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The fast-spreading wildfire engulfs the dense parched flora and all obstructions in its way, transforming a woodland into a volatile reservoir of combustible materials. Once ignited, fires can expand at a velocity of up to 23 km/h. As flames spread across vegetation and woodlands, they have the potential to become self-sustaining, propagating sparks and embers that can spawn smaller fires miles away. The proximity of the burning materials to the observer has a direct impact on the density of smoke produced by the ...

For most soils, genetic inheritance is the determining factor of heavy metal abundance. The anthropogenic impact on the soil produced by fertilizers, pesticides, zootechnical residues, wastewater or particles brought to the soil by gaseous emissions, brings important quantities of heavy metals into the soil. Among these, the most toxic are Cd and Pb. The aim of the study was to establish the levels of Cd and Pb in soil and Beta vulgaris roots, sampled from eight locations from Tarnaveni area, an industrial center ...

Forests provide humanity with essential raw materials, and the demand for these materials is growing, especially in conditions where it is necessary to replace the use of fossil resources with renewable ones. Latvia-s import of timber from Russia and Belarus has increased 8 times in 2021, when comparing 2013, reaching 33% of timber import value. Current geopolitical situation and supply chain sustainability calls for necessity to evaluate possibility to reduce the dependency on the timber import from Russia and Be...

Forest ecosystems are essential when dealing with climate change mitigation goals. Carbon stock of forest stand can hold substantial amounts of carbon as well products made from wood provide substitution effect, reducing reliance on fossil fuels. Silvicultural practices, such as drainage, have proven to be highly efficient of enhancing tree volume, aligning with climate change mitigation goals. As forest drainage disruption for rewetting of drained areas gains momentum with appealing goals such as enhancing biolog...

Europe must avoid losing manufacturing SMEs. However, presenting distinct maturity levels, these companies have a hard time fulfilling the necessary ecological sustainability level. Controversially, despite the intense debate about digital technologies, there is still a need for knowledge in the industrial world about the impact of these technologies to make manufacturing SMEs environmentally friendly. According to data made available by Stone Portuguese Federation, in 2019, the Portuguese Ornamental Stone sector ...

The contribution unveils the outcomes of a case study conducted in Chotebor, Czech Republic, highlighting the pivotal role of long-term traffic analysis in fostering sustainable urban development. It exemplifies how cutting-edge technology and data can be instrumental in formulating more streamlined and eco-conscious urban blueprints. Within the framework of this initiative, surveillance cameras and traffic analysis software were deployed, yielding profound insights into the city's present dynamics and prospective...

Increasing demands on the thermal performance of the building envelope play a crucial role in the design of buildings in order to maintain a quality indoor climate with reduced energy consumption. In case of repair mortars development, the necessary thermal insulation improvement can be effectively achieved by using lightweight aggregates. However, the application of new materials to historical buildings might be problematic due to their incompatibility with materials originally used in the past. In this paper, tw...

Prevention and reduction of food waste production, food waste conversion into energy and products as well as the proper disposal are sequential processes in the food system. Technological standards and a legal framework for food waste recycling, as well as amendments to the relevant legal acts - both national- and municipal-level ones - have been made in Latvia. In addition, the compliance with the European Waste Classification for Statistics have been verified and the participation of nongovernmental organization...

The assessment of genetic diversity is a key step in evaluating the adaptation of populations to new environmental conditions, and thus in the selection of new cultivars. The present investigation aimed to assess genetic variability of bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) genotypes grown in Algeria. The 17 hexaploid genotypes of bread wheat were assessed using 16 molecular microsatellites of SSR (Simple Sequence Repeat). Among the 16 microsatellite markers tested, only 11 markers were the most polymorphic and reprod...

21 strains of E. coli isolated from wild partridge birds - P. Perdix from the western part of Romania were studied. Through laboratory examination, the phenotypic characters of the isolated E. coli strains were highlighted. 21/70 (30%) of E. coli strains isolated from Perdix perdix fixed Congo Red, all isolated strains fermented lactose 21/21 (100%). Hemolytic activity was highlighted in a single strain of E. coli 1/21 (0.21%). The final identification of E. coli strains isolated from wild birds was done using the...

