Monitoring of Urban Growth and its Related Environmental Impacts: Niamey Case Study (Niger)

AbstractThe present contribution is about a preliminary study of the evolution of Niamey city (Niger) during last decades.Recent advances in remote sensing, both in satellite hardware technology and image availability development, provide opportunities image collection and multitemporal analysis on urban form and size that can be useful for policy and planning. Some opportunities for, and limitations on, monitoring urban growth using remote sensing data are shown in the present contribution; moreover examples of environmental impacts of urban growth, as monitored with remote sensing, are provided in order to define future development of dumps and quarries and its environmental impacts on Niamey city

Investigation of municipal solid waste (MSW) and industrial landfills as a potential source of secondary raw materials

Many of the secondary raw materials (SRM) in landfills constitute valuable and scarce natural resources. It has already been recognised that the recovery of these elements is critical for the sustainability of a number of industries and SRM recov¬ery from anthropogenic waste deposits represents a significant opportunity. In this study, the characterisation of the different waste fractions and the amount of SRM that can potentially be recovered from two landfill sites in Finland is presented. The first site was a municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill site and it was specifically in¬vestigated for its metals, SRM, plastics, wood, paper, and cardboard content as well as its fine fraction (<20 mm). The second site was an industrial landfill site contain¬ing residual wastes from industrial processes including 1) aluminium salt slag from refining process of aluminium scrap and 2) shredding residues from automobiles, household appliances and other metals containing waste. This site was investigated for its metals and SRM recovery potential as well as its fine fraction. Results suggest that the fine fraction offers opportunities for metal (Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn) and SRM extraction and recovery from both landfill site types while the chemical composition of the industrial waste landfill offered greater opporutinity as it was comparable to typical aluminium salt slags. Nevertheless, the concentrations of rare earth metals (REE) and other valuable elements were low even in comparison with the concentra¬tions found in the Earth’s crust. Therefore mining landfill sites only for their metals or SRM content is not expected to be financially viable. However, other opportunities, such as waste-derived fuels from excavated materials especially at MSW landfill sites, still exists and fosters the application and feasibility of landfill mining

Notulae to the Italian alien vascular flora: 11

In this contribution, new data concerning the distribution of vascular flora alien to Italy are presented. It includes new records, confirmations, exclusions, and status changes for Italy or for Italian administrative regions. Nomenclatural and distribution updates published elsewhere are provided as Suppl. material 1

A global experiment on motivating social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic

Finding communication strategies that effectively motivate social distancing continues to be a global public health priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-country, preregistered experiment (n = 25,718 from 89 countries) tested hypotheses concerning generalizable positive and negative outcomes of social distancing messages that promoted personal agency and reflective choices (i.e., an autonomy-supportive message) or were restrictive and shaming (i.e., a controlling message) compared with no message at all. Results partially supported experimental hypotheses in that the controlling message increased controlled motivation (a poorly internalized form of motivation relying on shame, guilt, and fear of social consequences) relative to no message. On the other hand, the autonomy-supportive message lowered feelings of defiance compared with the controlling message, but the controlling message did not differ from receiving no message at all. Unexpectedly, messages did not influence autonomous motivation (a highly internalized form of motivation relying on one’s core values) or behavioral intentions. Results supported hypothesized associations between people’s existing autonomous and controlled motivations and self-reported behavioral intentions to engage in social distancing. Controlled motivation was associated with more defiance and less long-term behavioral intention to engage in social distancing, whereas autonomous motivation was associated with less defiance and more short- and long-term intentions to social distance. Overall, this work highlights the potential harm of using shaming and pressuring language in public health communication, with implications for the current and future global health challenges

The mutable nature of particle-core excitations with spin in the one-valence-proton nucleus ¹³³Sb

The γ-ray decay of excited states of the one-valence-proton nucleus ¹³³Sb has been studied using cold-neutron induced fission of ²³⁵U and ²⁴¹Pu targets, during the EXILL campaign at the ILL reactor in Grenoble. By using a highly efficient HPGe array, coincidences between γ-rays prompt with the fission event and those delayed up to several tens of microseconds were investigated, allowing to observe, for the first time, high-spin excited states above the 16.6 μs isomer. Lifetimes analysis, performed by fast-timing techniques with LaBr₃(Ce) scintillators, revealed a difference of almost two orders of magnitude in B(M1) strength for transitions between positive-parity medium-spin yrast states. The data are interpreted by a newly developed microscopic model which takes into account couplings between core excitations (both collective and non-collective) of the doubly magic nucleus ¹³²Sn and the valence proton, using the Skyrme effective interaction in a consistent way. The results point to a fast change in the nature of particle-core excitations with increasing spin