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The synthesis of heterocycles is a prominent feature of organic chemistry, due to the enormous importance of such compounds in fields like medicinal or industrial chemistry. In the effort of improving their synthesis, the nature of the solvent plays a pivotal role. In this context, the use on non-conventional solvent like ionic liquids can determine significant improvements reaction outcomes, sustainability of the process, and possibility to be coupled with non-conventional synthetic methodologies, like ultrasounds or microwave irradiation. In this chapter, we present a bird’s-eye view on recent examples of the application of ionic liquids as solvents or catalysts, evidencing, whenever possible, the differences with reactions in conventional organic solvents

International audience; The classic computational scheme of convolutional layers leverages filter banks that are shared over all the spatial coordinates of the input, independently on external information on what is specifically under observation and without any distinctions between what is closer to the observed area and what is peripheral. In this paper we propose to go beyond such a scheme, introducing the notion of Foveated Convolutional Layer (FCL), that formalizes the idea of location-dependent convolutions with foveated processing, i.e., fine-grained processing in a given-focused area and coarser processing in the peripheral regions. We show how the idea of foveated computations can be exploited not only as a filtering mechanism, but also as a mean to speed-up inference with respect to classic convolutional layers, allowing the user to select the appropriate trade-off between level of detail and computational burden. FCLs can be stacked into neural architectures and we evaluate them in several tasks, showing how they efficiently handle the information in the peripheral regions, eventually avoiding the development of misleading biases. When integrated with a model of human attention, FCL-based networks naturally implement a foveated visual system that guides the attention toward the locations of interest, as we experimentally analyze on a stream of visual stimuli.

In this work, we screened several surfactants for their ability to harden Eutectic Mixtures. We found cetyldiethanolamine-N-oxide as the best candidate, which was able to form eutectogel in four eutectic mixtures. Characterization of the gels obtained in terms of thermal stability, rheology and gelation kinetics, showed a prominent influence of the nature of the hydrogen bonding accepting and donating components for the first two parameter and the other one, respectively. Then, we assessed the eutectogels for their ability to adsorb I2, as a model for its radioactive nuclides, from apolar solvent solutions. The best performing gel allowed fast and thorough removal of I2, over a broad range of initial concentrations. This gel displayed a maximum adsorption capacity of 280 mg/g, competitive with most gel-based sorbent reported in the literature for the adsorption of iodine. Interestingly, the eutectogel proved to be highly recyclable, it could be regenerated and reused without loss in performance.

Lo studio di idrogel supramolecolari da utilizzare in ambito biomedico è in continua espansione. Questo è dovuto al fatto che, così come gli idrogel polimerici, mostrano eccellenti proprietà meccaniche, ma possono anche essere sottoposti reversibilmente a rigonfiamento o a transizioni gel-sol in risposta a stimoli esterni (temperatura, pH, enzimi, agenti redox).1Ad esempio, la buona risposta degli idrogel supramolecolari agli stimoli fisiologici, insieme alla loro elevata biodegradabilità e biocompatibilità, ne ha permesso l’utilizzo per la diagnosi tumorale. Solitamente, questi materiali sono facilmente assimilati dalle cellule e hanno la funzione di carrier per le molecole attive nel bioimaging. 1Alla luce di queste premesse e della spiccata attività antimicrobica precedentemente riscontrata su idrogel formati da sali di imidazolio,2 si è pensato di sintetizzare nuovi sali organici di imidazolio fluorescenti, che potessero assolvere alla duplice funzione di gelator e di agente per il bioimaging. Sono stati ottenuti idrogel fluorescenti che hanno mostrato interessanti proprietà chimico-fisiche (temperatura di transizione gel-sol, risposta a stimoli esterni, reologia, morfologia, indagini spettrofluorimetriche) e biologiche (attività antiproliferativa, bioimaging su cellule tumorali in vitro e rilascio controllato del gelator in soluzione fisiologica).

