117,398 research outputs found
Vegetative response to Verticillium dahliae of italian varieties of olive (Olea europaea L.)
No full textVerticillium dahliae, the causal agent of vascular wilt, is a cosmopolitan pathogen of olive (Olea europaea L.). Italy is a traditional oil-producing country and its olive growing system is characterized by hundreds of regional varieties. They are widely employed for yielding oils protected by geographical indication systems of the European Union. The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of V. dahliae on the vegetative growth of young, own-rooted olive plants under natural environmental conditions. Specifically, we analyzed differences in stem elongation, number of leaves and stem diameters in eight local varieties of the Campania region of Italy, plus a reference national cultivar, following artificially infection with a non-defoliating pathotype. Multivariate analysis indicated that a distinction in vulnerability among cultivar can be made considering the inhibitory effect of the fungus on stem extension growth, while the other parameters are less influential. Our work also illustrated the variability in some vegetative parameters among the Campanian germplasm and its influence on the inhibitory effect of the pathogen. Further studies will have to analyze the mechanisms connecting the morpho-physiological alterations with the pathogen invasion of the host tissue
Identification and Characterization of New Seedborne Pathogens in Phaseolus vulgaris Landraces of Southern Italy
No full textThe diagnostic survey of seedborne fungal pathogens is fundamental for symptomless material stored in gene banks to avoid the diffusion of pathogens by germplasm distribution and propagation. In this work, seeds of Southern Italian landraces of the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) belonging to the gene bank at CREA (Italy) were inspected to assess their phytosanitary status. The phytopathological analysis revealed the presence of the most common pathogens associated with common bean seeds such as Fusarium spp., Macrophomina phaseolina, Rhizoctonia solani, Colletotrichum lindemuthianum and Diaporthe/Phomopsis complex. However, new fungi able to completely inhibit seed germination were also observed. The most aggressive were isolated, and the morpho-pathological characterization, DNA sequencing and phylogenetic analysis allowed us to define the strains as Botryosphaeria dothidea CREA OF 360.4 and Diplodia mutila CREA OF 420.36. These two plant pathogens are generally associated with grapevines and other fruit trees. Pathogenicity tests were carried out along with a transmissibility test in which the transmission of the pathogens to the seedlings was proven. Host range experiments revealed the ability of these pathogens to infect crops such as pepper and melon. To our knowledge, this is the first time that B. dothidea and D. mutila were detected on the common bean
StawGAN: Structural-Aware Generative Adversarial Networks for Infrared Image Translation
No full textThis paper addresses the problem of translating night-time thermal infrared images, which are the most adopted image modalities to analyze night-time scenes, to daytime color images (NTIT2DC), which provide better perceptions of objects. We introduce a novel model that focuses on enhancing the quality of the target generation without merely colorizing it. The proposed structural aware (StawGAN) enables the translation of better-shaped and high-definition objects in the target domain. We test our model on aerial images of the DroneVeichle dataset containing RGB-IR paired images. The proposed approach produces a more accurate translation with respect to other state-of-the-art image translation models. The source code will be available after the revision process
Ship in sight: diffusion models for ship-image super resolution
No full textIn recent years, remarkable advancements have been achieved in the field of image generation, primarily driven by the escalating demand for high-quality outcomes across various image generation subtasks, such as inpainting, denoising, and super resolution. A major effort is devoted to exploring the application of super-resolution techniques to enhance the quality of low-resolution images. In this context, our method explores in depth the problem of ship image super resolution, which is crucial for coastal and port surveillance. We investigate the opportunity given by the growing interest in text-to-image diffusion models, taking advantage of the prior knowledge that such foundation models have already learned. In particular, we present a diffusion-model-based architecture that leverages text conditioning during training while being class-aware, to best preserve the crucial details of the ships during the generation of the super-resoluted image. Since the specificity of this task and the scarcity availability of off-the-shelf data, we also introduce a large labeled ship dataset scraped from online ship images, mostly from ShipSpotting1 website. Our method achieves more robust results than other deep learning models previously employed for super resolution, as proven by the multiple experiments performed. Moreover, we investigate how this model can benefit downstream tasks, such as classification and object detection, thus emphasizing practical implementation in a real-world scenario. Experimental results show flexibility, reliability, and impressive performance of the proposed framework over state-of-the-art methods for different tasks. The code is available at: https://github.com/LuigiSigillo/ShipinSigh
Il completamento delle riforme pensionistiche?
