The side effects of the cure: Large-scale risks of a phytosanitary action plan on protected habitats and species.

Agriculture acts as a predominant factor that affects the state and functionality of ecosystems worldwide. Nevertheless, in case of emergency actions for counteracting the expansion of plant diseases, large-scale and harmful agricultural practices can be legally allowed without considering their environmental impact. Here, we assess the risks to the conservation of protected habitats and species arising from the implementation of an emergency action plan for counteracting the expansion of the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa in Puglia, Italy.

Molecular diversity of black corals from the Saudi Arabian Red Sea: a first assessment.

Black corals occur as part of benthic assemblages from shallow to deep waters in all oceans. Despite the importance in many benthic ecosystems, where these act as biodiversity aggregators, antipatharians remain poorly studied, with 75% of the known species occurring below recreational SCUBA diving depth limits. Currently, information regarding the diversity and evolutionary history is limited, with most studies focusing on Hawaii and the South Pacific Ocean.

Echoes of the past: Agricultural legacies shape the successional dynamics of protected semi-natural dry grasslands.

European semi-natural dry grasslands are among the most endangered terrestrial ecosystems, being recognised as habitats of community interest by the EU Habitats Directive. The occurrence and preservation of these habitats depend on a combination of anthropogenic and natural factors, although little is known regarding the role of past land-use changes. Here, we investigated the role of time since cultivation abandonment as a major driver of grassland successional dynamics in the Mediterranean agro-pastoral system of Alta Murgia, southern Italy.

Reduction in the incidence of invasive infections caused by encapsulated bacteria after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Interaction between severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and IIEB remains under investigation. Objective: to compare IIEB incidence before and during COVID-19 pandemic, and assess incidence of coinfection with COVID-19 and case fatality. A cross-sectional study was performed on data from a centralized microbiology laboratory serving a network of healthcare centers comprising 713 pediatric and adult inpatient beds, expanded by 20% during the pandemic.

Women's alcohol consumption in the early parenting period and influences of socio-demographic and domestic circumstances: A scoping review and narrative synthesis.

Issues: Numerous studies have explored alcohol consumption in pregnancy, but less is known about women's drinking in the early parenting period (EPP, 0-5 years after childbirth). We synthesise research related to three questions: (i) How are women's drinking patterns and trajectories associated with socio-demographic and domestic circumstances?; (ii) What theoretical approaches are used to explain changes in consumption?; (iii) What meanings have been given to mothers' drinking?

Approach: Three databases (Ovid-MEDLINE, Ovid-PsycINFO and CINAHL) were systematically searched. Citation tracking was conducted in Web of Science Citation Index and Google Scholar.

A new species of (Cnidaria, Anthozoa, Antipatharia, Schizopathidae) from the Red Sea and its phylogenetic position.

A black coral, Chimienti, is described from the Saudi Arabian coasts of the Gulf of Aqaba and north Red Sea (Neom area) using an integrated taxonomic approach. The morphological distinctiveness of the new species is confirmed by molecular analyses. The species thrives in warm and high salinity waters typical of the Red Sea at bathyal depths.

Atlantic cod () embryos are highly sensitive to short-term 3,4-dichloroaniline exposure.

3,4-dichloroaniline (3,4-DCA) is one of the most widely produced anilines world-wide, used in plastic packaging, fabrics, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, dyes and paints as well as being a degradation product of several pesticides. 3,4-DCA has been detected in freshwater, brackish and marine environments. Although freshwater toxicity thresholds exist, very little toxicological information is available on marine and cold-water species.

Women's informal surveillance of alcohol consumption in intimate heterosexual relationships during the early parenting period.

Alcohol consumption may play an important part in intimate heterosexual relationships, including regulating partners' emotional well-being and sustaining relational bonds. Quantitative studies consistently indicate that women play a prominent role in the informal surveillance of their partners' drinking. This paper aims to contribute to the evidence-base by examining possible meanings and reasons underpinning the surveillance of drinking in the early parenting period.

rasterdiv-An Information Theory tailored R package for measuring ecosystem heterogeneity from space: To the origin and back.

Ecosystem heterogeneity has been widely recognized as a key ecological indicator of several ecological functions, diversity patterns and change, metapopulation dynamics, population connectivity or gene flow.In this paper, we present a new R package-rasterdiv-to calculate heterogeneity indices based on remotely sensed data. We also provide an ecological application at the landscape scale and demonstrate its power in revealing potentially hidden heterogeneity patterns.

Negotiating identities of 'responsible drinking': Exploring accounts of alcohol consumption of working mothers in their early parenting period.

Mothers' alcohol consumption has often been portrayed as problematic: firstly, because of the effects of alcohol on the foetus, and secondly, because of the association between motherhood and morality. Refracted through the disciplinary lens of public health, mothers' alcohol consumption has been the target of numerous messages and discourses designed to monitor and regulate women's bodies and reproductive health. This study explores how mothers negotiated this dilemmatic terrain, drawing on accounts of drinking practices of women in paid work in the early parenting period living in Northern England in 2017-2018.

Salivary Cortisol Levels Are Associated with Craving and Cognitive Performance in Cocaine-Abstinent Subjects: A Pilot Study.

Cortisol is a glucocorticoid hormone secreted by the adrenal cortex upon the activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Assessment of cortisol in saliva has emerged as a reliable way of evaluating HPA function. We examined the relationships between salivary cortisol levels with both craving and cognitive performance, as a possible biomarker of cocaine addiction.

