Archivio istituzionale della ricerca - Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna
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Circular aquaculture: Unpacking views from farm to fork
No full textThe aquaculture sector holds strong potential to become a driving force in the blue transformation journey. As the push for sustainability intensifies, future development increasingly points toward models grounded in circular economy principles. However, the adoption of such models remains limited, hindered by the evolving nature of European aquaculture policy and the absence of a clear and consolidated vision of relevant strategies. Advancing circularity in aquaculture calls for a systemic rethinking of production and consumption models, supported by inclusive governance and multi-actor engagement. This study examines the perception of the most urgent circular strategies for advancing the blue transition of Italian aquaculture, providing the first multi-stakeholder analysis from “Farm to Fork”. The multicriteria approach enabled the construction of a shared yet differentiated hierarchy of strategies by integrating perspectives from across the value chain, including those of researchers, producers, policy and governance actors, and citizens. The findings revealed areas of alignment as well as divergence, illustrating how circularity is variously conceptualized and could be operationalized across the Italian aquaculture sector. Ensuring that blue policies effectively guide the transition towards more sustainable aquaculture models requires the establishment of a knowledge and innovation system capable of translating circular economy principles into socially accepted and context-sensitive actions
The visitors' book as a family-centered care tool: A corpus-based, multi-site study on the implementation of a narrative care practice in ICU
No full textObjectives: Hospitalization in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is a profound disruption of the taken-for-granted flow of everyday life, for both the patient and their relatives. While narrative-based tools to address the patients' traumatic experience in the ICU have been implemented and analyzed, research fails to address ways of dealing with the relatives' experience in order to align with the Patient & Family-Centered Care framework. This study aims to preliminarily observe the narrative-based care practice implemented in three Italian ICUs by means of a visitors' book (VB). Design: Qualitative study. Methods: Thematic analysis of a corpus of naturally gathered texts written by inpatients' relatives in the VB. Results: The semantic analysis, i.e., what relatives write about or refer to in their texts, suggests that the VB is interpreted by users mainly as a way to 1) establish a state of intersubjectivity with the staff, 2) talk into being the disruption they lived as a consequence of ICU hospitalization of a family member, and 3) transform it into an object of thought. The prevalence of references to visitors' experience indexes the users' appropriation of the VB as a family-centered care tool. Conclusions: The VB demonstrably works as a communicative and relational tool, a reflexivity-enabling device enacting and displaying the ward's orientation toward patient and family-centered care. Implications for clinical practice: Overcoming the limitations of family-centered care relying only on the staff's individual competences, attitudes, value-orientation, and time constraints, implementing the VB appears to be a sustainable way for the ward to respond to family members' needs
Influence of agricultural management practices on soil organic carbon stock and distribution in topsoil and subsoil as revealed by a mid-term trial
No full textCover crops and no–tillage are agricultural practices used to improve soil organic carbon (OC) sequestration, although most studies are often limited to examining only the topsoil. In this study the influence of different cropping systems (CONV – integrated management without cover crop and conventional tillage, ORG – organic management with cover and temporary intercropping crops and conventional tillage, and NOTILL – integrated management with cover crops and no–tillage) was evaluated on OC quantity and distribution in topsoil (0–20 cm), midsoil (20–40 cm), and subsoil (40–60 cm) of a 10–year wheat–maize rotation trial. A physical–chemical fractionation was performed to isolate OC among labile (water soluble and particulate OC, WEOC and POC, respectively), stable (OC in sand–size and silt– and clay–size aggregates, SSA and SCA, respectively), and resistant (NaClO oxidation) pools. Further, soil samples were characterised for13C and15N natural abundance, phenols and glomalin (GRSP) contents, and microbial activity. The soil OC stock in the 0–60 cm depth was similar for CONV, ORG and NOTILL. This was attributed to enhanced mineralisation processes promoted by the addition of N–rich fresh legume cover crop residues in ORG and NOTILL soils that exceeded the rate of OC stabilisation. However, specific contributions of the functional OC pools to the total stock and along the soil depth intervals occurred. For ORG and NOTILL, the implementation with cover crops favoured the development of a stable macrostructure and the accumulation of OC in SSAs, whereas CONV system mainly accumulated OC in SCAs. When the system was implemented with both cover crops and no–tillage, as for NOTILL, almost half of the total soil OC stock was stored in the topsoil, mostly as POC and associated with SSAs. Regardless of agricultural management, 53–68 % of the total OC stock was found in the layers below the topsoil
Impact of Non-Anesthesiologist-Administered Propofol Sedation for Outpatient Endoscopy in the Healthcare System
No full textIntroductionNon-anesthesiologist-administered propofol (NAAP) sedation for outpatient endoscopy has proven to be safe. However, implementing NAAP in Western countries faces challenges, and propofol-based sedation is still largely administered by anesthetists. For low-risk patients, anesthesiologist-administered propofol (AAP) could represent an avoidable waste of healthcare resources.MethodsThis research consisted of two phases. The first is a retrospective study comparing NAAP and AAP for outpatient endoscopy at a tertiary center, with the primary outcome being the rate of adverse events (AEs). Propensity score matching was performed to balance baseline characteristics between the two groups. The second phase involved a budget impact model to assess the economic impact of using NAAP instead of AAP for low-risk patients, both locally and nationally, between 2023 and 2025.ResultsBetween May 2019 and November 2021, 2721 patients undergoing esophagogastroduodenoscopies (EGDs; NAAP 2439 and AAP 282) and 2748 colonoscopies (NAAP 2491 and AAP 257) were enrolled. Overall, the AE rates were similar between the cohorts (esophagogastroduodenoscopies: NAAP 1.1% vs. AAP 0.8%, p = 0.81; colonoscopies: NAAP 1.8% vs. AAP 3.5%, p = 0.20). All NAAP-related AEs were minor. The budget impact model revealed that adopting NAAP instead of AAP would save 124,724,659 and 2223 working days for healthcare professionals for the Italian National Health System (NHS) between 2023 and 2025.ResultsBetween May 2019 and November 2021, 2721 patients undergoing esophagogastroduodenoscopies (EGDs; NAAP 2439 and AAP 282) and 2748 colonoscopies (NAAP 2491 and AAP 257) were enrolled. Overall, the AE rates were similar between the cohorts (esophagogastroduodenoscopies: NAAP 1.1% vs. AAP 0.8%, p = 0.81; colonoscopies: NAAP 1.8% vs. AAP 3.5%, p = 0.20). All NAAP-related AEs were minor. The budget impact model revealed that adopting NAAP instead of AAP would save 124,724,659 and 2223 working days for healthcare professionals for the Italian National Health System (NHS) between 2023 and 2025.ConclusionNAAP has a comparable AE rate to AAP for low-risk outpatient endoscopy. Implementing NAAP instead of AAP could save over 100 million and 2000 working days for the Italian NHS between 2023 and 2025. Wider adoption could improve healthcare resource allocation
