Biostratigraphic Evidence Relating to the Age-Old Question of Hannibal's Invasion of Italy, II: Chemical Biomarkers and Microbial Signatures

<p>As discussed in Part I, a large accumulation of mammalian faeces at the mire site in the upper Guil Valley near Mt. Viso, dated to 2168cal ¹⁴C yr., provides the first evidence of the passage of substantial but indeterminate numbers of mammals within the time frame of the Punic invasion of Italia. Specialized organic biomarkers bound up in a highly convoluted and bioturbated bed constitute an unusual anomaly in a histosol comprised of fibric and hemist horizons that are usually expected to display horizontal bedding. The presence of deoxycholic acid and ethylcoprostanol derived from faecal matter, coupled with high relative numbers of Clostridia 16S rRNA genes, suggests a substantial accumulation of mammalian faeces at the site over 2000years ago. The results reported here constitute the first chemical and biological evidence of the passage of large numbers of mammals, possibly indicating the route of the Hannibalic army at this time. Combined with the geological analysis reported in Part I, these data provide a background supporting the need for further historical archaeological exploration in this area.</p>

Do Individual Differences in Emotion Regulation Mediate the Relationship Between Mental Toughness and Symptoms of Depression?

Mental Toughness (MT) provides crucial psychological capacities for achievement in sports,<br/>education, and work settings. Previous research examined the role of MT in the domain of<br/>mental health and showed that MT is negatively associated with and predictive of fewer<br/>depressive symptoms in non-clinical populations. The present study aimed at 1) investigating<br/>to what extent mentally tough individuals use two emotion regulation strategies: cognitive<br/>reappraisal and expressive suppression; 2) exploring whether individual differences in<br/>emotion regulation strategy use mediate the relationship between MT and depressive<br/>symptoms. Three hundred sixty-four participants (M = 24.31 years, SD = 9.16) provided<br/>self-reports of their levels of MT, depressive symptoms, and their habitual use of cognitive<br/>reappraisal and expressive suppression. The results showed a statistically significant<br/>correlation between MT and two commonly used measures of depressive symptoms. A small<br/>statistically significant positive correlation between MT and the habitual use of cognitive<br/>reappraisal was also observed. The correlation between MT and the habitual use of<br/>expressive suppression was statistically significant, but the size of the effect was small. A<br/>statistical mediation model indicated that individual differences in the habitual use of<br/>expressive suppression mediate the relationship between MT and depressive symptoms. No<br/>such effect was found for the habitual use of cognitive reappraisal. Implications of these<br/>findings and possible avenues for future research are discussed.

Use of a Neural Network to Predict Strength and Optimum Compositions of Natural Alumina-Silica-Based Geopolymers

<br/>In order to predict compressive strength of geopolymers prepared from alumina-silica natural products, based on the effect of Al 2 O 3 /SiO 2, Na 2 O/Al 2 O 3, Na 2 O/H 2 O, and Na/[Na+K], more than 50 pieces of data were gathered from the literature. The data was utilized to train and test a multilayer artificial neural network (ANN). Therefore a multilayer feedforward network was designed with chemical compositions of alumina silicate and alkali activators as inputs and compressive strength as output. In this study, a feedforward network with various numbers of hidden layers and neurons were tested to select the optimum network architecture. The developed three-layer neural network simulator model used the feedforward back propagation architecture, demonstrated its ability in training the given input/output patterns. The cross-validation data was used to show the validity and high prediction accuracy of the network. This leads to the optimum chemical composition and the best paste can be made from activated alumina-silica natural products using alkaline hydroxide, and alkaline silicate. The research results are in agreement with mechanism of geopolymerization.<br/><br/><br/>Read More: http://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/(ASCE)MT.1943-5533.0000829