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The expression oikoi stratiōtikoi, used in Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus as opposed to oikoi politikoi, designates all those families who were bound to military service. They, in the tenth century, were listed in various enlistment registers that were periodically updated, among which one was kept in Constantinople. There is solid evidence to argue that such an administrative practice originated in the eighth century, coinciding with a significant transformation in the enrolment of soldiers and their maintenance. A conscription procedure was devised in the age of the Isaurians, which, although it is not known whether it was on a voluntary or compulsory basis, entailed the entry in the military records (in Constantinople and the provinces) of every person in charge (oikodespotēs) of the family that had assumed the military burden. This implied in later periods a strong uncertainty in the relationship between service and its performance because registration rested on an ambiguous vocabulary. The ambiguity, in fact, was rooted in the polysemy of the concept of oikos, family unit, home and patrimony at the same time. While such a notion allowed the recruitment in thematic armies to function flexibly through the wide network of the family’s cognate and agnatic structure, precisely because the oikoswas also a set of economic interests, it exposed the landed patrimony of military families to splitting and erosion. This ambiguity ended with Constantine VII’s famous law of 949, which regulated the property regime of the stratiōtikoi oikoi, a regime that, as the same provision explicitly states in several points, already existed previously throughout the empire. The law provided a precise economic quantification of the assets needed for each ‘military family’ to perform the service. Historiography has generally interpreted Constantine VII’s measure as an act breaking with the previous tradition, since military service appears in it much more markedly connoted as a patrimonial burden, rather than as a personal one. However, this ‘oppositional’ interpretation does not seem adequate for understanding the concept of oikos stratiōtikos, which from the outset must have implied a profound interrelationship between the personality of the service and its patrimonial basis, since the one did not exist without the other.

Accurate inference of orthologous genes constitutes a prerequisite for comparative and evolutionary genomics. SonicParanoid is one of the fastest tools for orthology inference; however, its scalability and accuracy have been hampered by time-consuming all-versus-all alignments and the existence of proteins with complex domain architectures. Here, we present a substantial update of SonicParanoid, where a gradient boosting predictor halves the execution time and a language model doubles the recall. Application to empirical large-scale and standardized benchmark datasets shows that SonicParanoid2 is much faster than comparable methods and also the most accurate. SonicParanoid2 is available at https://gitlab.com/salvo981/sonicparanoid2and https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.11371108.

It is largely acknowledged by scholars that the decline of the municipal councils was one of the factors that would have marked - with negative consequences - the life of the Late Antique city. An analysis of the sources from the second half of the fifth to the beginning of the sixth century suggests two tendencies that seem to be in contradiction with each other at first sight. On the one hand, the posts of greater political and managerial responsibility for municipal self-government (the curator, the defensorand, in the East, the patēr tēs poleōs) are held by individuals who are not directly appointed by the councils; on the other hand, the presence of councilors in the social landscape of the Italian cities during the period in question is still very relevant. The contradiction, however, is only ostensible when one reflects on what were the real functions of the decurions in Ostrogothic and early Byzantine Italy, namely 1/the preservation in the municipal archives of the legal transactions carried out in the city district, and 2/the division among its inhabitants of the tax burden. These two functions were far from marginal, so much so that the Pragmatica sanctio pro petitione Vigiliiintervened to alleviate the responsibility of the decurions in carrying out the second. In their activity, the decurions acquired administrative skills that, in some cases, as in Ravenna, churches used to their advantage by recruiting former members of the curiaeinto their own personnel. The curiaecontinued to have a longer existence in those Italian regions, such as Sicily, in which the role of the central power was stronger, since the latter acted as an instrument of their protection, not the opposite. The disappearance of the Praetorian prefecture in Italy, between 639 and 685, implied the collapse of the whole Late Roman administrative system in which municipal institutions were inserted. The curiaedid not cease to operate when their members lost their role as urban patrons, nor when they ceased to represent a true local ruling class, but when they were no longer able to perform those procedures that constituted the essence of the Late Roman municipal tradition, by ensuring an institutional link between the city, as well as its territory and between the city and the empire.