One of the main challenges in treating landfill leachate through membranes is managing the resulting concentrate. Depending on the membrane installation's performance and the stored waste's characteristics, significant quantities of concentrate may remain after leachate treatment. Therefore, it is necessary to identify an optimal disposal or treatment method for it. In the European Union List of Waste, the membrane concentrates are associated with leachates and are classified as either hazardous or non-hazardous w...

The objective of this work was to evaluate the physical, chemical and rhelogical characteristics of vegetable milk of soybean (soymilk homemade prepared, and some types of soymilk purchased from Romanian supermarkets). Soymilk is an alternative to dairy products and it has long been a traditional drink in China, Japan and other parts of Asia. The soybean (Glycine max) is the most important bean in the world, providing a wide range of vegetable proteins. Soybean is an important source of many bioactive compounds, w...

Airborne particulate matter (APM), and in particular its fine fraction PM2.5, is well known as an important pollutant in the urban atmosphere worldwide. The health effects of APMs depend not only on their size but also on their chemical composition. Black carbon (BC), heavy metals and other constituents can impact human health and climate. The main sources of BC are the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, biomass burning and other organic materials. Resuspension of soil and road materials, secondary aerosol for...

The article deals with the use of traffic calming elements to improve the environment, slow down traffic and increase safety for cyclists and pedestrians in urban centers in the Czech Republic. Calming elements also have a significant influence on the architecture of the street space. Traffic calming factors can be divided into psychological factors (e.g. road signs) and physical factors (e.g. road narrowing) or a combination of them based on their effect on drivers. These can be used at intersections and road sec...

Sustainable cities are urban center engineered to improve their environmental impact through proper urban planning and management. The implementation of green infrastructures is one of the most important characteristics in sustainable cities. Urban green areas play a basic role in the socio-economic development and in the sustainability of the cities. Climate change is one of the factors that needs to be into consideration during the design of sustainable cities, as it constitutes a major problem that humanity has...

The increasing impacts of climate change have necessitated a comprehensive reassessment of large infrastructure projects, particularly highways, to ensure their resilience and sustainability. The article focuses on the analysis of climate change vulnerability, mitigation measures, and adaptation strategies within the context of a major highway project in Romania. With climate change accelerating, highways in Romania are becoming increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather events, shifting precipitation patterns, te...

Lake Brates is located near Galati city, in the south-eastern part of Romania being one of the largest lakes in the country. Unfortunately, water quality has greatly decreased in recent years, both due to human actions and to climate change. The present paper aims at establishing the quality of the water in Lake Brates as resulted from the calculation of the water quality index (WQI) by the weighted arithmetic method. In order to calculate this index, several sampling campaigns were carried out in various points o...

The European Union stands apart through its ambitious blueprint to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. Playing a pivotal role within this process, the energy transition in EU is challenged by the trilemma of supply security, competitiveness and sustainability. Historical contingencies and contextual factors trigger different evolutionary trajectories in terms of temporalities and geographies. Testing the club convergence hypothesis, studies addressed the heterogeneity of EU member states either from energy or environ...

Vegan alternatives to cheeses are in growing demand in European markets as more and more people are either lactose intolerant or switching to a plant-based diet. When the consumer chooses to buy a vegan cheese, his expectations are that the vegan product has the nutritional and organoleptic characteristics as similar as possible to those of conventional cheeses. This work aimed to obtain two variants of vegan alternative to cheese, using coconut milk as the raw material: one with the addition of white pepper and g...

The consequences of human actions on Earth are becoming increasingly evident, leading us to consider that the -climate collapse has begun-, as the General Secretary of the United Nations (UN) warned at the beginning of September 2023. At less than a decade from 2030, the goals and its targets for sustainable development (SD) in the UN 2030 Agenda are far from being achieved, requiring urgent actions. Their fulfilment is at risk, particularly considering recent events such as the war(s) and the pandemic. Developing...

