Regional sub-hourly extreme rainfall estimates in Sicily under a scale invariance framework

Design of urban drainage systems or flood risk assessment in small catchments often requires knowledge of very short-duration rainfall events (less than 1 h). Unfortunately, data for these events are often unavailable or too scarce for a reliable statistical inference. However, regularities in the temporal pattern exhibited by storm records, known as scaling properties of rainfall, could help in characterizing extreme storms at partially gauged sites better than the application of traditional statistical techniques. In this work, a scaling approach for estimating the distribution of sub-hourly extreme rainfall in Sicily (Italy) is presented based on data from high-resolution rain gauges with a short functioning period and from low-resolution rain gauges with longer samples. First, simple scaling assumption was tested for annual maxima rainfall (AMR) data from 10 min to 24 h duration, revealing that the simple scaling regime holds from 20 to 60 min for most of the stations. Then, scaling homogeneous regions were classified based on the values of the scaling exponent. In each region, this parameter was regionalized through power-law relationships with the median of 1 h AMR data. After that, regional Depth Duration Frequency (DDF) curves were developed by combining the scale-invariant framework with the generalized extreme value (GEV) probability distribution and used to estimate T-year sub-hourly extreme rainfalls at sites where only rainfall data for longer durations (≥ 1 h) were available. The regional GEV simple scaling model was validated against sub-hourly historical observations at ten rain gauges, generally yielding, in relation to the scaling exponent value, to similar or better sub-hourly estimates than empirical approach.

     

Multiclass mycotoxin analysis in food, environmental and biological matrices with chromatography/mass spectrometry

Mold metabolites that can elicit deleterious effects on other organisms are classified as mycotoxins. Human exposure to mycotoxins occurs mostly through the intake of contaminated agricultural products or residues due to carry over or metabolite products in foods of animal origin such as milk and eggs, but can also occur by dermal contact and inhalation. Mycotoxins contained in moldy foods, but also in damp interiors, can cause diseases in humans and animals. Nephropathy, various types of cancer, alimentary toxic aleukia, hepatic diseases, various hemorrhagic syndromes, and immune and neurological disorders are the most common diseases that can be related to mycotoxicosis. The absence or presence of mold infestation and its propagation are seldom correlated with mycotoxin presence. Mycotoxins must be determined directly, and suitable analytical methods are necessary. Hundreds of mycotoxins have been recognized, but only for a few of them, and in a restricted number of utilities, a maximum acceptable level has been regulated by law. However, mycotoxins seldom develop alone; more often various types and/or classes form in the same substrate. The co-occurrence might render the individual mycotoxin tolerance dose irrelevant, and therefore the mere presence of multiple mycotoxins should be considered a risk factor. The advantage of chromatography/mass spectrometry (MS) is that many compounds can be determined and confirmed in one analysis. This review illustrates the state-of-the-art of mycotoxin MS-based analytical methods for multiclass, multianalyte determination in all the matrices in which they appear. A chapter is devoted to the history of the long-standing coexistence and interaction among humans, domestic animals and mycotoxicosis, and the history of the discovery of mycotoxins. Quality assurance, although this topic relates to analytical chemistry in general, has been also examined for mycotoxin analysis as a preliminary to the systematic literature excursus. Sample handling is a crucial step to devise a multiclass analytical method; so when possible, it has been treated separately for a better comparison before tackling the instrumental part of the whole analytical method. This structure has resulted sometimes in unavoidable redundancies, because it was also important to underline the interconnection. Most reviews do not deal with all the possible mycotoxin sources, including the environmental ones. The focus of this review is the analytical methods based on MS for multimycotoxin class determination. Because the final purpose to devise multimycotoxin analysis should be the assessment of the danger to health of exposition to multitoxicants of natural origin (and possibly also the interaction with anthropogenic contaminants), therefore also the analytical methods for environmental relevant mycotoxins have been thoroughly reviewed. Finally, because the best way to shed light on actual risk assessment could be the individuation of exposure biomarkers, the review covers also the scarce literature on biological fluids.     

A fast ellipsoidal MPC scheme for discrete-time polytopic linear parameter varying systems

This paper proposes a fast ellipsoidal Model Predictive Control (MPC) strategy to address feedback regulation problems for constrained polytopic Linear Parameter Varying (LPV) systems subject to bounded disturbances. In order to deal with the specific non-convex structure of the state prediction tubes arising in LPV contexts, a new convexification procedure is proposed and, based on the off-line computation of a sequence of inner ellipsoidal approximations of exact one-step controllable sets, a computationally low-demanding MPC algorithm is presented. Comparisons with state-of-the-art MPC control algorithms for LPV systems are reported in a final numerical example where several methods are contrasted in terms of achievable domains of attraction, control performance, numerical burdens and memory requirements.     

