Green public procurement criteria for road infrastructures: State of the art and proposal of a weighted sum multicriteria analysis to assessenvironmental impacts

In the last years, the attention to environmental issue is growing, demonstrating the interest to protect the nature and to better use the non-renewable resources. At international level, and especially in the European Community, for different trades, a wide production of voluntary documents and institutional acts proves the interest and the need for a green economy. An innovative approach may lead to the experience of Green Public Procurements (GPP), to protect the environment as a public interest and to promote technological developments. So far, the experiences of GPP are limited, not entirely positive and in the field of road infrastructures almost entirely absent. Construction and maintenance of road infrastructures is objectively more complex than purchasing goods or services. The paper proposes the integration of the weighted sum multi-criteria analysis into existing procedures. The methodology needs for environmental labels related to materials, machines and works which contribute to the final product "road". The labels are recognized at international level and consistent with procedures, conditions and criteria currently published in road tenders, therefore the approach can be followed to pursue the environmental sustainability of road infrastructures without compromising the economic attention

Translucent windows: How uncertainty in competitive interactions impacts detection of community pattern

Trait variation and similarity among coexisting species can provide a window into the mechanisms that maintain their coexistence. Recent theoretical explorations suggest that competitive interactions will lead to groups, or clusters, of species with similar traits. However, theoretical predictions typically assume complete knowledge of the map between competition and measured traits. These assumptions limit the plausible application of these patterns for inferring competitive interactions in nature. Here we relax these restrictions and find that the clustering pattern is robust to contributions of unknown or unobserved niche axes. However, it may not be visible unless measured traits are close proxies for niche strategies. We conclude that patterns along single niche axes may reveal properties of interspecific competition in nature, but detecting these patterns requires natural history expertise firmly tying traits to niches.Comment: Main text: 18 pages, 6 figures. Appendices: A-G, 6 supplementary figures. This is the peer reviewed version of the article of the same title which has been accepted for publication at Ecology Letters. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archivin

The Collaborative Development of New CFD Methods Adapted for Tilt Rotor Aircraft in the HiPerTilt Project

No abstract available

UHF-RFID smart gate: Tag action classifier by artificial neural networks

The application of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) to discriminate tag actions in UHF-RFID gate is presented in this paper. By exploiting Received Signal Strength Indicator values acquired in a real experimental scenario, a multi-layer perceptron neural network is trained to distinguish among tags incoming, outgoing or passing the RFID gate. A 99% accuracy can be obtained in tag classification by employing only one reader antenna and independently from tag orientation and typology

Neurotensin localization in adenomatoid cystic malformation versus normal lung: Preliminary report of six consecutive cases

Neuropeptides are considered a new class of neurotransmitters, several of which interact with the immune system as well as the macrophagic activity. Among these, neurotensin (NT) enhances the phagocitic response of macrophages and is the only neuropeptide that can enhance the cytolytic effects of activated macrophages. In this way, it may play a role as an inflammatory mediator. In order to investigate the possible relationship between NT and the defence mechanisms of the lung, we started to localize the presence of NT in pulmonary adenomatoid cystic malformation (CCAM). This series consists of 6 children affected by CCAM. In every case, at operation, we obtained specimens of both normal and pathological lung. Tissue sections from the pathological lung showed a significant increase of NT-like immunoreactivity in respect to sections of normal lung. NT influences and activates the macrophages, thus suggesting that it could represent a defence mechanism in children's lung activated in some malformative conditions. Finally, the increasing evidence of NT immunoreactivity in CCAM could explicate an in utero infectious pathogenesis of this malformation

On Kalmbach measurability

summary:In this note we show that, for an arbitrary orthomodular lattice $L$, when $\mu$ is a faithful, finite-valued outer measure on $L$, then the Kalmbach measurable elements of $L$ form a Boolean subalgebra of the centre of $L$