Dietary (co)-exposure to mycotoxins is associated with human and animal health concerns as well a... more Dietary (co)-exposure to mycotoxins is associated with human and animal health concerns as well as economic losses. This study aims to give a data-based insight from the scientific literature on the (co-)occurrence of mycotoxins (i.e., parent and modified forms) in European core cereals, and to estimate potential patterns of co-exposure in humans and animals. Mycotoxins were mainly reported in wheat and maize showing the highest concentrations of fumonisins (FBs), deoxynivalenol (DON), aflatoxins (AFs), and zearalenone (ZEN). The maximum concentrations of FB 1 +FB 2 were reported in maize both in feed and food and were above legal maximum levels (MLs). Similar results were observed in DON-food, whose max concentrations in wheat, barley, maize, and oat exceeded the MLs. Co-occurrence was reported in 54.9% of total records, meaning that they were co-contaminated with at least two mycotoxins. In the context of parental mycotoxins, co-occurrence of DON was frequently observed with FBs in maize and ZEN in wheat; DON + NIV and DON + T2/HT2 were frequently reported in barley and oat, respectively. Apart from the occurrence of ZEN and its phase I and phase II modified forms, only a limited number of quantified data were available for other modified forms; i.e., mainly the acetyl derivatives of DON. Data gaps are highlighted together with the need for monitoring studies on multiple mycotoxins to identify co-occurrence patterns for parent mycotoxins, metabolites, and their modified forms.
Climate-change-related extreme events impact ecosystems, people, economy, and infrastructures, wi... more Climate-change-related extreme events impact ecosystems, people, economy, and infrastructures, with important consequences on the real estate market as well. This study aims to investigate the variation of residential buildings’ real estate values in a historic Italian city in relation to the summer surface thermal anomaly pattern and urban features surrounding buildings. Open data from remote sensing products and the national database of the Revenue Agency of Italy were used. Real estate values of residential buildings were spatially analyzed in four urban belts, and the association with daytime summer surface hot- and cool-spot zones was studied through odds ratio (OR) statistic. Urban features (impervious area, tree cover, grassland area, and water body) surrounding residential buildings with different real estate values were also analyzed. Considering the whole Florentine municipality, 13.0% of residential buildings fell into hot-spot zones (only 0.6% into cool-spot ones), chara...
Rioba è un ecosistema hardware e software integrato per costruire una rete di dispositivi conness... more Rioba è un ecosistema hardware e software integrato per costruire una rete di dispositivi connessi, a basso costo, di rilevazione del comfort termico prossimale tramite rilevamento temperature superficiali. Rioba è un'azione di solidarietà per affrontare l'emergenza COVID-19, che ha imposto una profonda revisione delle abitudini e delle informazioni di cui necessitiamo ogni giorno. La confusione sui dati di contagio ha mostrato i limiti dei sistemi di rilevazione attuali, poco integrati e frammentati. Le progressive riaperture dopo il lockdown, necessitano di un sistema automatizzato di strumenti di rilevazione delle temperature individuali e delle condizioni di comfort. Rioba propone un'architettura aperta e senza brevetti, per la gestione automatica dei dati, per facilitare le rilevazioni, ridurre gli errori, i tempi di raccolta e il lavoro manuale delle persone.
Paper proposto https://www.eventi.garr.it/it/conf17 Titolo Un modello DAMA in stile agile: la pro... more Paper proposto https://www.eventi.garr.it/it/conf17 Titolo Un modello DAMA in stile agile: la proposta di Paesaggiaperti.org Autori Luca Corsato [1] , Alfonso Crisci [2], Massimiliano Magli [3] , e Teodoro Georgiadis [4]. Affiliazione [1] opensensorsdata srl (OSD), Via D. Manin 60, Venezia, Italia <em>[email protected]</em> [2] Istituto di Biometerologia, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Firenze, Italia <em>[email protected]</em> [3] Istituto di Biometerologia, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Bologna, Italia <em>[email protected]</em> [4] Istituto di Biometerologia, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche,Bologna, Italia <em>[email protected]</em> Sommario Con l'avvento degli strumenti digitali, all'attuale prassi scientifica nei vari domini della conoscenza ha corrisposto una grande produzione di dati e/o di prodotti intermedi di ricerca. Questi dati sono beni, che possono diventare bene comune, e si ottengono...
