Direct and indirect effects of tree canopy facilitation in the recruitment of M editerranean oaks

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106739/1/jpe12189.pd

High voltage electrical stimulation as an alternative treatment for chronic ulcers of the lower limbs

A estimulação elétrica de alta voltagem tem sido indicada para acelerar processos de cicatrização. Os efeitos da estimulação elétrica de alta voltagem, no tratamento de três voluntários com úlceras crônicas de membros inferiores, foram avaliados. Após quinze semanas de tratamento, pôde ser observada a redução da área de todas as úlceras, a qual sugere que a EEAV é um método eficaz no tratamento de úlceras crônicas.High voltage electrical stimulation has been recommended as a means of accelerating the wound healing process. The effects of high voltage electrical stimulation were evaluated in the treatment of three volunteers with chronic ulcers of the lower limbs. After fifteen weeks of treatment, a reduction was found in the area of all the ulcers, suggesting that high voltage electric stimulation is an effective therapeutic option for chronic ulcers

Biofuels and high value added products from the yeast Rhodosporidium toruloides NCYC 921: Strategies towards a true cost-effective and environmentally sustainable integrated multiproduct driven biorefinery [Poster]

Single-cell oils (SCO) have been considered a promising source of 3rd generation biofuels mainly in the final form of biodiesel. However, its high production costs have been a barrier towards the commercialization of this commodity. The fast growing yeast Rhodosporidium toruloides NCYC 921 has been widely reported as a potential SCO producing yeast. In addition to its well-known high lipid content (that can be converted into biodiesel), is rich in high value added products such as carotenoids with commercial interest. The process design and integration may contribute to reduce the overall cost of biofuels and carotenoid production and is a mandatory step towards their commercialization. The present work addresses the biomass disruption, extraction, fractionation and recovery of products with special emphasis on high added valued carotenoids (beta-carotene, torulene, torularhodin) and fatty acids directed to biodiesel. The chemical structure of torularhodin with a terminal carboxylic group imposes an additional extra challenge in what concern its separation from fatty acids. The proposed feedstock is fresh biomass pellet obtained directly by centrifugation from a 5L fed-batch fermentation culture broth. The use of a wet instead of lyophilised biomass feedstock is a way to decrease processing energy costs and reduce downstream processing time. These results will contribute for a detailed process design. Gathered data will be of crucial importance for a further study on Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA)

Models for the Brane-Bulk Interaction: Toward Understanding Braneworld Cosmological Perturbation

Using some simple toy models, we explore the nature of the brane-bulk interaction for cosmological models with a large extra dimension. We are in particular interested in understanding the role of the bulk gravitons, which from the point of view of an observer on the brane will appear to generate dissipation and nonlocality, effects which cannot be incorporated into an effective (3+1)-dimensional Lagrangian field theoretic description. We explicitly work out the dynamics of several discrete systems consisting of a finite number of degrees of freedom on the boundary coupled to a (1+1)-dimensional field theory subject to a variety of wave equations. Systems both with and without time translation invariance are considered and moving boundaries are discussed as well. The models considered contain all the qualitative feature of quantized linearized cosmological perturbations for a Randall-Sundrum universe having an arbitrary expansion history, with the sole exception of gravitational gauge invariance, which will be treated in a later paper.Comment: 47 pages, RevTeX (or Latex, etc) with 5 eps figure

Surface behavior of pelagic juvenile loggerhead sea turtles in the eastern North Atlantic

Sea turtles bask at the ocean surface, but little is known about the patterns and ecological context of surface behavior in the wild. This study investigated the surface behavior of ten juvenile loggerhead sea turtles (34 - 58 cm straight carapace length) satellite tagged in Madeira, in the pelagic eastern North Atlantic. During a total of 2273 tracking days, turtles moved through oceanic areas with a mean depth of ~3400 m. On average, turtles spent one third of the time at the surface (0 - 1 m depth), spending 43% of the time at the surface during the day and 29% of the time during the night. Generalized linear mixed modelling showed that the proportion of time at the surface was significantly larger during the day, particularly during spring and summer. Time spent at the surface during the day increased with elevated air temperatures and weak winds, probably to maximize the benefits of solar absorption. Conversely, the probability of being at the surface during the day decreased as horizontal search effort increased, suggesting a trade-off between basking and daytime foraging activities. At night, time spent at the surface was not associated with air temperature or wind speed but was instead positively associated with moon illumination. As turtles tend to dive deeper during clear nights, increased surface time may be needed to recover from deeper dives. This study presents important aspects of the behavioral ecology of the species during the oceanic juvenile phase. The findings reported here may be relevant for species management and conservation, including correction of census data and management of interactions with surface fishing gear and other anthropogenic activities.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Food waste accounting - Methodologies, challenges and opportunities

