Search results for " variability"
showing 10 items of 853 documents
Ecology of Vastedda della valle del Belìce cheeses: A review and recent findings to stabilize the traditional production
2018
The increasing request for classic foods has led to a higher demand for cheeses enjoying a “recognition of quality” status. This phenomenon has also affected Sicilian dairy products, in particular protected designation of origin (PDO) “Vastedda della valle del Belìce” (VdB), a cheese traditionally available only during the summer season, but requested year round. The variations of the microbial populations of raw milk among the seasons influence the microbiological quality of the cheeses produced. This review article reports the historical importance of cheeses and the traditional equipment used for dairy productions in Sicily with a specific focus on VdB. The microbial ecology of this chee…
Using Heart Rate Variability Methods for Health-Related Outcomes in Outdoor Contexts : A Scoping Review of Empirical Studies
2023
Heart rate variability (HRV) is a psychophysiological variable that is often used in applied analysis techniques to indicate health status because it provides a window into the intrinsic regulation of the autonomic nervous system. However, HRV data analysis methods are varied and complex, which has led to different approaches to data collection, analysis, and interpretation of results. Our scoping review aimed to explore the diverse use of HRV methods in studies designed to assess health outcomes in outdoor free-living contexts. Four database indexes were searched, which resulted in the identification of 17,505 candidate studies. There were 34 studies and eight systematic reviews that met t…
Associations of Environmental Features With Outdoor Physical Activity on Weekdays and Weekend Days: A Cross-Sectional Study Among Older People
2020
Background: Physical activity (PA) of higher intensity and longer duration mainly accumulates from older adults' out-of-home activities. Outdoor PA is influenced by environmental features; however, the day-to-day variability of PA and its associations with environmental features have not been widely studied. This study focused on the associations of environmental features with accelerometer-measured PA in older people on weekdays and weekend days. Methods: The study population comprised 167 community-dwelling older people aged 75–90 years. Accelerometers were worn on 7 consecutive days and a structured interview on physical functioning, health, and socioeconomic factors was administered. A …
SST Comparison of AVHRR and MODIS Time Series in the Western Mediterranean Sea
2020
La temperatura de la superficie del mar (SST) es un parámetro clave para comprender los procesos atmosféricos y oceánicos. Desde finales de la década de 1980, las imágenes de satélite infrarrojas se han utilizado para complementar los registros in situ para estudiar la variabilidad temporal y espacial de la SST. El radiómetro avanzado de muy alta resolución (AVHRR) del satélite de la Administración Nacional Oceánica y Atmosférica (NOAA) fue el primer sensor utilizado con éxito para calcular la SST después del desarrollo y validación del algoritmo de corrección atmosférica conocido como 'ventana dividida'. Más recientemente, el espectrorradiómetro de imágenes de resolución MODERADA (MODIS) a…
Critical forms in Sicilian populations of annual Lysimachia L. (Primulaceae)
2018
Based on recent literature, in the Primrose family the genus Lysimachia L. absorbed Anagallis L. (1). As a result, new name combinations have been introduced for this genus, thus involving the increase of specific and intraspecific taxa (for Italian flora see 2 and 3). A further consequence, focused in this contribution, concerns the binomial combination Lysimachia arvensis (L.) U.Manns & Anderb., which has different synonyms and includes several specific and intraspecific taxa. As far as the taxonomic history of the annual taxa of Anagallis is concerned, different authors preferred to include some of them in A. arvensis and in A. foemina at the level of variety (4) or subspecies (2), w…
Assessing Transfer Entropy in cardiovascular and respiratory time series: A VARFI approach
2021
In the study of complex biomedical systems represented by multivariate stochastic processes, such as the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, an issue of great relevance is the description of the system dynamics spanning multiple temporal scales. Recently, the quantification of multiscale complexity based on linear parametric models, incorporating autoregressive coefficients and fractional integration, encompassing short term dynamics and long-range correlations, was extended to multivariate time series. Within this Vector AutoRegressive Fractionally Integrated (VARFI) framework formalized for Gaussian processes, in this work we propose to estimate the Transfer Entropy, or equivalently G…
Associations of Environmental Features With Outdoor Physical Activity on Weekdays and Weekend Days: A Cross-Sectional Study Among Older People
2020
Background: Physical activity (PA) of higher intensity and longer duration mainly accumulates from older adults' out-of-home activities. Outdoor PA is influenced by environmental features; however, the day-to-day variability of PA and its associations with environmental features have not been widely studied. This study focused on the associations of environmental features with accelerometer-measured PA in older people on weekdays and weekend days.Methods: The study population comprised 167 community-dwelling older people aged 75–90 years. Accelerometers were worn on 7 consecutive days and a structured interview on physical functioning, health, and socioeconomic factors was administered. A g…
Atmospheric circulation modulates the spatial variability of temperature in the Atlantic-Arctic region
2019
International audience; The Arctic region has experienced significant warming during the past two decades with major implications on the cryosphere. The causes of Arctic amplification are still an open question within the scientific community, attracting recent interest. The goal of this study is to quantify the contribution of atmospheric circulation on temperature variability in the Atlantic–Arctic region at decadal to intra‐annual timescales from 1951 to 2014. Daily 20th Century reanalyses geopotential height anomalies at 500 hPa were clustered into different weather regimes to assess their contribution to observed temperature variability. The results show that in winter, 25% of the warm…
The influence of ENSO on South Africa winter rainfall
2011
International audience; We analysed the relationship between El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and South Africa austral winter rainfall using a 682 raingauges daily rainfall database documenting the period 1950-1999. The May, June and July (MJJ) seasonal rainfall amount shows a positive correlation with the Niño3.4 index that becomes significant since the mid 70's. Wet spells properties (length, frequency and intensity) at the raingauge scale indicate that high (low) MJJ seasonal rainfall amounts recorded during El Niño (La Niña) events are the result of longer (shorter) wet spells in the Cape Town area and more (less) frequent wet spells north of 33°S. Wet spells with daily rainfall amou…
Precision Agriculture: Past, Present and Future
2011
From 1978 the Global Positioning System, needed for sensing the position of military targets (e.g. buildings, machinery), was developed as a pure military system, while in 1983 it was made available also for public use. Therefore, at the beginning of 80s precision agriculture, requiring GPS for sensing the position to which any measured field parameter must be geo-referenced, was implemented for the first time in US. In fact, soil and crop parameters are spatially variable in a field, so that spatially uniform rate crop input applications cause increased environmental impact and crop input waste. In order to reduce the environmental impact and optimise the use of crop inputs, precision agri…