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5G networks will have to offer extremely high volumes of content, compared to those of today’s. Moreover, they will have to support heterogeneous traffics, including machine-to-machine, generated by a massive volume of Internet-of-Things devices. Traffic demands will be variable in time and space. In this work, we argue that all this can be achieved in a cost-effective way if the network is flexible and reconfigurable. We present the Flex5Gware network architecture, designed to meet the above requirements. Moreover, we discuss the links between flexibility and reconfigurability, on the one side, and context awareness and content awareness, on the other; we show how two of the building blocks of the Flex5Gware architecture, namely on-the-fly MAC reconfiguration and dynamic multi-cell coordinated resource scheduling, can leverage context and content information to make reconfiguration decisions. Our evaluation, conducted by both prototyping and simulation, show that this brings significant benefits in terms of improved coexistence of heterogeneous access networks and reduced latency. We terminate our paper by discussing how the Flex5Gware architecture aims at influencing future system standardization and leveraging the benefits of some key 5G networking enablers described in the paper. © 2018, The Author(s).

Black Aspergilli, and in particular Aspergillus carbonarius, are the main causes of contamination of grapes and their by-products by ochratoxin A. A PCR-based method was developed to detect DNA of A. carbonarius and A. japonicus. Two pairs of primers (CARBO1/2 and JAPO1/2) designed from the calmodulin gene, produced PCR products of 371 and 583 bp for A. carbonarius and A. japonicus, respectively. Primer specificity was tested with DNA of 107 strains belonging to Aspergillus section Nigri isolated mostly from grapes in Europe. The sensitivity of primers CARBO1/2 and JAPO1/2 was 12.5 pg when using pure total genomic DNA of the two species. The developed primers provide a powerful tool for detection of the main ochratoxigenic producing Aspergillus species in grapes.

Summary: Fumonisins are a family of carcinogenic secondary metabolites produced by members of the Fusarium fujikuroi species complex (FFSC) and rare strains of Fusarium oxysporum. In Fusarium, fumonisin biosynthetic genes (FUM) are clustered, and the cluster is uniform in gene organization. Here, sequence analyses indicated that the cluster exists in five different genomic contexts, defining five cluster types. In FUM gene genealogies, evolutionary relationships between fusaria with different cluster types were largely incongruent with species relationships inferred from primary-metabolism (PM) gene genealogies, and FUM cluster types are not trans-specific. In addition, synonymous site divergence analyses indicated that three FUM cluster types predate diversification of FFSC. The data are not consistent with balancing selection or interspecific hybridization, but they are consistent with two competing hypotheses: (i) multiple horizontal transfers of the cluster from unknown donors to FFSC recipients and (ii) cluster duplication and loss (birth and death). Furthermore, low levels of FUM gene divergence in F.bulbicola, an FFSC species, and F.oxysporum provide evidence for horizontal transfer of the cluster from the former, or a closely related species, to the latter. Thus, uniform gene organization within the FUM cluster belies a complex evolutionary history that has not always paralleled the evolution of Fusarium. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 90 2 October 2013 10.1111/mmi.12362 Research Articles Research Article Published 2013. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.

An Aspergillus population (67 strains), isolated from maize in 2003, during the first outbreak of aflatoxin contamination documented in Northern Italy, was characterised according to gene sequencing data. All strains were identified as A. flavus by sequencing of ?-tubulin and calmodulin gene fragments. Furthermore, the strains were analysed for the presence of seven aflatoxin biosynthesis genes in relation to their capability to produce aflatoxin B1, targeting the regulatory genes aflR and aflS, and the structural genes aflD, aflM, aflO, aflP, and aflQ. The strains were placed into four groups based on their patterns of amplification products: group I (40 strains) characterised by presence of all seven amplicons; groups II (two strains) and III (nine strains), showing four (AflM, aflP, aflO, and aflQ) and three (aflO, aflP, aflQ) amplicons, respectively; and group IV (16 strains) characterised by total absence of PCR products. Only group I contained strains able to produce aflatoxin B1 (37 out of 40), whereas the strains belonging to the other groups and lacking three, four or all seven PCR products were non-producers. The results obtained in this study pointed out that A. flavus was the only species responsible for aflatoxin contamination in Northern Italy in 2003, and that the aflatoxin gene cluster variability existing in populations can be useful for understanding the toxicological risk as well as the selection of biocontrol agents.

During the 2009 and the 2010 growing seasons, a root rot disease has been detected on young potted Persea americana plants in two nurseries located in the Catania and Messina provinces (eastern Sicily, Italy). A Cylindrocarpon sp. was consistently recovered from pieces of symptomatic tissues on Petri dishes containing potato dextrose agar. On the basis of morphological characteristics and molecular identification by DNA sequencing and phylogenetic analysis of internal transcribed spacer and ?-tubulin gene regions, the causal agent was identified as Ilyonectria (=Neonectria) macrodidyma. Koch's postulates were fulfilled by pathogenicity tests carried out on potted P. americana seedlings. To our knowledge, this is the first to report worldwide of the occurrence of a disease caused by I. macrodidyma on P. americana.

Orobanche ramosa is an important parasitic weed of several agriculturally important crops. A fungal strain identified as Fusarium oxysporum (named FT2) proved to be specific and highly virulent to O. ramosa plants and was proposed as a mycoherbicide for the biological control of this weed to be applied at the soil level. Considering that detecting and tracking the strain is of utmost importance to know the fate of the strain after its release, an amplified fragment length polymorphism (fAFLP) analysis was chosen and utilized with the aim to develop a molecular marker to specifically identify this strain. A wide population of F. oxysporum strains isolated from different hosts was screened against the mycoherbicide strain in order to identify specific fragments belonging to this strain. Two specific fragments were found and their DNA sequences were utilized for primer design. A primer pair (named FT2230F/FT2230R) proved to be strain–specific and it amplified a 232 bp DNA fragment of FT2. These primers were used to monitoring the presence of the F. oxysporum strain in the soil. Amplicons were detected from all the soil samples artificially infected by using known amounts of FT2 inoculum, whereas none of the primer sets amplified DNA from soils not infected by FT2.