Cognitive reserve mediates the severity of certain neuropsychological deficits related to cocaine use disorder.

The concept of cognitive reserve (CR) is being considered in the field of substance use disorder (SUD) by observing that there are individuals whose brain alterations are not related to the cognitive symptomatology they present. Our aims were to characterise the possible neuropsychological deficits in a sample of subjects with SUD compared to healthy controls and to determine whether the degree of CR is a mediator in the cognitive functioning of these patients. To perform these objectives, the study involved a sample of subjects with SUD in outpatient treatment and a healthy control group.

Tackling critical parameters in metazoan meta-barcoding experiments: a preliminary study based on DNA barcode.

Nowadays DNA meta-barcoding is a powerful instrument capable of quickly discovering the biodiversity of an environmental sample by integrating the DNA barcoding approach with High Throughput Sequencing technologies. It mainly consists of the parallel reading of informative genomic fragment/s able to discriminate living entities. Although this approach has been widely studied, it still needs optimization in some necessary steps requested in its advanced accomplishment.

DNA Multiple Sequence Alignment Guided by Protein Domains: The MSA-PAD 2.0 Method.

Multiple sequence alignment (MSA) is a fundamental component in many DNA sequence analyses including metagenomics studies and phylogeny inference. When guided by protein profiles, DNA multiple alignments assume a higher precision and robustness. Here we present details of the use of the upgraded version of MSA-PAD (2.

Survival and divergence in a small group: The extraordinary genomic history of the endangered Apennine brown bear stragglers.

About 100 km east of Rome, in the central Apennine Mountains, a critically endangered population of ∼50 brown bears live in complete isolation. Mating outside this population is prevented by several 100 km of bear-free territories. We exploited this natural experiment to better understand the gene and genomic consequences of surviving at extremely small population size.

Intra-individual purifying selection on mitochondrial DNA variants during human oogenesis.

Study Question: Does selection for mtDNA mutations occur in human oocytes?

Summary Answer: We provide statistical evidence in favor of the existence of purifying selection for mtDNA mutations in human oocytes acting between the expulsion of the first and second polar bodies (PBs).

What Is Known Already: Several lines of evidence in Metazoa, including humans, indicate that variation within the germline of mitochondrial genomes is under purifying selection. The presence of this internal selection filter in the germline has important consequences for the evolutionary trajectory of mtDNA.

Exploring the under-investigated "microbial dark matter" of drinking water treatment plants.

Scientists recently reported the unexpected detection of unknown or poorly studied bacterial diversity in groundwater. The ability to uncover this neglected biodiversity mainly derives from technical improvements, and the term "microbial dark matter" was used to group taxa poorly investigated and not necessarily monophyletic. We focused on such under-investigated microbial dark matter of drinking water treatment plant from groundwater, across carbon filters, to post-chlorination.

Mechanism of action of trabectedin in desmoplastic small round cell tumor cells.

Background: Desmoplastic small round cell tumor (DSRCT) is a rare and highly aggressive disease, that can be described as a member of the family of small round blue cell tumors. The molecular diagnostic marker is the t(11;22)(p13;q12) translocation, which creates an aberrant transcription factor, EWS-WT1, that underlies the oncogenesis of DSRCT. Current treatments are not very effective so new active drugs are needed.

BioVeL: a virtual laboratory for data analysis and modelling in biodiversity science and ecology.

Background: Making forecasts about biodiversity and giving support to policy relies increasingly on large collections of data held electronically, and on substantial computational capability and capacity to analyse, model, simulate and predict using such data. However, the physically distributed nature of data resources and of expertise in advanced analytical tools creates many challenges for the modern scientist. Across the wider biological sciences, presenting such capabilities on the Internet (as "Web services") and using scientific workflow systems to compose them for particular tasks is a practical way to carry out robust "in silico" science.

In vivo diagnosis with purified tropomyosin in mite and shellfish allergic patients.

Background: Tropomyosin is the most studied shellfish allergen and has been involved in cross-reactivity among different invertebrates (crustacean, mollusks, mites, insects, and nematodes).

Objective: To determine the relevance of tropomyosin in mite- and shellfish-sensitized patients using tropomyosin skin testing.

Methods: Patients were divided into 3 groups: group M included mite allergic patients (ie, individuals with respiratory symptoms and a positive result on skin prick testing [SPT] to house dust mites), group S included shellfish allergic patients (ie, individuals who reported symptoms with shellfish), and group MS included mite- and shellfish allergic patients (ie, individuals who simultaneously fulfilled the inclusion criteria for groups M and S).

MSA-PAD: DNA multiple sequence alignment framework based on PFAM accessed domain information.

Here we present the MSA-PAD application, a DNA multiple sequence alignment framework that uses PFAM protein domain information to align DNA sequences encoding either single or multiple protein domains. MSA-PAD has two alignment options: gene and genome mode.

A semi-automated workflow for biodiversity data retrieval, cleaning, and quality control.

The compilation and cleaning of data needed for analyses and prediction of species distributions is a time consuming process requiring a solid understanding of data formats and service APIs provided by biodiversity informatics infrastructures. We designed and implemented a Taverna-based Data Refinement Workflow which integrates taxonomic data retrieval, data cleaning, and data selection into a consistent, standards-based, and effective system hiding the complexity of underlying service infrastructures. The workflow can be freely used both locally and through a web-portal which does not require additional software installations by users.