This study presents the exposure scenario to mycotoxins of adult population throughout Europe. Th... more This study presents the exposure scenario to mycotoxins of adult population throughout Europe. The urinary biomarkers values were obtained by modelling data from two European projects. Exposure to AFB1, OTA, CIT, FBs, DON, NIV and T2/HT2 are presented. The main output obtained refers to a concern for public health about AFM1, FBs, T2/HT2 and NIV, and low concern for OTA, DON and CIT. The margin of exposure for AFM1 did not respect the reference value of 10,000 considered of low priority for risk; for Fusarium toxins, FBs and T2/HT2, probable daily intake (PDI) values resulted about ten times higher than their tolerable daily intake and NIV presented the most critical situation with a calculated PDI 30 times higher than the reference TDI value. North and South Europe scenarios were also depicted by clustering biomonitoring data. OTA and DON showed to be prevalent in Northern countries and the opposite was noticed for ZEN, higher in Southern countries. The critical issues of the avail...
The monitoring system of hunting currently adopted in Latium Region has proved largely inadequate... more The monitoring system of hunting currently adopted in Latium Region has proved largely inadequate for efficient wildlife planning the following reasons: it allows to verify aspects of qualitative / quantitative hunting only in retrospect; not conducive to suspension or extension of the harvest in real time; the implementation of the data is extremely laborious and for this reason carried out in a discontinuous manner; the results are not transparent and accessible in real time. It is proposed to implement a daily withdrawal data in an appropriate official web site. IX INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON WILD FAUNA KOŠICE (Slovakia) September 15-19, 2015 BOOK OF ABSTRACTS 12 to planned withdrawal) are verified at the end of the hunting season. It should not be underestimated for those species undergoing decline (for example: Alectoris graeca orlandoi, hunted but not included in the hunting schedule of Lazio-Amici et al., 2007), which distribution area is unknown (i. e. Lepus corsicanus-Adriani et al., 2014) or in a not defined conservation status. DISCUSSION It is believed that the hunting badge currently used does not guarantee what is required by law, neither promotes a sustainable wildlife management, for the following reasons: a) in the card is not included an indication of the planned sites of killing; The scale used is that of the ATC, far too wide to describe the spatial distribution of the harvest; b) the paper badge does not allow the ongoing verification of the amount harvested. Even with the annual plans of settling fauna, you can not confirm the level of completion, if not final. Under such conditions, some species could suffer withdrawal unsustainable (both quantitatively as absolute density of withdrawal); c) not all municipalities send badges to the province, and apply appropriate sanctions to defaulters; d) the hunting badge that arrive in the province are processed intermittently over the years. This is because of the inherent excessive hard work that requires the implementation of the data on file. This problem is likely to worsen in response to the current dismantling of the provinces; e) The ATC does not define the density of hunters in the areas of competence based on the size of the harvest denounced. Use badges simply to count those who have practiced as in the previous hunting season. CONCLUSION It is proposed to improve the system adopted: the paper badge, appropriately simplified, should remain for annotations and verification on the field. Reliefs should be entered into a daily official web site. This data should be accompanied by detailed instructions (ex. : name / coordinates of the harvest; species, sex, age, particularities of the slaughtered animal, etc.). This would allow the analysis of the dynamics involved. In cases where the right circumstances it would be possible to suspend and / or extend the practice of hunting. The summary of the data would be transparent and available for all institutions.