Food waste (FW) is a priority both at global and European level. The United Nations (UN) defined the Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 target of ‘By 2030, halve per capita global FW at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses’. The European Commission has committed to achieve this goal and defined FW as a priority within the Circular Economy Action Plan. In order to support achievement of the SDG 12.3 target on food waste and maximise the contribution of all actors, the Commission to established the EU Platform on Food Losses and Food Waste (FLW) to support all actors in defining measures needed to prevent food waste, sharing best practice, and evaluating progress made over time. The first step to address FW is to have a robust account of FW generated along the Food Supply Chain (FSC). Studies can be found in the literature that estimate FW at the EU level but results are discrepant because of different approaches, e.g. inclusion of inedible fractions of food and type of measurement. Furthermore, each approach presents strengths and weaknesses that may influence its use for specific purposes. At present, a consolidated framework for FW quantification in Europe is still an open challenge. A robust FW accounting system and FW quantification is primordial to enable monitoring FW and measuring distance to FW reduction targets. Such information is necessary to identify the most important FW streams, to define a baseline to monitor FW reduction over time, and to recognise FW flows that may undergo a valorisation process in a circular economy perspective To contribute to the development of harmonized and robust FW accounting methodologies and FW quantification, the Joint Research Centre (JRC), bioeconomy unit (D1) organized a technical workshop entitled ‘Food waste accounting: methodologies, challenges and opportunities’ with speaker’s representative of the main projects related to FW accounting. The aim of the workshop was to share experiences and perspectives on FW quantification at the European scale, highlighting opportunities and challenges in order to improve FW quantification and ensure better decision support in relation to FW reduction and valorisation. A key message from the workshop was that a harmonize methodology for FW accounting is not yet defined and there is the need of improving and matching methodological aspects and policy questions as the information needs are different depending on the area of policy intervention (either prevention, management or valorisation). Together with a clear framework for FW accounting, a clear and consensual FW definition clearly and in standardized way the aim, definitions and terminology (edible/inedible and avoidable/unavoidable), system boundaries, and, units of measurement is very important. This involves defining. This would enable the comparison of existing data across countries, commodities, and FSCs, which would further help exploring patterns and driving factors of FW generation. It was also identified the need to improve data quality and the development of methods to account liquid waste. Moreover, research is necessary to identify systematically types and sources of uncertainty and variability within the FW accounting framework and provide guidelines and tools to assess them. Another challenge to be addressed is the identification of FW drivers is of extreme relevance for both designing properly the framework for primary data collection and defining effective reduction strategies.JRC.D.1 - Bio-econom

Suggestions to improve data coverage and comparability in food waste accounting studies across the EU

Member States are now obliged to monitor the generation of food waste along the food supply chain and to take measures to limit it. To contribute to the harmonization of food waste quantification in the EU, the European Commission has published a delegated act establishing a common methodology and minimum quality requirements for the uniform measurement of food waste generated in Member States. A review of studies quantifying food waste at Member State level carried out by the European Commission Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC) unveils big discrepancies in the state-of-play in food waste accounting across Member States. Only a few countries have quantified food waste along the entire food supply chain. Moreover, the studies reviewed were developed following different quantification approaches, including the adoption of different food waste definitions, which limit their comparability. Based on the review conducted, this report summarizes the main limitations and data gaps encountered that hinder comparability of the results, in light of what is required by the delegated act. Issues identified include the food waste definition used, the assessment of edible and inedible food waste, the geographical and temporal scope and system boundaries, the quantification of food waste drained as/with wastewater, the choice of the measurement method, the use of primary and/or secondary data, the adoption of sampling and upscaling procedures, and the assessment of the uncertainty of the results. Suggestions are provided to support Member States in addressing the limitations and data gaps encountered. The harmonization of food waste quantification across the Member States is essential to ensure the comparability of the results and to assess the performance of the EU towards target 12.3 defined under the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production.JRC.D.1 - Bio-econom

