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Nous rapportons le cas d'une patiente de 89 ans adressée aux urgences pour épigastralgies et vomissements. Une dégradation hémodynamique, associée à des modifications du segment ST et une troponinémie légèrement augmentée, incitait à réaliser une coronarographie en urgence qui s'avérait normale. Le scanner thoraco-abdominal retrouvait une volumineuse hernie hiatale responsable d'une compression cardiaque avec obstruction intraventriculaire gauche objectivée en doppler cardiaque. L'ensemble des symptômes ainsi que les anomalies électrocardiographiques et échocardiographiques ont régressé après aspiration nasogastrique. We report the case of a 89 year-old woman admitted to the emergency department for epigastric pain, nausea, vomiting. Because of a circulatory failure with electrocardiographic ST changes and a slight elevation of ultra-sensible troponin, a coronary angiography was performed and found normal coronary arteries. Thoraco-abdominal CT scan revealed a large hiatal hernia causing a cardiac compression, and a left intraventricular obstruction showed by Doppler echocardiography. All signs resolved after fasting and gastric drainage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impacts of climate change and decreasing local resources are increasingly threatening the resilience and sustainable management of urban areas and infrastructures worldwide. To cope with such threads and vulnerabilities, urban sustainability and resilience oriented plans have been developed. Accordingly, policy makers need to learn how to properly integrate urban sustainability with urban resilience principles and practices in the re-shaping of urban agendas. In order to highlight the future potential of integrating transformative resilience principles into the general sustainability approach, this paper provides a critical review of a recent and successful urban regeneration and development plan, the “Mexico City Green Plan”. This paper also discusses a feasibility study for urban redevelopment and transition towards resilience in Mexico City, in order to illustrate the necessity and potential of urban resilience for the improvement of the life prospects of disadvantaged inhabitant groups. The Valle del Chalco neighborhood in Mexico City is presented as an example, whereby resilient and sustainable urban transformation was achieved through an integrated and sustainable decentralized water management and infrastructure plan. In practice, the terms ‘Sustainability’ and ‘Resilience’ can be exploited to justify conventional, non-sustainable urban development practices. The results discussed in this paper demonstrate the necessity of the integration of transformative resilience principles within sustainable urban redevelopment and regeneration. The main findings are i) Policy makers underestimate the potential of urban resilience in shaping more sustainable urban futures, since they only understand resilience as the flipside of specific vulnerabilities, ii) The building of urban resilience within sustainable urban transitions and redevelopment can effectively foster people empowerment, particularly in combination with the decentralization of resources management systems, and iii) The main challenge for the implementation and execution of transitions processes towards urban resilience and sustainability is the elimination of political barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluates the effect of two different kinds of liquid organic fertilizers and a mineral fertilizer on microbial populations (Eubacteria and Archaea) living in the tomato rhizosphere. The organic fertilizers comprised a stillage from bakery yeasts production, characterized by acidic pH and high organic nitrogen content, as well as a vermicompost extract with alkaline pH and low nitrogen content. The number of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) of Archaea species significantly increased after the addition of both the organic and mineral fertilizers, in comparison to the unfertilized control. Eubacteria OTUs increased only in plants treated with the stillage. T-RFLPs profiles identified different clusters of soil rhizospheric Archaea and Eubacteria in treatments of both organic and mineral fertilizers. However, multivariate analyses performed on indicators of genetic diversity, based on the T-RFLPs profiles, and Shannon and equitability indexes of the Archaea and Eubacteria communities, pointed out marked differences between the control (or the mineral fertilization) and the organic fertilizers. The latter treatments induced also a higher root growth and a modification of the root architecture in comparison to both control and mineral fertilizer. The results are discussed with reference to the effect of the organic products on rhizospheric soil characteristics and the relationships between the plant and the rhizospheric microorganisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role that land-use and socioeconomic factors exert on consolidating land degradation (LD) processes is a major research issue. However, intensity and type of the impact played by LD on such land use factors is still underexplored. The present study investigates the role of LD on land-use change (LUC) trajectories of land abandonment (LA) and urban expansion (URB) in the three geographical repartitions (North, Centre, South) of Italy between 1990 and 2012, by means of the Environmental Niche Factor Analysis (ENFA). ENFA is a multivariate approach originally introduced in the analysis of animal ecology allowing to compute habitat suitability (HS) models without requiring presence/absence data. Four environmental quality indices about climate (CQI), soil (SQI), vegetation (VQI) and land management (MQI) have been analyzed for the years 1990 and 2000 and related to the trajectories of LA and URB, respectively, for the time periods 1990–2000 and 2000–2012. Empirical results have indicated that different driving forces are linked to LA and URB, and that for each trajectory, the role of some forces may change over time. Evidence shows that soil quality and low human pressure represent the main drivers of LA. By contrast, as for URB, high human pressure represented the main driving factor throughout the country, both during 1990–2000 and 2000–2012. The HS maps show the probability arrangement of LA and URB in the three geographical repartitions. Starting from this work, further research is increasingly required to implement prediction models of future LA and URB trajectories according to the current land quality status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land use/land cover changes (LULCCs) represent the result of the complex interaction between biophysical factors and human activity, acting over a wide range of temporal and spatial scales. The aim of this work is to quantify the role of biophysical factors in constraining the trajectories of land abandonment and urbanization in the last 50 years. A habitat suitability model borrowed from animal ecology was used to analyze the ecological niche of the following LULCC trajectories occurred in Emilia-Romagna (northern Italy) during 1954–2008: (i) land abandonment (LA) and (ii) urbanization (URB), both from agricultural areas (URB_agr) and from semi-natural areas (URB_for). Results showed that the different LULCC trajectories were driven by different combinations of biophysical factors, such as climate, topography and soil quality. In particular, slope and elevation resulted as the main driving factors for rural processes, while slope and temperatures resulted as the main constraints underlying urban processes. This approach may represent a conceptual and technical step toward the systematic assessment of LULCC processes, thus providing an effective support tool to inform decision makers about land use transformations, their underlying causes, as well as their possible implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]