This study quantitatively elucidates the role of metal clusters in the electrochemical activation of metal-oxide nanostructured electrodes. Through the deposition of nearly monodisperse AuxPt1–x(x= 0, 0.5, 1) clusters, smaller than 3 nm, on the ZnO nanorod (NR) electrode surface, a controlled enhancement of charge transfer and activation of electrocatalytic processes was achieved. The interfacial electrical states of the hybrid electrodes were probed by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). Analysis of the charge-transfer resistance and interface capacitance, estimated by modeling EIS curves in different bias regimes, indicated the presence of a large amount of active donor states (∼1020cm–3) at the surface of the ZnO NRs. Decoration of the ZnO NRs with AuxPt1–xclusters strongly increased the charge-transfer process at the cluster–ZnO/electrolyte interface. This induced a more effective depletion of the electron charge available in the donor states of the ZnO NRs, leading to the formation of a positively charged layer at the interface between ZnO and the clusters. These two effects, intrinsically linked with the alignment between the electronic states of the AuxPt1–xclusters and ZnO, strongly enhance the interface reactivity of the ZnO NR electrodes toward the redox reaction of potassium ferricyanide. This is particularly relevant for understanding and improving the performance of electrochemical biosensors.

ABSTRACTOne of the first issues that emerges when a prokaryotic organism of interest is encountered is the question of what it is—that is, which species it is. The 16S rRNA gene formed the basis of the first method for sequence-based taxonomy and has had a tremendous impact on the field of microbiology. Nevertheless, the method has been found to have a number of shortcomings. In the current study, we trained and benchmarked five methods for whole-genome sequence-based prokaryotic species identification on a common data set of complete genomes: (i) SpeciesFinder, which is based on the complete 16S rRNA gene; (ii) Reads2Type that searches for species-specific 50-mers in either the 16S rRNA gene or the gyrBgene (for the Enterobacteraceaefamily); (iii) the ribosomal multilocus sequence typing (rMLST) method that samples up to 53 ribosomal genes; (iv) TaxonomyFinder, which is based on species-specific functional protein domain profiles; and finally (v) KmerFinder, which examines the number of cooccurring k-mers (substrings of knucleotides in DNA sequence data). The performances of the methods were subsequently evaluated on three data sets of short sequence reads or draft genomes from public databases. In total, the evaluation sets constituted sequence data from more than 11,000 isolates covering 159 genera and 243 species. Our results indicate that methods that sample only chromosomal, core genes have difficulties in distinguishing closely related species which only recently diverged. The KmerFinder method had the overall highest accuracy and correctly identified from 93% to 97% of the isolates in the evaluations sets.

Lo scopo del presente lavoro è stato studiare l'effetto di temperatura, tempo di reazione e concentrazione di acido ossalico durante il pretrattamento della canna comune (Arundo donaxL.), su i) rilascio di zuccheri e composti inibitori dall'emicellulosa, ii) idrolisi enzimatica della cellulosa e iii) simultanea saccarificazione e fermentazione (SSF) della cellulosa utilizzando un complesso cellulase/β-glucosidase ed il ceppo di lievito Scheffersomyces (Pichia) stipitisCBS 6054. La fase di pretrattamento è stata ottimizzata utilizzando un disegno fattoriale completo (central composite design) con due parametri come input –Severity Factor (SF) e concentrazione di acido ossalico (0A). La temperatura di reazione è variata da 150 a 190°C, il tempo di reazione da 10 a 40 minuti e la concentrazione di acido dal 2 all 8% (peso/peso). La concentrazione di xilosio (g L–1) nell'idrolizzato emicellulosico è cresciuta fino a valori medi di SF e 0 A; a più alte severità di trattamento, l'acido acetico ed i composti di degradazione degli zuccheri sono aumentati linearmente all'aumentare del SF o della OA. L'idrolizzato emicellulosico pretrattato a SF 2,87 e 5,0% OA è stato utilizzato come substrato per la fermentazione ad opera di S. stipitis CBS6054. A pH 6,0, circa il 100% degli zuccheri presenti sono stati fermentati ad etanolo, ottenendo una concentrazione di 8,20 g/L–1dopo 48 ore di incubazione. Il tasso di conversione dei glucani a glucosio seguendo l'idrolisi enzimatica della cellulosa ha raggiunto il valore massimo di 95% a 4,05 SF e 5,0% 0A. Analogamente la SSF alle più alte severità di pretrattamento ha fatto registrare sia la resa che la concentrazione più elevata in etanolo, rispettivamente 75.3% e 18,0 g/L–1.