Revisiting speed of imitation from a competitive dynamics perspective
No full textImitation—the process of reproducing other firms’ products, processes, technologies, or strategic decisions in general—is a salient theoretical construct in the strategic management literature. Moving beyond the “one imitation strategy” assumption, some studies have focused on “how quickly” firms imitate, describing the speed of imitation (SoI) as a key source of “fast-mover advantages.” However, research on SoI has primarily developed in an isolated fashion across multiple subfields of strategic management, leading to a variety of theories, methodologies, and mixed findings that hinder the comprehensive understanding of SoI research. Against such a backdrop, this review leverages competitive dynamics research to (a) conceptualize SoI both as the velocity dimension of the imitation process and as a specific type of competitive response by identifying its necessary conditions, (b) integrate current knowledge on SoI by shedding light on its antecedents and outcomes, resulting in a process model that organizes these factors systematically, and (c) use this presented process model to identify research gaps and mixed findings in the existing literature, thus opening avenues for future research
A structured mapping of food policies to identify gaps and new directions
No full textOver the past two decades, European governments have increasingly recognized the complexity of food systems and the need for evidence-based, effective policy interventions to address challenges such as food safety, health, sustainability, and food insecurity. However, many policy interventions have had mixed results, highlighting the need for a comprehensive, evidence-based understanding of the policy landscape. This chapter presents European Food Policy Database (EU F-POD) and its underlying classification framework, as a resource for mapping and classifying food policies and analyzing the interactions between policies and their impacts on different stakeholders. Drawing from the information provided in this database, the chapter discusses the current state of food policies, highlighting gaps and opportunities in interventions that can enable food systems to address the challenges of food security, climate change and the promotion of healthy and sustainable diets
Remote sensing data facilitate large-scale monitoring of natural vegetation integrity in Brazilian biomes
No full textHighlights
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Normalized Difference Moisture Index is a good predictor of vegetation integrity.
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Spectral traits from Sentinel and Landsat satellite images are good predictors of vegetation traits in Atlantic Forest.
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For small areas in Cerrado, spectral traits need to be derived preferentially from Sentinel satellite images.
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The spectral traits power prediction is associated with habitat types, being lower in savanna and open savanna areas
Non-local Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equations for the stochastic optimal control of path-dependent piecewise deterministic processes
No full textWe study the optimal control of path-dependent piecewise deterministic processes. An appropriate dynamic programming principle is established. We prove that the associated value function is the unique minimax solution of the corresponding non-local path-dependent Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation. This is the first well-posedness result for nonsmooth solutions of fully nonlinear non-local path-dependent partial differential equations
Glimpses of Joy in Byzantine Literature
Full text linkThis chapter explores the polysemy of emotional language in Byzantine literature, focusing on the bodily expressions of joy—ranging from dance to tears—and the tension between spiritual and worldly emotions. Contrary to the stereotype of Byzantium as a joyless culture, the author demonstrates how joy occupies a complex, morally nuanced space shaped by religious, rhetorical, and ascetic frameworks. The study highlights the need for a systematic analysis of the lexicon and expressive modalities of joy, within a cultural context deeply shaped by Scripture, ancient philosophy, and monastic spirituality. Particular attention is given to how emotional meaning varies across genres and contexts
A note on auxiliary mixture sampling for Bayesian Poisson models
Full text linkBayesian hierarchical Poisson models are an essential tool for analyzing count data. However, designing efficient algorithms to sample from the posterior distribution of the target parameters remains a challenging task. Auxiliary mixture sampling algorithms have been proposed to this aim. They involve two steps of data augmentation: the first leverages the theory of Poisson processes, and the second approximates the residual distribution of the resulting model through a mixture of Gaussian distributions. In this way, an approximate Gibbs sampler can be implemented. This strategy is particularly beneficial for latent Gaussian models, as it allows one to exploit the sparsity of the precision matrix associated with the random effects and to efficiently incorporate linear constraints. In this paper, we focus on the accuracy of the approximation step, highlighting scenarios where the mixture fails to represent accurately the true underlying distribution, leading to a lack of convergence in the algorithm. We outline key features to monitor, in order to assess if the approximation performs as intended. Building on this, we propose a robust version of the auxiliary mixture sampling algorithm. Our approach includes mechanisms for detecting approximation failures and introduces an enhanced approximation of the right tail of the auxiliary variable distribution, supplemented by a Metropolis-Hastings correction step when needed. Finally, we evaluate the proposed algorithm together with the original mixture sampling algorithms on both simulated and real datasets