1,721,018 research outputs found
A techno-economic analysis of the biofuel production potential in Italy. A case study: biodiesel from sunflower
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Client-side energy and GHGs assessment of advertising and tracking in the news websites
No full textElectronic devices consume energy both in the production and the use phase. Furthermore, the “hidden” impacts linked to their use are not frequently assessed and they depend on the behavior of the users, besides the servers and complex web networks. It must be underlined that many websites employ ads and trackers as part of their monetization strategy and, in order for online ads and trackers to work, they add an additional code to be executed on the users’ machines, which in turn requires more processing power. Considering that the Internet had an estimated 4.9 billion users in 2021, the global energy and carbon impacts of online ads and trackers might be significant. To investigate this phenomenon, we designed a novel automated framework for bottom-up estimation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions attributable to software using exclusively free and open source software. Our process involved the building of a random sample of global news websites which we visited with and without an ad-blocker, each time collecting power usage in identical conditions. The gathered data were put into an ordinary least squares (OLS)-based linear regression model, which showed that ads and trackers on news websites require on average an additional 6.13 W of power on personal computers. This result was then tuned to global environmental and technological parameters to estimate that in 2019, on the client side, ads and trackers on the news websites consumed 0.61 TWh of electrical energy, emitted 0.29 MtCO2eq of GHG, and cost all Internet users approximately 140 million USD (purchasing power parity) of electrical energy. This article met the requirements for a gold-gold JIE data openness badge described at http://jie.click/badges
A combined assessment of the energy, economic and environmental performance of a photovoltaic system in the Italian context
No full textPolicymakers are increasingly moving towards greater investments in research in the renewable energy sector, in order to reduce costs, making private investment affordable, so as to accelerate the achievement of grid parity. This evidence boosts for investigating the way the convenience of investing in a solar photovoltaic (PV) system, in Italy, is unrelated to any form of public incentive. Under this perspective, this paper is focused upon designing a residential 3 kW PV system and providing a full set of indicators for the assessment of its multi-dimension performance in an holistic, integrated approach. Particularly, energy and environmental indicators, likewise the Energy Payback Time (EPBT), Energy Return on Investment (EROI) and Environmental Impact Mitigation potential (EIMP) allowed the authors to measure some of the relevant sustainability-related issues of a residential PV system. Those were found to be equal to 1.35 years, 7.05 and 23,215 kg CO2 eq, respectively. Whereas, the authors used the Levelized Cost of Energy (0.15064 euro/kWh), the Net Present Value (euro 2881), and the Payback Period (8.26 years), to evaluate the economic and financial feasibility of the PV system modelized. The variations of EPBT and EROIEL with respect to solar radiation and the efficiency of the PV system and LCOE to discount rate and initial investment cost have been investigated through a sensitivity analysis
MY DIGITAL ENGLISH. A DIGITAL STORYTELLING SYLLABUS (DST)
No full textHow can language teachers help the students to write stories and not to only describe favourite colours, hobbies, pets, and say how many brothers and sisters they have got?
This work refers to the way teachers can focus on the teaching of the foreign language in the classroom in such a way that students can communicate in a conscious way, taking into account their voices and their real experiences.
The Digital Storytelling Syllabus is created for a communicative English as a Second Language class because the aim of most language learning is to be able to present oneself as a whole person through the foreign language and that is done very powerfully through storytelling. Stories are fundamental to one's sense of identity and to dealing with experience and offer much richness in language learning and teaching.
Digital storytelling is the practice of combining narrative with digital content, including images, sound, and video, to create a short movie, typically with a strong emotional component.
The aim of this work is to integrate Digital Storytelling into the curriculum to engage early English Language learners in creating and improving all the new language skills; students learn how to find, tell, create and publish the stories of their lives through hand-on project that foster development of language skills while building media literally and technical skills
Municipal Italian Waste Analysis: problems and perspective
No full textIn this paper we analyze the municipal waste in the European Union and especially in Italy, from a quantitative and qualitative point of view. The objective is to underline the problems related to information and data processing that represent the waste System. Particular attention will be paid to the composition and the characteristics of different waste fractions, in order to improve their commodity knowledge. It will be possible to get more information about waste management which allows to increase municipal waste recovery, recycle and reuse, to avoid the big quantity of materials is still left in landfìll areas
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
A comparative life cycle assessment between conventional and organic chickpea cultivation in southern Italy
No full textLegumes combine a high protein intake with reduced environmental impact and are suitable for application in rotational cropping systems, with the twofold function of producing grains and fixing N into the soil. By doing so, whether put in combination with low-input systems, they can contribute to implementing sustainable agriculture paths. Chickpea is the third most consumed grain legume in the world, and its nitrogen-fixing capacity can be beneficial for the next crops for improving soil fertility, structure, and water retention capacity and for reducing chemical fertilizer production and application. Despite the benefits, it is however needed to explore the relevant environmental sustainability issues associated with chickpea cultivation. To that end, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is proven valid methodology to compare cropping system alternatives, to support decision making. In this study, LCA was used in fact to compare conventional vs. organic cultivation of chickpea grains in Southern Italy in the period 2020–2022, through LCA application with a cradle-to-gate approach, using the EF 3.1 method. For the assessment, following previously published LCAs,1 kg asported N was chosen as the functional unit (FU), to make allocation possible between the harvested chickpea grains (modelled as kg eq of asported N), and the N leftover, thereby best representing the twofold function of the investigated system to produce legumes and fix N into the soil. From a review of the literature, the authors found that only a few LCAs have been developed that dealt with chickpea cultivation, which highlights the relevant contribution that this article is expected to make to specialized literature. This study represents one of the few LCAs focused exclusively on chickpea cultivation, providing a comparative analysis of conventional and organic systems, using an innovative N-based functional unit and an allocation between grain yield and nitrogen fixation. With such a FU, organic cultivation resulted to be more environmentally damaging (7.81 mPt vs. 3.40 mPt) than the conventional one, due to its lower yields that amplify the environmental impacts per unit of product. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis was incorporated in the study to explore the extent to which the choice of other FUs influence results from the assessment. The study highlighted, in particular, that results change in favour of the organic system in the case of a surface-based FU, thanks to the reduced agricultural activities and inputs per unit of ha (252 mPt for organic farming, and 279 mPt for conventional farming). These findings suggest that, while organic cultivation performs better from an environmental sustainability perspective, conventional farming is more efficient in terms of productivity. The study contributed to understanding the importance of FU selection in LCAs and provided valuable insights that can be useful to farmers for improving the sustainability of chickpea production systems and to practitioners to improve LCA applications in this research content area
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