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Chitin and chitosan, which due to their wide applicability and abundance are of increasing interest to industries. Chitin is extracted from a wide range of living things by a variety of methods, which may be chemical or biological. Chitosan is obtained from the alkaline deacetylation of chitin by chemical or enzymatic processes. Due to their different polysaccharide chains, chitin and chitosan have different properties. Chitin is thus an insoluble polymer in most solvents, while chitosan is a soluble polymer in ac...

Urban railway transit is one of the most sustainable and environmentally friendly means of transport in the modern European city. There is a significant incentive for municipalities in Europe to construct new urban railways as the latter combine high energy efficiency with high carrying capacity. One of the main arguments in opposition to expanding existing urban rail networks is the noise and vibration impact of the new line on the surrounding area. This paper addresses the issue by means of formulating a theoret...

Perlite is a naturally occurring siliceous rock of volcanic origins. When heated to more than 1000-C it expands up to several times its original volume and thus creating the premises of light weightiness and thermal insulating properties. The indoor comfortable climate of modern lifestyle requires large amounts of energy to be created and sustained. This, in turn, leads to large amounts of CO2 being released in the atmosphere. Continuous research efforts are invested in creating materials with good insulation prop...

The rise of bacterial resistance to currently employed antibiotics is causing growing concerns for public health. The emergence of highly resistant bacterial strains results in the ineffectiveness of antibiotic treatments against many bacterial infections. As a result, there is an ongoing quest for new antimicrobial agents. This pursuit can take two main directions: one involves the design and synthesis of novel agents, while the other involves exploring natural sources to uncover previously undiscovered antimicro...

Forests are import to the health of the planet, as well as an economic resource of the country. Latvia has 5th highest forest area coverage in the European Union. Major tree species in Latvia are birch, pine and spruce, with the birch having one of the highest felling rates as % of end of year stock. Importance of the topic is that as Latvia, in the particular in exports of selected timber products, as softwood sawn timber, birch plywood, chipboards and pellets, are among one of the ten largest exporters in the wo...

The field of construction is currently one of the most stable and active fields of activity. It presents complex activities that are done in phase and chronologically until the end of completion execution stage. Realization of the foundation or its characteristic elements it includes a number of preparatory activities such as: land preparation and release of various tasks, shoveling and ground consolidation. The type of consolidation it is chosen according to the depth of the escape and It is about choosing a supp...

Bilberries selected from U.P. V. Higigel were investigated for their antioxidative potential using 2,2-dyphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) scavenging. In order to determine the total content of polyphenols, the method described by Tamas-Krumpe Octavia and collaborators in 2010 [1] was chosen, consisting in the use of Folin-Ciocalteu reagent 0.2 N and sodium carbonate (Na2CO3) and the use of gallic acid in different concentrations as a standard. The spectrophotometric determination method based on the formation of the...

Cyanobacteria are ancient photosynthetic organisms that under certain conditions (high temperature, eutrophication) can grow rapidly and form "cyanobacterial blooms". Very often, these blooms are accompanied by production of cyanotoxins, which in most cases are dangerous to the other organisms. Knowing the producers of cyanotoxins is of utmost importance, especially today when climate change has been shown to increase the frequency of toxic cyanobacterial blooms worldwide. The aim of the present study was to chara...

Globally, there have been significant efforts to develop new means of assessing progress beyond GDP in recent years. The recent publication by the UN Secretary-General of a policy brief (UN, 2023) is inviting member states to move beyond GDP by measuring what truly matters for sustainability and prosperity. The policy brief outlines the shortcomings of GDP as an indicator of summarizing everything too much and revealing too little to be able to adequately inform policy (UN, 2023; pp. 12). This paper will present a...

Effective transportation planning must take into account urban factors and public space in order to achieve sustainable and efficient solutions to transportation problems in urban areas. Public space includes not only parks, squares, and markets, but also sidewalks and roads. Properly managed transportation in public space can help minimize traffic congestion, ensure efficient and safe movement of vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists, and overall improve its quality. The specific example which is frequently used in...

