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In a Chaetomorpha linum high density mat extending over 300 hectares, between 2017 and 2019 samples were collected for C, N, P, S tissue content determination, biomass (b) was estimated, sediment samples collected for labile organic matter (LOM) determination, and water chemical-physical variables measured. The latter showed extreme conditions with a wide range of values ​​and with zero oxygen for long periods. N-NO3:SRP atomic ratio showed extreme P-limitation. Tissue macronutrients showed very variable values, highlighting a strong P-limitation and relatively high level of S. With exception of nitrogen, no significant differences were detected for each macronutrient between the months and between the stations, neither was any correlation found between macronutrients and LOM and b data-set. The growth and survival of the mat occurred despite the scarcity of P, which probably reached with very low frequency the surface layer of the mat, the one capable of performing photosynthesis, where it was quickly re-assimilated and utilised.

It was in Love in Earnest (1970), one of the rare studies ever written on Uranian poetry, that Timothy d'Arch Smith chose the name 'Uranians' to designate a group of English poets and artists who shared a common love for boys and poetry in a period that went from about 1880 to 1930. These poets resorted to a set of symbols and imagery as a mode to conceal the object of their writings, appropriating fin-de-siècle Decadence and modelling a real 'fashion', an artistic attitude that might well be defined as 'Decadent Neoclassicism'. The aim of this article is to examine the uses and functions of flowers in Uranian poetry, and more specifically two peculiar flowers often associated with malemale love as from the late nineteenth century: hyacinths and narcissi. One of the reasons behind their employment goes beyond aesthetic choices, as they are part of those ways adopted to conceal - or, simultaneously, highlight - the Uranian theme. Once outlined the polarities of an aporia of light and shade, candour and censorship, which can be traced in different hues in each and every author and text of my corpus, I will consider the possible Uranian influences on the works of those who, at least in their explicit intentions, would flee from such a poetics: the Modernist poets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Langerhans cells (LCs) are crucial regulators of anti-cancer immune responses. Cancer, however, can alter DCs functions leading to tolerance. The enzyme indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO1) plays a crucial role in this process. In sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) of patients with melanoma, LCs show phenotypical and functional alterations favoring tolerance. Herein we aimed to investigate IDO1 expression in SLN LCs from patients with melanoma. We showed by immunofluorescence analysis that a portion of Langerin+ LCs, located in the SLN T cell-rich area, displayed the typical dendritic morphology and expressed IDO1. There was no significant difference in the expression of IDO between SLN with or without metastases. Double IDO1/CD83 staining identified four LCs subsets: real mature IDO1−CD83+ LCs; real immature IDO1−CD83− LCs; tolerogenic mature IDO1+CD83+ LCs; tolerogenic immature IDO1+CD83− LCs. The latter subset was significantly increased in metastatic SLNs as compared to negative ones (p < 0.05), and in SLN LCs of patients with mitotic rate (MR) > 1 in primary melanoma, as compared to MR ≤ 1 (p < 0.05). Finally, immature SLN LCs, after in vitro stimulation by inflammatory cytokines, acquired a maturation profile by CD83 up-regulation. These results provide new input for immunotherapeutic approaches targeting in vivo LC of patients with melanoma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coralligenous reefs represent one of the most important coastal ecosystems of the Mediterranean Sea, and their ecological quality must be assessed under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive to evaluate seafloor integrity. An effective standardized monitoring protocol is urgently needed in order to compare data at the Mediterranean scale and to plan efficient management and intervention programmes.This paper aims to: (a) review methods used to study shallow coralligenous reefs to propose a method able to optimize sampling effort; (b) select the most effective ecological descriptors to evaluate the responses of coralligenous assemblages to anthropogenic stress; and (c) synthesize available information in an integrated and standardized procedure.Ninety‐five scientific papers dealing with shallow coralligenous reefs were found. Among these, 52 papers reporting detailed descriptions about sampling methods were selected to identify methodologies and ecological descriptors suitable for monitoring purposes.Downstream of the bibliographic review, an integrated and standardized procedure, named STAR (STAndaRdized coralligenous evaluation procedure), was proposed to assess the ecological quality of coralligenous reefs.STAR was tested on coralligenous reefs at 12 sites, six of them subjected to high human pressure and six located in areas characterized by low human pressure.Significant differences between the two conditions were detected for all the ecological descriptors selected, thus confirming the effectiveness of STAR in the assessment of ecological quality of coralligenous reefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the