Application of green technologies in architecture

The modern day construction activities use forms of energy and the natural resources on a large scale with the production of huge quantities of by-products. The production of tones of by- products is introducing unwanted materials into the environment as a result, further polluting it. The present day world is experiencing a number of problems like the different kinds of pollution (air, water, land and noise pollution), shortage of the natural resources etc.  All this highlights the very need of protecting the environment and preserving it for the future generations, points towards the high need of adopting a sustainable way of construction and architecture.The purpose of this research is to highlight the raising need of adoption of green technologies especially in the field of architecture and construction for ensuring sustainable development in the present era. This paper specifies the definition of green architecture and covers the need, aspects, methods and its advantages, along with the use of various green technologies. It brings to fore the importance of green architecture for development in a sustainable way. It highlights the various green technologies by which sustainability in architecture can be achieved and adopted with its benefits to the environment as well as the society

Large Language Models, scientific knowledge and factuality: A systematic analysis in antibiotic discovery

Inferring over and extracting information from Large Language Models (LLMs) trained on a large corpus of scientific literature can potentially drive a new era in biomedical research, reducing the barriers for accessing existing medical evidence. This work examines the potential of LLMs for dialoguing with biomedical background knowledge, using the context of antibiotic discovery as an exemplar motivational scenario. The context of biomedical discovery from natural products entails understanding the relational evidence between an organism, an associated chemical and its associated antibiotic properties. We provide a systematic assessment on the ability of LLMs to encode and express these relations, verifying for fluency, prompt-alignment, semantic coherence, factual knowledge and specificity of generated responses. The systematic analysis is applied to nine state-of-the-art models (including ChatGPT and GPT-4) in two prompting-based tasks: chemical compound definition generation and chemical compound-fungus relation determination. Results show that while recent models have improved in fluency, factual accuracy is still low and models are biased towards over-represented entities. The ability of LLMs to serve as biomedical knowledge bases is questioned, and the need for additional systematic evaluation frameworks is highlighted. The best performing GPT-4 produced a factual definition for 70% of chemical compounds and 43.6% factual relations to fungi, whereas the best open source model BioGPT-large 30% of the compounds and 30% of the relations for the best-performing prompt. The results show that while LLMs are currently not fit for purpose to be used as biomedical factual knowledge bases, there is a promising emerging property in the direction of factuality as the models become domain specialised, scale-up in size and level of human feedback.Comment: 23 pages, 3 figure

'It’s hard to define good writing, but i recognise it when i see it’: can consensus-based assessment evaluate the teaching of writing?

In a Higher Education environment where evidence-based practice and accountability are highly valued, most writing practitioners will be familiar with direct requests or less tangible pressures to demonstrate that their teaching has a positive impact on students’ writing skills. Although such evaluations are not devoid of risk and the need for them is contested, it can be argued that it is better to engage with them, as this can avoid the danger of overly simplistic forms of measurements being imposed. The current paper engages with this question by proposing the conceptual basis for a new measurement tool. Based on Amabile’s Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT), developed to assess creativity, the tool develops the idea of consensual assessment of writing as a methodology that can provide robust data through systematic measurement. At the same time, I argue consensual assessment reflects the evaluation of writing in real life situations more closely than many of the methodologies for writing assessment used in other contexts, primarily large scale tests. As such, it would allow writing practitioners to go beyond ethnographic methods, or self- reporting, in order to obtain greater insight into the ways in which their teaching helps change students’ actual writing, without sacrificing the complexity of writing as social interaction, which is fundamental to an academic literacies approach

International trade of the NWFP: any opportunity for the Italian forest sector?

