1,720,974 research outputs found
Bioeconomy and green recovery in a post-COVID-19 era
Full text linkThe spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has generated a health crisis and repetitive lockdowns that disrupted different economic and societal segments. As the world has placed hope on the vaccination progress to bring back the socio-economic “normal,” this article explores how the bioeconomy can enhance the resilience and sustainability of bio-based, food, and energy systems in the post-COVID-19 era. The proposed recovery approach integrates technological innovations, environment, ecosystem services, “biocities,” food, rural economies, and tourism. The importance of integrating culture, arts, and the fashion industry as part of the recovery is underlined towards building a better bioeconomy that, together with environmental safeguards, promotes socio-cultural and economic innovations. This integration could be achieved supporting communities and stakeholders to diversify their activities by combining sustainable production with decarbonization, stimulating private investments in this direction and monitoring the resulting impact of mitigation measures. Food systems should become more resilient in order to allow adapting rapidly to severe crises and future shocks, while it is important to increase circularity towards the valorization of waste, the integration of different processes within the biorefinery concept and the production of bio-based products and biofuels
Bioeconomy Opportunities for a Green Recovery and Enhanced System Resilience
No full textThe COVID-19 pandemic is causing an unprecedented global health crisis and socio-economic upheavel and led to severe consequences well beyond previous crises of the last decades, which mostly were related to financial issues. COVID-19 caused sudden economic, psychological and parlty physical shocks to markets, social sub-systems (e.g. education, food, health), and people.
As a direct consequence, today, food security and resilience are at stake. The effects on biobased products and bioenergy (in particular, biofuels) vary and their role in the recovery (with possible changes in customer’s behavior) could differ as well.
The linkages of the bioeconomy to post-pandemic recovery with regard to impacts and possible responses are currently being discussed by many institutions and initiatives, even though there is currently limited data on the impact of the pandemic on the bioeconomy.
This report presents preliminary results based on initial analysis from the authors on knowledge synthesis on the EU bioeconomy system, trends, and perspectives of the future development towards 2030 and 2050
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
Reuse of olive mill waste as soil amendment
No full textThe environmental impact of olive cultivation and olive oil production is important as oil extraction requires a considerable amount of water and generates huge quantities of oil mill wastes. Moreover, such huge quantities are concentrated in a limited period of time, corresponding to two-three months of olive harvesting. In many olive-growing countries, as for example in Italy, the agronomic use of olive mill wastes, i.e. waste waters (OMWW) and pomace, by directly spreading in the field is a widespread method of legal disposal. Such use has taken great interest not only because it is a relatively inexpensive and easily feasible, but also because it allows to give organic matter to the soil, whose progressive depletion in soils subjected to intensive farming is a source of great concern, due to worsening of physical, chemical and biological soil properties, leading to degenerative phenomena, of which erosion and loss of fertility are the most obvious and worrying aspects. However, the spreading in the field of OMWW and pomace should be implemented with rationality since the little stabilized organic materials may inhibit or reduce the development of crops, due to I) the presence of tannins, fatty acids and phenols, II) the competition for the nitrogen among the microorganisms of the soil and the roots due to a high C/N ratio, and III) anoxia of the roots caused by the microorganism consumption of oxygen. In particular, the high concentration of polymeric phenols could have a bacteriostatic effect on micro-organisms and some phytotoxic effect on cultivations. Also the high content of salts and the slightly acidic reaction suggest the need to manage this waste carefully. On the other hand, large quantities of phosphorous and potassium and organic matter can give a significant contribution to the fertilization of cultivated soil.
In this chapter, on the basis of the specific literature, the benefits, the risks and the correct use of the oil mill wastes as soil amendment are described
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
Improving Functionality of Chocolate
No full textTop trends in the food industry are mainly related with improvement of functionality of the products. Food manufacturers and researchers mainly focus on this subject and it is aimed to produce the functional products with quality characteristics similar to conventional ones. In the present chapter, the ways to improve functional characteristics of the chocolate products were reviewed. Calorie reduction in chocolates with using sugar and cocoa butter alternatives and its effect on chocolate quality was mentioned. In addition, the influence of processes applied for cocoa and chocolate productions on polyphenol composition and antioxidant activity was also addressed. Studies related with dietary fiber usage as a prebiotics and
their effects on chocolate quality and probiotic chocolates and bioaccessibility of probiotics were also summarized in the chapter. It can be highlighted that functional characteristics of the chocolate or derived products can be improved by enrichment and adjusting production process parameters. Chocolate is a good functional compound carrier since it is lovely consumed by people of all age throughout the world
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