Mycotoxins are toxic compounds mainly produced by fungi of the genera Aspergillus, Penicillium an... more Mycotoxins are toxic compounds mainly produced by fungi of the genera Aspergillus, Penicillium and Fusarium. They are present, often as mixtures, in many feed and food commodities including cereals, fruits and vegetables. Their ubiquitous presence represents a major challenge to the health and well being of humans and animals. Hundreds of compounds are listed as possible mycotoxins occurring in raw and processed materials destined for human food and animal feed. In this study, mycotoxins of major toxicological relevance to humans and target animal species were investigated in a range of crops of interest (and their derived products). Extensive Literature Searches (ELSs) were undertaken for data collection on: (i) ecology and interaction with host plants of mycotoxin producing fungi, mycotoxin production, recent developments in mitigation actions of mycotoxins in crop chains (maize, small grains, rice, sorghum, grapes, spices and nuts), (ii) analytical methods for native, modified and co-occurring mycotoxins (iii) toxicity, toxicokinetics, toxicodynamics and biomarkers relevant to humans and animals (poultry, suidae (pig, wild boar), bovidae (sheep, goat, cow, buffalo), rodents (rats, mice) and others (horses, dogs), (iv) modelling approaches and key reference values for exposure, hazard and risk modelling. Comprehensive databases were created using EFSA templates and were stored in the MYCHIF platform. A range of approaches were implemented to explore the modelling of external and internal exposure as well as dose-response of mycotoxins in chicken and pigs. In vitro toxicokinetic and in vivo toxicity databases were exploited, both for single compounds and mixtures. However, large data gaps were identified particularly with regards to absence of common statistical and study designs within the literature and constitute an obstacle for the harmonisation of internal exposure and dose-response modelling. Finally, risk characterisation was also performed for humans as well as for two animal species (i.e. pigs and chicken) using available tools for the modelling of internal dose and a component-based approach for selected mycotoxins mixtures.
Dietary (co)-exposure to mycotoxins is associated with human and animal health concerns as well a... more Dietary (co)-exposure to mycotoxins is associated with human and animal health concerns as well as economic losses. This study aims to give a data-based insight from the scientific literature on the (co-)occurrence of mycotoxins (i.e., parent and modified forms) in European core cereals, and to estimate potential patterns of co-exposure in humans and animals. Mycotoxins were mainly reported in wheat and maize showing the highest concentrations of fumonisins (FBs), deoxynivalenol (DON), aflatoxins (AFs), and zearalenone (ZEN). The maximum concentrations of FB1+FB2 were reported in maize both in feed and food and were above legal maximum levels (MLs). Similar results were observed in DON-food, whose max concentrations in wheat, barley, maize, and oat exceeded the MLs. Co-occurrence was reported in 54.9% of total records, meaning that they were co-contaminated with at least two mycotoxins. In the context of parental mycotoxins, co-occurrence of DON was frequently observed with FBs in m...
Face to the urban resiliency two major environmental threats are widely recognized: the increasin... more Face to the urban resiliency two major environmental threats are widely recognized: the increasing summer air temperatures and the soil consumption that affects a large number of city in Italy. The work have the goal to present preliminary the actual Heat Summer Risk defined by using Crichton's Risk Triangle (Crichton, 1999) on the second Italian level of administration (ADM2 - Province). For each administrative unit we have considered as hazard layer the most recent trend of summer air temperature assessed (1980-2014); the exposure layer is individuated by the amount of population living in each province and finally as vulnerable layer the mean degree of soil consumption expressed in percentage was considered. Thanks to these information Crichton's methodology are able to give a quantitative risk value index further classified in five risk class. Data sources was provided by several authoritative institutions : (i) ISPRA ( Italian National Institute for Environmental Protec...
GPS collars for wildlife provide a large amount of spatio-temporal location data and are frequent... more GPS collars for wildlife provide a large amount of spatio-temporal location data and are frequently equipped with sensors that record the animal-level environmental temperature at a schedulable sampling frequency. The simultaneous collection of environmental temperature and animal location may contribute not only to deepen the understanding of animal behavior in different climatic conditions, but also to increase the knowledge of climate features in inaccessible areas. The measurement of environmental temperature provided by the sensors, however, can be biased by several factors (e.g., surface temperature of the animal, direct solar radiation, precipitation), so in-depth studies are required to verify the correlation. The aim of this study was to identify an equation for correcting the collar-recorded temperature data, allowing to improve and refine the results obtained by the analysis of spatial data and to highlight the environmental factors having the greatest impact on the accuracy of the measures. Temperature data from GPS collars were obtained within a research on spatial behavior on 11 hinds while spatialized temperature data were obtained from LAMMA-IBIMET dataset. These data showed high correlation and an identical trend, although the GPS collar temperature data was always higher. This model could represent a tool to obtain an accurate measurement of temperatures in complex geographical areas with wild animals but low density of weather stations. The availability of corrected temperature data, recorded simultaneously with the animal location, could be useful for a more accurate comprehension of animal behavior in free-ranging conditions, both in case of forthcoming studies and to valorize existing datasets.
