1,721,018 research outputs found
An Assessment of Built-Up Areas Trend Among EU27 Small Municipalities
No full textLand use, land use change and forestry (LULCF) were included by the Regulation (EU) 2018/841, in the 2030 climate and energy framework, as a sector accounting green-house gas emission. In this perspective, EU has established a comprehensive framework (such as European Landscape Convention, EU’s Common Agricultural Policy or EU’s Urban Agenda) aimed at reducing land consumption and promoting sustainable land use practices, facing climate change. Sustainable land use practices are also addressed by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with specific targets related to land consumption. In the EU perspective of achieving “net zero land consumption by 2050” target, the authors examined the trend of built-up areas in small Italian municipalities (those with a population below 10,000 inhabitants) and compared it with population growth. Results are oriented to understand if the built-up areas trend is related to a densification process or land consumption compared to the population growth. Data was retrieved from the Global Human Settlement Layer and Eurostat. Results remarked that demographic dynamics and land urbanization are two intertwined processes, but in the last decade, the increase of built-up areas overcame the decreasing population growth. Moreover, it is relevant that land consumption processes involved small municipalities as well as bigger ones
The WRN exonuclease domain protects nascent strands from pathological MRE11/EXO1-dependent degradation
No full textThe WRN helicase/exonuclease protein is required for proper replication fork recovery and maintenance of genome stability. However, whether the different catalytic activities of WRN cooperate to recover replication forks in vivo is unknown. Here, we show that, in response to replication perturbation induced by low doses of the TOP1 inhibitor camptothecin, loss of the WRN exonuclease resulted in enhanced degradation and ssDNA formation at nascent strands by the combined action of MRE11 and EXO1, as opposed to the limited processing of nascent strands performed by DNA2 in wild-type cells. Nascent strand degradation by MRE11/EXO1 took place downstream of RAD51 and affected the ability to resume replication, which correlated with slow replication rates in WRN exonuclease-deficient cells. In contrast, loss of the WRN helicase reduced exonucleolytic processing at nascent strands and led to severe genome instability. Our findings identify a novel role of the WRN exonuclease at perturbed forks, thus providing the first in vivo evidence for a distinct action of the two WRN enzymatic activities upon fork stalling and providing insights into the pathological mechanisms underlying the processing of perturbed forks
The Engagement of Small European Municipalities in Achieving the Climate Neutrality
No full textOver the past two decades, European municipalities have been including in their local strategies energy and climate consideration, thereby developing actions plans with a growing focus on both mitigation and adaptation to climate change. This paradigmatic change has been supported by the EU policy framework on energy, climate and environment, currently enshrined in the European Green Deal, and by the new Leipzig Charter on sustainable cities, which have set the “green” transition as a reference for implementing interventions aimed at reducing carbon emissions. In the challenge of climate change adaptation and mitigation, major European cities have behaved as frontrunner to meet ambitious climate targets by designing and implementing a well-developed set of experiences and good practices. However, also small municipalities with a population of less than 10000 inhabitants have been playing a key role in the climate transition.
This is evident from the high participation of small municipalities in the Covenant of Mayors initiative in Europe (CoM), covering the 63% of the whole CoM signatories. The CoM initiative is supporting local authorities in taking local action against climate change through a bottom-up voluntary approach. CoM signatories commit to develop a Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan (SECAP) to meet their energy and climate targets. By analyzing the SECAPs of a sample of small municipalities with most ambitious 2030 targets in the EU, this paper aims to explore how these signatories intend to achieve their objectives thereby building upon their actions to identify urban planning trends and options
Le politiche urbane per la transizione low-carbon e il Patto dei sindaci
No full textIl contributo analizza i risultati del Patto dei Sindaci in termini di riduzione delle emissioni
ottenute nelle città che si trovano in uno stato avanzato, avendo già presentato un Inventatio di Monitoraggio delle Emissioni (IME), e le azioni di mitigazione da esse adottate. L’analisi delle misure adottate dai firmatari dell’iniziativa permette di determinarne l’impatto in termini di riduzione di emissioni e di comprendere quale sia il contributo offerto dalle città e le loro necessità (Kona et al., 2015, 2017). Il lavoro è strutturato in due parti: la prima parte include il confronto tra gli Ibe e gli Ime presentati dalle città, considerando la distribuzione delle emissioni a livello settoriale e le riduzioni ottenute nei diversi settori, nonché le politiche adottate per raggiungere i target prefissati e le riduzioni ad esse associate. La seconda
parte è dedicata ad un approfondimento sulle riduzioni ottenute e le politiche adottate dalle città
italiane presenti nel campione
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
Combined seismic plus energy retrofitting for the existing RC buildings: Economic feasibility
No full textThe vast majority of the existing European building stock has been built without modern provisions for earthquake resistance and energy efficiency, resulting in seismic vulnerable and low energy performance buildings. Although many studies to address both these needs exist, energy and seismic retrofitting are nowadays treated separately. In this study, a combined seismic and energy retrofitting approach is adopted. Retrofitting strategies for existing RC buildings, combining seismic and energy features are investigated and compared. For what concerns seismic retrofitting, two different seismic retrofitting techniques for RC-moment resisting frames, namely addition of RC Walls and TRM Jacketing). The economic benefit deriving from their implementation has been evaluated using a probabilistic vulnerability building based approach (based on fragility curves and mean repair costs). Moreover, a simplified method for fragility curves in retrofitted state has been proposed. For what concerns energy retrofitting, an attempt was made to evaluate the energy performance and cost improvements of buildings receiving various thermal insulation materials (i.e. EPS, XPS, PUR) to their building envelopes, following a simplified procedure in line with the requirements of the Italian regulation. To evaluate the economic feasibility of an integrated seismic plus energy retrofitting approach, this paper proposed an expected annual loss (EAL) parameter combining both the economic benefits related to reduction of the seismic risk and energy losses. It was found that a number of retrofitting techniques were effective and economically feasible, with the combination of advanced textile composites (i.e. TRM) and thermal insulations materials (i.e. EPS) being the most effective scheme, than the combination based on more localized seismic interventions. Overall, this study demonstrates that the concurrent energy and seismic retrofitting using advanced materials is a quite promising alternative approach for upgrading the existing RC buildings in seismic EU regions
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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