The quest for a coherent picture of nuclear activity has witnessed giant leaps in the last decades. Four decades ago, the idea was put forward that accretion of matter onto a massive compact object or a supermassive black hole (SMBH) of mass >10 M could power very luminous active galactic nuclei (AGN), in particular, quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) (Lynden-Bell 1969; Soltan 1982; Rees 1984). In th...

BACKGROUND Invasive alien plant species (IAPs) are plants that have migrated from one geographical region to non-native region either intentional or unintentional. The general view of IAPs in environment is regarded as destructive to the ecosystem and they pose threat to native vegetation and species. However, some of these IAPS are utilized by local inhabitants as a substitute for scarce indig...

Italy is recognized as one of the prominent hot spot areas for plant diversity at regional and global scale, hosting a rich range of ecosystems and habitat types. This is especially true considering aquatic habitats, which represent a major portion of the total water surfaces in the Mediterranean region. Nevertheless, only a scant attention was paid to clarify the species richness of aquatic pl...

The reproductive cells of macroalgae are regarded as the life history stages most susceptible to various environmental stresses, including UV radiation (UVR). UVR is proposed to determine the upper depth distribution limit of macroalgae on the shore. These hypotheses were tested by UV-exposure experiments, using spores and young thalli of the eulittoral Rhodophyceae Mastocarpus stellatus and Ch...

Connection between the developmental stage and the quantity and quality of essential oil was investigated in some model species of the Asteraceae, Lamiaceae and Apiaceae plant families. The accumulation of essential oil decreased continuously during ontogenesis in Tanacetum vulgare. The tendency of accumulation showed an optimum curve in Mentha piperita, Hyssopus officinalis, Majorana hortensis...

Silent mutation rate estimates for Pinus vary 50-fold, ranging from angiosperm-like to among the slowest reported for plants. These differences either reflect extraordinary genomic processes or inconsistent fossil calibration, and they have important consequences for population and biogeographical inferences. Here we estimate mutation rates from 4 Pinus species that represent the major lineages...

This study investigated the protective effect of the butanol (BuOH) fraction from fermented Laminaria japonica extract (BFLJ) on AAPH-induced oxidative stress in porcine kidney epithelial cells (LLC-PK1 cells). L. japonica was fermented by Aspergillus oryzae at 35±1°C for 72 h. Freeze-dried fermented L. japonica was extracted with distilled water, and the extracted solution was mixed with ethan...

We work in the space ~ = ~-~ of divergence-free measurable vector fields o n R 3 complete in the norm II N', where ( l[vll ' )2= Sup I vN(y)d3y B(x, R) R<=I for some fixed e > 0. B(x, R) is the ball of radius R centered at x. Given an initial velocity distribution 3(0) in ~-, we find ~J(x, t) for 0 _< t _< T = T( ll v(0) it'), T > 0, such that g(x, t) is the unique strong solution of the Navier...

The general aim of this talk is to advocate a combinatorial perspective, together with its methods, in the investigation and study of models of computation structures. This, of course, should be taken in conjunction with the wellestablished views and methods stemming from algebra, category theory, domain theory, logic, type theory, etc. In support of this proposal I will show how such an approa...