Search results for "engineer"

Disintegration of Italian rural landscapes to international environmental agreements

2015

In Italy, the first law that puts landscape and historical buildings under public control was implemented in 1922. While this represents a significant achievement for those times, for that law landscape essentially has an historical and aesthetic connotation, without any explicit reference to the components of flora, fauna and geology. Today, many protection policies and initiatives are still biased by the lack of reference to the intrinsic value that biodiversity and ecosystem services have for the maintenance of traditional landscapes, as well as for the survival of the human species. The priority accorded to historical and aesthetic values can lead to a lack of attention to the complex r…

Impediments to fisheries recovery in Canada: Policy and institutional constraints on developing management practices compliant with the precautionary…

2020

The status of many Canadian fisheries is poor, a consequence of inadequate implementation of sustainable fishery policy within the context of the Precautionary Approach (PA). A key component of implementation lies with the provision of science advice. Scientists are responsible for advising on options likely to meet policy intent and objectives. Here, we examine PA-compliance in the role of science in Canada's fisheries management decision-making. We distinguish science-based from science-determined decisions and processes. Science-based decisions emerge from consultation processes involving stakeholders; science need not always have a clear and accountable role that can be transparently se…

Novel simple templates for reproducible positioning of skin applicators in brachytherapy.

2016

Purpose : Esteya and Valencia surface applicators are designed to treat skin tumors using brachytherapy. In clinical practice, in order to avoid errors that may affect the treatment outcome, there are two issues that need to be carefully addressed. First, the selected applicator for the treatment should provide adequate margin for the target, and second, the applicator has to be precisely positioned before each treatment fraction. In this work, we describe the development and use of a new acrylic templates named Template La Fe-ITIC. They have been designed specifically to help the clinical user in the selection of the correct applicator, and to assist the medical staff in reproducing the po…

Microalgae and seaweeds for food applications: Challenges and perspectives

2016

Hydrodynamic characterization of a new small-scale reactor mixed by a magnetic bar

2015

International audience; The purpose of this study was to evaluate the mixing characteristics of a new milliliter-scale (mL-scale) reactor developed for studying enzymatic activity or physiological cell response. The mL-scale reactor was designed to enable the integration of several sensors to carry out dynamic measurements in a controlled environment. Rapid homogeneity of the entire system is essential to ensure reproducible and reliable results, consequently the reactor was stirred to optimize both mass and heat transfers. A comparative study using three different techniques was undertaken to study mixing performances in the system. Firstly, mixing time (4,) was estimated in the reactor us…

Collating science-based evidence to inform public opinion on the environmental effects of marine drilling platforms in the Mediterranean Sea.

2017

Abstract The use of rigorous methodologies to assess environmental, social and health impacts of specific interventions is crucial to disentangle the various components of environmental questions and to inform public opinion. The power of systematic maps relies on the capacity to summarise and organise the areas or relationships most studied, and to highlight key gaps in the evidence base. The recent Italian technical referendum (2016) – a public consultation inviting people to express their opinion by voting to change the rules on the length of licence duration and the decommissioning of offshore oil and gas platform drilling licences – inspired the creation of a systematic map of evidence…

Electrotechnologies applied to valorization of by-products from food industry: Main findings, energy and economic cost of their industrialization

2016

Abstract There has been a growing interest to reuse food waste and by-products from different processing steps, not only to ensure the environmental sustainability but also to improve the economic performance of the processes. One way of recovery that has raised more interest is the extraction of valuable compounds, which can be used as ingredients in food and pharmaceutical industries due to their technological function, nutritional properties, or their beneficial effects on human or animal health. In many cases, conventional solvent extraction cannot be economically feasible or involves the use of toxic solvents, hindering their subsequent management, or high temperatures, with consequent…

Innovative technologies for encapsulation of Mediterranean plants extracts

2017

Abstract Background High-added value biological compounds (BACs) from herbal and plant sources, such as essential oils (EO), antioxidants and volatile compounds, often exhibit remarkable features, ranging from nutritive and medicinal properties, as well as antimicrobial and antioxidant activities, which can be exploited in the production of functional foods. However, most BACs exhibit low water solubility, strong off-flavors/odors, and are generally unstable and easily degraded under common processing and storage conditions. Encapsulation is a technology that enables the delivery in food systems, the protection, as well as the controlled and targeted release of BACs. Scope and approach The …

Parameter identification and state estimation of a microalgae dynamical model in sulphur deprived conditions: Global sensitivity analysis, optimizati…

2014

International audience; In this article, a dynamic model describing the growth of the green microalgae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii , under light attenuation and sulphur‐deprived conditions leading to hydrogen production in a photobioreactor is presented. The strong interactions between biological and physical phenomena require complex mathematical expressions with an important number of parameters. This article presents a global identification procedure in three steps using data from batch experiments. First, it includes the application of a sensitivity function analysis, which allows one to determine the parameters having the greatest influence on model outputs. Secondly, the most influentia…

Landmarks in the historical development of twenty first century food processing technologies.

2017

International audience; Over a course of centuries, various food processing technologies have been explored and implemented to provide safe, fresher-tasting and nutritive food products. Among these technologies, application of emerging food processes (e.g., cold plasma, pressurized fluids, pulsed electric fields, ohmic heating, radiofrequency electric fields, ultrasonics and megasonics, high hydrostatic pressure, high pressure homogenization, hyperbaric storage, and negative pressure cavitation extraction) have attracted much attention in the past decades. This is because, compared to their conventional counterparts, novel food processes allow a significant reduction in the overall processi…