This review describes giant reed propagation methods taking into account propagation organs and transplanting times. Field results of researches carried out in semi-arid Mediterranean environment are presented and discussed with the aim to help producers to make decisions on the most suitable establishment method and season of transplant. Temperature and soil water availability are limiting factors constraining optimal establishment of giant reed in Mediterranean semiarid environment. Days with maximum temperatures of 17°C (T max) and minimum temperatures over 7.5°C (T min) coupled with good soil water availability were found as suitable for stems sprouting. Rhizomes optimal transplanting time resulted in spring, while horizontal stem cuttings in autumn. Vertical stem cutting showed worst results in stem density and biomass yield in every transplanting time. Rhizomes of big size showed greater biomass dry matter yield both at the first year and in the subsequent years after establishment. Stem cuttings biomass yield level off in the subsequent years after establishment. The irrigation supplied during the establishment showed a beneficial effect in all transplanting times and propagation methods.

ABSTRACTAccurate strain identification is essential for anyone working with bacteria. For many species, multilocus sequence typing (MLST) is considered the “gold standard” of typing, but it is traditionally performed in an expensive and time-consuming manner. As the costs of whole-genome sequencing (WGS) continue to decline, it becomes increasingly available to scientists and routine diagnostic laboratories. Currently, the cost is below that of traditional MLST. The new challenges will be how to extract the relevant information from the large amount of data so as to allow for comparison over time and between laboratories. Ideally, this information should also allow for comparison to historical data. We developed a Web-based method for MLST of 66 bacterial species based on WGS data. As input, the method uses short sequence reads from four sequencing platforms or preassembled genomes. Updates from the MLST databases are downloaded monthly, and the best-matching MLST alleles of the specified MLST scheme are found using a BLAST-based ranking method. The sequence type is then determined by the combination of alleles identified. The method was tested on preassembled genomes from 336 isolates covering 56 MLST schemes, on short sequence reads from 387 isolates covering 10 schemes, and on a small test set of short sequence reads from 29 isolates for which the sequence type had been determined by traditional methods. The method presented here enables investigators to determine the sequence types of their isolates on the basis of WGS data. This method is publicly available at www.cbs.dtu.dk/services/MLST.

Nowadays, the cultivation of energy crops is, in most cases, directly or indirectly subsidized at EU and global levels. However, their financial viability, i.e. sustainable profitability in the absence of subsidies, is not too remote any more given the increasing cost of fossil fuels, pressing environmental concerns, and the rapid technological progress in the renewable energies field.

The recent policies enacted by the EU foresee an increased interest in the cultivation of energy crops. Hence systematized information on new energy crops and cropping strategies is necessary to optimize their production quantitatively and qualitatively and to integrate them into traditional production systems. This kind of information will offer farmers new perspectives and options to diversify their farming activities. Some of these crops, however, may compete for land and resources with existing food crops, while others could be grown in marginal/degraded lands with consequent beneficial effects on the environment. Therefore choosing the appropriate management components and species should be site specific and oriented to minimize inputs and maximize yields. In some cases, traditional food crops are used as dedicated energy crops with the advantage that their management practices are well known. On the other hand, the management of new dedicated energy crops, such as perennial herbaceous crops, often demands a range of structural features and tactical management approaches that are different to those commonly used for traditional food crops. Most of these crops are largely undomesticated and are at their early stages of development and improvement. In this work, state‐of‐the‐art research and development of agronomic management and the production of a wide range of multipurpose future energy crop species are reviewed and where possible examples of appropriate crop management practices that would enhance energy yields are provided. Interesting lines of investigation are also suggested. © 2010 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Si assiste oggi ad un generale consenso in merito alle agri-energie, sebbene crescenti siano le preoccupazioni in merito all’effettiva capacità da parte di queste nuove tecnologie di poter far fronte efficacemente ai problemi di ordine ambientale ed ecologico che il modello energetico convenzionale, prevalentemente incentrato sulle fonti di origine fossile, ha di fatto generato.