Rendiconti Online della Società Geologica Italiana, 2018
The detection of the rainfall events is part of the Tuscany Region administration project, which ... more The detection of the rainfall events is part of the Tuscany Region administration project, which aims to detect shallow landslides triggered by heavy rainfall events. The project has followed two main linked objectives: (i) acquiring knowledge on shallow landslides and their relationships with the triggering weather events. (ii) provide indepth knowledge of the main intense precipitation events occurring inrecent years in Tuscany. At present, the study includes spatial analysis of 70 intense precipitation events from 2004 to 2016. For such events, a spatial statistical analysis allowed to highlight the most affected areas. In order to outline these areas, the cumulative precipitation measured at the rain gauges was assessed for each event, and it was correlated to return values of rainfall events of the same duration andfor different return times. Thus, the exceptionality of the events on the territory has been related to the time series of every rain gauge. A unique threshold parameter was defined by identifying areas where the precipitation exceeded a given return time value (related to the duration of the event) for the stations within the identified area. The parameters (a and n) of the power law that regulates the relationshipbetween rainfall height and precipitation duration for a given return time (h (t) = a × t n) have been provided by the Centro Funzionale Regionale (CFR). So for each rainfall event of different duration (24-48-72-96 hours) and for different return times (2, 5, 10, 20, 30, 50, 100, 150, 200 and 500 years), rainfall level have been calculated. Once the rain gauges most affected by the event have been identified, a simple buffer helped to highlight the main affected area. In the case of eventswhere some stations exceeded the 10-year Return Time (RT), it was preferred to process both the areas that enclosed these stations and the buffer with the gauges where the rainfall level exceeded the RT of 5 years, both being very significant from a point of view of the entity’s ‘event. Same for events with RT thresholds exceeded at 2 and 5 years.
In the last few years, high-resolution imaging of vineyards, obtained by unmanned aerial vehicle ... more In the last few years, high-resolution imaging of vineyards, obtained by unmanned aerial vehicle recognitions, has provided new opportunities to obtain valuable information for precision farming applications. While available semi-automatic image processing algorithms are now able to detect parcels and extract vine rows from aerial images, the identification of single plant inside the rows is a problem still unaddressed. This study presents a new methodology for the segmentation of vine rows in virtual shapes, each representing a real plant. From the virtual shapes, an extensive set of features is discussed, extracted and coupled to a statistical classifier, to evaluate its performance in missing plant detection within a vineyard parcel. Passing from continuous images to a discrete set of individual plants results in a crucial simplification of the statistical investigation of the problem.
Weather conditions are an important factor that influences everyday life and decision making in s... more Weather conditions are an important factor that influences everyday life and decision making in specialized fields like agriculture, industry, transportation, water management etc. Often decisions are taken under uncertain information due to the probabilistic nature of weather forecasting which is inherently uncertain. This makes the communication task very challenging for forecasters attempting to communicate the uncertainties surrounding the predicted event. This is particularly true for precipitation forecasts, since precipitation is perceived by general public as the most important weather component influencing decisions. In many countries precipitation forecasts are conveyed through probabilistic information while in others, like Italy, through linguistic expressions. In both cases lay people should interpret uncertainty to make decisions. This work examine two years of current day weather bulletins for Tuscany Region (n:772 issues, from July 2009 to August 2011), provided by t...
ABSTRACT L&#39; impianto consente il riscaldamento del terreno o del substrato dei bancali sf... more ABSTRACT L&#39; impianto consente il riscaldamento del terreno o del substrato dei bancali sfruttando non il gasolio bensì l&#39; elettricità. I vantaggi, oltre all&#39; elevata efficienza energetica, sono legati alla semplicità strutturale e d&#39; installazione, nonché ai costi contenuti sia d&#39; impianto sia di manutenzione.
