1,720,961 research outputs found
Rare-earth elements in the circular economy: The case of yttrium
Full text linkThis paper discusses the economic rationale of recycling exhaustible raw materials and assesses how a circular economy perspective can improve the sustainable use of critical raw materials (CRMs). We use the case study of yttrium, a rare-earth element (REE) on the EU list of CRMs, given its widespread use in the electronics industry and the geopolitical concentration of its supply. Even if recycling REEs from waste electric and electronic equipment is a valid alternative to extraction from mines, as proposed by the circular economy paradigm, less than 1% of REEs used today are recycled. Nevertheless, studies on the economic benefits of recovery REEs are very limited. In this paper, we present the business case of an Italian recycling company, Relight Ltd., and its HydroWEEE project, to recycle REEs such as yttrium, from spent lamps. In environmental terms, recycling REEs has a much lower impact than their extraction from virgin source. In economic terms, it is profitable to recycle yttrium if its market price is above 14€/kg, and above 9.54€/kg taking in consideration the external costs of mining. Therefore, in 2012 and 2013, recycling was profitable thanks to the high price of yttrium, while between 2014 and 2016 recycling was not cost effctive. In these cases, policymakers must incentivize recovery and recycling solutions with appropriate policies
SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF EUROPEAN POLICIES IMPACTING ON EEE, BATTERIES AND THEIR END-OF-LIFE
No full textThe European “twin transition” is based on products and technologies built with different materials such as critical raw materials (CRMs) that are mainly mined and refined outside the EU. Supporting and partially replacing the supply of these CRMs with secondary material from waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) and waste batteries would reduce such dependency. The design, production and end-of-live management of these goods is regulated by several European policies. However, such large number of policies is not yet presented in an organized scheme that would support the producer and other stakeholders to fulfil their obligations. This work has the dual purpose: identify the European policies that impact on the entire life cycle of these two categories of products and provide a logical scheme of interconnection and dependence between the most relevant policies. After an initial phase of research and identification of the significant policies, an in-depth study of the policies of interest was conducted. Finally, the policies were organized in a scheme that defined hierarchies, connections, and dependencies between them. The study identifies 21 policies where the Green Deal and the Framework Directive are the main references. EEE and batteries productions are mainly influenced by the Circular Economy Action Plan, the Ecodesign Directive, and the REACH Regulation. EEE is also regulated by the WEEE and RoHS directives, while batteries by the Battery Regulation. This study can support producers and the other stakeholder involved in any part of the life cycle of EEE and batteries to identify the relevant and impacting policies
Moral duty, warm glow or self-interest? A choice experiment study on motivations for domestic garbage sorting in Italy
Full text linkBehavioural and mainstream environmental economics have proposed alternative explanations for individual motivations behind environmentally relevant activities, leading to different recommendations for policymakers. Separate collection of different types of municipal waste represents a popular field of application. In this paper, we exploit the results of a choice experiment study conducted on a representative sample of 1010 Italian households, aimed at understanding the relative weights of economic and non-economic motivations. The results show that the mean willingness to pay for separate waste collection is €77/year per family, which is an adequate empirical estimate of the warm glow effect of recycling. However, the four identified latent classes reveal individuals with fairly opposite motivations. This finding can be interpreted as the fact that the two types of motivations (economic and non-economic) do not add up but tend to cancel each other. The concept of latent classes applied to environmental economics is novel and suggests distinct typologies of individuals. More importantly, these groups of individuals are likely to react differently to alternative policy instruments. Therefore, instead of designing waste management policies based on the assumption that behavioural responses are stereotyped, policymakers should adopt a more complex set of policy instruments that target different groups of individuals, with appropriately chosen incentive scheme
A simple fault-tolerant induction motor drive for dependable electrical auxiliary equipment of railway locomotives
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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