Energy crops, and in particular oil crops, could be an important occasion for developing new non food production rows for a new multi-functional agriculture in Italy. In this view, the use of local biomass is a fundamental starting point for the development of a virtuous energy chain that should pursue not only agricultural profitability, but also chain sustainability and that is less dependent on the global market, characterized by instability in terms of biomass availability and price. From this perspective, particular attention must be paid to crop choice on the basis of its rusticity and of its adaptability to local growing conditions and to low input cropping systems. In this context, alike woody and herbaceous biomasses, oil crops such as sunflower and rapeseed should be able to support local agricultural bioenergy chain in Italy.

The review, after a short introduction on the tendencies of the European Community Policy on biomasses, describes the agronomic, energy potential and environmental aspects of biomass crops for energy in relation to the research activity carried out in Italy on this topic, differentiating crops on the basis of the main energy use: biodiesel and bioethanol (which refers to “first generation biofuel”), heat and electricity.

We show that the invariant distributions for the horocycle flow on compact hyperbolic surfaces described by Flaminio and Forni (2003 Duke Math. J.119465-526) can be represented as distributions on the ideal circle tensorized with absolutely continuous measures, and use this information to derive their Hölder regularity.

This article examines a group of letters of the Variae concerning the building of an Ostrogothic fleet by Theoderic. These letters, though well known, lack detailed analysis in modern historiography. The author deals with the relationship between the Goths (and Germanic peoples in general) and the sea. It is possible to maintain that even if navigation was not an obstacle to barbaric settlement in the empire, maritime culture did not characterize the traditions of the Goths. Gothic mentality viewed the sea with the same feeling of distrust as the Romans did.

We show that the Patterson–Sullivan measure on the limit set of a geometrically finite Kleinian group with cusps can be recovered as a weak limit of sums of Dirac masses placed on an appropriate orbit of each parabolic fixed point. A corollary is a sharp asymptotic estimate for a natural counting function associated to a cuspidal subgroup. We also discuss the connection between the above counting and the Riemann hypothesis in some examples of arithmetical lattices.

Introduction: Taurohyodeoxycholic acid (THDC), a new natural hydrophilic bile salt, dissolves human cholesterol gallstones in vitro and may be effective as a litholytic agent in vivo. We thus, investigated in man the effects of short-term oral administration of THDC on lipid composition and physical-chemical features of bile. Methods: Three patients with a nasobiliary drainage (positioned after sphincterotomy for bile duct stones removal) were given 3 g of THDC (1 g every 12 h). At time of the study patients had an intact entero-hepatic circulation and minimal signs of cholestasis. Bile was collected before each THDC administration, the last sample being obtained 14 h after the final THDC dose. All specimens were analyzed for individual bile salts (HPLC) and lipids. Biliary lipid carriers were separated by gel-chromatography on Superose-6 and analyzed by quasielastic light scattering (QLS) and electron microscopy (EM). Results: biliary THDC concentration represented 30.3, 27.2 and 29.2% of total bile salts, respectively. Lecithin and cholesterol concentration in bile did not change significantly during the study. In all bile lipids were almost exclusively eluted in a single gel-chromatographic peak, with an average molecular weight between 20 and 100 kDa QLS analysis of THDC-rich biles, demonstrated an average hydrodynamic diameter of this lipid-carrier of 300 nm. In THDC-free biles fractionated using the same conditions, the predominant lipid-carrier had an average hydrodynamic diameter of 250 nm. This difference in size was confirmed at EM. Conclusions: THDC is efficiently secreted in human bile, without causing changes in the concentration of biliary lipids. The latter, however, are assembled in structures larger than those found in THDC-free biles. The size and spherical appearance of these aggregates are consistent with those of large unilamellar vesicles or multilamellar structures.

