Wine production is a relevant sector of the Italian economy and recently consumer demand has drastically changed due to their orientation towards new attributes of quality wines. Sustainability ...aspects are credence attributes that have an effect on consumers' perceived quality. Moreover, local production of wine is seen as a sign of quality. However, much is still to be studied about drivers that can push consumers towards new quality attributes of wine such as sustainability and local production. Profiling consumers could be a first step to better understand consumers' decisions on local and sustainable wine. Thus, the paper has the purpose of understanding the Italian consumers' willingness to consume sustainable and local wine. Data has been collected from a sample of Italian consumers (N=1,099) using a web-based survey. A binary logistic regression model, selected on the basis of the model AIC was used. The findings showed the large majority of the interviewed are willing to consume local and sustainable wine. Keywords: Italian consumer behavior, local wine, logistic regression, sustainable wine, willingness to consume
This work assessed the environmental impact of cereal straw end-practices at farm gate and highlighted the best on-farm scenario. A sample of cereal farms located in Apulia Region, in Southern Italy, ...was investigated through a survey questionnaire. Straw incorporation in the soil, straw burning and baling, were the three practices considered. In the light of the ever-growing demand of straw for energy feedstock production, we discussed two scenarios, namely the status quo and the demand pulled scenarios, each one with a different mix of the three straw end-practices. Following farmer's intentions, in the demand pulled scenario a high percentage of straw was baled while reducing straw incorporation; straw burning practice was not eliminated because it allows farmers to prepare the soil for cultivation. Sensitivity analysis tested different wheat and straw allocation methods (economic vs mass and cereal unit allocation). The environmental impact of alternative straw end-practices and scenarios was assessed by means of an attributional Life Cycle Assessment. Straw incorporation resulted the best environmental practice. Scenarios had quite similar impacts for 8 out of 11 impact categories, but the demand pulled scenario was less impacting than the status quo on global warming, human toxicity, and photochemical oxidation impact categories. These results allow us to conclude that the perspective of selling the straw on the local market for energy production is a better solution compared to the current situation.
This paper presents a multi-camera target tracking system based on factor graphs, designed to estimate the state of moving targets using a message propagation framework. Inexpensive cameras deployed ...in the area of interest are the main sensory modality. We discuss the transformation geometry between world points and camera pixels and how the uncertainties in the homographies affect the estimation. The framework has been tested on real data coming from a harbor to track moving vessels.
The study investigated students' attitudes and willingness to pay (WTP) for the protection of some environmental values. The empirical study refers to a site located in Southern Italy and inserted ...into the Natura 2000 European Network. Students were segmented according to their appreciation of environmental values and the WTP for them. We considered two scenarios of the study site - of use and non-use - and four values - recreational, educational, bequest and existence. Five clusters, from the 'unconcerned' to the 'committed' one, reveal a diversity of profiles across the sample. Segmentation results point out the multifunctionality of the environmental heritage and highlight the heterogeneity of students' environmental profiles.
The use of estimation techniques on stochastic models to solve control problems is an emerging paradigm that falls under the rubric of Active Inference (AI) and Control as Inference (CAI). In this ...work, we use probability propagation on factor graphs to show that various algorithms proposed in the literature can be seen as specific composition rules in a factor graph. We show how this unified approach, presented both in probability space and in log of the probability space, provides a very general framework that includes the Sum-product, the Max-product, Dynamic programming and mixed Reward/Entropy criteria-based algorithms. The framework also expands algorithmic design options that lead to new smoother or sharper policy distributions. We propose original recursions such as: a generalized Sum/Max-product algorithm, a Smooth Dynamic programming algorithm and a modified versions of the Reward/Entropy algorithm. The discussion is carried over with reference to a path planning problem where the recursions that arise from various cost functions, although they may appear similar in scope, bear noticeable differences. We provide a comprehensive table of composition rules and a comparison through simulations, first on a synthetic small grid with a single goal with obstacles, and then on a grid extrapolated from a real-world scene with multiple goals and a semantic map.