Malanotte-Rizzoli, Paola ... et. al.-- 76 pages, The importance of the Mediterranean Sea for the world ocean has long been recognized. First, the Mediterranean sea has a profound impact on the Atlantic ocean circulation and, consequently, on the global thermohaline conveyor belt. Maps of the 5 Mediterranean salty water tongue exiting from the Gibraltar strait at intermediate depths and spreading throughout the Atlantic interior are well known since the 1950s. Through direct pathways to the Atlantic polar regions or through indirect mixing processes, the salty Mediterranean water preconditions the deep convection cells of the polar Atlantic. There the North Atlantic Deep Water is formed which successively spreads throughout 10 the world ocean constituting the core of the global thermohaline circulation. Even more importantly, the Mediterranean Sea is a laboratory basin for the investigation of processes of global importance, being much more amenable to observational surveys because of its location in mid-latitude and its dimensions. Both the western and eastern basins in fact possess closed thermohaline circulations analogous to the 15 global conveyor belt. A unique upper layer open thermohaline cell connects the eastern to the western basin and, successively, to the north Atlantic through the Gibraltar strait. In it, the Atlantic water entering into Gibraltar in the surface layer, after travelling to the easternmost Levantine basin, is transformed into one of the saltiest water masses through air–sea heat and moisture fluxes. This is the salty water which, crossing the 20 entire basin in the opposite direction below the surface Atlantic water, finally exits from the Gibraltar strait at mid-depths. Both the western and eastern basins are endowed with deep/intermediate convection cells analogous to the polar Atlantic deep convection cells or to the intermediate mode water ones. Deep and intermediate water masses are therefore formed in differ25 ent sites of the entire basin. Because of their easily accessible locations, these convection cells are much more amenable to direct observational surveys and mooring arrays

The Mediterranean community represented in this paper is the result of more than 30 years of EU and nationally funded coordination, which has led to key contributions in science concepts and operational initiatives. Together with the establishment of operational services, the community has coordinated with universities, research centers, research infrastructures and private companies to implement advanced multi-platform and integrated observing and forecasting systems that facilitate the advancement of operational services, scientific achievements and mission-oriented innovation. Thus, the community can respond to societal challenges and stakeholders needs, developing a variety of fit-for-purpose services such as the Copernicus Marine Service. The combination of state-of-the-art observations and forecasting provides new opportunities for downstream services in response to the needs of the heavily populated Mediterranean coastal areas and to climate change. The challenge over the next decade is to sustain ocean observations within the research community, to monitor the variability at small scales, e.g., the mesoscale/submesoscale, to resolve the sub-basin/seasonal and inter-annual variability in the circulation, and thus establish the decadal variability, understand and correct the model-associated biases and to enhance model-data integration and ensemble forecasting for uncertainty estimation. Better knowledge and understanding of the level of Mediterranean variability will enable a subsequent evaluation of the impacts and mitigation of the effect of human activities and climate change on the biodiversity and the ecosystem, which will support environmental assessments and decisions. Further challenges include extending the science-based added-value products into societal relevant downstream services and engaging with communities to build initiatives that will contribute to the 2030 Agenda and more specifically to SDG14 and the UN's Decade of Ocean Science for sustainable development, by this contributing to bridge the science-policy gap. The Mediterranean observing and forecasting capacity was built on the basis of community best practices in monitoring and modeling, and can serve as a basis for the development of an integrated global ocean observing system. © Copyright © 2019 Tintoré, Pinardi.

A research cruise was organized on board the Italian National Research Council (CNR) R/V Urania to test the oil spill monitoring system developed during the PRogetto pilota Inquinamento Marino da Idrocarburi project (PRIMI, pilot project for marine oil pollution). For the first time, this system integrated in a modular way satellite oil spill detection (Observation Module) and oil spill displacement forecasting (Forecast Module) after detection. The Observation Module was based on both Synthetic Aperture RADAR (SAR) and optical satellite detection, namely SAR and Optical Modules, while the Forecast Module on Lagrangian numerical circulation models. The cruise (Aug. 6-Sep. 7, 2009) took place in the Mediterranean Sea, around Sicily, an area affected by heavy oil tanker traffic with frequent occurrence of oil spills resulting from illegal tank washing. The cruise plan was organized in order to have the ship within the SAR image frames selected for the cruise, at acquisition time. In this way, the ship could rapidly reach oil slicks detected in the images by the SAR Module, and/or eventually by the Optical Module, in order to carry out visual and instrumental inspection of the slicks. During the cruise, several oil spills were detected by the two Observation Modules and verified in situ, with the essential aid of the Forecasting Module which provided the slick position by the time the ship reached the area after the alert given by the SAR and/or optical imagery. Results confirm the good capability of oil spill SAR detection and indicate that also optical sensors are able to detect oil spills, ranging from thin films to slicks containing heavily polluted water. Also, results confirm the useful potential of oil spill forecasting models, but, on the other hand, that further work combining satellite, model and in situ data is necessary to refine the PRIMI system.

