MiniMapathon: mappare il mondo a 10 anni

Il presente articolo illustra il primo e più grande esperimento al mondo di MiniMapathon, ovvero un mapathon (editing collaborativo di mappe) a scopo umanitario realizzato con 250 studenti di quarta e quinta della scuola primaria. Vengono illustrate le motivazioni che hanno portato al MiniMapathon, i risultati didattici, i benefici in termini di conoscenze e di atteggiamento verso la geoinformatica e le potenzialità di questa particolare attività, indagate attraverso questionari agli studenti e interviste ai docenti delle classi coinvolte

Evaluating the flood damage on dairy farms: a methodological proposal

The debate on climate change arose several concerns on the impacts of floods on agriculture and, consequently, on food security. At the same time, the European Floods Directive asks Members States to implement suitable measures to mitigate flood damage on economic activities, including farms. Still, while several analyses were developed to estimate potential flood damages on crops, a gap exists for livestock productions. The purpose of this study is to develop a conceptual model for the assessment of flood economic damages on dairy farms. Results propose a static and a dynamic model of farms recovery actions to re-establish the farming activity, which takes into account all farm components, as well as their interaction. Facing the destruction caused by floods, a first reaction of farmers could be closing the activity, with repercussion on this well-being as well as on farm workers\u2019, and on the economy of rural areas. From this perspective, this study wants to provide a first methodological pathway to support farmers in restoring their activity

A global reference database of crowdsourced cropland data collected using the Geo-Wiki platform

A global reference data set on cropland was collected through a crowdsourcing campaign using the Geo-Wiki crowdsourcing tool. The campaign lasted three weeks, with over 80 participants from around the world reviewing almost 36,000 sample units, focussing on cropland identification. For quality assessment purposes, two additional data sets are provided. The first is a control set of 1,793 sample locations validated by students trained in satellite image interpretation. This data set was used to assess the quality of the crowd as the campaign progressed. The second data set contains 60 expert validations for additional evaluation of the quality of the contributions. All data sets are split into two parts: the first part shows all areas classified as cropland and the second part shows cropland average per location and user. After further processing, the data presented here might be suitable to validate and compare medium and high resolution cropland maps generated using remote sensing. These could also be used to train classification algorithms for developing new maps of land cover and cropland extent

r.massmov: an open-source landslide model for dynamic early warning systems

This paper illustrates the main characteristics of the newly developed landslide model r.massmov, which is based on the shallow water equations, and is capable of simulating the landslide propagation over complex topographies. The model is the result of the reimplementation of the MassMov2D into the free and open-source GRASS GIS with a series of enhancements aiming at allowing its possible integration into innovative early warning monitoring systems and specifically into Web processing services. These improvements, finalized at significantly reducing computational times, include the introduction of a new automatic stopping criterion, fluidization process algorithm, and the parallel computing. Moreover, the results of multi-spatial resolution analysis conducted on a real case study located in the southern Switzerland are presented. In particular, this analysis, composed by a sensitivity analysis and calibration process, allowed to evaluate the model capabilities in simulating the phenomenon at different input data resolution. The results illustrate that the introduced modifications lead to important reductions in the computational time (more than 90 % faster) and that, using the lower dataset resolution capable of guaranteeing reliable results, the model can be run in about 1 s instead of the 3.5 h required by previous model with not optimized dataset resolution. Aside, the results of the research are a series of new GRASS GIS modules for conducting sensitivity analysis and for calibration. The latter integrates the automated calibration program “UCODE” with any GRASS raster module. Finally, the research workflow presented in this paper illustrates a best practice in applying r.massmov in real case applications

Metabolic and genetic risk factors for migraine in children

Abstract Migraine can induce ischaemic stroke, and is considered an independent risk factor for stroke in the young. To date, the nature of the link between migraine and stroke is essentially unknown. Forty-five children were studied. Homocysteine levels (fasting and post methionine load), vitamin B12 and plasma folate levels, factor V Leiden, factor II G20210A, methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) C677T and A1298C mutations were examined. Compared with controls, patients with migraine had higher levels of post-methionine load homocysteine values (19.5 +/- 4.9 vs. 16.9 +/- 1.9; P = 0.025) and significantly lower folate levels (5.8 +/- 2.6 vs. 7.5 +/- 2.1; P = 0.002). We found a trend toward an increased risk of migraine in subjects carrying a homozygous mutant genotype for MTHFR C677T and MTHFR A1298C polymorphisms. Genetic prothrombotic conditions do not seem to be related to migraine in the young, whereas the biochemical differences between migrainous patients and controls are an appealing topic for further investigation

ALCCOL E INCIDENTI STRADALI: CONSIDERAZIONI EPIDEMIOLOGICHE

nell'ottica della relazione tra consumo alcoolico ed inscidenti stradali, è statp cpndotto uno studio osservazionale, sull'andamento dei dati alcoolimetrici, condotti su campioni ematici da cadaveri, di conducenti di vetture, motocicli e velocipedi, coinvolti in incidenti stradali della città di Ferrara e provincia in rapporto alla legislazione vigente (D. L. 3 agosto 2007, n. 117