Forests play an important role in carbon storage and global carbon cycling. The processes of litter decomposition, movement within the soil, and incorporation into different soil layers play a crucial role in the functioning of forest ecosystems. These activities are important in regulating the cycling of soil organic matter and the storage and release of carbon into the atmosphere. Soil carbon and carbon input via litter has been well-recognized, however studied relatively less compared to other carbon pools, but...

This study explores the intricate relationship between Urban Heat Islands (UHIs) and landslide vulnerability within the context of Iasi City, Romania. UHIs are characterized by elevated temperatures in urban areas compared to their surrounding rural areas, primarily resulting from human activities and urbanization. The combination of these two factors, UHI and landslide vulnerability, poses critical challenges for urban planning, environmental sustainability, and public safety. The research employs a multi-discipl...

The ventilation network related to a mining unit for the exploitation of the useful mineral substance aims to ensure optimal microclimate conditions in underground. An ventilation network is made up of nodes and branches in order to establish its structure. In this sense, the mine ventilation must be seen as a source of life, in which the ramifications represent at the same time the arteries that transport the air to the working fronts and the evacuation of the poluted air to the surface. In order to establish the...

Urtica dioica L. is a multi-functional plant commonly known as stinging nettle, which has been used as wild vegetable for centuries. Stinging nettle is a highly nutritious vegetable due to its increased use in different food products and its health-promoting properties. Nettles are highly adaptable occurring in most common areas from unpolluted to highly polluted areas, along stream banks, farmland and also in highly disturbed areas. In hot areas, they prefer sites in partial shade, but accept to grow also in full...

Databases and ICT capabilities allow for the analysis of trends and possibilities of change. The use of ICT enables a broader problem analysis and an indication of how and where to process it For a given biodiversity, specific situation and existence, refer to the global situation and the global step on energy fuel becomes bigger with each step. Therefore, a more and more needed, soon to be added supplement, accompanying, supplementing the source. The closest available alternatives to humans are so-called biofuels...

Floods are one of the most devastating hazardous events often causing destruction of infrastructure and loss of lives. In order to mitigate negative flood impact a reliable hydrological forecast is of great importance. Thus using trustworthy information on the meteorological elements that mostly contribute to the occurrence of floods - precipitation and temperatures, is essential. Although the accuracy of the global forecasting models like ECMWF, GFS etc. has improved a lot, still sometimes there are extreme meteo...

The aim of the study is to look for ways for applying the principles of sustainable development in spatial planning through approaches that reflect modern trends in the field of ecosystem research, environmental protection and provide an optimal living environment. For this purpose, the regulatory documents for spatial planning in Bulgaria were analyzed, as well as the possibilities for applying within their framework approaches for objective assessment of the ecosystem-s state and their capacity to provide ecosys...

The paper deals with the ? + ? titanium alloys, due to their good properties such as low specific weight and high values of mechanical properties have found wide application as a construction material. Their disadvantage is high price and complicated production of the basic material - titanium but also alloying components (molybdenum, chromium), associated with high energy demand and undesirable effects on ecology. The inhomogeneity of the deformation with formation of deformation bands are typical for these alloy...

Poultry meat and eggs are considered as one of the most popular food items all over the world due to their content of high quality nutrients including protein, lipids, vitamins, and minerals. During the past decade, many countries have increased their commercial production of these essential products to meet the increased demand by consumers, especially with the increasing populations all over the world. However, there is an urgent need to ensure sustainable poultry production for the local consumer. Using native ...

The presented paper deals with the targeted application of pre-emergent herbicides. The field experiment was established in 2022 and 2023; two plots sized 26 ha and 30 ha were selected and the accuracy of the application was tested. There were local outbreaks of weeds on selected plots of land, which had to be eliminated before sowing the main crop - soybeans. Both plots were monitored using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) - Mavic 3M with the multispectral camera. After the end of the monitoring, spectral analysi...