No full textLe riforme che hanno interessato la materia pensionistica sono state inevitabilmente influenzate dal contesto socioeconomico in cui ha operato il legislatore. Sulla base di questa premessa si ripercorrono le tappe delle riforme del 1995 (c.d. «riforma Dini») e, prima ancora, del 1992 («riforma Amato»), che hanno avviato quel percorso di razionalizzazione e controllo della spesa previdenziale, sia mediante l’inasprimento dei requisiti d’accesso alle prestazioni, sia con l’introduzione di nuovi (e più penalizzati) modelli di calcolo delle pensioni, sia attraverso l’armonizzazione dei regimi previdenziali esistenti. Il sistema pensionistico, dopo la parziale deviazione dal seguita alla legge n. 243/2004, è stato poi completato con la riforma del 2007 che introduce un sistema di aggiornamento automatico dei coefficienti di trasformazione in relazione alle variazioni dell’attesa di vita; e, infine, dalla l. n. 122/2010, con la quale viene perfezionato l’impianto della riforma Dini, agganciando non solo l’importo della prestazione, ma anche (e soprattutto) il momento d’accesso alla stessa all’andamento dell’attesa di vita dei lavoratori. A seguito degli ultimi interventi, dunque, il sistema può dirsi in (tendenziale) equilibrio; resta però aperta la questione dell’adeguatezza della prestazione previdenziale pensionistica alle «esigenze di vita» dei lavoratori e degli strumenti mediante i quali possa soddisfarsi siffatta esigenza, atteso che il sistema contributivo non pare in grado – allo stato – di rispondere al precetto costituzionale in materia.The reforms that affected the public pension schemes have inevitably been influenced by the socio-economical context in which the legislation has been enacted. The essay, starting from this premise, analyzes the progressive stages of the reforms: from the «Dini reform» of 1995 (and before of that the «Amato reform» of 1992), which defined a path of rationalization and control of pensions costs, also with the increase of the requirements for the access to the pension benefits, the introduction of a new (and penalizing) models for pensions calculation, and with the harmonization of social security schemes. The progressive pensions reform, after partial deviation with law n. 243/2004, was completed by law n. 247/2007, which introduced an automatic update system of determination of the pensions amount connected to life expectancy changes; and, finally, by law n. 122/2010, which completed the implementation of the Dini reform, ruling not only with regard to amount of benefits, but also (and especially) with reference to the effective date of benefits payment. Consequently, the system could be in (trend) financial stability; therefore, the new challenge for the legislator is represented by the implementation of the adequacy principle established by art. 38 Cost., as the founded pensions system may be unable to the mentioned principle
Osservazioni sul 'sigillo' di Teognide
No full textCommento a Theogn. 19-26; 'status quaestionis' e riesame delle tesi relative all’identificazione del ‘sigillo’ (dal XVI sec. a oggi); nuove ipotesi sul significato e la funzione dell’elegia, che costituisce un invito a diffondere la poesia teognidea in quanto teognidea. La ricerca di un referente (testuale o concreto) per il ‘sigillo’ menzionato al v. 19 è del tutto inutile, e le eccessive preoccupazioni ‘filologiche’ attribuite a Teognide appaiono in gran parte insussistenti. Tra stato della Silloge e apposizione del ‘sigillo’ teso a tutelare la paternità teognidea non sussiste nessuna contraddizione: la costituzione stessa della raccolta realizza l’invito dei vv. 19-26. // Commentary on Theogn. 19-26; 'status quaestionis' and reexamination of the many thesis concerning the identification of the ‘seal’ (from 16th Century up to now); new hypothesis about the meaning and the function of the elegy, which represents an exhortation to spread Theognidean poetry as Theognidean. The search for a concrete or textual referent of the ‘seal’ mentioned at l. 19 is pointless, and the exorbitant ‘philological’ anxiety ascribed to Theognis is largely groundless. There is no contradiction between the actual status of the Sylloge and the apposition of a seal in order to protect Thognidean authorship: the very formation of the collection fulfils the request of ll. 19-26
Comparative measurements of interfacial tension in a model polymer blend
No full textThis work shows the application of several experimental methods to the measurement of the interfacial tension between two immiscible polymers. A quantitative knowledge of the interfacial tension is important in view of the crucial role that this parameter plays in polymer blend processing. Common to all methods presented here are two main points. The first is that the interfacial tension is obtained from experiments where the shape of the interface between the liquids is directly observed by means of optical microscopy techniques. The second point is that the interface geometry is controlled by a balance between the interfacial force and the viscous stresses generated by some flow applied to the system. Measurements have been carried out on a model polymer blend, whose constituents are a poly-isobutylene and a polydimethylsiloxane, both transparent and liquid at room temperature. When compared with each other, the values of interfacial tension obtained from the different methods show a good quantitative agreement. Excellent agreement is also found with results for the same system previously published in the literatur
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