application of multiple environmental descriptors through an asymmetrical sampling design to detect possible impacts related to the Costa Concordia event on the coastal marine environment. The Costa Concordia shipwreck occurred on a submerged rocky reef in the north-western Mediterranean Sea and the wreck was removed 2 years later. To achieve the proposed objective two main coastal ecosystems, the seagrass Posidonia oceanica and coralligenous assemblages were studied using two ecological indices, PREI and ESCA, respectively. Both indices show a lower ecological quality in the disturbed sites compared with the control ones. Differences between the disturbed and control sites observed in both studied ecosystems would seem to indicate an increase of turbidity around the shipwreck as the most plausible cause of impact. The concurrent use of different ecological indices and asymmetrical sampling designs allowed detection of differences in ecological quality of the disturbed sites compared with the controls. This approach may represent an interesting tool to be employed in impact evaluation studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

War and trauma-be it related to war itself, or to other problematical issues such as collective or individual precariousness, struggle for gender and or national identity, discovery of personal or historical truths are often sublimated in literature by objective correlatives and structural features that simultaneously create an identity and enhance the idealization related to it. Of particular interest are those works in which characters build their identities through an accumulation of both material and immaterial objects, which can be either utterly messy or compulsively ordered, in both structure and content. In Victorian and Edwardian England, Uranian poets and writers (John Gambril Nicholson, John Addington Symonds, William Johnson Cory, Lord Alfred Douglas, Montague Summers, Frederick Rolfe, Charles Kains Jackson, E. E. Bradford, John Moray Stuart-Young, among many others) based the essence of their works on apparently ordered classical forms and paradigms to represent complex questions of sexuality and social restraint. They often referred to World War I and to trauma as well, especially when personally experienced, as in the case of Edmund John and other canonical authors (see Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon), who were driven to write poetry to overcome shell shock. As Paul Fussell recognized, Uranian poetry formed the basis of World War I war poetry in terms of imagery, which drew on Greek myths and ideas to give structure to otherwise intolerable conflicts and emotions. Responding to the virtuosistic experimentation of Modernism and Postmodernism and the new realism of some post-war fiction, some novelists of the late twentieth century either adopted similar tendencies to create order out of a chaotic reality or subverted formal order completely. The latter seems to be the case with Jonathan Safran Foer's novel Everything Is Illuminated (2002), in which the precariousness of both the WWII and the post- 9/11 world is spasmodically controlled by the character's ambiguously 'rigid' search through history and by a formal coherence, in overlapping narratives and simultaneous, conflictual times and spaces, that intertwine lives in a mess of form and content. This article aims to analyse these modulations of classical order and Uranian and or postwar mess. Both such order and mess are arguably outcomes of disordered consciences and of attempts at using objects and myths to shape a suspect, often hostile, reality. This reading will tease out similar patterns in the representation of 'messiness' in contemporary British and American literature dealing with 'minoritarian subjects'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The STAR protocol was recently proposed to standardise sampling methods for assessing the ecological quality of coralligenous cliffs through the three indices ESCA, ISLA and COARSE. In this paper, a revised version of the STAR protocol was proposed to enhance its robustness and effectiveness. Compared to the previous one, this new proposal includes the use of video transects for a more accurate assessment of erect anthozoans, the development of a new ESCA (n-ESCA) index independent of the encrusting coralline algae and integrated with the ISLA index, and the creation of the IICA index calculated averaging n-ESCA and COARSE. The new STAR protocol was applied to 28 sites in the western Mediterranean Sea and the ecological status obtained from all the indices (ESCA, ISLA, COARSE, n-ESCA, IICA) were compared to the human pressure levels calculated by an anthropization index. The n-ESCA showed a stronger correlation compared to the ESCA, COARSE and ISLA indices, indicating a better response of this new index to anthropogenic pressures affecting the investigated coralligenous. Moreover, the correlation obtained for the IICA was stronger than that showed individually by the n-ESCA and COARSE indices, further supporting the advantage of integrating multiple ecological descriptors for a more comprehensive evaluation. The advanced STAR protocol overcome the constraints emerged over several years of large-scale application of the previous version, offering a more robust and sensitive tool that can effectively capture both fine-scale and broader ecological changes in coralligenous habitats., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2025 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)