Dietary (co)-exposure to mycotoxins is associated with human and animal health concerns as well a... more Dietary (co)-exposure to mycotoxins is associated with human and animal health concerns as well as economic losses. This study aims to give a data-based insight from the scientific literature on the (co-)occurrence of mycotoxins (i.e., parent and modified forms) in European core cereals, and to estimate potential patterns of co-exposure in humans and animals. Mycotoxins were mainly reported in wheat and maize showing the highest concentrations of fumonisins (FBs), deoxynivalenol (DON), aflatoxins (AFs), and zearalenone (ZEN). The maximum concentrations of FB 1 +FB 2 were reported in maize both in feed and food and were above legal maximum levels (MLs). Similar results were observed in DON-food, whose max concentrations in wheat, barley, maize, and oat exceeded the MLs. Co-occurrence was reported in 54.9% of total records, meaning that they were co-contaminated with at least two mycotoxins. In the context of parental mycotoxins, co-occurrence of DON was frequently observed with FBs in maize and ZEN in wheat; DON + NIV and DON + T2/HT2 were frequently reported in barley and oat, respectively. Apart from the occurrence of ZEN and its phase I and phase II modified forms, only a limited number of quantified data were available for other modified forms; i.e., mainly the acetyl derivatives of DON. Data gaps are highlighted together with the need for monitoring studies on multiple mycotoxins to identify co-occurrence patterns for parent mycotoxins, metabolites, and their modified forms.
Climate-change-related extreme events impact ecosystems, people, economy, and infrastructures, wi... more Climate-change-related extreme events impact ecosystems, people, economy, and infrastructures, with important consequences on the real estate market as well. This study aims to investigate the variation of residential buildings’ real estate values in a historic Italian city in relation to the summer surface thermal anomaly pattern and urban features surrounding buildings. Open data from remote sensing products and the national database of the Revenue Agency of Italy were used. Real estate values of residential buildings were spatially analyzed in four urban belts, and the association with daytime summer surface hot- and cool-spot zones was studied through odds ratio (OR) statistic. Urban features (impervious area, tree cover, grassland area, and water body) surrounding residential buildings with different real estate values were also analyzed. Considering the whole Florentine municipality, 13.0% of residential buildings fell into hot-spot zones (only 0.6% into cool-spot ones), chara...
Rioba è un ecosistema hardware e software integrato per costruire una rete di dispositivi conness... more Rioba è un ecosistema hardware e software integrato per costruire una rete di dispositivi connessi, a basso costo, di rilevazione del comfort termico prossimale tramite rilevamento temperature superficiali. Rioba è un'azione di solidarietà per affrontare l'emergenza COVID-19, che ha imposto una profonda revisione delle abitudini e delle informazioni di cui necessitiamo ogni giorno. La confusione sui dati di contagio ha mostrato i limiti dei sistemi di rilevazione attuali, poco integrati e frammentati. Le progressive riaperture dopo il lockdown, necessitano di un sistema automatizzato di strumenti di rilevazione delle temperature individuali e delle condizioni di comfort. Rioba propone un'architettura aperta e senza brevetti, per la gestione automatica dei dati, per facilitare le rilevazioni, ridurre gli errori, i tempi di raccolta e il lavoro manuale delle persone.
Paper proposto https://www.eventi.garr.it/it/conf17 Titolo Un modello DAMA in stile agile: la pro... more Paper proposto https://www.eventi.garr.it/it/conf17 Titolo Un modello DAMA in stile agile: la proposta di Paesaggiaperti.org Autori Luca Corsato [1] , Alfonso Crisci [2], Massimiliano Magli [3] , e Teodoro Georgiadis [4]. Affiliazione [1] opensensorsdata srl (OSD), Via D. Manin 60, Venezia, Italia <em>[email protected]</em> [2] Istituto di Biometerologia, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Firenze, Italia <em>[email protected]</em> [3] Istituto di Biometerologia, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Bologna, Italia <em>[email protected]</em> [4] Istituto di Biometerologia, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche,Bologna, Italia <em>[email protected]</em> Sommario Con l'avvento degli strumenti digitali, all'attuale prassi scientifica nei vari domini della conoscenza ha corrisposto una grande produzione di dati e/o di prodotti intermedi di ricerca. Questi dati sono beni, che possono diventare bene comune, e si ottengono...