Currently, the food industry accounts for the largest amount of waste, a third of which is waste from the processing of fruits into natural fruit juices, the consumption of which has recently increased significantly due to health problems among the population. The transition to a healthier and more natural lifestyle involves reducing the consumption of soft drinks, which can contain high concentrations of sugars, artificial colors, preservatives, and increasing the production of natural juices. Studies were carrie...

Disposal of by-products from the processing of plant foods is a major industry concern, but these by-products are also promising sources of compounds with technological or nutritional properties and are now being considered as a possible source of functional compounds. The common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.), which contains a high protein content, fiber, and other critical minerals for humans, is one of the most significant pulses in the world. The objective of this work is to exploit the properties of common bean...

Ventilation plays a key role in maintaining the indoor environmental quality of buildings. This contribution focuses on the significance of ventilation intensity as a crucial indicator of air quality within buildings. The aim is to analyze the impact of ventilation intensity on various aspects of the indoor environment, including thermal comfort, pollutant concentrations, and overall occupant comfort. The research is centered around methods for measuring ventilation intensity and ways to optimize this value to ach...

This chapter deals with the design of optimal ventilation of the Anna seam in the Ostrava - Karvina district, with regard to the parameters of the virgin mining field, depth of deposition, rock temperature, seam gasody and method of spreading. In the first part of the paper, the authors introduce a general description of the mining area, the then state of ventilation and microclimatic conditions. The second part of the paper describes the design of the method of dispersal of the Anna seam between 8-8/7 floors and ...

Hydrogen explosions can occur in industrial processes, in laboratories, in hydrogen production and storage processes, or in new combustion processes used in modern transportation. This gas presents a particularly dangerous potential due to its flammability properties. The combustion reaction of this gas mixed with air or oxygen is strongly exothermic, resulting in a rapid increase in temperatures and pressures developed. When these overpressures become too great to be supported by the vessels or enclosures where t...

A healthy indoor environment is becoming an increasingly important issue. As the use of various materials in inhabited interiors increases, so does the concentration of harmful volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in these spaces. The actual trend of reducing energy consumption in buildings, such as by using perfectly sealing windows and doors, contributes to this increase. Consequently, people moving around in these interiors experience a rise in health problems due to the elevated concentrations of VOCs. This study...

Voltammetry is an electrochemical technique widely used in quantitative analysis to determine nickel ions in food samples due to its excellent stability. Knowing the exact applied levels of metals such as nickel in different food samples is very important to prevent high nickel consumption, especially in people with allergies and nickel excess. Electrochemical analytical methods appear to be an alternative with many advantages, including high sensitivity, low detection limits on the g/L scale, ease of use, and sim...

The purpose of this paper is volumetric quantification of soil erosion using the so-called erosion bridge. For the measurement, a locality in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic was chosen. With the erosion bridge, we can measure erosion rills. Rill erosion is caused by concentrated water flow. It occurs when runoff water forms small channels as it concentrates down a slope. The erosion bridge is a very simple device that enables us to accurately measure the shape of the soil surface in a given place. ...

Even if the total amount of water in the world remains the same, we observe a constant deterioration of water quality, water ecosystems and the surrounding environment of water courses and reservoirs. At the same time, the costs of treatment of surface and underground water for drinking water. For this reason, the pollution limits for wastewater treatment plants of all types are constantly being tightened, which increases the already high costs of their operation and often increases in the increased prices for was...

The article discusses the efficiency of vertical subsurface flow filters in wastewater treatment wetlands, where the main filtration layer is composed of recycled aggregates. To determine the efficiency of the vertical filter using modified recycled aggregates, three test columns were created. The first column contained natural gravels, while the second and third columns used masonry (RMA) and concrete aggregates (RCA). The test filters were loaded with wastewater from a combined sewer system, with non-dissolved s...

