circular urban metabolism framework

In our cities, the production and consumption of resources are achieved at an unsustainable rate. Combined with an increasing global population and accelerating urbanization, the absence of a new approach will almost certainly have dramatic environmental consequences. Potential solutions are emerging: the concepts of circular economy (CE) and urban metabolism (UM), which contrast the current and traditional linear extract-produce-use-dispose model of the modern economic and urban systems, offer a new approach. In this Primer, we present the principles of CE and UM as well as their origins and definitions, strengths and weaknesses, similarities, and limits. We introduce how these concepts can be used for designing a new urban framework called circular urban metabolism (CUM), which encourages urban planners and decision makers to study, design, and manage sustainable cities. CUM has the potential to unite research fields to promote collaboration across disciplines that operate on the planning, design, and management of cities and their complexities

Challenges of implementing maritime spatial planning in the Eastern Mediterranean

The Maritime Spatial Planning Directive (2014/89/EU) was launched to create a common framework for maritime spatial planning (MSP) in Europe. The case of the Adriatic and Ionian Region (AIR) is emblematic of the peculiar challenges to be faced while implementing MSP in the region

Assessing urban system vulnerabilities to flooding to improve resilience and adaptation in spatial planning

Fluvial, pluvial and coastal flooding are the most frequent and costly natural hazard. Cities are social hubs and life in cities is reliant on a number of services and functions such as housing, healthcare, education and other key daily facilities. Urban flooding can cause significant disruption to these services and wider impacts on the population. These impacts may be short or long with a variably spatial scale: urban systems are spatially distributed and the nature of this can have significant effects on flood impacts. From an urban-planning perspective, measuring this disruption and its consequences is fundamental in order to develop more resilient cities. Whereas the assessment of physical vulnerabilities and direct damages is commonly addressed, new methodologies for assessing the systemic vulnerability and indirect damages at the urban scale are required. The proposed systemic approach recognizes the city as a collection of sub-systems or functional units (such as neighborhoods and suburbs), interconnected through the road network, providing key daily services to inhabitants (e.g., healthcare facilities, schools, food shops, leisure and cultural services). Each city is part of broader systems—which may or may not match administrative boundaries—and, as such, needs to be connected to its wider surroundings in a multi-scalar perspective. The systemic analysis, herein limited to residential households, is based on network-accessibility measures and evaluates the presence, the distribution among urban units and the redundancy of key daily services. Trying to spatially sketch the existence of systemic interdependences between neighborhoods, suburbs and municipalities, the proposed method highlights how urban systemic vulnerability spreads beyond the flooded areas. The aim is to understand which planning patterns and existing mixed-use developments are more flood resilient, thereby informing future urban development and regeneration projects. The methodology has been developed based on GIS and applied to an Italian municipality (Noale) in the metropolitan area of Venice, NE Italy

Different carbohydrate sources affect swine performance and post-prandial glycaemic response

The type of starch and fibre in the diet affects several parameters, including glycaemic and insulin response, that are involved in pig growth performance. Four experimental diets for growing pigs differing for carbohydrates source (corn, barley, faba bean and pea) were tested. The diets were analysed in vitro to assess the carbohydrates characteristics, and they were administered to 56 crossbreed growing pigs (Landrace × Large White) randomly divided into four groups (mean age of 95 ± 6 days; body weight 80 kg ± 4 days). Clinical examination and average daily gain were performed before recruitment and after 40 days of experiment. The metabolic effects were investigated by blood count and serum biochemical parameters and by the glycaemic and insulin post-prandial response. The study revealed substantial differences among the diets, suggesting that alternative feedstuffs for swine affect several parameters, including glycaemic and insulin response, with no negative effects on growing performance. The Barley group showed the highest daily weight gain (p <.05) associated with the highest glycaemic (p <.05) and insulin response at 1 and 2 h post-prandial (p <.01), suggesting that the barley-based diet can support performance comparable to that of the corn-based diet in growing pig. By contrast, the lowest glycaemia was observed in the Faba bean group (p <.05), confirming the capacity of this legume to modulate post-prandial glucose levels. Moreover, the ability of some ingredients in lowering glucose and insulin response enriches the knowledge on functional nutrients for animal diets and to prevent the incidence of enteric diseases.Highlights The type of starch and fibre used in the diet highly affected some blood parameters, such as glycaemic and insulin responses. The Barley group showed the highest daily weight gain. Lower glycaemia levels were observed in the Faba bean group compared to the Corn one. Alternative protein sources for swine diets can limit the glycaemic and insulin response with no negative effects on growing performance