Vertex angle and crossing angle resolution of leveled tree drawings

We study the problem of computing leveled tree drawings, i.e., straight-line drawings of trees where the vertices have distinct preassigned y-coordinates. Our optimization goal is to maximize the crossing angle resolution (i.e., the minimum angle formed by any two crossing edges) and/or the vertex angle resolution (i.e., the minimum angle formed by two edges incident to the same vertex) of the drawing. We provide tight and almost tight worst case bounds for the crossing angle resolution and for the total angle resolution (i.e., the minimum of crossing and vertex angle resolution), respectively.     

On-line schedulability tests for adaptive reservations in fixed priority scheduling

Adaptive reservation is a real-time scheduling technique in which each application is associated a fraction of the computational resource (a reservation) that can be dynamically adapted to the varying requirements of the application by using appropriate feedback control algorithms. An adaptive reservation is typically implemented by using an aperiodic server (e.g. sporadic server) algorithm with fixed period and variable budget. When the feedback law demands an increase of the reservation budget, the system must run a schedulability test to check if there is enough spare bandwidth to accommodate such increase. The schedulability test must be very fast, as it may be performed at each budget update, i.e. potentially at each instance of a task; yet, it must be as efficient as possible, to maximize resource usage. In this paper, we tackle the problem of performing an efficient on-line schedulability test for adaptive resource reservations in fixed priority schedulers. In the literature, a number of algorithms have been proposed for on-line admission control in fixed priority systems. We describe four of these tests, with increasing complexity and performance. In addition, we propose a novel on-line test, called Spare-Pot algorithm, which has been specifically designed for the problem at hand, and which shows a good cost/performance ratio compared to the other tests.     

A2A Receptor Dysregulation in Dystonia DYT1 Knock-Out Mice

We aimed to investigate A2A receptors in the basal ganglia of a DYT1 mouse model of dystonia. A2A was studied in control Tor1a+/+ and Tor1a+/− knock-out mice. A2A expression was assessed by anti-A2A antibody immunofluorescence and Western blotting. The co-localization of A2A was studied in striatal cholinergic interneurons identified by anti-choline-acetyltransferase (ChAT) antibody. A2A mRNA and cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) contents were also assessed. In Tor1a+/+, Western blotting detected an A2A 45 kDa band, which was stronger in the striatum and the globus pallidus than in the entopeduncular nucleus. Moreover, in Tor1a+/+, immunofluorescence showed A2A roundish aggregates, 0.3–0.4 μm in diameter, denser in the neuropil of the striatum and the globus pallidus than in the entopeduncular nucleus. In Tor1a+/−, A2A Western blotting expression and immunofluorescence aggregates appeared either increased in the striatum and the globus pallidus, or reduced in the entopeduncular nucleus. Moreover, in Tor1a+/−, A2A aggregates appeared increased in number on ChAT positive interneurons compared to Tor1a+/+. Finally, in Tor1a+/−, an increased content of cAMP signal was detected in the striatum, while significant levels of A2A mRNA were neo-expressed in the globus pallidus. In Tor1a+/−, opposite changes of A2A receptors’ expression in the striatal-pallidal complex and the entopeduncular nucleus suggest that the pathophysiology of dystonia is critically dependent on a composite functional imbalance of the indirect over the direct pathway in basal ganglia.     

Engineered Lactobacillus paracasei Producing Palmitoylethanolamide (PEA) Prevents Colitis in Mice

Palmitoylethanolamide (PEA) is an N-acylethanolamide produced on-demand by the enzyme N-acylphosphatidylethanolamine-preferring phospholipase D (NAPE-PLD). Being a key member of the larger family of bioactive autacoid local injury antagonist amides (ALIAmides), PEA significantly improves the clinical and histopathological stigmata in models of ulcerative colitis (UC). Despite its safety profile, high PEA doses are required in vivo to exert its therapeutic activity; therefore, PEA has been tested only in animals or human biopsy samples, to date. To overcome these limitations, we developed an NAPE-PLD-expressing Lactobacillus paracasei F19 (pNAPE-LP), able to produce PEA under the boost of ultra-low palmitate supply, and investigated its therapeutic potential in a murine model of UC. The coadministration of pNAPE-LP and palmitate led to a time-dependent release of PEA, resulting in a significant amelioration of the clinical and histological damage score, with a significantly reduced neutrophil infiltration, lower expression and release of pro-inflammatory cytokines and oxidative stress markers, and a markedly improved epithelial barrier integrity. We concluded that pNAPE-LP with ultra-low palmitate supply stands as a new method to increase the in situ intestinal delivery of PEA and as a new therapeutic able of controlling intestinal inflammation in inflammatory bowel disease.