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At Positano, the renowned town of the Amalfi coast (Salerno province), a Roman villa was found beneath the church of Santa Maria Assunta. It likely dates back to I century BC - I century AD (Julio-Claudian age) and belonged to the freedman Posides Claudi Caesaris, from whose the town might probably derive the name (Della Corte, 1936). The villae were prestigious residences disseminated as status symbol of the wealthy Roman people all around the coastal areas of the Campania region (i.e. Vesuvian villae; Maiuri, 1955. Guzzo & Guidobaldi, 2008). During the 79 AD eruption of the Vesuvius the residence was suddenly destroyed and covered by a volcanoclastic debris flow more than 10 m thick, composed of a mass of gray ashes with large amount of high-porosity welded pumices. During the Middle age, Benedictine monks built an abbey on the same site of the Posides’ villa, then transformed in the present church dedicate to the Virgin. At the beginning of the 2000, the Archaeological Superintendence started the recovery of the overlying Benedictine crypts and extended the excavation and recovery also downward to the villa remains. Inside the crypts it was possible to unearth, descending in the villa from tiles roof till to mosaic pavement, a luxurious triclinio. Imprints of holes related to large wood poles (now replaced with plaster casts), as well as fragments of the roof, coffered ceiling, doors and other wooden remains were found embedded in the volcanoclastic mud. Tuff walls are decorated with fine plasters, polychrome frescoes of excellent painters, with hippocampus, eagle poised upon a globe, Pegasus and Cupids. These lively compositions are basically made by some colors, like the “Pompeian” red, blue and yellow ochre. This work reports a preliminary archaeometric study of various artifacts from the Positano villa, represented by plasters, fresco fragments, tile and other materials. Small but representative samples of the different findings were analyzed, in order to reach our characterization scopes and to provide useful information on probable future restoration activities. The analytical techniques used for mineralogical and petrographic study are: optical and stereoscopic studies on thin sections, modal analysis, X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD), scanning electron microscopy analysis (SEM) and energy-dispersion X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). Data concerning the composition of the artifacts and manufacturing techniques will be reported and compared with the reference literature. Della Corte M. 1936. Posides Claudi Caesaris libertus – Positano da Posidetanum? Rivista Indo-greca-Italica, 20, 67-73 Guzzo P.G. & Guidobaldi M.P. 2007. Nuove ricerche archeologiche nell'area vesuviana (scavi 2003-2006). Atti Conv. Int. Roma 1-3 febbraio, L’Erma di Bretschneider, 629 p. Maiuri A. 1955. Le vicende dei monumenti antichi della costa amalfitana e sorrentina alla luce delle recenti alluvioni. Rend. Acc. Arch. Lett. Belle Arti Napoli, XXIX, 87-98.

Vegetable salad shelf life largely depends on leaf senescence and abiotic and biotic stress responses, both under control of the phytohormone cytokinin (CK). Flowering time (FT) diversity has adaptive value in natural populations and plays a major role in leafy crops production. Our studies aim at identifying molecular markers and hub/master gene regulators of these key agronomic traits in the Compositae (Asteraceae) family. This will produce novel genetic tools and strategies to improve leafy crops bel onging to this family. A de novo assembled Cichorium endivia transcriptome obtained in our lab was used for deep annotation and gene prediction. With the aim to dissect the genetic pathways of cytokinins and flowering time in this species, manual curation of the database was carried out to obtain high quality functional annotations based on knowledge acquired in plant model species. CK and FT genetic pathways were subdivided into functional modules for systematic bioinformatic analyses. Correlation analyse s of RNAseq and hormone metabolites data, obtained from edible leaves of four commercial cultivars, identified key genes involved in cytokinin nucleotide - nucleoside interconversion and O - glycosylation, and their relationships with other CK metabolism genes , CK transport and components of the signal transduction pathway. Cis - zeatin (cZ) was identified as the most abundant form of CK in C. endivia leaves, and functional gene modules connected to either cZ or trans - zeatin (tZ) pathways were characterized. Analysis of CK and flowering time gene RNAseq expression profiles over two production cycles allowed the identification of known and novel co - expression networks, giving new insights into CK connection with plant innate immune response and novel information on flowering time control in endive and escarole. A connection of both pathways with the T hree A mino acid L oop E xtension (TALE) superclass of homeobox transcription factors (TF) was revealed. Genome - wide in silico analyses of TALE binding sites in Arabidops is allowed us to predict that several TFs involved in the control of flowering time may be direct targets of TALEs. The 1135 sequenced genomes of A. thaliana natural accessions, available in the "1001 Genomes Project", were screened for SNPs/mutations in the core consensus region of the identified TALE binding sites, which may result in loss of transcriptional regulation. The screen identified several putative lost and some newly evolved TALE binding sites, some of them being excellent candidates for adapt ive mutations and diversity in the flowering time pathway.