Urinary Bladder Volume Reconstruction Based on Bioimpedance Measurements: Ex Vivo and In Vivo Validation Through Implanted Patch and Needle Electrodes

Restoring bladder sensation in patients with bladder dysfunctions by performing urinary volume monitoring is an ambitious goal. The bioimpedance technique has shown promising results in wearable solutions but long-term validation and implantable systems are not available, yet. In this work, we propose to implant commercial bioimpedance sensors on bladder walls to perform bladder volume estimation. Two commercial sensor types (Ag/AgCl patch and needle electrodes) were selected to this purpose. Injected current frequency of 1.337 MHz and electrodes pair on the same face of the bladder allowed to correlate the changes in impedance with increasing volumes. Two volume reconstruction algorithms have been proposed, based on the direct correlation between bioimpedance readings and bladder volume (Algorithm A) or bioimpedance readings and inter-electrode distance (Algorithm B, bladder shape approximated to a sphere). For both algorithms, a better fit with a second-degree fitting polynomial was obtained. Algorithm A obtained lower estimation errors with an average of 20.35% and 21.98% (volumes greater than 150 ml) for patch and needle electrodes, respectively. The variations in ions concentration led to a slight deterioration of volume estimation, however the presence of tissues surrounding the bladder did not influence the performance. Although Algorithm B was less affected by the experimental conditions and inter-subject biological variability, it featured higher estimation errors. In vivo validation on suine model showed average errors of 29.36% (volumes greater than 100 ml), demonstrating the potential of the proposed solution and paving the way towards a novel implantable volume monitoring system

Resilienza costiera e sviluppo turistico : verso un approccio co-evolutivo

Il contributo vuole presentare una parte di ricerca legata al progetto Interreg MED CO-Evolve al fine di mostrare un approccio sperimentale utilizzato per la definizione di un processo di pianificazione che mira ad aumentare il grado di resilienza costiera. In quest\u2019ottica i processi di sviluppo turistico costiero sono stati ulteriormente migliorati integrando gli strumenti di pianificazione esistenti in un pi\uf9 ampio contesto di gestione costiera, rafforzando la valutazione dei progetti di sviluppo locale e perseguendo maggiori benefici per il miglioramento delle condizioni delle comunit\ue0 coinvolte. Attraverso questo approccio co-evolutivo il progetto CO-EVOLVE incoraggia la costruzione di politiche e iniziative per promuovere lo sviluppo di un turismo costiero e marittimo sostenibile e responsabile, applicando i principi della gestione integrata delle zone costiere (ICZM) e della pianificazione dello spazio marittimo (MSP) che tengono conto di tutte le principali sfide legate allo sviluppo del turismo costiero

Concern about the spread of the invader seaweed Caulerpa taxifolia var. distichophylla (Chlorophyta: Caulerpales) towards the West Mediterranean