The eco-efficiency of mozzarella cheese production was investigated in two dairy chains that differ in liquid whey recycling, with whey recycling (B) and without whey recycling (A), in cow diets. The ...total eco-efficiency (total GVA/total GWP) for 1 kg of mozzarella cheese ranged from 0.19 euro (B) to 0.16 euro per kg CO.sub.2-eq (A). The cheese-making phase of each diet accounted for about 3% of GWP total emissions. The mozzarella cheese making phase had the highest eco-efficiency ratio, while the milk production phase showed the lowest economic value and the highest impact. Findings suggest improvements in reducing the environmental burden of the primary phase while increasing its economic value. Keywords: carbon footprint, cheese whey recycling, eco-efficiency ratio; economic value added, mozzarella cheese production
In this work, we investigate an Information Fusion architecture based on a Factor Graph in Reduced Normal Form. This paradigm permits to describe the fusion in a completely probabilistic framework ...and the information related to the different features are represented as messages that flow in a probabilistic network. In this way we build a sort of context for observed features conferring to the solution a great flexibility for managing different type of features with wrong and missing values as required by many real applications. Moreover, modifying opportunely the messages that flow into the network, we obtain an effective way to condition the inference based on the different reliability of each information source or in presence of single unreliable signal. The proposed architecture has been used to fuse different detectors for an identity document classification task but its flexibility, extendibility and robustness make it suitable to many real scenarios where the signal can be wrongly received or completely missing.
Abstract Forty-five consecutive subjects (26M, 19F; mean age 54 ± 14 yrs) with a diagnosed retinal vein occlusion (RVO), were followed-up for 8 yrs. As many as 145 sex-age- and blood pressure-matched ...individuals (78M, 67F; mean age 54.4 ± 13.5 yrs), that did not experience any vascular event, served as controls. At the time of the RVO, controls and subjects did not differ as to hypercholesterolemia, hypertrigliceridemia, diabetes mellitus, smoking habits, inherited/acquired thrombophilia. At the follow-up completion, they differed as to statin consumption ( p = 0.016). During the 8-yrs follow-up, in the control population, 11 out of 145 (7.6%) subjects had experienced a major vascular event (8 coronary artery disease; 3 cerebral non-fatal ischemic stroke). In contrast, of the 45 subjects with a history of RVO, as many as 10 (22.2%) had experienced a major vascular event: 4 coronary artery disease; 4 cerebral non-fatal ischemic stroke; 2 cardiovascular + cerebrovascular event ( p = 0.012). A prolonged antiplatelet treatment, prior to the major vascular event, was found in 5/45 cases (11.1%) vs 23/145 (15.9%) controls ( p = 0.63). In contrast, a long-lasting administration of anti-hypertensive drugs, to achieve a control of blood pressure, was found in 83.4% of controls and only in 46.7% of cases ( p < 0.0001). In conclusion, in a 8-yr follow-up, coronary artery disease and/or non-fatal ischemic stroke were more common in subjects with a history of RVO than in a large setting of subjects comparable for cardiovascular risk factors. These data also argue for RVO as a vascular disease in which aggressive anti-hypertensive therapy to prevent stroke and/or myocardial infarction is needed.
ML offers solutions to difficult engineering problems, in a similar way to the humans’ brain processing. ...considering the large amount and diversity of data (image, video, time series, 1D signals, ...text, etc.) massively generated and stored by modern “smart” systems, the need for efficient ML algorithms in terms of accuracy and speed become increasingly important. Another paper presents a novel active semisupervised Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) algorithm able to recognize SAR images without the need for a large number of labeled samples in the training phase. The ensemble classifier consists of three base neural network classifiers, namely, feed-forward, radial-basis, and probabilistic neural networks, while the majority-voting rule was used to fuse the decisions of three base classifiers to generate the final decision.
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