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AbstractEmbedding sustainability in day‐to‐day operations necessitates employees' proactiveness beyond compliance with standardised management practices. Exchanging information on safety and environmental issues is acknowledged as a component of workers' proactive behaviours for sustainability embeddedness, which is hardly promoted by codified procedures. Accordingly, identifying leverages to stimulate information exchange is a primary objective for academics and practitioners. The study investigates drivers of information exchange on safety and environmental near misses by examining five situation‐related antecedents: rewards/reinforcements, organisational boundaries, social proactiveness, stakeholder salience and connectedness. The study relies on a mixed method approach, by combining social network analysis and a questionnaire survey conducted among four large Italian companies. The findings partially support the hypothesis of the study, highlighting rewards/reinforcements and connectedness as relevant antecedents of information exchange, while organisational boundaries only partially relate with information exchange. Surprisingly, stakeholder salience and social proactiveness do not emerge as significant drivers of information exchange. The study contributes to the debate on extra‐role pro‐sustainability behaviours and provides implications for managerial practice.

This paper elaborates different hybrid energy scenarios for applications in small or medium residential building facilities in typical Mediterranean climate conditions. Proposed hybrid energy solutions are based on the split air conditioning units as they are the most used individually energy sources able to cover heating and cooling demands in residential building facilities in considered climate conditions. Four different hybrid energy options have been analysed as they represent highly efficient energy solutions that could reduce overall energy consumption as well as also carbon dioxide emissions from residential sector. For each proposed energy solution a technical aspect was addressed, as well as also an economic aspect through obtained LCOE analysis. Therefore, the proposed and analysed hybrid energy concepts turned out to be a viable energy solution for residential applications as calculated LCOE was competitive with current retail prices of electricity on the EU market. The calculated LCOE ranged from 0.036 €/kWh up to 0.159 €/kWh, depending from the considered hybrid energy solution. The solution with the modified split heat pump system turned out to be most favourable. However, as each solution is characteristic one an additional evaluation framework was developed. Finally, the results of this study could be useful as examples of good practice as well as also a useful guidance for policy makers.

This work investigates the behaviour of BDD samples differently aged by an oxidative treatment. Two series of data are presented: the first in acid solutions was used to derive information about the electronic structure of the samples, whereas measurements in equimolar ferro/ferri cyanide solutions were performed to test the activity of the samples towards charge transfer reaction. Flat band potential as well as energy levels of conduction and valence bands were calculated for new and aged samples. These parameters, together with the current voltage response, are crucial information for a comprehensive interpretation of the behaviour of samples.

Prenatal ethanol exposure produces severe changes in brain, liver, and kidney through mechanisms involving growth factors. These molecules regulate survival, differentiation, maintenance, and connectivity of brain, liver, and kidney cells. Despite the abundant available data on the short and mid-lasting effects of ethanol intoxication, only few data show the long-lasting damage induced by early ethanol administration. The aim of this study was to investigate changes in nerve growth factor (NGF), brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in brain areas, liver, and kidney of 18-mo-old male mice exposed perinatally to ethanol at 11% vol or to red wine at the same ethanol concentration. The authors found that ethanol per se elevated NGF, BDNF, HGF, and VEGF measured by ELISA in brain limbic system areas. In the liver, early exposure to ethanol solution and red wine depleted BDNF and VEGF concentrations. In the kidney, red wine exposure only decreased VEGF. In conclusion, the present study shows that, in aged mice, early administration of ethanol solution induced long-lasting damage at growth factor levels in frontal cortex, hippocampus, and liver but not in kidney. Otherwise, in mice exposed to red wine, significant changes were observed in the liver and kidney but not in the hippocampus and frontal cortex. The brain differences in ethanol-induced toxicity when ethanol is administered alone or in red wine may be related to compounds with antioxidant properties present in the red wine.

Abstract The general acceptance of the CO2 geological storage by stakeholders passes through the assessment and mitigation of risks, potentially induced or increased by the disposal activity. Injection of moderate to large quantities of CO2 in the sub-surface may unbalance local stress and trigger earthquakes if faults are critically stressed, condition that is not easily verifiable. Pilot sites are therefore the best way to proceed further in order to address such challenging issues. In such cases, the reconnaissance of faults and seismicity in the sub-surface, before the onset of activity, is mandatory. In this paper, we present studies carried out in the site where the Sotacarbo Fault Lab is going to be installed. This facility will be located in a very low seismic hazard region of central Mediterranean, where reports on historical large earthquakes are poor. We show results from a series of experiments aimed to monitor the background seismicity around the pilot site. As expected, seismicity is almost absent down to small magnitude close to the future injection-test well. Further seismic imaging of the sub-surface layers obtained by ambient noise tomography offers the ability to resolve the presence of a seismicity-free fault located in the first 200 m below the surface, of which the last episode of activity is difficult to assess. Our results encourage the use of this site to follow the response of the system to injection of small quantity of CO2.