The diurnal cycle in sea-surface temperature (SST) is reconstructed for the year 2013 by combining numerical model analyses and satellite measurements using Optimal Interpolation (OI). The method is applied to derive hourly Mediterranean SST fields using Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) data and Mediterranean Forecasting System analyses (Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service - Analysis and Forecast product). The evaluation of the Diurnal OI SST (DOISST) values against drifter measurements results in a mean bias of −0.1°C and a RMS of 0.4°C. The DOISST fields reproduce well the diurnal cycle in SST including extreme Diurnal Warming events as measured by drifting buoys. We evaluate the impact of resolving the SST diurnal cycle, including extreme events, on estimates of the heat budget of the Mediterranean Sea over an entire annual cycle. It results in the mean annual difference in the heat loss derived using SSTs with and without diurnal variations of 4 Wm−2 with a peak of 9 Wm−2 in July. This value is comparable to several other sources of uncertainty in the calculation of the heat and water budgets of the Mediterranean Sea. The results are an important step toward reducing uncertainties in the “Mediterranean Sea Heat Budget Closure Problem”. © 2016. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.

[No abstract available]

Initial efforts toward developing a combined organic-inorganic sea spray source function parameterization for large-scale models made use of chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) and wind speed as input parameters to combine oceanic biology and atmospheric dynamics. These studies reported a modest correlation coefficient (0.55) between chlorophyll-a and organic matter (OM) enrichment in sea spray, suggesting that chlorophyll-a is only partially suitable for predicting organic enrichment. A reconstructed chlorophyll-a field of the North Atlantic Ocean from GlobColour reveals an improved correlation of 0.72 between the fractional mass contribution of organics in sea spray and chlorophyll-a concentration. A similar analysis, using colored dissolved and detrital organic material absorption and particulate organic carbon concentration, revealed slightly lower correlation coefficients (0.65 and 0.68). These results indicate that to date, chlorophyll-a is the best biological surrogate for predicting sea spray organic enrichment. In fact, considering the minimal difference between the correlation coefficients obtained with the three ocean color products, there is no reason to substitute chlorophyll-a, which is the most accurate parameter obtained from ocean color data, with other biological surrogates being generally affected by larger and less known errors. The observed time lag between chlorophyll-a concentration and organic matter enrichment in aerosol suggests that biological processes in oceanic surface waters and their timescales should be considered when modeling the production of primary marine organic aerosol. Key PointsChlorophyll is the best proxy for predicting marine primary organic aerosolA new relationship describing the organic enrichment of sea spray is presented ©2013. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.