Introduction: Taurohyodeoxycholic acid (THDC), a new natural hydrophilic bile salt, dissolves human cholesterol gallstones in vitro and may be effective as a litholytic agent in vivo. We thus, investigated in man the effects of short-term oral administration of THDC on lipid composition and physical-chemical features of bile. Methods: Three patients with a nasobiliary drainage (positioned after sphincterotomy for bile duct stones removal) were given 3 g of THDC (1 g every 12 h). At time of the study patients had an intact entero-hepatic circulation and minimal signs of cholestasis. Bile was collected before each THDC administration, the last sample being obtained 14 h after the final THDC dose. All specimens were analyzed for individual bile salts (HPLC) and lipids. Biliary lipid carriers were separated by gel-chromatography on Superose-6 and analyzed by quasielastic light scattering (QLS) and electron microscopy (EM). Results: biliary THDC concentration represented 30.3, 27.2 and 29.2% of total bile salts, respectively. Lecithin and cholesterol concentration in bile did not change significantly during the study. In all bile lipids were almost exclusively eluted in a single gel-chromatographic peak, with an average molecular weight between 20 and 100 kDa QLS analysis of THDC-rich biles, demonstrated an average hydrodynamic diameter of this lipid-carrier of 300 nm. In THDC-free biles fractionated using the same conditions, the predominant lipid-carrier had an average hydrodynamic diameter of 250 nm. This difference in size was confirmed at EM. Conclusions: THDC is efficiently secreted in human bile, without causing changes in the concentration of biliary lipids. The latter, however, are assembled in structures larger than those found in THDC-free biles. The size and spherical appearance of these aggregates are consistent with those of large unilamellar vesicles or multilamellar structures.

In Mediterranean environments, few perennial grass species are available for cultivation in rainfed systems and marginal lands, where plants with excellent adaptation are required. The aim of the present work was to determine the potentiality of five native Mediterranean perennial grasses for lignocellulosic biomass production. Wild accessions of three hemicryptophytes (Ampelodesmos mauritanicus, Hyparrhenia hirta, and Piptatherum miliaceum) and two geophytes (Saccharum spontaneumssp. aegyptiacumand Sorghum halepense) were collected at three Mediterranean sites (Sicily, Sardinia and Majorca), and their morphological, physiological, productivity and quality traits were evaluated in the field. The species differed in height, with S. spontaneumand A. mauritanicusbeing the tallest. The leaf mass ratio ranged from 0.23 to 1.0g g–1among species. Maximum net photosynthesis was measured in the C4species S. spontaneumand S. halepense(26.6 and 23.8 µmol CO2m–2s–1, respectively). A. mauritanicusshowed the lowest transpiration rate and the highest instantaneous water use efficiency (2.7 mmol H2O m–2s–1and 6.9 µmol CO2mmol H2O–1, respectively). S. spontaneumwas the most productive species, yielding more than 18 Mg DM ha–1as a three-year average. The highest content of acid detergent lignin was found in P. miliaceum, while A. mauritanicuswas the species richest in hemicellulose and cellulose and poorest in ash. S. spontaneumshowed the highest moisture content at harvest. Overall, the studied species showed interesting morphological, physiological, productive and qualitative traits. Nevertheless, additional research is necessary to investigate their long-term performance under different management strategies.

In the present study, a two-year field trial was carried out with the aim to evaluate daylength and air temperature effects on leaf appearance and related rates in two durum wheat (Triticum durumDesf.), two bread wheat (Triticum aestivumL.) and two barley (Hordeum vulgareL.) cultivars, using six different sowing dates (SD). Significant effects of SD on final main stem leaf number (FLN), thermal leaf appearance rate (TLAR), daily leaf appearance rate (DLAR) and phyllochron (PhL) were found. Cultivars resulted inversely correlated to mean air temperature in the interval emergence - fifth leaf full expansion (E-V). Linear response of leaf number over days after sowing was shown for all SD and cultivars, with R2higher than 0.95. FLN linearly decreased from the first to the last SD for durum wheat, while more variable behaviour was observed in bread wheat. TLAR and DLAR showed a linear increment of the rate from the first to the last SD in durum wheat, while did not for bread wheat and barley. PhL in durum wheat decreased from the first to the last SD. Barley and bread wheat showed the highest values on those SDs which did not reach flowering. The increase of TLAR was affected by photoperiod and photothermal units in durum wheat, while by temperatures only in barley and bread wheat. Present results might find practical application in the improvement of phenology simulation models for durum wheat, bread wheat and barley grown in Mediterranean area in absence of water and nutrient stress.

