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From the perspective of the recent orientations of virtual geographies, the idea of smart and novelty villages in the context of renovated material rural worlds is conceptualized. The sum of new virtual and new materiality produces virtual and novelty spaces and places, which acquire a precise territorial dimension in the rural policy and politics of smart villages. Smart villages can not only be framed in global smart contexts, but they can also play a fundamental role in de-global territorial horizons as an instrument of resistance to global processes of rural restructuring. The smart political idea or orientation takes shape in each rural community with a different expression in the form of new local materials. The concept of quality virtuality is developed theoretically along three axes: the encounter between smart, novelty and new materials; the smart in the equitable rural community; and the right to disconnection in remote rural areas.

An ever more environmentally conscious society demands the use of green, sustainable and high-efficiency renewable energy resources. However, large-scale energy storage remains a challenge for a deep penetration of power produced from renewables into the grid. The Calcium-Looping (CaL) process, based on the reversible carbonation/calcination of CaO, is a promising technology for thermochemical energy storage (TCES) in Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants. Natural limestone to be used as CaO precursor is cheap, non-toxic and abundant. Nevertheless, recent works have shown that carbonation of CaO derived limestone at optimum conditions for TCES is limited by pore-plugging, which leads to severe deactivation for large enough particles to be employed in practice. In our work, we have synthesized inexpensive CaO/SiO composites by means of a biotemplate method using rice husk as support. The morphological and compositional features of the biomorphic materials synthesized help improve the CaO multicycle activity under optimum CSP storage conditions and for particles sufficiently large to be managed in practical processes. Peer Reviewed

[ES] Los Lodos Rojos son el residuo insoluble de la extracción de alúmina a partir de la bauxita por el proceso Bayer. En Galicia se producen más de 400.000 toneladas anuales de este residuo industrial, constituido fundamentalmente por una mezcla de óxidos e hidróxidos de hierro, óxidos de titanio, cuarzo, con cantidades menores de, arcillas, y otros minerales. El presente trabajo describe el proceso de aprovechamiento industrial de los Lodos Rojos, para obtener ladrillos densos para acumuladores de calor, áridos para carreteras y otros productos cerámicos. Este tipo de materiales, hasta ahora fabricados de forma experimental en el Instituto de Cerámica de Galicia han dado lugar a la creación de una nueva empresa y a la actual construcción y puesta en funcionamiento, de una planta piloto valorada en 200.000.000 Ptas. ubicada en el norte de la Provincia de Lugo. Dicha planta permitirá la fabricación de 20 Tm/día de material para su estudio y comercialización. [EN] The Red Mud is the insoluble residue of the alumina extraction starting from the bauxite for the process Bayer. In Galicia they take place more than 400.000 annual tons of this industrial residue, constituted fundamentally by a mixture of oxides and iron hydroxides, titanium oxides, quartz, and small quantities of clays and other minerals. The present work describes the process of industrial use of the Red Mud, to obtain dense bricks used in heat accumulators, arid for highways and other ceramic products. This type of materials, up to now manufactured in an experimental way in the Institute of Ceramic of Galicia have given place to the creation of a new company and the current construction and setting in operation, of a pilot plant valued in 200.000.000 Ptas. Located in the north of the Province of Lugo, this plant will allow the production of 20 Tm/day of material for its study and commercialisation. Peer reviewed

