Low-cost sensors are useful tools for the collection of air quality data, augmenting the existing regulatory monitoring networks and providing an unprecedented opportunity to increase their spatial ...coverage. This study presents a calibration process of a low-cost PM sensor (PurpleAir PA-II, PAir) in ambient conditions in the city of Patras, Greece, during 18 months of 2017–2018.
The hourly PM1 and PM2.5 measurements using the original sensor values were reasonably well correlated (R2 = 0.82 for PM1 and R2 = 0.56 for PM2.5) with the reference instrument, but with a high mean bias and root mean square error. There was a small improvement of around 10% for the daily averages. For PM1–2.5 (particles with diameters between 1 and 2.5 μm), PM2.5–10 (diameters between 2.5 and 10 μm) and PM10, the performance of the low-cost sensors was poor in this area with R2 < 0.37 in all cases.
The response of the PAir sensor for PM1 and PM2.5 changed significantly compared to the reference instrument during periods with high dust (or other coarse particle) concentrations. These periods were excluded and a simple linear calibration was then developed for the rest of the fine PM measurements. A method for the identification of these high dust periods based on regional model predictions is proposed. This calibration reduces the relative mean error for hourly PM1 to 19% (1.1 μg m−3) and for PM2.5 to 18% (1.1 μg m−3). The corresponding root mean square errors are 25% (1.4 μg m−3) for hourly PM1 and 25% (1.6 μg m−3) for PM2.5. The biases of the corrected values are, as expected, practically zero. Surprisingly, the relative humidity had a negligible effect on fine PM measurements of the PAir in this location and for the conditions of the study.
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•Low-cost PM sensors were calibrated in ambient conditions.•The original sensor values were reasonably well correlated.•The sensor response was different during periods with high dust.•The relative humidity had a negligible effect on fine PMs.
Soil loss by water is a major form of land degradation with environmental and economic consequences. In particular, erosion rates are sensitive to both climate and land cover changes. The present ...study investigates the temporal changes in soil loss rate over South Europe during the 1980–2018 period. To that end, the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) was applied by integrating information from freely available geospatial datasets to conduct a multi-decadal assessment. In this frame, the temporal variability of the two dynamic RUSLE factors, namely rainfall erosivity (R) and cover management (C), was explored. Specifically, the rainfall erosivity values per decade were acquired from a newly developed dataset from the European Soil Data Center (ESDAC), coupling the Rainfall Erosivity Database at European Scale (REDES) and UERRA regional reanalysis rainfall data. On the other hand, land cover data were retrieved from the CORINE dataset (CLC) through the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service for different reference years. The appropriate values were assigned to each CLC category per country according to the recent literature to determine the C-factor. In terms of the other three static RUSLE factors, namely soil erodibility (K), slope length and steepness (LS) and support practice (P), these were obtained from the ESDAC database by exploiting the results of previous pan-European assessments. The results indicate that the mean annual soil erosion rates in South Europe were 6.82, 4.90, 4.89 and 5.26 t/ha/year for the decades 1981–1990, 1991–2000, 2001–2010 and 2011–2018, respectively.
•Frame professional hosting in STR platforms to contribute to regulation discourses.•Professional hosts are the leading figures in STR market.•Southern European cities suffer for the massive presence ...of Airbnb listings.•Cluster analysis aims recognizing several business-oriented approaches within hosts.•Propose of a new methodology to help structure shared regulative frameworks.
Professionalisation in accommodation platforms is changing the short-term rental market worldwide. During the past decade, till today, Airbnb has been the leader in this economic sector, its spread has been a central issue in urban dynamics related to the several discomforts it has caused in cities. Recently, the professionalisation of its users has popped up as an additional issue to be dealt with. The professionalisation process has changed the internal structure of Airbnb from a peer-to-peer platform to a business-to-consumer one. Despite the growing attention to this trend, regulatory frameworks across cities still do not have policies to deal with this specific issue. This article proposes a data-driven methodology to identify the different economic approaches of professional hosts for contributing to the debate on professionalisation in short-term rental studies and provide new insights into the regulation debate. The proposed methodology consists of a cluster analysis applied to 2019 Airbnb data (from the AirDNA dataset) in eight Southern European cities: Lisbon, Porto, Madrid, Seville, Rome, Naples, Athens and Thessaloniki. The results highlight four clusters that describe different economic approaches of Airbnb hosts recognisable in each city. The findings offer a novel and clear entry point to understand the professional hosts' economic strategies, which can inform policies to regulate their market, as well as advancing knowledge in the field of critical geographies of housing.
The EU recent energy policies aim to rapidly transition to a sustainable and citizen-centric energy system. However, most regulations do not fully acknowledge the social aspect of the energy ...transition. The relationship between collective energy action (energy citizenship) and the just transition framework requires further examination. This paper aims to explore the relationship between just transition and energy citizenship in Southern European collective energy actions, showcasing their association and varied impacts based on agency dynamics, contextual factors, and governance models. It also proposes new tools and analytical lenses to assess and govern place-based collective energy actions, complementing policy-making efforts.