Abstract In Concentrated Solar Power Plants, steam turbines controlled with standard Proportional Integrative Derivative (PID) methods may suffer from performance downgrading in power generation when the steam conditions deviate from nominal ones. An enhancement of standard steam turbine controller can be the key to achieve optimal performance also in non-nominal steam conditions. This paper presents the improvement of the PID control concept by exploiting Fuzzy Logic, an artificial intelligence technique that allows taking into account the human experience and knowledge on the system behavior. A real Concentrated Solar Power Plant has been modeled focusing on generated power control loop, its stability and performance analysis, knowledge useful to design a Fuzzy Inference System. A fuzzy logic controller is proposed to continuously adapt the PID parameters, to improve the steam turbine governor action. Its performance is compared to the classical PID tuned according to three different approaches. The fuzzy logic PID controller extends the simplicity of PID and adapts the control action to actual operating condition by providing the system with a sort of “decision-making skill”. The possibility to design implementable algorithms on a Programmable Logic Controller, which have stringent computational speed and memory requirements, has been explicitly taken into account in the developed work, through the minimization of the controller complexity with a reduced number of fuzzy sets and fuzzy rules within the fuzzy inference system.

This paper presents an integrated vehicle model to simulate simultaneously the driver, powertrains, chassis, body, road condition, vehicle dynamics and the Active Suspension (AS) system with/without an energy harvesting module. The developed model is used to investigate the ride comfort and influences of energy harvesting AS system on the total energy consumption of battery Electric Vehicles (EVs) relative to EVs with a passive suspension system. Preliminary simulation results show that compared to EVs with a passive suspension system, the ones with AS system improve ride comfort, up to 31% reduction of the vehicle body acceleration RMS value, with an expense of higher energy consumption. This expense can be reduced to about 2.8% when using an energy harvesting AS system. Simulation results also demonstrate that the available energy for recuperation during the AS system operation is significant in relation to the regenerative braking energy of the propulsion system, up to approx. 70% on bumpy road surfaces.

The study of the biological mechanisms of ethanol reward has greatly suffered from problems to obtain ethanol-induced conditioned place preference (CPP) in rats. In the present study, CPP was obtained in genetically selected Marchigian Sardinian alcohol-preferring (msP) rats, derived from Sardinian alcohol-preferring rats, following intragastric (IG) ethanol administration by means of a permanent IG catheter, but not after intraperitoneal (IP) injection or IG gavage. Rats with permanent IG catheter, received IG administration of 0.35, 0.7, 1.5 or 2.8 g/kg ethanol, as a 10% v/v solution. In ethanol-experienced rats 0.7 or 1.5, but not 0.35 or 2.8 g/kg ethanol significantly increased in comparison to controls the time spent in the ethanol-associated previously non-preferred compartment, which became preferred in the post-conditioning test. In ethanol-naive rats, only 0.7 g/kg ethanol significantly increased the time spent in the ethanol-associated compartment. On the other hand, no effect was observed in alcohol-experienced rats following IG gavage, or IP injection of 0.35, 0.7 or 1.5 g/kg ethanol. The present results provide evidence that ethanol possesses postingestive rewarding properties in msP rats, and that it can reliably induce CPP in them, provided that an appropriate method of administration is adopted.

Abstract The primary goal of the project is to design a lighting system that provides the highest visual comfort and conserves energy for different uses and furniture layouts, which considers that the design of the house will be used by many different users. Indoor system designs vary in layout, goals and optics with two levels of intervention: when initially furnished and during daily use. Lighting is managed by a building automation system, which is equipped with motion and daylight sensors and human interfaces with user scenarios. An outdoor design that requires only a standalone system and is powered by photovoltaic and eolic devices has been developed. All systems incorporate LED technology and have been custom-developed for Med in Italy, which resulted in new patents. Lighting system projects have been involved in several competitions, e.g., Med in Italy placed in the Solar Decathlon in Architecture, Electrical Energy Balance, House Functioning, and Sustainability and took third place in the final ranking. Further research developments are in progress and will be seen in next Solar Decathlon Europe in Paris in 2014. This paper describes the project, installation and analyses of the energy savings that the Medinitaly system can achieve compared with traditional solutions. Simulation data are compared with measured data from the period of the Solar Decathlon competition.