This study presents the exposure scenario to mycotoxins of adult population throughout Europe. Th... more This study presents the exposure scenario to mycotoxins of adult population throughout Europe. The urinary biomarkers values were obtained by modelling data from two European projects. Exposure to AFB1, OTA, CIT, FBs, DON, NIV and T2/HT2 are presented. The main output obtained refers to a concern for public health about AFM1, FBs, T2/HT2 and NIV, and low concern for OTA, DON and CIT. The margin of exposure for AFM1 did not respect the reference value of 10,000 considered of low priority for risk; for Fusarium toxins, FBs and T2/HT2, probable daily intake (PDI) values resulted about ten times higher than their tolerable daily intake and NIV presented the most critical situation with a calculated PDI 30 times higher than the reference TDI value. North and South Europe scenarios were also depicted by clustering biomonitoring data. OTA and DON showed to be prevalent in Northern countries and the opposite was noticed for ZEN, higher in Southern countries. The critical issues of the avail...
The monitoring system of hunting currently adopted in Latium Region has proved largely inadequate... more The monitoring system of hunting currently adopted in Latium Region has proved largely inadequate for efficient wildlife planning the following reasons: it allows to verify aspects of qualitative / quantitative hunting only in retrospect; not conducive to suspension or extension of the harvest in real time; the implementation of the data is extremely laborious and for this reason carried out in a discontinuous manner; the results are not transparent and accessible in real time. It is proposed to implement a daily withdrawal data in an appropriate official web site. IX INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON WILD FAUNA KOŠICE (Slovakia) September 15-19, 2015 BOOK OF ABSTRACTS 12 to planned withdrawal) are verified at the end of the hunting season. It should not be underestimated for those species undergoing decline (for example: Alectoris graeca orlandoi, hunted but not included in the hunting schedule of Lazio-Amici et al., 2007), which distribution area is unknown (i. e. Lepus corsicanus-Adriani et al., 2014) or in a not defined conservation status. DISCUSSION It is believed that the hunting badge currently used does not guarantee what is required by law, neither promotes a sustainable wildlife management, for the following reasons: a) in the card is not included an indication of the planned sites of killing; The scale used is that of the ATC, far too wide to describe the spatial distribution of the harvest; b) the paper badge does not allow the ongoing verification of the amount harvested. Even with the annual plans of settling fauna, you can not confirm the level of completion, if not final. Under such conditions, some species could suffer withdrawal unsustainable (both quantitatively as absolute density of withdrawal); c) not all municipalities send badges to the province, and apply appropriate sanctions to defaulters; d) the hunting badge that arrive in the province are processed intermittently over the years. This is because of the inherent excessive hard work that requires the implementation of the data on file. This problem is likely to worsen in response to the current dismantling of the provinces; e) The ATC does not define the density of hunters in the areas of competence based on the size of the harvest denounced. Use badges simply to count those who have practiced as in the previous hunting season. CONCLUSION It is proposed to improve the system adopted: the paper badge, appropriately simplified, should remain for annotations and verification on the field. Reliefs should be entered into a daily official web site. This data should be accompanied by detailed instructions (ex. : name / coordinates of the harvest; species, sex, age, particularities of the slaughtered animal, etc.). This would allow the analysis of the dynamics involved. In cases where the right circumstances it would be possible to suspend and / or extend the practice of hunting. The summary of the data would be transparent and available for all institutions.