The EU recent energy policies aim to rapidly transition to a sustainable and citizen-centric energy system. However, most regulations do not fully acknowledge the social aspect of the energy ...transition. The relationship between collective energy action (energy citizenship) and the just transition framework requires further examination. This paper aims to explore the relationship between just transition and energy citizenship in Southern European collective energy actions, showcasing their association and varied impacts based on agency dynamics, contextual factors, and governance models. It also proposes new tools and analytical lenses to assess and govern place-based collective energy actions, complementing policy-making efforts.
In this paper new data on distribution and new taxonomic status of the caddisfly Triaenodes ochreellus lefkas are given. DNA barcoding data are also included into defining new status of the species ...Triaenodes lefkas stat. nov. Data from DNA barcoding analyses of 60 specimens from the genus Triaenodes from the BOLD database show certain taxonomic peculiarities in specimens of T. unanimis from Japan.
This paper provides new insights into the relationships between income inequality and residential segregation between socioeconomic groups by undertaking a comparative study of European urban ...regions. In Europe, income inequalities are the lowest in North Europe and the highest in South Europe. In many East European countries, a switch from low inequality to high inequality has taken place. The main findings show that changes in the levels of residential segregation between socioeconomic groups correlate to changes in the levels of income inequality found approximately 10 years earlier, that is, with a time lag.
In the last years the tourist hospitality sector faced substantial changes due to the digital revolution carried on by platforms such as Airbnb. In almost a decade Airbnb consolidated its position as ...a principal channel in the short-term rental market. Over this period, it faced a series of internal changes regarding the composition of the hosts. Property managers, real estate firms, and tourism hospitality professionals used Airbnb as a preferential channel to their business establishing a professional offer within the platform. This dynamic highly disadvantaged smallest and non-professional hosts. This article analyzes the category of professional host highlighting how, even during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic (2020), they had maintained their leading position experiencing the best performances.
Purpose
Despite an acknowledged dearth of data on serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) concentrations from Southern European countries, inter-country comparison is hampered by inconsistent data ...reporting. The purpose of the current study was to conduct a systematic literature review of available data on serum 25(OH)D concentrations and estimate vitamin D status in Southern European and Eastern Mediterranean countries, both at a population level and within key population subgroups, stratified by age, sex, season and country.
Methods
A systematic review of the literature was conducted to identify and retrieve scientific articles reporting data on serum 25(OH)D concentration and/or vitamin D status following standard procedures.
Results
Data were extracted from 107 studies, stratified by sex and age group, representing 630,093 individuals. More than one-third of the studies reported mean 25(OH)D concentrations below 50 nmol/L and ~ 10% reported mean serum 25(OH)D concentrations below 25 nmol/L. Overall, females, neonates/ infants and adolescents had the higher prevalence of poor vitamin D status. As expected, there was considerable variability between studies. Specifically, mean 25(OH)D ranged from 6.0 (in Italian centenarians) to 158 nmol/L (in elderly Turkish men); the prevalence of serum 25(OH)D < 50 nmol/L ranged from 6.8 to 97.9% (in Italian neonates).
Conclusions
Contrary to expectations, there was a high prevalence of low vitamin D status in the Southern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean regions, despite abundant sunshine. These data further emphasize the need for strategies, such as fortification of foods with vitamin D and/or vitamin D supplementation, which will be tailored to the needs of specific population groups with higher risk of insufficiency or deficiency, to efficiently tackle the pandemic of hypovitaminosis D in Europe.
Portugal, which is located in the west limit of the Mediterranean subtropics, is a small region with a complex orography with large precipitation gradients and interannual variability. In this study, ...the newer and higher resolution regional climate simulations, covering Portugal, are evaluated in present climate and used to investigate the rainfall projections for the end of the twenty-first century, following the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 emission scenarios. The EURO-CORDEX historical simulations, at 0.11° and at 0.44° resolution, are evaluated against gridded observations of precipitation, which allows the assembly of four multi-model ensembles. An extra simulation, at even higher resolution (9 km) with WRF is also analysed. In present climate, the models are able to describe the precipitation temporal and spatial patterns as well its distributions, although there is a large spread and an overestimation of larger rainfall quantiles. The multi-model ensembles show that selecting the best performing models adds quality to the overall representation of rainfall. The high-resolution simulations augment the spatial details of precipitation, but objectively do not seem to add value with respect to the coarse resolution. Regarding the RCP8.5 scenario, WRF and the multi-model ensembles consistently predict important losses of precipitation in Portugal in spring, summer and autumn, ranging from −10% and −50%. For all seasons, the changes are more severe in the southern basins. The precipitation distributions show, for all models, important reductions of the contribution from low to moderate/high precipitation bins and augments of days with strong rainfall. Furthermore, a prominent growth of high-ranking percentiles is predicted reaching values over 70% in some regions. Generally, the changes associated with the RCP4.5 scenario have the same signal and features, but with smaller magnitudes.
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