The new Australian alien seaweed Caulerpa taxifolia var. distichophylla, after being established along the Turkish Mediterranean coast in 2006, was recorded in Southern Sicily in 2007. Since then local fishermen claimed support to counteract the effects of entanglement of large amounts of the alien strain wrack in their trammel nets, causing the gear to become ineffective. The further northward and westward spread of the new alien strain is supposed to be limited by winter temperature. We present novel data confirming that the new alien strain is fully naturalized in Central Mediterranean and is expanding its range beyond such limit (i.e. the 15°C February isotherm), thus becoming potentially able to colonize the western basin. By means of a preliminary estimation of effects on native polychaete assemblages, and considering some peculiarities of Sicily (mostly linked to its geographical position in the Mediterranean Sea), the risk linked to the increasing range of distribution of the invasive algae is highlighted

Signatures of non-gaussianity in the isocurvature modes of primordial black hole dark matter

Primordial black holes (PBHs) are black holes which may have formed very early on during the radiation dominated era in the early universe. We present here a method by which the large scale perturbations in the density of primordial black holes may be used to place tight constraints on non-gaussianity if PBHs account for dark matter (DM). The presence of local-type non-gaussianity is known to have a significant effect on the abundance of primordial black holes, and modal coupling from the observed CMB scale modes can significantly alter the number density of PBHs that form within different regions of the universe, which appear as DM isocurvature modes. Using the recent \emph{Planck} constraints on isocurvature perturbations, we show that PBHs are excluded as DM candidates for even very small local-type non-gaussianity, $|f_{NL}|\approx0.001$ and remarkably the constraint on $g_{NL}$ is almost as strong. Even small non-gaussianity is excluded if DM is composed of PBHs. If local non-Gaussianity is ever detected on CMB scales, the constraints on the fraction of the universe collapsing into PBHs (which are massive enough to have not yet evaporated) will become much tighter.Comment: 23 pages, 11 figures. V2: minor corrections and changes, matches published versio

Effect of Cereals and Legumes Processing on In Situ Rumen Protein Degradability: A Review

The determination of the ruminal degradability rate of feeds, mainly starch and crude protein, is one of the most common methods to evaluate the nutritional value of ruminant feed. The protein requirements for ruminants are met from microbial protein and undegraded dietary protein digested in the small intestine. In order to reach maximum productivity, high-quality proteins are needed, and the requirement for undegraded dietary protein increases with the performance of the animal. This protein can be supplied by reducing the ruminal degradation to increase the amount of protein digested post-rumen, but the form in which a feed is administered influences degradability, and grain processing, especially, is a common practice to improve feed efficiency. Despite these aspects, studies on the effects of feed processing methods on protein degradability are limited, even though more and more ruminants are fed with processed feeds. For these reasons, this review investigated the protein degradability of different processed cereals and legumes in ruminants based on the analysis of available literature in order to take stock of the state of the art on this topic. Results showed that: First, the majority of the papers are focused on the energy aspects mainly due to carbohydrate-rich feeds; second, the majority of the studies in the literature are quite old, probably because the changes occurred in the animal testing legislation that made in vivo studies more and more difficult in the last 20 years; third, as a consequence, the few data available in recent years concern in vitro experiments; fourth, we found a high variability of the experimental conditions thus affecting protein degradability and making it quite difficult to compare the different results

Effect of a high forage: Concentrate ratio on milk yield, blood parameters and oxidative status in lactating cows

A feeding strategy that requires a forage: concentrate ratio equal to 70: 30, with at least five different herbs in the forage and the use of silages prohibited, has recently been introduced in Italy. Despite the benefits in terms of human health (lower ω6: ω3 ratio, higher conjugated linoleic acid level) of the obtained milk, little information regarding the possible effects on cows' health is available. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of such a feeding strategy in dairy cows (90 days in milk at the beginning of the trial) on milk yield and composition, and blood metabolic profile, including the evaluation of oxidative stress. The proposed feeding strategy, compared with a semi-intensive strategy, resulted in an improvement of animal oxidative status (lower levels of reactive oxygen metabolites, higher levels of antioxidant potential and anti-reactive oxygen metabolites) and a significant increase of milk urea only in the first part of the trial. No differences in milk yield and composition were detected throughout the trial