The use of hydrogen as a fuel requires as much research as possible on the construction and functional parameters for the development of appropriate burners. The researches undertaken are addressed to diffuse flame burners with concentric jets of fuel and air. These burners cannot lead to flame return, the combustion being much safer, than for the case of burners with fuel-air mixture. The researches were carried out by numerical modeling through the ANSYS-FLUENT V.14.0 software. An important stage of the research...

A comparative analysis has been carried out on a set of indicators of two ways of recycling glass containers - collecting in retail stores and fast washing of containers at beverage bottling plants and processing into cullet, taking into consideration the whole life cycle of glassware production, use, recycling and utilization. Methods of systematization and statistical generalization were applied for comparative analysis. The specified work was based on data, that were received from various glass manufacturing en...

Soil contamination by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) is a widespread concern due to the high potential for human exposure through inhalation, ingestion, and dermal contact. In this study, we compared the efficiency of three different methods for PAHs extraction from model samples, including ultrasonic (US), mechanical shaking and purification with commercial QuEChERS kit (Shq), and ultrasonic extraction coupled with QuEChERS (USq) by gas chromatography coupled to a triple quadrupole tandem mass-spectromet...

In recent years, consumers, including domestic meat consumers, have been looking for new products with high biological and nutritional value, plus flavour. Consumer concern for a healthy diet has led to increased demand for low-fat, low-cholesterol products, coupled with growing interest in returning to traditional products as an option to advanced processing. Game meat could meet consumer needs and requirements as an alternative to meat from domestic animals, with the following recommendations: 1. low fat content...

The vibration study of the cycloidal gear and the prevention of vibrations are important issues in the field of mechanical engineering. Cycloidal gears are used in many different applications, including industrial machinery, industrial robots and medical devices. Vibration tests of the cycloidal gear consist in identifying the sources of vibrations and determining their characteristics. As a result of the conducted research, the sources of vibrations can be identified and strategies for their reduction can be deve...

Flash floods occur in small areas and in a short time after an extreme precipitation event - generally less than six hours. The intensity of the precipitation, the location and distribution of the precipitation, the land use and topography, soil type, etc. determine just how quickly Flash Flooding can occur. These types of floods are extremely dangerous and it is very important to pay special attention to their forecasting. Due to the complex nature of flash floods, in addition to the qualification and experience ...

As of 1.1.2023, a legal obligation under Decree No. 264/2020 Coll., Section 4, point 1 and Section 12 to calculate the total delivered energy for buildings with cooling, humidity adjustment and/or electricity generation by a maximum hourly step has been established in the Czech Republic. The current monthly calculations represented stationary thermal balances of losses and gains. The new hourly calculation is a dynamic model. The accuracy of the model increases significantly based on the solution of the differenti...

The aim of this project is to compare the effectiveness of different neural network architectures and pre-trained models for the classification of forest flora and fauna. Experiments were conducted on a dataset containing images of selected plants and animals found in the forest. The project covers the basics of convolutional neural networks, and compares the architectures of the networks used in the study. The results of the experiments compare the effectiveness of different convolutional neural network architect...

The present study aimed to track the changes in microbial communities during home composting of biodegradable plastic products (PLA). 6 waste mixtures and controls were prepared, with C:N about 30, placed in containers. The amount of PLA compared to the compostable mixture is 1%. Different depositing methods were used - active composting and placing part of the material in biodegradable bags. Temperature, humidity, pH, C:N ratio were measured. The amounts of bacteria, actinomycetes, micromycetes were recorded duri...

Arid and semi-arid regions, including Cyprus, are increasingly experiencing severe weather events due to climate change. These events, characterized by prolonged droughts and flash floods, pose significant challenges to the environment, economy, and societal well-being. This paper aims to analyze the challenges of Flood Risk Management (FRM) in dry areas, focusing on Cyprus as a case study. It reviews historical data on temperature and rainfall patterns, flood types, and severity to propose effective, nature-based...