13 páginas, 7 figuras, 7 tablas. The trace elements (As, B, Ba, Be, Bi, Cd, Co, Cr, Cs, Cu, Ga, Ge, Hg, Li, Mn, Mo, Ni, Pb, Rb, Sb, Se, Sn, Sr, Ta, Th, Tl, U, V, W, Y, Zn, Zr and REE) in a subbituminous coal and their behaviour during combustion in a large power station were characterized by their content and distribution in the fuel (organic and/or inorganic affinities) and in the combustion wastes (partition and volatility). Samples were fractionated by density and magnetic separations and cascade impactors. Quantitative analyses were performed by X-ray diffraction, ICP-MS, ICP-AES, AAS and ICP-AES with hydride generation. Among the findings is the important role of anhydrite (CaSO4) in the sorption of trace elements such as As, B, Ge, Se, Pb, Mo, Zn and Tl from flue gas and in the reduction of emissions of these potentially toxic elements. Calcium oxide has a high sorption capacity for some of the elements studied. This sorption phenomenon and the condensation, mainly as fine fly ash particles, of important fractions of the trace elements during the cooling of flue gas significantly reduce the gaseous emissions of potentially toxic trace elements from coal combustion in the power station studied. The present study has been supported by the European Coal and Steel Community Contract 7220-ED/014 and the Spanish Research Project NAT91-0571. Peer reviewed

This paper provides an overview of the last 40 years of use, and in many cases abuse, of the natural resources in Catalonia, a country that is representative of European countries in general, and especially those in the Mediterranean region. It analyses the use of natural resources made by mining, agriculture, livestock, logging, fishing, nature tourism, and energy production and consumption. This use results in an ecological footprint, i.e., the productive land and sea surface required to generate the consumed resources and absorb the resulting waste, which is about seven times the amount available, a very high number but very similar to other European countries. This overexploitation of natural resources has a huge impact on land and its different forms of cover, air, and water. For the last 25 years, forests and urban areas have each gained almost 3% more of the territory at the expense of agricultural land; those municipalities bordering the sea have increased their number of inhabitants and activity, and although they only occupy 6.7% of the total surface area, they account for 43.3% of the population; air quality has stabilized since the turn of the century, and there has been some improvement in the state of aquatic ecosystems, but still only 36% are in good condition, while the remainder have suffered morphological changes and different forms of nonpoint source pollution; meanwhile the biodiversity of flora and fauna remains still under threat. Environmental policies do not go far enough so there is a need for revision of the legislation related to environmental impact and the protection of natural areas, flora, and fauna. The promotion of environmental research must be accompanied by environmental education to foster a society which is more knowledgeable, has more control and influence over the decisions that deeply affect it. Indeed, nature conservation goes hand in hand with other social and economic challenges that require a more sustainable vision. Today’s problems with nature derive from the current economic model, which is environmentally unsustainable in that it does not take into account environmental impacts. Lastly, we propose a series of reasonable and feasible priority measures and actions related to each use made of the country’s natural resources, to the impacts they have had, and to their management, in the hope that these can contribute to improving the conservation and management of the environment and biodiversity and move towards sustainability.

6 páginas.- 2 figura.- 29 referencias.- 1st Conference on Information Technology for Social Good, GoodIT 2021, Rome 9-11 September 2021 New challenges such as climate change and sustainability arise in society influencing not only environmental issues but human's health directly. To face these new challenges IT technologies and their application to environmental intelligent monitoring become into a powerful tool to set new policies and blueprints to contribute to social good. In the new H2020 project, WatchPlant will provide new tools for environmental intelligence monitoring by the use of plants as "well-being"sensors of the environment they inhabit. This will be possible by equipping plants with a net of communicated wireless self-powered sensors, coupled with artificial intelligence (AI) to become plants into "biohybrid organisms"to test exposure-effects links between plant and the environment. It will become plants into a new tool to be aware of the environment status in a very early stage towards in-situ monitoring. Additionally, the system is devoted to be sustainable and energy-efficient thanks to the use of clean energy sources such as solar cells and a enzymatic biofuel cell (BFC) together with its self-deployment, self-awareness, adaptation, artificial evolution and the AI capabilities. In this concept paper, WatchPlant will envision how to face this challenge by joining interdisciplinary efforts to access the plant sap for energy harvesting and sensing purposes and become plants into "biohybrid organisms"to benefit social good in terms of environmental monitoring in urban scenarios. © 2021 Owner/Author. Project WatchPlant has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the FET grant agreement, no. 101017899 Peer reviewed