Framework of Gender and Sexuality Education.
No full textThe article aims to analyze the alias career in universities from a communicative perspective, with the goal of identifying its strengths and weaknesses within a context marked by the persistence of gender ideology, which constantly threatens individual and collective freedoms, and by the absence of structured programs on gender and sexuality education. Based on an exploratory analysis of the alias career employed in a sample of three Italian universities evenly distributed across the country (the Universities of Turin, Urbino, and Catania), the research seeks to identify key elements and ‘best practices’ of the alias career. In this context, one of the most significant issues is how gender differences (and non-binary identities) are addressed and discussed within educational, training, and instructional settings in Italy, particularly regarding the way gender issues are presented and the educational and communicative approaches adopted by the involved institutions. The objective of the study is therefore to reflect on the progressive reduction of discrimination against non-normative identities (which also involves administrative procedures), with a view toward promoting social inclusion and advancing gender and sexuality education
First report of tomato brown rugose fruit virus infecting sweet pepper in Italy
No full textIn January 2020, about 85% of a red sweet pepper (Capsicum annuum) crop
in a greenhouse located in Ragusa province (Sicily, Italy) showed virus-like
symptoms. Symptoms consisted of a slight mosaic and discoloration of
young leaves, vein clearing on young leaves, browning of the stem with
strong necrosis located in the intersection of the secondary branches, partial
necrosis of the vegetative apex and marbling, mosaic and distortion of the
fruits (Fig. 1). It is important to note that in 2019 the same greenhouse was
cultivated with tomato, which had been removed due to extensive infection
caused by Tomato brown rugose fruit viru
Building energy demand assessment through heating degree days: the importance of a climatic dataset
No full textThe weather is one of the main factors to consider when designing a building because it represents the most important boundary condition to affect the dynamic behaviour of the building. In the literature, many studies use the degree day to predict building energy demand. However, linking the results obtained from a generic building simulation tool with defined degree days, will not give reliable energy evaluation. The goal of this study is to demonstrate that the assessment of building energy demand through the use of the degree day is correct only if the determination of the climate index is a function of the same weather data. The relationship between Heating Degree-Day and heating energy performance was identified by determining some simple correlations, in order to obtain a preliminary evaluation of energy demands. The authors used Heating Degree Days based on three climate data-sets, developing different relationships and feedback. For the extraction of these correlations, numerous dynamic simulations on non-residential buildings characterized by high-energy performance were carried out. From the analysis of the results, it is clear that the relationships with higher correlation coefficients (higher than 0.9) are those that are a function of the degree calculated from the same climatic file used during the simulations. The proposed methodology, validated in this work for an Italian case study can be extended to any country and can be used to improve the reliability of any decision support tool based on climatic indexes
FQDB: a fair multisegment MAC protocol for dual bus networks
No full textThe fair queue dual bus (FQDB) medium-access control (MAC) protocol for dual bus networks, which is intrinsically fair in bandwidth sharing and retains all the positive features of distributed-queue dual-bus (DQDB) systems including simplicity, robustness, flexibility, 100% bandwidth utilization, and zero access delay at very low load, is presented. Features which make this protocol appealing with respect to others DQDB alternatives are represented by the fact that FQDB is compatible with the DQDB standard with respect to the physical arrangement and attachment to the bus, the XOR write tap, the access control field (ACF) length, and the three priority levels. Nevertheless, its properties are attractive also for protocols operating at 1 Gb/s and up. Fairness is formally proved, and it is shown that a bandwidth sharing pattern different from the uniform one can easily be enforced, as may be the case if bridges or other large users are presented. Queueing disciplines, priorities, and implementation issues are discussed, and comparisons obtained by simulation are give
Experimental analysis of the potential validity of Lorenzini’s hypothesis to treat COVID-19 patients
No full textThe present research was aimed at testing the potential validity of Lorenzini’s hypothesis against Covid-19, based on the use of far UV-C rays directly on the patient’s ill lungs, so to significantly reduce the virus presence and with it the interstitial pneumonia, the cause of most deaths. Not having had the chance to experiment directly on the SARS-CoV-2, we shifted to a plant virus called TSWV, which has some common characteristics with SARS-CoV-2, so making our tests significant. The virus was suitably utilized so to affect an opportune range of pepper plants, after a treatment with 2 UV-C lamps, of which just one spreading far UV-C rays. Results showed that the effect of a quick exposition to UVC rays of TSWV-infected sap extract reduces nearly to zero the viral effect, leaving the plant healthy or infected, but asymptomatic. Due to the test conditions and to the similarities of TSWV to SARS-CoV-2, we can conclude that Lorenzini’s hypothesis against Covid-19 is well posed and, if adopted, could save many lives
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