Wireless data transmission interfaces have advantages that ensure their wide and almost inevitable application in a number of tasks of creating modern automation systems, cyber-physical systems, Industrial Internet of Things, and sensor networks. However, there is a certain methodological gap between radiophysicists who are engaged in the design of wireless networks, and IT specialists who need to implement them into various computing systems. The gap is caused by the insufficiently high quality of documentation, ...

Because of the incoming mission of Artemis on the Moon, the extraction of water, oxygen, and metal from the lunar regolith is necessary, which involves intensive power requirements. To keep a mining unit operation running continuously, a technical solution known as the Tall Lunar Tower (TLT) claims to be able to capture sunlight 93% of the time through a solar panel structure. The composition of a typical panel is 76% glass, 10% polymer, 8% aluminum, 5% pure silicon, and 1% other metals. Fortunately, we just need ...

This paper presents the starting phase of a research project that aims to develop the technological demonstrator of a wind power generator system using a wind sail to capture the high altitude wind energy. The sail will capture the wind energy and will be raised to an altitude of minimum 100-200 meters to capture the stronger and more constant winds at this altitude. Flight attitude control will be done via an active control hub named WCU (Wing Control Unit) attached to the cable at about 10m from the sail. The gr...

In the energy field hydrogen will be more obvious to use by certain technologies than by direct combustion. The paper presents a conceptual analysis on the use of hydrogen by hydrogen by hydrogenation of carbon dioxide with final product methane, by hydrogenation of carbon dioxide, with the final product of methanol and by injection in certain proportions into the natural gas network. A new application of carbon dioxide hydrogenation is the decarbonisation of flue gases. To this end, conceptual analyses have been ...

The purpose of this study is to shed light on the question of what the possible consequences will be on people and the building stock of a strong earthquake for the city of Varna. A seismic risk assessment methodology is used, which was approved by the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works of the Republic of Bulgaria. The seismic impact is determined based on a detailed deterministic study of the seismic hazard. Initially, an assessment of the seismic vulnerability of the building stock is made based o...

The topic of sustainable mobility has been prioritized on the EU-s political agenda, with the goal of lowering CO2 emissions and air pollution. This goal entails the introduction of low-polluting cars, such as those driven by an electric battery (BEV), into the EU car market. The current investigation was guided by the theory of planned behavior (TPB): The three main TPB constructs-attitudes, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control-as well as the intention to purchase a BEV have been measured. In additio...

Aphids have grown significantly both in number of species and in number of individuals in populations, especially in green spaces in urban environments. By feeding, they affect the plants in the structure of the ecosystem at the foliar and floral level, therefore it is necessary to manage them so that they are numerically reduced but at the same time to avoid the application of pesticides. Through this work, 2 ways of management were tried for 5 months (April-August): by exploiting existing natural enemies and by ...

This paper aims to synthesize in a logical and coherent approach the main control techniques used in managing and combating food fraud, as well as to discuss their effectiveness. Given the impact that food fraud can have on consumers' health and well-being, anti- fraud control techniques used throughout the food chain are an important and relevant topic, still insufficiently addressed and accepted in the relevant economic environment. The objectives of the article include presenting the current context of food fra...

Rapid development of the Spa and Wellness sector creates new opportunities for companies in the sector, but at the same time also new challenges. Sustainable development of the sector from both the environmental, economic, and social aspects is an important factor for the further success of the sector. The Spa and Wellness sector is a labor-intensive sector of the service industry, where the employees- impact on customer satisfaction is crucial. For employees to be able to successfully ensure the quality of servic...

Copper has a fantastic role in the organism, indifferent if its mammalian, plant, bacteria or yeast, functioning as a cofactor in enzymes involved in various processes. In agriculture, different copper compounds are used as fungicide to protect plants from fungal diseases. In humans the role of copper is also crucial, as it is an essential trace element being involved in many processes as well as a cofactor for several enzymes involved in antioxidant defense, iron metabolism, and neurotransmitter synthesis, playin...