Mycotoxins are toxic compounds mainly produced by fungi of the genera Aspergillus, Penicillium an... more Mycotoxins are toxic compounds mainly produced by fungi of the genera Aspergillus, Penicillium and Fusarium. They are present, often as mixtures, in many feed and food commodities including cereals, fruits and vegetables. Their ubiquitous presence represents a major challenge to the health and well being of humans and animals. Hundreds of compounds are listed as possible mycotoxins occurring in raw and processed materials destined for human food and animal feed. In this study, mycotoxins of major toxicological relevance to humans and target animal species were investigated in a range of crops of interest (and their derived products). Extensive Literature Searches (ELSs) were undertaken for data collection on: (i) ecology and interaction with host plants of mycotoxin producing fungi, mycotoxin production, recent developments in mitigation actions of mycotoxins in crop chains (maize, small grains, rice, sorghum, grapes, spices and nuts), (ii) analytical methods for native, modified and co-occurring mycotoxins (iii) toxicity, toxicokinetics, toxicodynamics and biomarkers relevant to humans and animals (poultry, suidae (pig, wild boar), bovidae (sheep, goat, cow, buffalo), rodents (rats, mice) and others (horses, dogs), (iv) modelling approaches and key reference values for exposure, hazard and risk modelling. Comprehensive databases were created using EFSA templates and were stored in the MYCHIF platform. A range of approaches were implemented to explore the modelling of external and internal exposure as well as dose-response of mycotoxins in chicken and pigs. In vitro toxicokinetic and in vivo toxicity databases were exploited, both for single compounds and mixtures. However, large data gaps were identified particularly with regards to absence of common statistical and study designs within the literature and constitute an obstacle for the harmonisation of internal exposure and dose-response modelling. Finally, risk characterisation was also performed for humans as well as for two animal species (i.e. pigs and chicken) using available tools for the modelling of internal dose and a component-based approach for selected mycotoxins mixtures.
Dietary (co)-exposure to mycotoxins is associated with human and animal health concerns as well a... more Dietary (co)-exposure to mycotoxins is associated with human and animal health concerns as well as economic losses. This study aims to give a data-based insight from the scientific literature on the (co-)occurrence of mycotoxins (i.e., parent and modified forms) in European core cereals, and to estimate potential patterns of co-exposure in humans and animals. Mycotoxins were mainly reported in wheat and maize showing the highest concentrations of fumonisins (FBs), deoxynivalenol (DON), aflatoxins (AFs), and zearalenone (ZEN). The maximum concentrations of FB1+FB2 were reported in maize both in feed and food and were above legal maximum levels (MLs). Similar results were observed in DON-food, whose max concentrations in wheat, barley, maize, and oat exceeded the MLs. Co-occurrence was reported in 54.9% of total records, meaning that they were co-contaminated with at least two mycotoxins. In the context of parental mycotoxins, co-occurrence of DON was frequently observed with FBs in m...
Face to the urban resiliency two major environmental threats are widely recognized: the increasin... more Face to the urban resiliency two major environmental threats are widely recognized: the increasing summer air temperatures and the soil consumption that affects a large number of city in Italy. The work have the goal to present preliminary the actual Heat Summer Risk defined by using Crichton's Risk Triangle (Crichton, 1999) on the second Italian level of administration (ADM2 - Province). For each administrative unit we have considered as hazard layer the most recent trend of summer air temperature assessed (1980-2014); the exposure layer is individuated by the amount of population living in each province and finally as vulnerable layer the mean degree of soil consumption expressed in percentage was considered. Thanks to these information Crichton's methodology are able to give a quantitative risk value index further classified in five risk class. Data sources was provided by several authoritative institutions : (i) ISPRA ( Italian National Institute for Environmental Protec...
GPS collars for wildlife provide a large amount of spatio-temporal location data and are frequent... more GPS collars for wildlife provide a large amount of spatio-temporal location data and are frequently equipped with sensors that record the animal-level environmental temperature at a schedulable sampling frequency. The simultaneous collection of environmental temperature and animal location may contribute not only to deepen the understanding of animal behavior in different climatic conditions, but also to increase the knowledge of climate features in inaccessible areas. The measurement of environmental temperature provided by the sensors, however, can be biased by several factors (e.g., surface temperature of the animal, direct solar radiation, precipitation), so in-depth studies are required to verify the correlation. The aim of this study was to identify an equation for correcting the collar-recorded temperature data, allowing to improve and refine the results obtained by the analysis of spatial data and to highlight the environmental factors having the greatest impact on the accuracy of the measures. Temperature data from GPS collars were obtained within a research on spatial behavior on 11 hinds while spatialized temperature data were obtained from LAMMA-IBIMET dataset. These data showed high correlation and an identical trend, although the GPS collar temperature data was always higher. This model could represent a tool to obtain an accurate measurement of temperatures in complex geographical areas with wild animals but low density of weather stations. The availability of corrected temperature data, recorded simultaneously with the animal location, could be useful for a more accurate comprehension of animal behavior in free-ranging conditions, both in case of forthcoming studies and to valorize existing datasets.
