Search results for "environmental engineering"
showing 10 items of 2674 documents
Occurrence of illicit drugs in two wastewater treatment plants in the South of Italy
2017
In this study the occurrence and the behavior of illicit drugs and their metabolites have been investigated for two wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) (namely, WWTP-1 and WWTP-2) located in Sicily (island of Italy). Samples were analyzed for methamphetamine, cocaine (COC), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), methadone (METH), 2-ethylidene-1,5-dimethyl-3,3-diphenylpyrrolidine (EDDP), 3,4-methylenedioxy amphetamine (MDA); 3,4-methylenedioxy ethylamphetamine (MDEA), 11-nor-9-carboxy-Î9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC-COOH) and Benzoylecgonine (BEG). The BEG, COC, MOR and THC-COOH were found at the highest concentration in both WWTPs. The Wastewater-based epidemiology calculation for BEG, COC…
AN INNOVATIVE SYSTEM FOR VINEYARD MANAGEMENT IN SICILY
2010
The aim of this study was to monitor the micro-climate of the grapevine in order to detect the adversities of the spring period (especially April and May), while reducing the operating costs of the vineyard, and increasing the overall quality of grapes. For this purpose a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) was used. Furthermore, a comparison was performed between data measured by the wireless sensors and data provided by the fixed meteorological station of the Regione Siciliana (SIAS).
Lipid-containing semipermeable membrane devices (SPMDs) as concentrators of toxic chemicals in the lower Fraser River, Vancouver, British Columbia.
1998
Abstract Semipermeable membrane devices (SPMDs) were deployed in the water column and in the sediments of the Lower Fraser River (B.C., Canada) to compare the levels and the congener profiles of polychlorinated dibenzo- p -dioxins (PCDDs), dibenzofurans (PCDFs) and non- ortho -chlorinated biphenyls (N-o,o′-PCBs) against those sampled by an Infiltrex resin column water sampler. Also the relationship between what was present in the ecosystem as sampled by SPMDs and what was accumulated in the tissue of resident benthic-feeding fish was explored. Only the lipid portion of the SPMDs was prepared for analysis, due to some technical difficulties in cleaning the polyethene tubing. The calculated w…
Assessment of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in soil of a Natural Reserve (Isola delle Femmine) (Italy) located in front of a plant for the …
2009
Isola delle Femmine Natural Reserve is a very little isle about 15 km from the centre of Palermo, in front of a plant for the production of cement and about 600 m from coast. In the present research, profiles soil PAHs were obtained for 16 sites within the reserve and for 8 stations on the rural soil taken as reference. summation Sigma PAHs, in the soil of investigated area, ranged from 35 to 545 microg/kg. With the aim to find the origin of PAHs in the soil of Isola delle Femmine, we compare the distribution of single analytes in the investigated area with those of the reference rural area (Monte Raffo Rosso), with those of atmospheric urban particulate collected at Palermo along with repo…
Receiving water quality assessment: comparison between simplified and detailed integrated urban modelling approaches
2010
Urban water quality management often requires use of numerical models allowing the evaluation of the cause–effect relationship between the input(s) (i.e. rainfall, pollutant concentrations on catchment surface and in sewer system) and the resulting water quality response. The conventional approach to the system (i.e. sewer system, wastewater treatment plant and receiving water body), considering each component separately, does not enable optimisation of the whole system. However, recent gains in understanding and modelling make it possible to represent the system as a whole and optimise its overall performance. Indeed, integrated urban drainage modelling is of growing interest for tools to …
Uncertainty in urban stormwater quality modelling: The influence of likelihood measure formulation in the GLUE methodology
2009
In the last years, the attention on integrated analysis of sewer networks, wastewater treatment plants and receiving waters has been growing. However, the common lack of data in the urban water-quality field and the incomplete knowledge regarding the interpretation of the main phenomena taking part in integrated urban water systems draw attention to the necessity of evaluating the reliability of model results. Uncertainty analysis can provide useful hints and information regarding the best model approach to be used by assessing its degrees of significance and reliability. Few studies deal with uncertainty assessment in the integrated urban-drainage field. In order to fill this gap, there ha…
Anthropic space and design for all. New knowledge paths for urban planning strategies
2019
Abstract Nowadays city environment shows the presence of a mixed variety of elements, as natural, semi natural and anthropic components that build up both structure and connections of the urban context. This specific structure shapes and directs space and its functions strictly connected with their sustainable potential uses and sustainable development opportunities. The lack of rules and proper planning methods produces inefficient use conditions by resident citizens, entropy, functions' reduction of ecological networks and deep environmental impacts. The consequence comes out to be a great widespread life quality decrease in urban areas. These thoughts lead the authors to rethink the defi…
Protonation-induced fluorescence modulation of carbazole-based emitters
2022
The development of purely organic fluorescence emitters is of great importance for their low cost and high performance. Responding to this demand, carbazole is a promising emitter due to its extensive freedom for functionalisation, high thermal and chemical stability, as well as low cost. Herein, the effect of protonation on the fluorescence of various pyridine-functionalised carbazole-based bipolar host materials was studied both in solution and in the solid-state. The restriction of intramolecular rotation of the molecules upon protonation of the pyridyl-moiety together with easier planarization of the protonated acceptor and the donor moieties and relocalisation of the LUMO orbital on th…
Prediction of acute toxicity of phenol derivatives using multiple linear regression approach for Tetrahymena pyriformis contaminant identification in…
2016
In this article, the modeling of inhibitory grown activity against Tetrahymena pyriformis is described. The 0-2D Dragon descriptors based on structural aspects to gain some knowledge of factors influencing aquatic toxicity are mainly used. Besides, it is done by some enlarged data of phenol derivatives described for the first time and composed of 358 chemicals. It overcomes the previous datasets with about one hundred compounds. Moreover, the results of the model evaluation by the parameters in the training, prediction and validation give adequate results comparable with those of the previous works. The more influential descriptors included in the model are: X3A, MWC02, MWC10 and piPC03 wit…
Predictive modeling of aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) agonism
2020
Abstract The aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) plays a key role in the regulation of gene expression in metabolic machinery and detoxification systems. In the recent years, this receptor has attracted interest as a therapeutic target for immunological, oncogenic and inflammatory conditions. In the present report, in silico and in vitro approaches were combined to study the activation of the AhR. To this end, a large database of chemical compounds with known AhR agonistic activity was employed to build 5 classifiers based on the Adaboost (AdB), Gradient Boosting (GB), Random Forest (RF), Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithms, respectively. The built classifier…