Fashion Industry as a Big Data Enterprise for Sustainability

Fashion has the power to tell over the years human stories and cultural changes: every day through clothes we can communicate who we are and who we want to be.This research aims to explore this sector as a complex system trying to understand the relationship between places, purchase and actors involved. Starting from data analysis and exploration by industries, brands, territories and consumers, this contribution shows how a big data-oriented culture can be useful to design new products, services and process with a new perspective throwing the bases for an innovative and sustainable fashion industry

Data, Fashion System and Systemic Design approach: an information flow strategy to enhance sustainability

Nowadays, the role played by the fashion industry in contributing to the degradation of natural systems is increasingly acknowledged. The impacts on the environment are mainly linked to the use of non-renewable raw materials, water pollution and waste generated. In addition to these socio-cultural implications deriving from the use of cheap labour and undignified working conditions resulted from ‘fast’ fashion business model, where economies of scale deliver standardised fashion at high volume and low price. According to Meadows (2008), the structure of information flows can be a useful leverage point in the fashion system, if the data is delivered where it was not before, causing people to change behaviour. Adding or restoring information, in a fashion system where the information circulating is sometimes not linked to ethical and social value, can, therefore, represent an effective intervention, usually more accessible and cheaper than reconstructing physical infrastructures. Data matched with a Systemic Innovation Design Methodology becomes a useful tool to analyse, organise and understand visually all the complexity of process, behaviour and pattern related to the fashion system. Mapping the entire lifecycle highlights that some data are not effectively harvested and appears the need of generating new asset of data collection able to bring the intangibility of shopping and consumption experience to the tangibility of dress and people, spreading the awareness of the entire process inside the system

Understanding fashion complexity through a systemic data approach

Nowadays, the role played by fashion industry in contributing to degradation of natural systems is increasingly acknowledged. Acting in terms of information flow from a systemic perspective does not represent a parametric adjustment, nor a reinforcement or a weakening of an existing cycle. It is the generation of a new cycle, that of information, in a place where it was not previously given, therefore inducing a different behavior in people. The structure of information flows can be an effective leverage point in the fashion system, if information is delivered where it was not before, causing people to change behavior. Adding or restoring information, in a fashion system where the information circulating is sometimes not linked to an ethical and social value, can therefore represent a powerful intervention, usually easier and cheaper than reconstructing physical infrastructures. The ambition of this paper is to offer a perspective that faces this complexity and align fashion with sustainability values through insights gained from data

Data, Fashion Systems and Systemic Design approach: an information flow strategy to enhance sustainability

Nowadays, the role played by the fashion industry in contributing to the degradation of natural systems is increasingly acknowledged. Acting in terms of information flow from a systemic perspective does not represent a parametric adjustment, nor a reinforcement or a weakening of an existing cycle. It is the generation of a new sequence, that of information, in a place where it was not previously given, therefore inducing a different behaviour in people. The structure of information flows can be a useful leverage point in the fashion system, if the information is delivered where it was not before, causing people to change behaviour. Adding or restoring information, in a fashion system where the information circulating is sometimes not linked to an ethical and social value, can, therefore, represent an effective intervention, usually more accessible and cheaper than reconstructing physical infrastructures. The ambition of this paper is to offer a perspective that faces this complexity and align fashion with sustainability values through insights gained from data

Viability of Legionella pneumophila in Water Samples: A Comparison of Propidium Monoazide (PMA) Treatment on Membrane Filters and in Liquid

Legionella pneumophila is a ubiquitous microorganism widely distributed in aquatic environments and can cause Legionellosis in humans. A promising approach to detect viable cells in water samples involves the use of quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) in combination with photoactivatable DNA intercalator propidium monoazide (PMA). However, the PMA efficiency could be different depending on the experimental conditions used. The aim of this study was to compare two PMA exposure protocols: (A) directly on the membrane filter or (B) in liquid after filter washing. The overall PMA-induced qPCR means reductions in heat-killed L. pneumophila cells were 2.42 and 1.91 log units for exposure protocols A and B, respectively. A comparison between the results obtained reveals that filter exposure allows a higher PMA-qPCR signal reduction to be reached, mainly at low concentrations (p < 0.05). This confirms the potential use of this method to quantify L. pneumophila in water with low contamination

Agronomic and Environmental Benefits of Cover Crops in Northern Italy

Cover crops have a number of benefits (reduction of nitrate leaching and of soil erosion, control of weed seed bank, increase of soil organic matter and increase of cash crop yield), but these were seldom quantified in cropping systems of Northern Italy. This experiment aimed to quantify some of these effects, by comparing cover crop species and their management techniques

Fatal myocardial damage due to zinc phosphide intentional ingestion

We present a case of fatal myocardial damage caused by zinc phosphide ingestion. It is a highly toxic poison that causes life-threatening complications (cardiac and respiratory acute failure above all) by its active metabolite phosphine. Phosphine toxicity's case reports from Europe (and Italy), United States and western countries are rare. A 69-year-old man drunk a great amount of alcohol and unspecified amount of diluted zinc phosphide and was admitted to emergency department with a mild metabolic acidosis and acute respiratory failure. After gastro-intestinal decontamination, a transient improvement of his clinical conditions was observed. In the emergency medicine unit a sudden onset of severe bradycardia and hypotension appeared, electrocardiogram showed an increase in QRS duration with ST elevation in many leads; 2 min later a thirddegree atrio-ventricular block was evident. Bradycardia went into asystole and the patient had cardiac arrest. Despite all resuscitative maneuvers, 6 h after zinc phosphide ingestion the patient died. No antidote or specific therapy or management of this potentially lifethreatening poison are actually available, but only supportive and resuscitative measures

Modification of the surface of activated carbon electrodes for capacitive mixing energy extraction from salinity differences

This is an unedited version of this article. The publisher's edited version cab reached in this URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021979714006274#The reference for this article is: Marino et al., Journal of Colloid and Interface Science 436(2014) 146-153.The “capacitive mixing” (CAPMIX) is one of the techniques aimed at the extraction of energy from the salinity difference between sea and rivers. It is based on the rise of the voltage between two electrodes, taking place when the salt concentration of the solution in which they are dipped is changed. We study the rise of the potential of activated carbon electrodes in NaCl solutions, as a function of their charging state. We evaluate the effect of the modification of the materials obtained by adsorption of charged molecules. We observe a displacement of the potential at which the potential rise vanishes, as predicted by the electric double layer theories. Moreover, we observe a saturation of the potential rise at high charging states, to a value that is nearly independent of the analyzed material. This saturation represents the most relevant element that determines the performances of the CAPMIX cell under study; we attribute it to a kinetic effect.Departamento de Física Aplicad