Análise da qualidade de vida no trabalho a partir da percepção de jovens estudantes de administração

O mundo do trabalho vem sofrendo, durante os anos, cada vez mais transformações. Estas transformações geram impactos que afetam na sociedade, nas organizações e na vida das pessoas. A Qualidade de Vida no Trabalho faz parte das mudanças as quais passam as relações de trabalho na sociedade moderna (Limongi-França, 2004, p. 22). Durante a vida acadêmica, os estudantes de administração buscam desenvolver competências que ajudem a solucionar problemas e/ou conflitos no ambiente de trabalho, e de acordo com as funções estratégicas que ocupa um administrador, saber o que influencia na Qualidade de Vida no Trabalho é um dos fatores essenciais para se tornar um ótimo profissional. Nesse contexto, sendo os alunos de administração um público significativo, e sendo a QVT uma questão importante para os trabalhadores e as organizações, torna-se interessante levantar a percepção desse grupo sobre o que entendem por esse termo e o que consideram fundamental para terem qualidade de vida no trabalho. Neste trabalho foi realizado uma pesquisa quantitativa descritiva, com 61 respondentes e objetivou verificar os fatores que influenciam na Qualidade de Vida no Trabalho dos jovens estudantes de Administração da região metropolitana de Porto Alegre/RS. Contatou-se que no emprego atual, os respondentes relacionam o maior nível de satisfação com garantias constitucionais, relevância social do trabalho na vida, e segurança e saúde nas condições de trabalho. Enquanto os menores níveis de satisfação no emprego atual estão relacionados com oportunidade de crescimento e segurança, integração social na organização, e trabalho e espaço total de vida.The world of work has been undergoing, over the years, more and more transformations. These transformations generate impacts that affect society, organizations, and people's lives. Quality of Life at Work is part of the changes that work relations are going through in modern society (Limongi-França, 2004, p. 22). During their academic life, business administration students seek to develop competencies that help to solve problems and/or conflicts in the work environment, and according to the strategic functions that an administrator performs, knowing what influences the Quality of Life at Work is one of the essential factors to become a great professional. In this context, since administration students are a significant public, and QLW is an important issue for workers and organizations, it becomes interesting to survey the perception of this group about what they understand by this term and what they consider fundamental to have quality of life at work. In this work, a descriptive quantitative research was carried out with 61 respondents and aimed to verify the factors that influence the Quality of Life at Work of young students of Administration in the metropolitan region of Porto Alegre/RS. It was found that in the current job, the respondents related the highest level of satisfaction with constitutional guarantees, social relevance of work in life, and safety and health in working conditions. While the lowest levels of satisfaction in the current job are related to growth opportunity and security, social integration in the organization, and work and total life space. This study aimed to contribute to the understanding about QLW and what is in fact relevant to the professional life of business students

Proposal for a sustainability framework for energy technologies

The European Green Deal is a flagship initiative of the European Commission aimed at achieving a sustainable future through a clean energy transition. The report proposes a sustainability framework for evaluating energy technologies, inspired by the Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) framework. It supports the Clean Energy Technology Observatory in monitoring research and innovation activities for clean energy technologies. The background concepts underlying the sustainability framework are discussed, including sustainability principles, life cycle assessment, sustainable innovation, and energy-specific concepts. The proposed sustainability framework includes three dimensions: security, environmental sustainability, and social sustainability. Energy security encompasses economic aspects, such as stable energy supply, accessibility of resources, and trade considerations. Environmental sustainability is based on the Product Environmental Footprint methodology and aligned with the SSbD framework. The social sustainability dimension considers impacts on workers, local communities, value chain actors and society, according to the Social Life Cycle Assessment methodology. The framework supports the European Union's priority on energy security in the context of achieving clean energy transition and becoming the first climate-neutral continent by 2050.JRC.D.3 - Land Resources and Supply Chain Assessment