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Strawberry is a very popular fruit, appreciated for its unique flavor and many beneficial traits such as antioxidants and useful amino acids, which strongly contribute to the overall quality of the product. Indeed, the quality of fresh fruit is a fundamental aspect for consumers, and it is crucial for the success of breeding activities as well as for enhancing the competitiveness and profitability of the fruit industry. Nowadays, the entire supply chain requires simple and fast systems for quality evaluation. In this context, the pomological and chemical traits (i.e., soluble solids, firmness, titratable acidity, dry matter) as well as nutritional ones such as total phenols, total anthocyanins and antioxidant potential were evaluated and compared for seven strawberry cultivars and three harvest times. The prediction of the qualitative traits was carried out using color space coordinates (L*, a* and b*) and two statistical techniques, i.e., the multiple linear regression models (MLR) and artificial neural networks (ANNs). Unsatisfactory prediction performances were obtained for all parameters when MLR was applied. On the contrary, the good prediction of the internal quality attributes, using ANN, was observed, especially for both antioxidant activity and the total monomeric anthocyanin (R2 = 0.906, and R2 = 0.943, respectively). This study highlighted that color coordinates coupled with ANN can be successfully used to evaluate the quality of strawberry. [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]

Forty-five Xanthomonas arboricola pv. juglandis (Xaj) strains originating from Juglans regia cultivation in different countries were molecularly typed by means of MultiLocus Sequence Typing (MLST), using acnB, gapA, gyrB and rpoD gene fragments. A total of 2.5 kilobases was used to infer the phylogenetic relationship among the strains and possible recombination events. Haplotype diversity, linkage disequilibrium analysis, selection tests, gene flow estimates and codon adaptation index were also assessed. The dendrograms built by maximum likelihood with concatenated nucleotide and amino acid sequences revealed two major and two minor phylotypes. The same haplotype was found in strains originating from different continents, and different haplotypes were found in strains isolated in the same year from the same location. A recombination breakpoint was detected within the rpoD gene fragment. At the pathovar level, the Xaj populations studied here are clonal and under neutral selection. However, four Xaj strains isolated from walnut fruits with apical necrosis are under diversifying selection, suggesting a possible new adaptation. Gene flow estimates do not support the hypothesis of geographic isolation of the strains, even though the genetic diversity between the strains increases as the geographic distance between them increases. A triplet deletion, causing the absence of valine, was found in the rpoD fragment of all 45 Xaj strains when compared with X. axonopodis pv. citri strain 306. The codon adaptation index was high in all four genes studied, indicating a relevant metabolic activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]