Metapontum Forest Reserve: Salt Stress Responses in <i>Pinus halepensis</i>

Metapontum Forest Reserve is an artificial formation located between mouths of Bradano and Basento river, it is composed prevalently of Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis). In recent years, the Metapontum coast is characterized by a strong erosive process which has really removed the dune behind the beach moving in the inland and causing the decline of the historical pinewood. This negative effect on plant was induced by an increase in soil salinity, which is one of the major abiotic stresses. A clear understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in plants response to salt stress is fundamentally important for plant biology. The salinity soil causes broad variety of physiological and biochemical processes, as oxidative damage, also has a negative effect on energy metabolism, which unavoidably resulted in a decreased ATP production through photophosphorylation and, thus, affected the Calvin cycle in photosynthesis. A proteomic approach was utilized to identify key protein which result to be directly responsive to salt stress. Total proteins were extracted from the leaves by a combination of TCA—acetone and phenol, and separated by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis at pH 5 - 8. Spots were stained with Coomassie Brilliant Blue and analyzed with the software PDQuest 8.0 (Bio-Rad) to identify differentially expressed polypeptides. Preliminary analysis revealed around 29 differentially expressed proteins, and they were sequenced by MALDI TOF and LC-MS/MS. Sequenced spots were classified in different functional classes.

RESTful implementation of geospatial services for Earth and Space Science applications

In recent years,Representational State Transfer(REST)has been proposed as the architectural style for the World Wide Web.REST promises of scalability and simple deployment of Web Services seem to be particularly appealing for Earth and Space Science(ESS)applications.In fact,most of the available solutions for geospatial data sharing,applying standard interoperability specifications,require complex service-oriented infrastructures;these are powerful and extensible environments,but they usually result in difficult to deploy and manage for ESS research teams.Thus,ESS researchers would gain great benefit from an easy way of sharing geo-information using the international interoperability standards.The variety and complexity of geo-information sharing services poses several architectural issues;in fact these services encompass sensor planning and observation,coverages and features publication and retrieving,models and simulations running,data citation and annotation.Consequently,the adoption of a specific architectural style must be carefully evaluated against these specific requirements.In this work we analyse the existing geospatial services from an architectural perspective and investigate their possible RESTful implementation.Particular attention is paid to the OGC Web Coverage Service(WCS).Possible benefits and drawbacks,along with open issues and possible solutions are discussed.Our investigation suggests that REST may fit well to the typical ESS research usage cases.However,the architectural choice(e.g.Simple Object Access Protocol(SOAP)vs REST)will depend on a case-by-case analysis.Other important factors must be considered,such as the application context:a valuable example in point are the e-Business and e-Government application scenarios which require message based solutions-like those implemented by SOAP.In any case,there is a clear need for harmonization and reconciliation of these two approaches.

Space technology:A powerful tool for safeguarding world heritage

WORLD HERITAGE AND SPACE TECHNOLOGY The Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage(WHC),adopted by United Nations Educational,Scientific and Cultural Organization(UNESCO)on November 16,1972,aims to ensure the identification,protection,conservation,presentation,and transmission to future generations of the world’s cultural and natural heritage.The WHC works toward these goals by emphasizing the Outstanding Universal Value(OUV)of heritage sites and the unique contribution such places can make to conservation and human development agendas.1 As of the end of January 2023,theWHC has been signed by 194 state parties,covering 1,157 sites(including 900 cultural,218 natural,and 39 mixed properties),55 of which are considered to be in danger.These sites,totaling an area of more than 370 million hectares are designated as World Heritage(WH)sites(https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/).WH sites have played a significant role in the sustainable development of society globally and helped effectively maintain and preserve the cultural diversity and global biodiversity of the Earth.