Search results for " indicator"
showing 10 items of 613 documents
Bibliometric analysis of publications by South African viticulture and oenology research centres
2012
We analysed the production, impact factor of, and scientific collaboration involved in viticulture and oenology articles associated with South African research centres published in international journals during the period 1990–2009. The articles under scrutiny were obtained from the Science Citation Index database, accessed via the Web of Knowledge platform. The search strategy employed specific viticulture and oenology terms and was restricted to the field ‘topic’. The results showed that 406 articles were published during the review period, with the most number of publications being in the South African Journal of Enology and Viticulture (n = 34), American Journal of Enology and Vit…
Soil carbon quality and nitrogen fertilization structure bacterial communities with predictable responses of major bacterial phyla
2014
Abstract Agricultural practices affect the soil ecosystem in multiple ways and the soil microbial communities represent an integrated and dynamic measure of soil status. Our aim was to test whether the soil bacterial community and the relative abundance of major bacterial phyla responded predictably to long-term organic amendments representing different carbon qualities (peat and straw) in combination with nitrogen fertilization levels and if certain bacterial groups were indicative of specific treatments. We hypothesized that the long-term treatments had created distinctly different ecological niches for soil bacteria, suitable for either fast-growing copiotrophic bacteria, or slow-growing…
Multivariate analysis of sites using water invertebrates and land use as indicators of the quality of biotopes of Mediterranean relic plant (Petagnae…
2007
Petagnaea gussonei is a rhizomatous, perennial scapose hemicryptophyte species belonging to a monospecific genus of Apiaceae. It lives only along woodland rivulets and is a Tertiary relic localized in the restricted area of the Nebrodi Mountains (NE Sicily, Italy). Ecological indicators have been employed to understand the status of eight localities (intermittent rivulets) where the species occurs. In order to evaluate both the rivulets' water-quality and landscape use, index of anthropisation (Ia), water fleas bioassay (TU), and analyses of water macroinvertebrates have been employed. The results obtained for the level of toxicity exclude the presence of macropollutants (TU < 0.001), where…
Medium for Screening Leuconostoc oenos Strains Defective in Malolactic Fermentation
1989
A new sensitive medium was developed to screen and isolate mutagenic Leuconostoc oenos strains defective in malolactic fermentation. The essential components of the medium included fructose (22 mM), l -malic acid (74.6 mM), bromocresol green (as pH indicator), and cellulose powder. The wild-type colonies turned blue, but defective malolactic colonies gave an acid reaction and remained yellow-green.
Legislative basis for corporate social responsibility reporting
2014
L’analisi delle politiche di riduzione dei cesarei attraverso il dynamic performance management: La valutazione del percorso nascita in un’azienda sa…
2018
Da tre decenni l'Organizzazione Mondiale della Sanità considera appropriata una percentuale di cesarei tra il l 0-1 5%. Tuttavia, molti Paesi tuttora si trovano a fronteggiare valori molto più elevati e le politiche adottate dai decisori pubblici spesso mostrano di essere poco efficaci. Il presente lavoro prende avvio dall'analisi del percorso nascita introdotto in Sicilia e propone il ricorso all'approccio del Dynamic Performance Management per investigare le cause sottostanti l'andamento dei parti cesarei. Lo studio ha consentito di costruire un modello di System Dynamics, successivamente personalizzato con i dati di un'azienda sanitaria. L'analisi dei risultati delle simulazioni evidenzi…
Framing Caesarean Section Reduction Policies Through a Dynamic Performance Management Approach: A Maternity Pathway Case-Based Analysis
2017
The World Health Organization since the last three decades strongly encourages countries to reduce the caesarean section (CS) rate down to 10–15%. However, this goal nowadays appears still far from its achievement. Public decision-makers are indeed struggling to design and implement effective policies to reduce the CS rate. The literature provides a wide range of factors causing a change in the CS rate, such as the patient clinical profile and the healthcare service quality provided. Maternity pathway (MP) is considered a mean through which to standardize the cares and to reduce CSs. This study investigates the MP recently introduced in Sicilian local health authorities. Based on such an an…
Remote sensing of vegetation dynamics in agro-ecosystems using smap vegetation optical depth and optical vegetation indices
2017
The ESA's SMOS and the NASA's SMAP missions, launched in 2009 and 2015, respectively, are the first two missions having on-board L-band microwave sensors, which are very sensitive to the water content in soils and vegetation. Focusing on the vegetation signal at L-band, we have implemented an inversion approach for SMAP that allows deriving vegetation optical depth (VOD, a microwave parameter related to biomass and plant water content) alongside soil moisture, without reliance on ancillary optical information on vegetation. This work aims at using this new observational data to monitor the phenology of crops in major global agro-ecosystems and enhance present agricultural monitoring and pre…
State of the Art on Sustainability Assessment of Positive Energy Districts: Methodologies, Indicators and Future Perspectives
2021
The concept of Positive Energy District is one of the main areas of research and extensive applications of the principles of the clean energy transition within the building sector. In the past years, the most widely accepted definitions have focused specifically on carbon neutrality, while several other aspects regarding all sustainability approaches (including environmental, social and economic perspective) were included qualitatively or to a lesser degree. This paper proposes a discussion on the state of the art of the sustainability assessment of Positive Energy Districts, by investigating environmental, social and economic sustainability applications. The three sustainability dimensions…