The second half of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century are marked by two processes that pose a serious threat to the sustainable development of the world in the near future. These are the population explosion in certain parts of the world and climate change. At the beginning of the second millennium the world population was only 300 million, today it exceeds 8 billion and by the middle of this century it will reach 10 billion. At the same time, throughout human history, people have lived an...

The extraction and utilization of planetary materials in situ are of utmost importance to establish a sustainable human presence on Mars. Among these resources, water stands out as the most valuable due to its potential for producing rocket propellants and supporting life systems for astronauts. This research delves into the water resources in Meridiani Planum, an equatorial region where the presence of hydrated sulfates has been confirmed. Leveraging data from the Opportunity Rover and its advanced instruments- t...

Water is one of the basic necessities of life. However, water crises have become more frequent around the world as billions of people continue to suffer from a lack of access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene. Water is a limited resource that has been in growing demand - with the world's population increasing and water-intensive economic development continuing, infrastructure of many countries is not fit to meet accelerating demand. With climate change and its variability fluctuations in rainfall and extreme ...

It is recognized that increased mechanization in mining has resulted in a larger number of workers exposed to longer durations of whole-body vibration (WBV) in mining work context. This physical agent is one of the leading causes for workplace disability and it is regarding of many mining operators that during daily activities use mining vehicles such as dozers, haul trucks, Load Haul Dump (LHD) vehicles and wheeled shovel. The present study was conducted in a typical mining context in order to investigate the eff...

Future climate scenarios of the Global Circulation model (GCM) show an increased frequency of heavy rainfall events, which may lead to more severe floods. It is also expected that more and more areas will suffer due to flooding as a result of growing urbanization. Public attention has increased in many parts of the world in recent years and calls have been made to improve flood warnings, including the United States, the European Union and Australia (Hapuarachchi, H.A.P, and Q.J. Wang 2008). To respond and manage f...

A miniaturized on-board platform for optic sensors stabilization is the proposed concept developed and tested by a multidisciplinary team of engineers under a UEFISCDI (the Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding in Romania) research funding. The need for a UAV to capture images and give in-depth information of ground objects is fulfilled by the developed three-axial stabilized optical system. Modern techniques, technologies and state-of-the-art electronics are employed ...

Organic waste has been discharged into the environment by various industries in a global society. Anaerobic digestion has proven its potential as a waste-to-energy (WTE) technology to produce biogas, which can also replace fossil fuels while accommodating these unwanted wastes. However, there are limitations to anaerobic digestion, such as poor biomethane yield due to limited supply and fluctuations in the composition of the substrates, and an inadequate C/N ratio in the feedstocks. This paper aims to discuss poss...

The aim of this study is to present preliminary results of testing the new non-hydrostatic dynamic core of the regional climate model RegCM4.7.1 by varying different parametrization schemes over the Balkan Peninsula and Bulgaria. A one-way double nesting technique was applied, employing a mother domain with 15 km grid spacing and a nested domain with 3 km grid spacing. Twenty test simulations were performed with a model resolution of 15 km for the year 2000 on a Lambert Conformal Conic projection and 12 test simul...

In addition to its main purpose: establishing and maintaining the parameters of the height system for the territory of a given state (country), state levelling networks also serve to establish (register) the contemporary (recent) vertical movements of the Earth's crust. The detection of such movements, besides in a purely research sense, is of great practical importance. The displacement of the benchmarks over time plays an essential role in seismic forecasting in the short and long term. Sometimes, not very often...

Mining wastes represent a specific type of waste and, like sites after mining, represent sites where a comprehensive assessment of pollution at these sites needs to be approached, taking into account various specific conditions. Subsequently, the design of the remediation technologies used at a specific location must also be adapted to this fact. Until now, mining waste facilities (heaps and sludge ponds) have been treated as environmental burdens. However, it should be borne in mind that abandoned extractive wast...

