871 research outputs found
Orchestrating Forest Policy in Italy: Mission Impossible?
In the Italian political and economic agenda the forest sector occupies a marginal role. The forest sector in Italy is characterized by a high institutional fragmentation and centralized decision-making processes dominated by Public Forest Administrations. Public participation in forest policy processes has been implemented since the 1990s at national, regional and local levels in several cases. However, today no significant changes have been observed in the overall governance of the forest sector and stakeholders' involvement in Italian forest policy decision-making is still rather limited. The aims of this paper are to describe the state of forest-related participatory processes in Italy at various levels (national, regional and local) and identify which factors and actors hinder or support the establishment and implementation of participatory forest-related processes in the country. The forest-related participatory processes are analyzed adopting a qualitative-based approach and interpreting interactive, complex and non-linear participatory processes through the lens of panarchy theory
On the tilt of Fundamental Plane by Clausius' virial maximum theory
The theory of the Clausius' virial maximum to explain the Fundamental Plane
(FP) proposed by Secco (2000, 2001,2005) is based on the existence of a maximum
in the Clausius' Virial (CV) potential energy of a early type galaxy (ETG)
stellar component when it is completely embedded inside a dark matter (DM)
halo. At the first order approximation the theory was developed by modeling the
two-components with two cored power-law density profiles. An higher level of
approximation is now taken into account by developing the same theory when the
stellar component is modeled by a King-model with a cut-off. Even if the DM
halo density remains a cored power law the inner component is now more
realistic for the ETGs. The new formulation allows us to understand more deeply
what is the dynamical reason of the FP tilt and in general how the CV theory
may really be the engine to produce the FP main features. The degeneracy of FP
in respect to the initial density perturbation spectrum may be now full
understood in a CDM cosmological scenario. A possible way to compare the FPs
predicted by the theory with those obtained by observations is also
exemplified.Comment: 35 pages, 8 figure
Co-constructing a new framework for evaluating social innovation in marginalized rural areas
The EU funded H2020 project \u2018Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas\u2019 (SIMRA; www.simra-h2020.eu) has the overall objective of advancing the state-of-the-art in social innovation. This paper outlines the process for co- developing an evaluation framework with stakeholders, drawn from across Europe and the Mediterranean area, in the fields of agriculture, forestry and rural development. Preliminary results show the importance of integrating process and outcome-oriented evaluations, and implementing participatory approaches in evaluation practice. They also raise critical issues related to the comparability of primary data in diverse regional contexts and highlight the need for mixed methods approaches in evaluation
The role of dark matter in the galaxy mass-size relationship
The observed relationship between stellar mass and effective radius for early
type galaxies, pointed out by many authors, is interpreted in the context of
Clausius' virial maximum theory. In this view, it is strongly underlined that
the key of the above mentioned correlation is owing to the presence of a deep
link between cosmology and the existence of the galaxy Fundamental Plane. Then
the ultimate meaning is: understanding visible mass - size correlation and/or
Fundamental Plane means understanding how galaxies form. The mass - size
relationship involves baryon (mainly stellar) mass and its typical dimension
related to the light, but it gets memory of the cosmological mass variance at
the equivalence epoch. The reason is that the baryonic component virializes by
sharing virial energy in about equal amount between baryons and dark matter,
this sharing depending, in turn, on the steepness of the dark matter
distribution. The general strategy consists in using the two-component tensor
virial theorem for determining the virialized baryonic configurations. A King
and a Zhao density profile are assumed for the inner baryonic and the outer
dark matter component, respectively, at the end of the relaxation phase. All
the considerations are restricted to spherical symmetry for simplicity. The
effect of changing the dark-to-baryon mass ratio, m, is investigated inside a
LambdaCDM scenario. A theoretical mass - size relation is expressed for the
baryonic component, which fits fairly well to the data from a recently studied
galaxy sample. Finally, the play of intrinsic dispersion on the mass ratio, m,
is discussed in the light of the cusp/core problem and some consequences are
speculated about the existence of a limit, m_l, expected by the theory.Comment: 36 pages, 8 figures (Accepted for publication in New Astronomy
An Activity Classifier based on Heart Rate and Accelerometer Data Fusion
The European project ProeTEX realized a novel set of prototypes based on smart garments
that integrate sensors for the real-time monitoring of physiological, activity-related and environmental
parameters of the emergency operators during their interventions. The availability of these parameters
and the emergency scenario suggest the implementation of novel classification methods aimed at
detecting dangerous status of the rescuer automatically, and based not only on the classical activityrelated
signals, rather on a combination of these data with the physiological status of the subject. Here
we propose a heart rate and accelerometer data fusion algorithm for the activity classification of
rescuers in the emergency context
EXPO-AGRI: Smart Automatic Greenhouse Control
Predicting and controlling plant behavior in con- trolled environments is a growing requirement in precision agri- culture. In this context sensor networks and artificial intelligence methods represent key aspects for optimizing the processes of data acquisition, mathematical modeling and decision making. In this paper we present a general architecture for automatic greenhouse control. In particular, we focus on a preliminary model for predicting the risk of new infections of downy mildew of basil (Peronospora belbahrii) on sweet basil. The architecture has three main elements of innovation: new kinds of sensors are used to extract information about the state of the plants, model predictors are generated from this information by non-trivial processing methods, and informative predictors are automatically selected using regularization techniques
The High-Pressure Structural Evolution of Olivine along the Forsterite–Fayalite Join
Structural refinements from single-crystal X-ray diffraction data are reported for olivine with a composition of Fo100 (forsterite Mg2SiO4, synthetic), Fo80 and Fo62 (~Mg1.6Fe0.4SiO4 and ~Mg1.24Fe0.76SiO4, both natural) at room temperature and high pressure to ~8 GPa. The new results, along with data from the literature on Fo0 (fayalite Fe2SiO4), were used to investigate the previously reported structural mechanisms which caused small variations of olivine bulk modulus with increasing Fe content. For all the investigated compositions, the M2 crystallographic site, with its bonding configuration and its larger polyhedral volume, was observed to control the compression mechanisms in olivine. From Fo100 to Fo0, the compression rates for M2\u2013O and M1\u2013O bond lengths were observed to control the relative polyhedral volumes, resulting in a less-compressible M1O6 polyhedral volume, likely causing the slight increase in bulk modulus with increasing Fe content
High-pressure synthesis, crystal and electronic structures of a new scandium tungstate, Sc0.67WO4
Negative thermal expansion (NTE) materials possess a low-density, open
structure which can respond to high pressure conditions, leading to new
compounds and/or different physical properties. Here we report that one such
NTE material -- white, insulating, orthorhombic Sc2W3O12 -- transforms into a
black compound when treated at 4 GPa and 1400 oC. The high pressure phase,
Sc0.67WO4, crystallizes in a defect-rich wolframite-type structure, a dense,
monoclinic structure (space group P2/c) containing 1-D chains of edge-sharing
WO6 octahedra. The chemical bonding of Sc0.67WO4 vis-a-vis the ambient pressure
Sc2W3O12 phase can be understood on the basis of the Sc defect structure.
Magnetic susceptibility, resistivity, thermoelectric power and IR spectroscopic
measurements reveal that Sc0.67WO4 is a paramagnet whose conductivity is that
of a metal in the presence of weak localization and electron-electron
interactions. Oxygen vacancies are suggested as a potential mechanism for
generating the carriers in this defective wolframite material.Comment: 29 pages total, 1 table, 7 figure
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