130,832 research outputs found
Indagine sull'entità dei problemi di schiume biologiche e scarsa sedimentabilità dei fanghi attivi in inpianti operanti sul territorio nazionale
No full textSEARCH FOR NU/MU NU/E OSCILLATIONS IN THE NOMAD EXPERIMENT
No full textA search for νμ ↔ νe oscillations based on the 1995 collected by the NOMAD experiment is presented. The quality of event reconstruction allows to select a background free νe CC sample. Good agreement is obtained with respect to predictions, allowing to exclude the presence of a signal from νμ ↔ νe oscillations and to establish a limit on the amplitude of the oscillation sin2(2θ) ≤ 2. 10−3 in the high Δm2 region
Survey of filamentous microorganisms from bulking and foaming activated-sludge plants in Italy
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A framework assessing the footprints of food consumption. An application on water footprint in Europe
No full textInnovative sustainable food systems should be defined to meet the future food demand (both in terms of quality and quantity) and to overcome the threats that current food systems are posing to the natural capital. To achieve this ambitious goal, the transition to sustainable food habits should be supported by methodological frameworks and modelling tools promoting human and environmental health. The proposed framework provided a standardized system-based approach for the analysis of environmental impacts of food systems, assessed in terms of use of natural resources (water and ecological footprint) and GHG emissions (carbon footprint). The framework is applied to the assessment of water footprint of cradle-to-gate European food consumption, resulting in an average water footprint consumption of 3291 (±557) litre (per day per person). The case study showed the potentiality of our framework as a support tool for policy making in designing specific incentives for the reduction of environmental impacts related to the agri-food sector, as well as in the evaluation of agronomic strategies in the light of pursuing the environmental sustainability of food commodities production. The main novelty presented in the case study is to use food consumption data coming from surveys harmonized across European countries to assess the real food demand
MeSH term explosion and author rank improve expert recommendations
No full textInformation overload is an often-cited phenomenon that reduces the productivity, efficiency and efficacy of scientists. One challenge for scientists is to find appropriate collaborators in their research. The literature describes various solutions to the problem of expertise location, but most current approaches do not appear to be very suitable for expert recommendations in biomedical research. In this study, we present the development and initial evaluation of a vector space model-based algorithm to calculate researcher similarity using four inputs: 1) MeSH terms of publications; 2) MeSH terms and author rank; 3) exploded MeSH terms; and 4) exploded MeSH terms and author rank. We developed and evaluated the algorithm using a data set of 17,525 authors and their 22,542 papers. On average, our algorithms correctly predicted 2.5 of the top 5/10 coauthors of individual scientists. Exploded MeSH and author rank outperformed all other algorithms in accuracy, followed closely by MeSH and author rank. Our results show that the accuracy of MeSH term-based matching can be enhanced with other metadata such as author rank
Environmental Impact of Real Gaseous Pollutants Emission of Agricultural Tractors
No full textThe gaseous pollutants produced by the internal combustion engines fitted on vehicles powered with fossil fuels are considered one of the main sources causing the global warming and consequently the climate change. In this scenario, the agricultural self-propelled machinery, in particular tractors, are believed to have a significant role, due to the generalized fitting of diesel engines. Trying to improve the situation, from 1996 for non road vehicles (therefore also for self-propelled agricultural machinery) some Standards were issued, based on steps referred to the time, defining progressively stringent emission limits, from Stage I to Stage V (in Europe), roughly correspondent to Tier 1 to Tier 5 in USA. The compliance of an engine to a given step is referred to dedicated homologation tests, on the basis of a series of defined running conditions.
At present, no subsequent tests are provided to check the conformity of the engine along its service life. Consequently, there is no assurance that the engine is respecting the emission limits provided by its homologation step, especially in case it is heavily used and/or is not submitted to a diligent periodical maintenance.
To ascertain the real pollutants gaseous emission of used tractors, a model equipped with an engine compliant to the Stage IIIA level was tested, using PEMS (Portable Emission Measurement System), measuring NOx, CO, HC and PM emissions, in comparison with the limits established by its homologation stage
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