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Microclimate for cultural heritage plays a fundamental role in the degradation process of artefacts exhibited in museums. Generally, the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) monitoring inside museums is based on conventional measurements of thermo-hygrometry parameters and longtime averaged measurements of atmospheric pollutants’ concentration. Unfortunately, all these approaches require electric supply and are usually characterized by a noticeable visual impact on the exhibition space, which clearly negatively affects the visitors’ experience. This paper intends to revisit and discuss a methodology (and its test application on field, to estimate the risk of damage of three artefacts displayed in an old museum of Palermo – Italy) perhaps prematurely underestimated that could usefully be re-proposed in particular contexts in which it is necessary to be careful to be as less invasive as possible, as in the case of museums housed in buildings of particular historical-cultural prestige. The discussed approach uses a non-destructive (or minimally invasive, at least) technique consisting in using two types of coupons, bi-metallic and marble ones, that allows an off-line monitoring of the indoor air aggressiveness inside museums, while avoiding consuming electricity and undesirable visual impacts on the site. Specifically, the estimated coupon damage is regarded as gauge to air aggressiveness, in order to provide an early warning of the risk of damage for the artefacts made of materials similar to those which the coupons are made of. Based on the considerations reported in the paper, the indirect evaluation of the air chemical aggressiveness through the assessment of the bi-metallic and marble coupons’ erosion seems to still candidates itself as a feasible method to be applied in complex exhibition scenes.

Xanthomonas arboricola pv. fragariae is the causal agent of strawberry bacterial leaf blight, and, so far, has been reported in Italy and Turkey. Some years later the description of this new pathovar, and its pathogenicity, was questioned based upon artificial inoculations performed with some strains of the pathogen, including the pathotype strain; it was concluded that it is a non-pathogenic xanthomonad. This notion has also been accepted in other studies aiming at elucidating the molecular characteristics of X. arboricola strains. In the present investigation, we performed again pathogenicity tests using the pathotype strain of X. a. pv. fragariae, namely PD 2780 = LMG 19145 = CFBP 6771, by a spray leaf inoculation technique on strawberry cultivars Candonga, Sabrina and Murano. Similarly, it was also inoculated onto pot-cultivated walnut, hazelnut, peach, apple and kiwifruit plants. All typical symptoms of bacterial leaf blight of strawberry were observed within 25 days after the artificial inoculation on all tested strawberry cultivars. None of the other plant species showed symptoms of disease. We conclude again that the pathotype strain of X. a. pv. fragariae is a pathogenic bacterium. This technique also allowed us to observe typical symptoms of strawberry bacterial blight in a shorter time than that obtained previously by puncturing the major vein of the three leaflets of the leaf. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen an increasing public interest in issues related to energy saving and environmental pollution reduction in the building sector. As a result, many directives have been issued, the most important being the Directive 2010/31/EU (EPBD Recast) on the energy performance of buildings, which requires that "Member States shall ensure that by 31 December 2020 all new buildings are nearly zero-energy buildings". This goal can be obtained not only by reducing energy demand for heating and cooling, but also, for example, by improving building envelope performances. In this work, a first analysis of the thermal and structural behaviour of a biocomposite material, constituted by a natural resin (rosin) and vegetal fibres (hay), has been performed, with particular attention to the share of fibres and the granulometry in the mixture. The biocomposite has shown both good insulation properties and mechanical resistance. However, the results show that further analyses should be performed on the optimisation of the samples' preparation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A simplified version of the ecological footprint method is proposed for assessing the environmental performances of urban transportation systems. The method, starting from the knowledge of the composition of the running vehicular fleet, is here applied to a southern Italian province. It represents a synthetic indicator of the environmental pressure exerted by the system also matching the pollutant emissions with the carrying capacity of the site. Particularly, the forested area needed to absorb the CO2 emissions of the system is compared with the total forested area of the province. The results of the case-study indicates the yearly maximum distance that each vehicle of the fleet can cover in order for their emissions to be absorbed by the surrounding forested area. Specifically, if all cars of the fleet would travel for 10,000 km/year, 97% of the forested area would be involved. Thanks to its features, this indicator can be usefully adopted for ranking different transportation options. Therefore, it could allow local administrations to environmentally hierarchize alternative plans concerning urban transportation choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phytopathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae ( Psa) is the causal agent of bacterial canker of kiwifruit. In the last years, it has caused severe economic losses to Actinidia spp. cultivations, mainly in Italy and New Zealand. Conventional strategies adopted did not provide adequate control of infection. Phage therapy may be a realistic and safe answer to the urgent need for novel antibacterial agents aiming to control this bacterial pathogen. In this study, we described the isolation and characterization of two bacteriophages able to specifically infect Psa. φPSA1, a member of the Siphoviridae family, is a temperate phage with a narrow host range, a long latency, and a burst size of 178; φPSA2 is a lytic phage of Podoviridae family with a broader host range, a short latency, a burst size of 92 and a higher bactericidal activity as determined by the TOD value. The genomic sequence of φPSA1 has a length of 51,090 bp and a low sequence homology with the other siphophages, whereas φPSA2 has a length of 40 472 bp with a 98% homology with Pseudomonas putida bacteriophage gh-1. Of the two phages examined, φPSA2 may be considered as a candidate for phage therapy of kiwifruit disease, while φPSA1 seems specific toward the recent outbreak's isolates and could be useful for Psa typing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]