Rendiconti Online della Società Geologica Italiana, 2018
The detection of the rainfall events is part of the Tuscany Region administration project, which ... more The detection of the rainfall events is part of the Tuscany Region administration project, which aims to detect shallow landslides triggered by heavy rainfall events. The project has followed two main linked objectives: (i) acquiring knowledge on shallow landslides and their relationships with the triggering weather events. (ii) provide indepth knowledge of the main intense precipitation events occurring inrecent years in Tuscany. At present, the study includes spatial analysis of 70 intense precipitation events from 2004 to 2016. For such events, a spatial statistical analysis allowed to highlight the most affected areas. In order to outline these areas, the cumulative precipitation measured at the rain gauges was assessed for each event, and it was correlated to return values of rainfall events of the same duration andfor different return times. Thus, the exceptionality of the events on the territory has been related to the time series of every rain gauge. A unique threshold parameter was defined by identifying areas where the precipitation exceeded a given return time value (related to the duration of the event) for the stations within the identified area. The parameters (a and n) of the power law that regulates the relationshipbetween rainfall height and precipitation duration for a given return time (h (t) = a × t n) have been provided by the Centro Funzionale Regionale (CFR). So for each rainfall event of different duration (24-48-72-96 hours) and for different return times (2, 5, 10, 20, 30, 50, 100, 150, 200 and 500 years), rainfall level have been calculated. Once the rain gauges most affected by the event have been identified, a simple buffer helped to highlight the main affected area. In the case of eventswhere some stations exceeded the 10-year Return Time (RT), it was preferred to process both the areas that enclosed these stations and the buffer with the gauges where the rainfall level exceeded the RT of 5 years, both being very significant from a point of view of the entity’s ‘event. Same for events with RT thresholds exceeded at 2 and 5 years.
In the last few years, high-resolution imaging of vineyards, obtained by unmanned aerial vehicle ... more In the last few years, high-resolution imaging of vineyards, obtained by unmanned aerial vehicle recognitions, has provided new opportunities to obtain valuable information for precision farming applications. While available semi-automatic image processing algorithms are now able to detect parcels and extract vine rows from aerial images, the identification of single plant inside the rows is a problem still unaddressed. This study presents a new methodology for the segmentation of vine rows in virtual shapes, each representing a real plant. From the virtual shapes, an extensive set of features is discussed, extracted and coupled to a statistical classifier, to evaluate its performance in missing plant detection within a vineyard parcel. Passing from continuous images to a discrete set of individual plants results in a crucial simplification of the statistical investigation of the problem.
Weather conditions are an important factor that influences everyday life and decision making in s... more Weather conditions are an important factor that influences everyday life and decision making in specialized fields like agriculture, industry, transportation, water management etc. Often decisions are taken under uncertain information due to the probabilistic nature of weather forecasting which is inherently uncertain. This makes the communication task very challenging for forecasters attempting to communicate the uncertainties surrounding the predicted event. This is particularly true for precipitation forecasts, since precipitation is perceived by general public as the most important weather component influencing decisions. In many countries precipitation forecasts are conveyed through probabilistic information while in others, like Italy, through linguistic expressions. In both cases lay people should interpret uncertainty to make decisions. This work examine two years of current day weather bulletins for Tuscany Region (n:772 issues, from July 2009 to August 2011), provided by t...
ABSTRACT L&#39; impianto consente il riscaldamento del terreno o del substrato dei bancali sf... more ABSTRACT L&#39; impianto consente il riscaldamento del terreno o del substrato dei bancali sfruttando non il gasolio bensì l&#39; elettricità. I vantaggi, oltre all&#39; elevata efficienza energetica, sono legati alla semplicità strutturale e d&#39; installazione, nonché ai costi contenuti sia d&#39; impianto sia di manutenzione.
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