Origin of arsenic pollution in Southwest Tuscany: comparison of fluvial sediments

The Colline Metallifere in SW Tuscany are characterized by strong anomalies in arsenic concentrations and distribution. The area is sparsely populated and largely wild, though it has been subject to human impact due to mining and metal processing since Etruscan and Roman times. In the Middle Ages it was exploited intensively for silver and copper. Until 1995, pyrite (FeS2) was mined and roasted to produce sulphuric acid and iron. Hypotheses based on geological and mineralogical factors formulated in the last 20 years have failed to explain the peculiar distribution of arsenic in the Colline Metallifere. Here we report preliminary results of widespread sampling and analysis of the fluvial sediments of rivers originating in this mining area. The data was analysed in relation to the archaeological features of the area, since the presence of ancient mining and ore processing sites can shed light on the peculiar distribution of arsenic. Comparison of data from two rivers and their respective contaminated and uncontaminated coastal lagoons also clarified the general mechanisms of arsenic mobility, pinpointing the source of arsenic contamination. The study methods also promise to be useful for discovering unknown archaeological sites.     

A background-dependent approach to the theory of gravitation

On the basis of a Machian view of nature we find a covariant formulation of Newton's gravitational equation in a general frame which satisfies the requirements (i) of being singular if the density of mass is zero everywhere and (ii) of depending on the parallel transport of the four-momentum density of matter (from the three-space point in which it is defined to any other three-space point, at any fixed time) in such a way that it incorporates the idea that the frame has to be fixeddirectly in connection with the distribution and motion of matter. In Paper II we will use such an equation as starting point in order to find relativistic gravitational equations which are supposed to hold in any conceivable universe, describe a purely geometrical theory of gravitation, and explicitly incorporate Mach's principle.     

Mouse brain expression patterns of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Spg7</Emphasis>, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Afg3l1</Emphasis>, and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Afg3l2</Emphasis> transcripts,encoding for the mitochondrial <Emphasis Type="Italic">m</Emphasis>-AAA protease

Background  

The m-AAA (ATPases Associated with a variety of cellular Activities) is an evolutionary conserved metalloprotease complex located in the internal mitochondrial membrane. In the mouse, it is a hetero-oligomer variably formed by the Spg7, Afg3l1, and Afg3l2 encoded proteins, or a homo-oligomer formed by either Afg3l1 or Afg3l2. In humans, AFG3L2 and SPG7 genes are conserved, whereas AFG3L1 became a pseudogene. Both AFG3L2 and SPG7 are involved in a neurodegenerative disease, namely the autosomal dominant spinocerebellar ataxia SCA28 and a recessive form of spastic paraplegia, respectively.     

Spaces of Tilings, Finite Telescopic Approximations and Gap-Labeling

The continuous Hull of a repetitive tiling T in ℝ^d with the Finite Pattern Condition (FPC) inherits a minimal ℝ^d-lamination structure with flat leaves and a transversal which is a Cantor set. This class of tiling includes the Penrose & the Amman Benkker ones in 2D, as well as the icosahedral tilings in 3D. We show that the continuous Hull, with its canonical ℝ^d-action, can be seen as the projective limit of a suitable sequence of branched, oriented and flat compact d-manifolds. As a consequence, the longitudinal cohomology and the K-theory of the corresponding C*-algebra are obtained as direct limits of cohomology and K-theory of ordinary manifolds. Moreover, the space of invariant finite positive measures can be identified with a cone in the d^th homology group canonically associated with the orientation of ℝ^d. At last, the gap labeling theorem holds: given an invariant ergodic probability measure μ on the Hull the corresponding Integrated Density of States (IDS) of any selfadjoint operators affiliated to takes on values on spectral gaps in the ℤ-module generated by the occurrence probabilities of finite patches in the tiling. Accepted in Revised Form: 7 May 2005     

Toward a DFT-based molecular dynamics description of Co(II) binding in sulfur-rich peptides

In this paper, we investigated the reliability of a Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics (CPMD) approach to characterize the binding of Co(II) metal cation to peptide molecules containing cysteine. To this end, we compared pseudo-potentials and DFT plane wave expansion, which are used as key ingredients in the CPMD method, with standard all-electron Gaussian basis set DFT calculations. The simulations presented here are the first attempts to characterize interactions and dynamics of Co(II) metal with the building blocks of phytochelatin peptide molecules. Benchmark calculations are performed on [Co(Cys-H)]+ and [Co(Glutathione-H)]+ complexes, since they are the main fragments of the Co(II)-Cys and Co(II)-glutathione systems found in gas phase electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) experiments done in our laboratory. We also present benchmark calculations on the [Co(H2O)6)]2+ cluster with direct comparisons to highly correlated ab initio calculations and experiments. In particular, we investigated the dissociation path of one water molecule from the first hydration shell of Co(II) with CPMD. Overall, our molecular dynamics simulations shed some light on the nature of the Co(II) interaction and reactivity in Co(II)-phytochelatin building block systems related to the biological and environmental activity of the metal, either in the gas or liquid phase.     

Controllability of quasi-linear Hamiltonian NLS equations

We prove internal controllability in arbitrary time, for small data, for quasi-linear Hamiltonian NLS equations on the circle. We use a procedure of reduction to constant coefficients up to order zero and HUM method to prove the controllability of the linearized problem. Then we apply a Nash–Moser–Hörmander implicit function theorem as a black box.     

Existence and multiplicity of solutions for elliptic equations with jumping nonlinearities

In this paper we are concerned with a semilinear elliptic Dirichlet problem with jumping nonlinearity and, using a completely variational method, we show that the number of solutions may be arbitrarily large provided the number of jumped eigenvalues is large enough. In order to prove this fact, we show that for every positive integer k, when a suitable parameter is large enough, there exists a solution which presents k peaks. Under the assumptions we consider in this paper, new (unexpected) phenomena are observed in the study of this problem and new methods are required to construct the k-peaks solutions and describe their asymptotic behavior (weak limits of the rescaled solutions, localization of the concentration points of the peaks, asymptotic profile of the rescaled peaks, etc.).     

Multigram scale, solventless, and diffusion-controlled route to highly monodisperse PbS nanocrystals

High-quality PbS nanocrystals were produced in multigram-scale quantities through a solventless, heterogeneous, and relatively green route. The heterogeneous nature of this reaction allows one to limit the diffusion in the system, allowing for unprecedented monodispersity and quality of the product demonstrated by a full-width at half-maximum of the photoluminescence peak (PL fwhm) as low as 52 meV, a Stokes shift as low as 10 meV, and a quantum yield (QY) of 40%. The growth of the nanocrystals is interpreted in the framework of a diffusion-controlled Ostwald growth in conditions of strong supersaturation.