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With the damages caused to plant roots, nematodes may affect the growth and yield of fruit and vegetable crops, and the income earned by farmers at harvest time. Available solutions include chemical treatments such as 1,3-dichloropropene (1,3-D), physical treatments, such as solarisation and biological treatments, all acts through soil disinfestation with diverse specificities. In this context, 1,3-D represents a specific option as it targets nematodes and may be used in both open field and protected crop production. In order to characterise the risks and benefits associated with the use of 1,3-D in crop protection according to a reasoned application frequency, an Ecosystem Services (ES) framework was applied to its use in the control of nematodes in tomato cultivation in southern Italy. A Net Ecosystem Services Analysis (NESA) framework was developed to conceptualise potential routes of exposure and effects to ES. In support of this study, surveys of tomato growers in the Puglia and Sicily regions of Italy were undertaken to gather information on the socio-economics and the management practices of tomato cultivation. The results of the evaluation were used to determine changes in ES in the absence of nematicide use and the effect on socio-economics and the environment posed by the discontinued use of this nematicide and the strategies that might be developed to minimise changes and enhance current ecosystem services for future generations. The study confirmed the benefits of 1,3-D to tomato production in Italy, with significant positive effects on production yields and farm income, as compared to limited and transient potential impacts on ecological indicators, particularly on soil function and on other services such as water quality, ecological food chain, pollination or air quality. This study opens new perspectives on the evolution of crop protection tools, in line with the recommendation of the Sustainable Use Directive.

We present a theoretical model to predict the properties of an observed $z =$ 5.72 Lyman $\alpha$ emitter galaxy - CIV absorption pair separated by 1384 comoving kpc/h. We use the separation of the pair and an outflow velocity/time travelling argument to demonstrate that the observed galaxy cannot be the source of metals for the CIV absorber. We find a plausible explanation for the metal enrichment in the context of our simulations: a dwarf galaxy with $M_{\star} =$ 1.87 $\times$ 10$^{9} M_{\odot}$ located 119 comoving kpc/h away with a wind velocity of $\sim$ 100 km/s launched at $z \sim$ 7. Such a dwarf ($M_{\text{UV}} =$ - 20.5) is fainter than the detection limit of the observed example. In a general analysis of galaxy - CIV absorbers, we find galaxies with -20.5 $< M_{\text{UV}}, Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. Accepted April 10, 2017 in MNRAS

We investigate the evolution of the galaxy Star Formation Rate Function (SFRF) and Cosmic Star Formation Rate Density (CSFRD) of $z\sim 1-4 $ galaxies, using cosmological Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamic (SPH) simulations and a compilation of UV, IR and H$\alpha$ observations. These tracers represent different populations of galaxies with the IR light being a probe of objects with high star formation rates and dust contents, while UV and H$\alpha$ observations provide a census of low star formation galaxies where mild obscuration occurs. We compare the above SFRFs with the results of SPH simulations run with the code {\small{P-GADGET3(XXL)}}. We focus on the role of feedback from Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and supernovae in form of galactic winds. The AGN feedback prescription that we use decreases the simulated CSFRD at $z < 3$ but is not sufficient to reproduce the observed evolution at higher redshifts. We explore different wind models and find that the key factor for reproducing the evolution of the observed SFRF and CSFRD at $z \sim1-4$ is the presence of a feedback prescription that is prominent at high redshifts ($z \ge 4$) and becomes less efficient with time. We show that variable galactic winds which are efficient at decreasing the SFRs of low mass objects are quite successful in reproducing the observables., Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures, 10 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS

The relation between the Star Formation Rate (SFR) and stellar mass (${\rm M}_{\star}$) of galaxies represents a fundamental constraint on galaxy formation and has been studied extensively both in observations and cosmological simulations. However, the observed amplitude has not been successfully reproduced in simulations, indicating either that the halo accretion history and baryonic physics are poorly modeled or that observations contain biases. We examine the evolution of the SFR$-{\rm M}_{\star}$ relation of $z\sim1-4 $ galaxies and display the inconsistency between observed relations that are obtained using different techniques. We employ cosmological hydrodynamic simulations and compare these with a range of observed SFR$-{\rm M}_{\star}$ relations. We find that numerical results are consistent with observations that use Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) techniques to estimate star formation rates and dust corrections. On the contrary, simulations are not able to reproduce results that were obtained by combining only UV and IR luminosities. These imply SFRs at a fixed stellar mass that are larger almost by a factor of 5 than those of SED measurements for $z \sim1.5-4$. Furthermore, we find remarkable agreement between the numerical results from various authors who have employed different cosmological codes and run simulations with different resolutions. This is interesting for two reasons. A) simulations can produce realistic populations of galaxies within representative cosmological volumes even at relatively modest resolutions. B) It is likely that current numerical codes that rely on similar subgrid multiphase Inter-Stellar Medium (ISM) models and are tuned to reproduce statistical properties of galaxies, produce similar results for the SFR$-{\rm M}_{\star}$ relation by construction, regardless of resolution, box size and, to some extent, the adopted feedback prescriptions., Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in PASA

We study the role of feedback from supernovae and black holes in the evolution of the star formation rate function (SFRF) of z~4-7 galaxies. We use a new set of cosmological hydrodynamic simulations, ANGUS (AustraliaN GADGET-3 early Universe Simulations), run with a modified and improved version of the parallel TreePM-smoothed particle hydrodynamics code GADGET-3 called P-GADGET3(XXL), that includes a self-consistent implementation of stellar evolution and metal enrichment. In our simulations both Supernova (SN) driven galactic winds and Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) act simultaneously in a complex interplay. The SFRF is insensitive to feedback prescription at z>5, meaning that it cannot be used to discriminate between feedback models during reionisation. However, the SFRF is sensitive to the details of feedback prescription at lower redshift. By exploring different SN driven wind velocities and regimes for the AGN feedback, we find that the key factor for reproducing the observed SFRFs is a combination of "strong" SN winds and early AGN feedback in low mass galaxies. Conversely, we show that the choice of initial mass function and inclusion of metal cooling have less impact on the evolution of the SFRF. When variable winds are considered, we find that a non-aggressive wind scaling is needed to reproduce the SFRFs at z>4. Otherwise, the amount of objects with low SFRs is greatly suppressed and at the same time winds are not effective enough in the most massive systems., 18 pages, 3 tables, 8 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

(Abridged) We explore new observationally-constrained sub-resolution models of galactic outflows and investigate their impact on the circumgalactic medium (CGM) over redshifts z = 2 - 4. We perform cosmological hydrodynamic simulations, including star formation, chemical enrichment, and four cases of SNe-driven outflows: no wind (NW), an energy-driven constant velocity wind (CW), a radially varying wind (RVWa) where the outflow velocity has a positive correlation with galactocentric distance (r), and a RVW with additional dependence on halo mass (RVWb). Overall, we find that the outflows expel metal-enriched gas away from galaxies, significantly quench star formation, and enrich the CGM. At z = 2, the radial profiles of gas properties around galaxy centers are most sensitive to the choice of the wind model for halo masses (10^9 - 10^11) M_sun. We infer that the RVWb model is similar to the NW case, except that it substantially enriches the CGM: the carbon metallicity (Z_C) is 10 times higher in RVWb than in NW at r > R_200; and the warm gas of 10^4 - 10^5 K and delta < 100 is enriched to 50 times higher than in NW. We also find that the impact of models CW and RVWa are similar, with the following differences. RVWa causes a greater suppression of star formation rate at z < 5, and has a higher fraction of low-density (delta < 10), warm-hot (10^4 - 10^6 K) gas than in CW. Outflows in CW produce a higher and earlier enrichment of some IGM phases than RVWa. By visual inspection, we note that the RVWa model shows more pronounced bipolar outflows and galactic disks. We present fitting formulae for [Z_C-delta] and [Z_C-r], also for the abundance of CIV as a function of r. We predict observational diagnostics to distinguish between different outflow scenarios: Z_C of the CGM gas at r = (30 - 300) kpc/h comoving, and CIV fraction of the inner gas at r < (4 - 5) kpc/h comoving., Version accepted for publication in MNRAS. Manuscript file with higher resolution Fig. 2 can be found here: http://adlibitum.oats.inaf.it/barai/AllPages/Images-Movies/RadialVarWind.pdf