Understanding household recycling for the sustainable management of urban waste: a mixed-method investigation

In recent years, the ever-increasing generation of urban waste is posing serious problems to developed countries and cities, highlighting the pressing need to transform their current recycling practices into more efficient and sustainable ones. This is not possible, however, without the involvement and active cooperation of citizens as key initiators and sustainers of the entire recycling process. During the last decades, the question of what makes people recycle or not has occupied researchers and practitioners seeking to understand and influence this behavior, resulting in a great number of publications examining recycling from a range of perspectives including psychology, economics, sociology, geography and marketing. Yet the comprehension of this phenomenon and of the most effective ways to promote its adoption among people is still far from being exhaustive. The aim of the research presented here is thus to examine household recycling using a mixed-method approach, in order to overcome the limitations that characterize both quantitative and qualitative research and to provide new penetrating insights to comprehend this phenomenon and promote its adoption. The research work is composed of two main parts. The first, theoretical, consists of a systematic review of the existing recycling literature, offering an in-depth overview of the identified socio-psychological and situational determinants of household recycling (Chapter 1), as well as of the intervention strategies used to promote it, including a meta-analysis of their effectiveness (Chapter 2). Starting from here, the second part concerns the investigation in the Italian context of household recycling drivers and dynamics, as well as of the mechanisms underlying its adoption and maintenance over time. The mixed-method approach adopted to undertake the research is discussed in Chapter 3, pointing at the flexible use of quantitative and qualitative methods to gather different but complementary types of data. Study 1 consists indeed of an extensive online survey allowing to collect data across a large population sample, while Study 2 relies on qualitative and ethnographic methods, such as interviews, observations and home tours, to achieve a deeper comprehension of recycling dynamics in the setting of the home, exploring the experiences of participants and the meanings they attribute to them. Altogether the pieces of evidence obtained from the present thesis point at the relational and habitual nature of recycling, evidencing that various factors, such as knowledge and the perceived value of waste (Chapter 4), motivations to recycle and those used to justify defective episodes (Chapter 5), cooperation and distribution of tasks between family members, the organization of domestic spaces, as well as the responsibilities for recycling attributed to external actors (Chapter 6) interact with each other and become locally important in influencing recycling behavior. A general discussion synthetizing the theoretical findings and the results obtained by the studies presented in this thesis is then offered in Chapter 7, with the twofold aim to extend the results of previous research on recycling and to delineate a set of practical recommendations for implementing effective interventions

Road traffic pollution and childhood leukemia: a nationwide case-control study in Italy

Background The association of childhood leukemia with traffic pollution was considered in a number of studies from 1989 onwards, with results not entirely consistent and little information regarding subtypes. Aim of the study We used the data of the Italian SETIL case-control on childhood leukemia to explore the risk by leukemia subtypes associated to exposure to vehicular traffic. Methods We included in the analyses 648 cases of childhood leukemia (565 Acute lymphoblastic–ALL and 80 Acute non lymphoblastic-AnLL) and 980 controls. Information on traffic exposure was collected from questionnaire interviews and from the geocoding of house addresses, for all periods of life of the children. Results We observed an increase in risk for AnLL, and at a lower extent for ALL, with indicators of exposure to traffic pollutants. In particular, the risk was associated to the report of closeness of the house to traffic lights and to the passage of trucks (OR: 1.76; 95% CI 1.03–3.01 for ALL and 6.35; 95% CI 2.59–15.6 for AnLL). The association was shown also in the analyses limited to AML and in the stratified analyses and in respect to the house in different period of life. Conclusions Results from the SETIL study provide some support to the association of traffic related exposure and risk for AnLL, but at a lesser extent for ALL. Our conclusion highlights the need for leukemia type specific analyses in future studies. Results support the need of controlling exposure from traffic pollution, even if knowledge is not complete

Psychological strategies to promote household recycling. A systematic review with meta-analysis of validated field interventions

Recycling urban waste is a priority to preserve natural resources and reduce pollution. However, the entire recycling process is not possible without the cooperation of citizens through primary separation of waste at home. Various psychological intervention strategies have been applied to promote household recycling, such as information, feedback, incentives, commitment, behavior modeling and environmental alterations. The purpose of this article is to systematically review and evaluate through a meta-analysis their effectiveness, investigating also existing connections between intervention-based research and research on recycling determinants. A random-effect meta-analysis with a sample of 36 studies reporting 70 interventions revealed that social modeling and environmental alterations were the most effective techniques. The examination of underlying factors considered in the interventions also showed that some of them are rarely accounted for when designing the interventions. The findings are discussed along with possible future directions for interventions aiming at promoting recycling

Vestígios da presença das ideias educacionais de John Dewey em uma escola normal paulista nas décadas de 10 e 20 do século XX

O presente artigo propõe-se a investigar como as ideias educacionais de John Dewey foram apropriadas na formação de professores no interior da Antiga Escola Normal Secundária de São Carlos–SP. Para compreender esses preceitos buscou-se estudar e analisar os artigos publicados na Revista da Escola Normal de São Carlos (feita sob a responsabilidade dos docentes da instituição, entre 1916-1923), na qual se destacaram pela apropriação e discussão direta das concepções educacionais de John Dewey. Os resultados obtidos por esse estudo demonstram a presença e apropriação de John Dewey no interior da instituição, bem como permitem a compreensão do movimento das ideias pedagógicas de John Dewey no contexto brasileiro

Electrodeposition of cobalt thin films and nanowires from ethylene glycol-based solution

Ethylene glycol-based solutions containing metal precursor chloride salts were investigated for the electrodeposition of cobalt thin films and nanowires. The electrochemical behavior of 0.5 M Co(II) chloride solution at 70 °C was studied by means of cyclic voltammetry (CV) on a Pt substrate. The reduction process was shown to be irreversible, with high faradaic efficiencies (85–90 %). A diffusion coefficient (D0) of 2.29 × 10−6 cm2 s−1 for the Co species was estimated from the electrochemical behavior at different scan rates (from 25 to 125 mV s−1). The electrodeposition process was also studied on a copper substrate at different cathodic potentials (from −0.75 V vs Pt to −0.95 V vs Pt). Field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and electron dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) revealed high-purity, compact films. Template-assisted electrodeposition resulted in ~16–18 μm long cobalt nanowires with an aspect ratio L/D > 100. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis of Co thin films showed a preferential orientation along the HCP [100] direction, which was even more marked for the nanowires. Vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM) highlighted that the fact that Co thin films were magnetized in-plane, while in nanowires a competition between shape and magnetocrystalline anisotropy led to similar magnetic behavior for the in-plane and out-of-plane directions

A two-step, user-centered approach to personalized tourist recommendations

Geo-localized, mobile applications can simplify a tourist visit, making the relevant Point of Interests more easily and promptly discernible to users. At the same time, such solutions must avoid creating unfitting or rigid user profiles that impoverish the users' options instead of refining them. Currently, user profiles in recommender systems rely on dimensions whose relevance to the user is more often presumed than empirically defined. To avoid this drawback, we build our recommendation system in a two-step process, where profile parameters are evaluated preliminarily and separately from the recommendations themselves. We describe this two-step evaluation process including an initial survey (N = 206), and a subsequent controlled study (N = 24). We conclude by emphasizing the benefit and generalizability of the approac