The Landscape planning and the green infrastructure in Campania Region

In the document Verso il piano paesaggistico regionale 4.0 (Campania Region 2016) in the context of the institutional agreement between the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities and Campania Region, it is clarified in the premise that the Cultural Heritage and Landscape Code requires that the drafting of the PPR, as an organic landscape planning tool extended to the whole Region. The PPR does not give indications of mere protection of landscape assets but, most importantly, defines directives regarding their enhancement, not limited to specific areas and objects. The PPR envisage extending general indications on various and specific assets, from the ones regarding urban areas to the ones regarding agricultural areas and infrastructures, differentiating them for the different territorial areas, based on the overall values of the regional landscape, even overcoming and modifying obsolete constraints. The Landscape Regional Plan (PPR) also has a dynamic role through the possibility to design environmental redevelopment projects aimed at regaining lost landscapes and recreating new landscapes. The Domitio-Flegreo Coastal Masterplan represents the first regional landscape regeneration project and green infrastructures become the effective tool for restoring degraded ecosystems

Multi-Criteria Life-Cycle Assessment of bus fleet renewal: A methodology with a case study from Italy

To decarbonize the transport sector, national and local government have introduced policies to incentivize the replacement of old diesel-powered vehicles with new clean-fuel ones (e.g., battery electric, hydrogen fuel-cells). This paper focuses on both the economic and ecological transition of local public transit (LPT) bus fleets. A methodology based on a Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach of both costs and environmental impacts is proposed to identify suitable pathways for the renewal of the existing buses: these are compared using a multicriteria decision matrix. The application to the Italian basin of the provinces of Como, Lecco and Varese (with about 860 operating buses almost all equipped with diesel engines) has allowed to validate the approach for both the urban and the ex-urban context. In the urban context, the study has shown that the full-electric scenario has the lowest environmental impact since there are zero tailpipe emissions and greenhouse gases (GHG) are lower than all the other scenarios. For the ex-urban service, that is characterized by medium and long-distance routes, a "full-electric" scenario is not yet feasible, considering that long-range BEBs having sufficient battery autonomy to guarantee efficient operations on medium-long distance routes are not yet widely marketed. Liquefied natural gas-powered buses could be a suitable solution in these contexts, however it was found that they have even worse environmental performances compared to diesel buses (+14% GHG emissions and more than doubled direct emissions). Hybrid electric vehicles would be an option for decarbonising ex-urban LPT, but the costs of the transition in such direction should be considered with care

Neural crest cells organize the eye via TGF-β and canonical Wnt signalling

In vertebrates, the lens and retina arise from different embryonic tissues raising the question of how they are aligned to form a functional eye. Neural crest cells are crucial for this process: in their absence, ectopic lenses develop far from the retina. Here we show, using the chick as a model system, that neural crest-derived transforming growth factor-ßs activate both Smad3 and canonical Wnt signalling in the adjacent ectoderm to position the lens next to the retina. They do so by controlling Pax6 activity: although Smad3 may inhibit Pax6 protein function, its sustained downregulation requires transcriptional repression by Wnt-initiated ß-catenin. We propose that the same neural crest-dependent signalling mechanism is used repeatedly to integrate different components of the eye and suggest a general role for the neural crest in coordinating central and peripheral parts of the sensory nervous system