Genomes of alfalfa root nodule bacteria, Sinorhizobium meliloti, symbionts of alfalfa are enriched in non-symbiotic (cryptic) plasmids, which gene pool is remained weakly studied. S. meliloti strains are significantly varied in number and size of these plasmids. The goal of the study was to assess the occurrence of phage-related sequences (PRS) on cryptic plasmids. Whole genome sequences of 12 S. meliloti strains native to Caucasian and Kazakhstan centers of alfalfa diversity (NCG and PAG, correspondingly) were st...

The problem of academic perfectionism in teaching technical English at a higher education institution stems from a number of external and internal factors - the current educational targets set by managing social groups and student ambitions. The research methods included the analysis of objectives, contents and teaching methods intended for the first and second year bachelor degree students. The findings show that the target competence, being focused on the technical English, also incorporates the ability to solve...

The presence of nitrate concentration in drinking water can cause high toxicity to the human body, being considered among the most important pollutant in the environment. Among the many methods available such as biological treatment, electrodialysis, reverse osmosis, adsorption, ion exchange, adsorption is the most used technique due to its low cost and simplistic design. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to study the retention of nitrate anion from high concentration aqueous solutions on a novel magnetic adsor...

Pyrophyllite was investigated in this study as a potential adsorbent for the removal of glyphosate, a common herbicide for the control of a wide variety of weeds. There are several publications in the literature that discuss how glyphosate interacts with clay minerals such as montmorillonite, kaolinite, and bentonite, but there is no information regarding the possibility of glyphosate removal from aqueous solution using pyrophyllite. In this study, the adsorption of glyphosate from water samples onto pyrophyllite,...

Many oilfields such as supergiant Romaschkinskoye oilfield in Russia contain heavy oils that are complicated to recover. In order to increase the proportion of obtained oil, methods of enhanced oil recovery are implemented, and microbial methods (MEOR) are considered as safe and efficient once. In-situ MEOR are based on stimulation of oilwell microflora that partly decomposes hydrocarbon molecules or alters oil-water interface tension. Despite oilwells are an environments with anaerobic conditions, many allochtono...

The current weather patterns, in the form of more frequent occurrences of hydrological extremes, are increasingly being felt in the Czech Republic. In this context, the paper focuses on the issue of the current management of the landscape, which loses its quality due to these adverse climatic conditions and the influence of man. The aim is to compare selected physical properties and obtained soil moisture data for different uses and cultivation. For sample collections, a site in the Czech Republic in the South Mor...

The mobile environmental laboratory was located in a fuel distribution station located on a heavy traffic national road in Petro?ani City, Hunedoara County (Romania) to investigate dust and gas pollution, as well as dispersion of pollutants to nearby homes, using the AUSTAL VIEW software. Measurements were performed over a period of eight hours in two working days in order to better capture the movement of air masses and the dispersion of measured pollutants. In the event of accidental spills of chemicals or chemi...

This study investigated changes in carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) concentrations in the three components of the forest ecosystem (leaves, bark and soil) along an altitudinal gradient in the temperate forests of Romania. The properties and processes within the forest ecosystem are influenced by altitude. The leaves, litter and soil are important in the good development of the ecosystem and in the cycle of the elements. Plants extract the nutrients necessary for life and growth from the soil in which they carry out the...

Open data is undoubtedly one of the most exciting innovations of the last decade. Data that can be (re)used freely and without restrictions is a key driver for achieving many environmental goals. Through the use of open crowdsourcing tools, noise monitoring is enabled by the active participation of citizens who measure noise and thus contribute to the creation of a dynamic noise map. This is consistent with the lifecycle of open data - the design of the process and practices for handling data from its creation, to...

Many processes involving dusts, suspended or accumulated, have the potential to lead to fire, explosion or decomposition in the presence of oxygen and an ignition source. The risk of dust explosions increases as more and more products take the form of dusts or require the use of dusts during manufacture. In spite of extensive research and development to prevent and mitigate dust explosions in the process industries, this phenomenon continues to represent a constant hazard to industries including manufacturing, usi...