Rock typing is an essential tool for reservoir characterization and management in the petroleum industry. It is the process of grouping portions of a rock sample based on their physical and chemical properties. This process is currently done by experts in the industry, which consumes valuable industry resources. Precise and efficient rock typing can build accurate geological models, optimize exploration and production strategies, and reduce exploration and production risks. This work proposes a deep learning metho...

The research examines creativity as an important factor in the production of ecological products and the promotion of sustainable development in the regional economy. The research aims to examine how to promote creativity in the regional economy, what tools should be implemented to develop creativity in individuals, and how creativity is associated with overall prosperity and economic growth in the country. Nowadays, the problems of exploiting natural resources and management of constrained natural resources in th...

The article considers the possibilities of using modern methods and tools in teaching the industry section of economic geography, in particular the geography of the fuel and energy complex. The authors propose to use methods and approaches that take into account the significant changes that occurred at the turn of the 20th-21st centuries during the transition from industrial to post-industrial society and the formation of modern information technologies. The article proposes to increase the involvement of schoolch...

Since the inception of modern plant breeding, especially with the discovery of heterosis and the development of hybrids, which are known for their ability to enhance crop yields, plant breeders have consistently strived to advance and identify an efficient method for developing inbred lines. In this endeavor, breeders have encountered various challenges, including the complexity of requiring multiple generations to develop inbred lines and the struggle to find effective ways to optimize this process. In our resear...

The multiple therapeutic properties of Chelidonium majus are known and well documented in the bibliography, being used for a long time in Chinese homeopathic medicine [1]. At the level of the skin, in traditional folk medicine, C. majus is used to treat warts, condylomas, and papillae, which are due to human papillomavirus (HPV) infections [2, 3]. In this context, the aim of this study was to assess the potential antitumor effects of C. majus extracts on human melanoma cells - A375 - and to evaluate it in terms of...

Composite materials are widely used in high-tech fields of industry, especially in the aeronautical and aerospace industry, land and water transport. Weight reduction, high creep resistance, very good damping deformations compared to traditional materials, represent some of the advantages for these materials- usage. The studies carried out aim to determine the evolution of the physical-mechanical characteristics of a composite material with a thickness of less than 1 mm, using descriptive statistics techniques. In...

The serious demographic crisis in rural areas of the country poses great challenges to the implementation of the strategic plan for the development of agriculture and rural areas for the period 2023-2027. This determines the purpose of the publication, namely to develop and build scenarios based on them to make recommendations regarding the need for urgent, complex and non-traditional measures to overcome the demographic crisis. The estimated values of the indicators were used to prepare the scenarios: the birth r...

The main objective of this study is to analyze the demographic structure and spatial distribution of Quercus canariensis populations in the Ouled Bechih forest in northeastern Algeria. Knowledge of these parameters is an essential step in their sustainable management. Sample inventory plots measuring 30m x 30m (900m2) were identified by random sampling. Tree diameter at 1.30 m above the ground and total height of Q. canariensis were measured for each tree in four inventory plots. The demographic structures were es...

Flash floods represent one of the most significant natural hazards in headwater catchments facing the lack of systematic hydrological monitoring. This study focus on the detection of flash floods on growth disturbances detected at trees of European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) located in the torrential channel of the Holubi Potok stream in the Jizera Mountains (North Bohemia, Czech Republic). At the injured stems, flood scars were identified and core samples dated by tree ring analysis; the intensity of the disturba...

The Arctic Seas are of particular interest now in connection with the prospects for their development. At the same time, the construction of critical and industrial infrastructure at sea must be preceded by a thorough assessment of possible geohazards, including dangerous landforms, earthquakes, geofluid outflows, marine landslides, soil liquefaction, tsunamis, etc. The purpose of the study is to highlight various seismological applications of the records obtained recently in the Laptev Sea and other Arctic Seas o...