Environmental implications of dairy sheep supply chain and evaluation of climate change mitigation actions for Sardinian sheep farming systems

The contribution of small ruminant sector to overall livestock GHG emissions is quite significant and the optimization of environmental performances by the way of eco-innovation is considered a valid strategy to improve the competitiveness of Mediterranean dairy sheep systems. Despite their significant role in environmental and socio-economic terms, little research has been conducted on the environmental implications of dairy sheep production systems. In this context, the main aim of this thesis was to contribute to the environmental profile characterization of the Sardinian dairy sheep supply chain, in order to evaluate climate change mitigation actions for Sardinian sheep farming systems. Three studies were conducted using a LCA approach, with the following specific goals: i) comparing the environmental implications of contrasting dairy sheep systems and ii) identifying the hotspots to minimizing the ecological impacts of the Sardinian dairy sheep sector. In line with several LCA studies on dairy sector, the farm activities played the most relevant role in the overall environmental performances. Enteric methane emissions, feed supply chain, electricity and equipment seem to be the hotspots where the environmental performances can be improved. Future research will be dedicated to explore in detail the relationship between sheep breed, diet composition and enteric methane emissions and to properly assess the ecosystems services of pasture-based farming systems

Knowledge Transfer in Local Governments: A Cultural Challenge for Internal Auditors

During the last two decades, public sector experienced a number of management, accounting and policy changes. As a consequenc e the actors role had to meet the new accountability and responsibility requirements. The article aims at analyzing the role of internal audit committee in the Italian local government context and the attitude of auditors to transfer managerial culture to public authorities. Thus, the survey conduced over the auditors technical, human and conceptual attributes allows to underline the important strength and weakness auditors have as ‘agent of change’

LCA Study on Sheep Milk Production in Sardinian Farms at Different Input Levels

This paper illustrates a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study carried out with the purposes of comparing the environmental impacts of sheep milk production from three different dairy farms in Sardinia, Italy, characterized by different production systems

Standard Model updates and new physics analysis with the Unitarity Triangle fit

We present here the update of the Unitarity Triangle (UT) analysis performed by the UTfit Collaboration within the Standard Model (SM) and beyond. Continuously updated flavour results contribute to improving the precision of several constraints and through the global fit of the CKM parameters and the SM predictions. We also extend the UT analysis to investigate new physics (NP) effects on $\Delta F=2$ processes. Finally, based on the NP constraints, we derive upper bounds on the coefficients of the most general $\Delta F=2$ effective Hamiltonian. These upper bounds can be translated into lower bounds on the scale of NP that contributes to these low-energy effective interactions.Comment: Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on the CKM Unitarity Triangle (CKM 2014), Vienna, Austria, September 8-12, 201

Quale ruolo per il volontariato nelle attività degli Enti Locali? Considerazioni da un’analisi empirica

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