Great effort has been placed to identify the most suited bioenergy crop under different environments and management practices, however, there is still need to find new genetic resources for constrained areas. For instance, South Mediterranean area is strongly affected by prolonged drought, high vapour pressure deficit (VPD) and extremely high temperatures during summertime.

In the Iblei plateau (Sicily, Southern Italy) the native dairy cattle breed Modicanaduring the spring season grazes exclusively on natural pastures for the production of the Ragusanoprotected denomination of origin cheese. Along the grazing season, herbage undergoes to changes on protein, fibre and moisture content, affecting quality parameters such as plant carotenoids concentration, involved in the colour and nutritional characteristics of dairy products and potential biomarkers for authenticating fed green pasture-based diets. The aim of this work was to assess whether the cheese traceability index, based on the carotenoids spectra data elaboration, could be related to seasonal variations of floral composition and pasture quality. Four herbage and cheese samples were collected every two weeks in two representative farms of this area, from March to May 2013. Pasture characteristics as pastoral vegetation composition and pastoral value were analysed using the methodology developed for pastoral resources studies. Traceability indexshowed a significant positive correlation with pasture moisture and crude protein content (r=0.729* and 0.853**, respectively), while it was negatively correlated with fibre content (r=–0.719*).

In this paper the suitability of three perennial, herbaceous, lignocellulosic grasses (Arundo donax, Saccharum spontaneousspp. aegyptiacumand Miscanthusx giganteus) for the production of second-generation bioethanol in semi-arid Mediterranean environment was studied. Crops were established in spring 2002, supplying irrigation and nitrogen fertilization up to 2004/2005 growing season. Subsequently, crops were grown without any agronomic input and harvested annually. Data reported in this paper refers to 2008/2009 and 2009/2010 growing seasons. Aboveground dry matter (DM) yield was higher in Arundo(35.4±2.1 Mg ha–1in 2009 and 32.2±1.9 Mg ha–1in 2010 harvest) than in Saccharum(27.3±2.0 and 23.9±1.9 Mg ha–1, respectively) and Miscanthus(19.6±2.8 and 17.2±1.6 Mg ha–1, respectively). Structural polysaccharides of the raw material were higher in Miscanthus(63.4% w/w) followed by Saccharum(61.5% w/w) and Arundo(57.6% w/w). The same trend was identified for the cellulose content (41.0%, 36.8% and 34.6%, respectively). The highest values in the total hemicellulose complex were observed in Saccharum(24.7%), followed by Arundo(23.1%) and Miscanthus(22.4%). The composition of structural polysaccharides leads to a higher theoretical ethanol yield (TEY) from one dry ton of Miscanthusfeedstock (kg DM Mg–1), followed by Saccharumand Arundo. On the other hand, the TEY per unit surface (Mg ha–1) was greater in Arundothan in Saccharumand Miscanthus. When compared to other lignocellulosic sources used in the second-generation bioethanol technology, such as agricultural residues, woody species and other herbaceous perennial crops, Arundo, Saccharumand Miscanthusshowed a great potential in terms of TEY ha–1.

Bioenergy crops are expected to play an important role in reducing CO2emission, in energy supply and in European energy policy. However, a sustainable bioenergy supply must be resilient to climate change and the impacts on agriculture at both global and regional scale. The purpose of this study was to forecast the potential distribution of several bioenergy crops based on agronomic and environmental constrains under current conditions and future scenarios (2020 and 2030) in European Union. Potential biomass yield, according to the category end use product achievable in each environmental zone of Europe at present and in the future available land have been also studied. Future yields were assessed according to two factors: technological development and climate change: the former was based on prospect of DG-Agriculture for conventional crops and expert judgments for bioenergy crops, while the latter based on relevant research papers and literature reviews which used site-specific crop growth models. Yields are expected to increase in northern Europe due to climate change and technological development, while in southern-eastern Europe the negative effect of climate change will be mitigated by the technological development. The estimated total biomass production in Europe, on the basis of future yields and surplus land made available for energy crops, may not be sufficient to meet the needs of bioenergy supply as claimed in the European directive 2009/28/EC.