The seasonal and year-to-year variability of the phytoplankton size class (PSC) spatial distribution has been examined in the Mediterranean Sea by using the entire time series of Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) space observations (1998-2010). Daily maps of PSCs have been determined using an empirical model based on a synoptic relationship between surface chlorophyll a and diagnostic pigments referred to different taxonomic groups. The analysis of micro-, nano-and pico-phytoplankton satellite time series (1998-2010) describes, quantitatively, the algal assemblage structure over the basin and reveals that the main contribution to chlorophyll a in most of the Mediterranean Sea comes from the pico-phytoplankton component, especially in nutrient-poor environments. Regions with different and peculiar features are the Northwestern Mediterranean Sea, the Alboran Sea and several coastal areas, such as the North Adriatic Sea. In these areas, local interactions between physical and biological components modulate the composition of the three phytoplankton size classes. It results that, during the spring bloom season, micro-phytoplankton dominates in areas of intense vertical winter mixing and deep/intermediate water formation, while in coastal areas micro-phytoplankton dominates in all seasons because of the nutrient supply from the terrestrial inputs. In the Alboran Sea, where the Atlantic inflow modulates the nutrient availability, any predominance of one class over the other two has been observed. The nano-phytoplankton component instead remains widespread over the entire basin along the year, and its contribution to chlorophyll a is of the order of 30-40 %. The largest inter-annual signal occurs in the Northwestern Mediterranean Sea, driven by the year-to-year variation in intensity and extension of the spring bloom, followed by the Alboran Sea, in which the inter-annual variability is strongly modulated by the Atlantic inflow. In absence of sufficient in situ data of community composition, the satellite-based analysis demonstrated that pico-, nano- and micro-phytoplankton classes often coexist. The predominance of one group over the other ones is strongly dependent on the physical and biological processes occurring at the mesoscale. These processes directly influence the nutrient and light availability, which are the principal forcing for the algae growth.

To investigate the role of herbaceous plants as hosts of Xylella fastidiosa, monthly sampling of the native flora of two heavily infected olive groves and of the sides of the adjacent dirt roads was conducted from January 2014 onwards. One of the orchards had not been subjected to weeding, whereas periodic tillage had been carried out in the other. Overall, more than 100 species of 40 monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous families were collected.

This paper is the outcome of a workshop held in Rome in November 2011 on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the POEM (Physical Oceanography of the Eastern Mediterranean) program. In the workshop discussions, a number of unresolved issues were identified for the physical and biogeochemical properties of the Mediterranean Sea as a whole, i.e., comprising the Western and Eastern sub-basins. Over the successive two years, the related ideas were discussed among the group of scientists who participated in the workshop and who have contributed to the writing of this paper. Three major topics were identified, each of them being the object of a section divided into a number of different sub-sections, each addressing a specific physical, chemical or biological issue: 1. Assessment of basin-wide physical/biochemical properties, of their variability and interactions. 2. Relative importance of external forcing functions (wind stress, heat/moisture fluxes, forcing through straits) vs. internal variability. 3. Shelf/deep sea interactions and exchanges of physical/biogeochemical properties and how they affect the sub-basin circulation and property distribution. Furthermore, a number of unresolved scientific/methodological issues were also identified and are reported in each sub-section after a short discussion of the present knowledge. They represent the collegial consensus of the scientists contributing to the paper. Naturally, the unresolved issues presented here constitute the choice of the authors and therefore they may not be exhaustive and/or complete. The overall goal is to stimulate a broader interdisciplinary discussion among the scientists of the Mediterranean oceanographic community, leading to enhanced collaborative efforts and exciting future discoveries. © Author(s) 2014.

To investigate the role of herbaceous plants as hosts of Xylella fastidiosa, monthly sampling of the native flora of two heavily infected olive groves and of the side of the adjacent dirt roads was conducted from January 2014 onwards. One of the orchards had not been subjected to weeding, whereas periodic tillage had been carried out in the other. Overall, more than 100 species of 40 monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous families were collected, photographed and identified, their phenological stage was recorded using the Keller-Baggiolini scale, their period of presence and the type of distribution prevailing in the field (e.g. whether the species scattered or concentrated under olive trees or along the edges of the dry stone walls) was assessed, as well as the abundance-dominance indices according to the Braun-Blanquet method. At all sites monitored, Philenus spumarius, the main and most important vector of Xylella fastidiosa so far found in the area of the outbreak, was present with abundant populations on herbaceous species in the spring and on olive trees from the middle of May throughout the summer. All weed samples collected, in pools of 4-5 plants, were tested by DAS-ELISA and the uncertain results were verified by PCR. So far, none of the samples analyzed, in excess of 600, proved to host Xylella fastidiosa, confirming the preliminary observations that, by and large, weeds may not have a major role in the epidemiology of X. fastidiosa in the considered area. However, since sampling of the summer/autumn flora is yet to be done, a better insight into the epidemiological role of these plants will become available in the coming months, in conjunction with the migration of the vectors from the olive trees onto the native flora with the consequent possible inoculation of the bacterium.