the second law and the energy use mapping for sustainability planning

Abstract City sustainability is an inherently complex process, yet increasingly robust computational tools and digital data are emerging to assist with analysis and planning. Broadly speaking, scholars and urban planners have been developed a large variety of models that can estimate the building energy use aiming the implementation of urban energy reduction strategies and policies. In this paper we propose a brief up-to-date review of the aforementioned models, particularly focussing on spatio-temporal observation. The goal of this paper is to show how to integrate the urban energy use models and the growing attention towards to environmental impact, using Second Law of Thermodynamic for a more rational metric of city sustainability

Spaghetti Meat Abnormality in Broilers: Current Understanding and Future Research Directions

open3noSpaghetti meat (SM) is a recent muscular abnormality that affects the Pectoralis major muscle of fast-growing broilers. As the appellative suggests, this condition phenotypically manifests as a loss of integrity of the breast muscle, which appears soft, mushy, and sparsely tight, resembling spaghetti pasta. The incidence of SM can reach up to 20% and its occurrence exerts detrimental effects on meat composition, nutritional value, and technological properties, accounting for an overall decreased meat value and important economic losses related to the necessity to downgrade affected meats. However, due to its recentness, the causative mechanisms are still partially unknown and less investigated compared to other muscular abnormalities (i.e., White Striping and Wooden Breast), for which cellular stress and hypoxia caused by muscle hypertrophy are believed to be the main triggering factors. Within this scenario, the present review aims at providing a clear and concise summary of the available knowledge concerning SM abnormality and concurrently presenting the existing research gaps, as well as the potential future developments in the field.openBaldi, Giulia; Soglia, Francesca; Petracci, MassimilianoBaldi, Giulia; Soglia, Francesca; Petracci, Massimilian

Current Status of Poultry Meat Abnormalities

Over the past decade, the poultry industry has faced an increasing occurrence of growth-related muscular abnormalities that mainly affect fast-growing genotypes selected for their production performances (high growth rate and breast yield). These abnormalities, termed white striping (WS), wooden breast (WB) and spaghetti meat (SM), primarily affect the superficial portion of pectoralis major muscles. Despite their distinctive phenotypes, WS, WB, and SM conditions entail common histological features, i.e., they might share common causative mechanisms underpinning their occurrence. Meat affected by growth-related abnormalities is harmless for human nutrition since no specific biological or chemical hazards have been found to be related to its consumption. However, WS, WB, and SM abnormalities negatively affect both quality traits and technological properties of raw and processed meat, causing relevant economic damages in the poultry industry. This paper aims to provide an update about the current status of poultry meat abnormalities, giving useful insights about their impact on meat quality, the possible causative mechanisms, methods for mitigation, and future perspectives

Progetto tra integrazione e interazione: il caso di Stoccarda.

Un nuovo edificio come requisito basilare, al pari della sua coerenza statica e funzionale, dovrà avere la capacità intrinseca di minimizzare l’impatto che i materiali costituenti, la forma, la sua costruzione e il suo funzionamento, avranno sull’ambiente nel quale si inseriscono. Nasce l’esigenza di divulgare in forma architettonica il messaggio ambientalista introducendo un nuovo linguaggio della sostenibilità per l’architettura contemporanea. Il risultato dell’integrazione tra i vari aspetti della progettazione, ha portato in questo esempio, ad una sintesi tra forma, struttura e materiali racchiusi in un edificio che vorrebbe essere armonico, flessibile e leggibile. La scelta verso un’architettura funzionale, nuda, essenziale, che rinuncia ad un formalismo espressivo, lascia spazio ad un rigore strutturale quasi industriale, in una soluzione che ha previsto l’interazione tra sistemi costruttivi differenti: il cemento armato, tecnica principe del ‘900, i pannelli multistrato di legno massiccio, materiale antico con tecnologia moderna che fa valere le doti di leggerezza e il suo “appeal” ecosostenibile, le sezioni miste acciaio-calcestruzzo e la tecnologia del cemento armato precompresso

The role of histidine dipeptides on postmortem acidification of broiler muscles with different energy metabolism

It is generally held that the content of several free amino acids and dipeptides is closely related to the energy-supplying metabolism of skeletal muscles. Metabolic characteristics of muscles are involved in the variability of meat quality due to their ability to influence the patterns of energy metabolism not only in living animal but also during post-mortem time. Within this context, this study aimed at establishing whether the concentration of histidine dipeptides can affect muscle post-mortem metabolism, examining the glycolytic pathway of three chicken muscles (Pectoralis major, extensor iliotibialis lateralis and gastrocnemius internus as glycolytic, intermediate and oxidative-type, respectively) selected based on their histidine dipeptides content and ultimate pH. Thus, a total of 8 carcasses were obtained from the same flock of broiler chickens (Ross 308 strain, females, 49 days of age, 2.8 kg body weight at slaughter) and selected immediately after evisceration from the line of a commercial processing plant. Meat samples of about 1 cm3 were excised from bone-in muscles at 15, 60, 120 and 1,440 min post-mortem, instantly frozen in liquid nitrogen and used for the determination of pH, glycolytic metabolites, buffering capacity as well as histidine dipeptides content through 1H-NMR. Overall results suggest that glycolysis in leg muscles ceased already after 2 h post-mortem, while in breast muscle continued until 24 h, when it exhibited significantly lower pH values (P<0.05). However, considering its remarkable glycolytic potential, Pectoralis major muscle should have exhibited a greater and faster acidification, suggesting that its higher (P<0.05) histidine dipeptides\u2019 content might have prevented a potentially stronger acidification process. Accordingly, breast muscle also showed greater (P<0.05) buffering ability in the pH range 6.0-7.0. Therefore, anserine and carnosine, being highly positively correlated with muscle\u2019s buffering capacity (P<0.001), might play a role in regulating post-mortem pH decline, thus exerting an effect on muscle metabolism during pre-rigor phase and the quality of the forthcoming meat. Overall results also suggest that total histidine dipeptides content along with muscular ultimate pH represent good indicators for the energy-supplying metabolism of chicken muscles

Analysis of a blockchain protocol based on LDPC codes

In a blockchain Data Availability Attack (DAA), a malicious node publishes a block header but withholds part of the block, which contains invalid transactions. Honest full nodes, which can download and store the full blockchain, are aware that some data are not available but they have no formal way to prove it to light nodes, i.e., nodes that have limited resources and are not able to access the whole blockchain data. A common solution to counter these attacks exploits linear error correcting codes to encode the block content. A recent protocol, called SPAR, employs coded Merkle trees and low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes to counter DAAs. We show that the protocol is less secure than expected, owing to a redefinition of the adversarial success probability

Analysis of a Blockchain Protocol Based on LDPC Codes

In a blockchain Data Availability Attack (DAA), a malicious node publishes a block header but withholds part of the block, which contains invalid transactions. Honest full nodes, which can download and store the full ledger, are aware that some data are not available but they have no formal way to prove it to light nodes, i.e., nodes that have limited resources and are not able to access the whole blockchain data. A common solution to counter these attacks exploits linear error correcting codes to encode the block content. A recent protocol, called SPAR, employs coded Merkle trees and low-density parity-check codes to counter DAAs. In this paper, we show that the protocol is less secure than claimed, owing to a redefinition of the adversarial success probability. As a consequence we show that, for some realistic choices of the parameters, the total amount of data downloaded by light nodes is larger than that obtainable with competing solutions