A population of the Mediterranean red gorgonian Paramuricea clavata has exhibited unexpected resilience after being impacted by 2 anomalous mortality events in 1999 and 2003. To understand the recovery mechanisms, we examined the population reproductive structure and reproductive output based on data collected via non-destructive sampling techniques. The overall population sex ratio was balanced, though the spatial distribution of sexes was significantly segregated. Dividing the population into 14 size classes on the basis of their measured average annual growth revealed a decreasing monotonic trend of abundance of larger classes. The recruitment class was consistently dominant. The minimum size at first reproduction was 8.5 cm in height, corresponding to an age of ~3 yr. The percentage of fertile colonies increased with size, reaching 90% in size Class 9. Polyp fecundity increased with colony size and did not differ significantly between healthy and damaged colonies. As the number of mature oocytes produced by a colony is a function of polyp fecundity and of the number of reproductive polyps, colony reproductive output increased exponentially with size. The population reproductive output (145 × 103 mature oocytes m−2 yr−1) was one-fifth of that measured in stable, undamaged populations and came mainly from the medium size classes. After the catastrophic mortality, the population has been recovering, albeit with reduced reproductive output. Moreover, it has exhibited a 2-fold increase in recruitment rate, 3-fold greater than that measured in other, undisturbed populations. Our findings are consistent with a strict density-dependent recruitment control operating in crowded, stable P. clavata populations.

In this paper we study a system of nonlinear hyperbolic equations, with nonlocal boundary conditions and a free boundary, arising in the modelling of epidermis growth. The model was introduced in a previous paper [9] where conditions for the existence of a steady state were investigated. The present paper is devoted to prove existence and uniqueness of a solution to the evolution problem and of the related moving boundary representing the external surface of the epidermis. The proof of the theorem is based on the integration along characteristic curves in order to obtain suitable estimates allowing to set up a fixed point procedure. The modellistic aim of the paper is a description of the structure of the epidermis as a layered aggregate of different type of cells.

International Workshop on Red Coral Science, Management, and Trade: Lessons from the Mediterranean, 23-26 September 2009, Naples, Italy.-- 14 pages, 9 figures, The history of the research on the Mediterranean red coral (Corallium rubrum L 1758) is strictly intertwined with that of harvesting. For more than three centuries all the information on red coral habitat and all the material examined by naturalists was gathered by fishermen; moreover, the oscillating succession of red coral fishing vicissitudes deeply affected the development of red coral research. Up to the XVII century, red coral was considered to be a plant, and the first naturalist who stated the animal nature of red coral was the Neapolitan alchemist Farinella, and only subsequently Peyssonel in 1723 confirmed this statement. A following milestone in red coral research was the beautiful book of the French scientist Lacaze-Duthiers, who, in 1864 published: History naturelle du corail. Only in the second half of the XX century the research on red coral started again and in situ researches were carried out by Laborel and Vacelet (1958, 1961) and Weinberg (1978, 1979a, 1979b), who described the sensitivity of red coral to light, sedimentation, hydrodynamics, and the red coral habitat selectivity. In the same period, a team of Italian researchers (Barletta, Marchetti, Vighi 1968) described, on the basis of data collected directly by SCUBA diving, several red coral populations living in shallow-waters (between 20 and 50 meter depth) along the Italian coasts. Moreover, they described for the fist time the reproductive cycle of this species. In 1986, Spanish researchers (Rodriquez and Massò 1986) described red coral population size structure and allometric relationships on the basis of Catalan fishing crops; moreover, they try to determine the age of red coral colonies. In 1991 and 1994, after two meetings organised by FAO in Torre del Greco and Alger, and the submission of a Spanish proposal to include red coral in CITES Appendix-II, new impulse was given to red coral research by the Italian Government, who funded two preliminary research projects. These researches led to two basic books on red coral biology and ecology (Red coral in the Mediterranean Sea, Art history and Science 1993; Red Coral and other Mediterranean Octocorals: Biology and Protection 1999). It will be worth to remember that nearly all the papers already published deal with shallow-water populations which have a limited economic value. More recently red coral research was addressed towards the study of population structure and dynamics by means of demographic models (Abbiati et al. 1992; Santangelo et al. 2004, 2007; Bramanti et al. 2009). This approach, widely applied in Conservation Ecology, will supply the tools to match harvesting to population growth rate fostering both conservation and rational management of the populations of this precious species, if sound data on deep-dwelling populations will be at least gathered and enforcement will be really applied at local population level