open5siThe Italian forests, traditionally managed for wood production, need to tackle today a demand of good and services considered as secondary outputs by the forest manager. The Italian forest sector showed an increasing role of the of the non-wood forest products (NWFP), considered raw material in other sectors like food, floral green and chemical industries. The scarce attention to the production of non-wood forest products in the forest, the complex legal system linked to the harvesting rights and the increment of the use of such products by the industries, have pushed the companies to import raw materials from the international market with favourable quantities and prices. Moreover, in Italy, NWFP have been transformed in functional goods sold to the final users as recreational services inside the forest, instead of as commodities. Wild mushrooms, truffles, berries, nuts, resins, cork, tannins, and ornamental green are the most frequently traded NWFP toward and from Italy; country that covers a key role in the import and processing of several NWFP; the import and processing of the tannin for leather tanning, or cork for stopper and cork panel production or the processing of fresh and dried mushrooms for national and international market are examples of products that let Italy become a leader in the international market. The paper describes the economic volume and quantities of the more traded NWFP from and to Italy, calculated through the analysis of international trade data reported in COMTRADE.openVidale, Enrico; Da Re, Riccardo; Lovric, Marko; Corradini, Giulia; Pettenella, DavideVidale, Enrico; DA RE, Riccardo; Lovric, Marko; Corradini, Giulia; Pettenella, DAVIDE MATTE

Innovation in Services - Theoretical Approach

The aim of this article is to present the evolution of theoretical studies on service innovation. The author also attempts to put these different approaches to service innovation into order and to indicate the possible forms of service innovation that emerge from these researches. In further part of the article the issue of the availability of statistical data and its relevance to the possible forms of service innovation, as well as some changes that has been implemented recently in order to improve this relevance, are discussed.Celem artykułu jest przedstawienie ewolucji teoretycznych badań nad innowacjami w usługach. Autorka podejmuje również próbę uporządkowania różnych podejść do kwestii innowacji usługowych oraz wskazać możliwe formy tych innowacji, wyłaniające się z analizowanych badań. W dalszej części artykułu, podejmowana jest kwestia dostępności danych statystycznych oraz ich adekwatności, jeśli chodzi o możliwość zastosowania do analizy różnych form innowacji usługowych. Omawiane są również wprowadzone ostatnio zmiany, mające na celu poprawę adekwatności tych danych

ECONOMIC VALUATION ON CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE MARINE FISHERIES IN CILACAP, CENTRAL JAVA

The objective of this study is to estimate the impact of climate change in the marine capture fisheries in Cilacap, Central Java. Also to formulate the adaptation and mitigation strategies on the impacts of climate change. Data collection was done through multi-stages sampling. Samples of respondents were: 73 marine-fisher respondents, 43 collector respondents, and 100 consumer respondents, which were analyzed by descriptive statistics. In the aspect of production, there was a decrease in catch which caused severe losses in 26 respondents, an increase in length of trip which was vary from 1 day to 7 days, and changes in fishers spending, such as: change in cost of fuel, change in food & lodging cost, and change in productivity. Lack of production has led to a decrease in fish-stocks. Therefore availability and sustainability of fish-stock in the aspect of distribution became questionable, which influenced availability and affordability of fish in market (Aspect of consumption). Thus, enhancing the performance of extension institution was needed to anticipate the impact of climate change in marine fisheries sector. An ideal extension institution was made to enhance the performance of extension institution was made in order to estimate transaction cost of the policy. The result has shown the amount of information cost, policing cost and operational & maintenance cost to establish a successful program

African Regional Integration: Implications for Food Security

This report looks at the African regional trade, regional integration agreements (RIAs) and the implications for food security. An overview is presented on the present state of African regional integration and the determinants of regional trade in agriculture and food commodities. In particular the study focuses on eight target countries, related RIAs and a set of strategic food commodities. The evidence presented in this study shows that African countries have made progress in opening up agriculture and food trade with partner countries. With, the exception of Ghana, Tanzania and Mozambique, the effective applied tariff rates for regional trade partners are substantially lower than the (MFN) rates applied to world trade partners. Nonetheless, regional trade in agriculture and food only increased marginally between 1990 and 2009, and is relatively low in comparison with other developing regions. The weak state of soft and hard infrastructure, rather than high trade tariffs, seem to be the cause of thi