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Large amounts of waste debris occur in urbanised areas when heavy rain on local geology generates flooding and landslides. Improved understanding of disaster waste management helps to support future strategies. This study aims to find management solutions that are environmentally and economically sustainable, hypothesizing three different options. There are many variables which influence the environmental impact and the operational cost. The distances between the areas of interest and the management site, the extent of a first manual sorting carried out by citizens, the economic load of each involved step. Overall, both the environmental and the economic analysis confirmed the usefulness of the non‐advanced option, which includes a temporary debris storage site for a preliminary shredding. On the other hand, the impact due to a possible biological treatment is not balanced by the advantage of the further volume decrease. The article shows a simple analysis schema, easily adaptable to different geographical context, is useful as supporting tool for the decision makers in flood emergency scenarios.

According to the WEEE European directives, efforts must be undertaken to reuse or safely dispose liquid crystal displays (LCD) waste, however no practical process was reported yet, although it is possible to recover glass, plastic and precious metals, in particular indium. Indium is one of the elements included by the European Commission in the list of 20 raw materials critical for economic importance and high supply risk (European Commission, https://ec.europa.eu/ growth/tools-databases/eip-raw-materials/en/system/files/ged/79%20report-b_en.pdf [1]). The work aims to valorize LCD scraps after indium recovery with low cost applications both economically and environmentally speaking. Applications have been explored by many researchers, although most focused only on the use of glass powder waste LCD to design concrete. This work deals the use of LCD scraps as it is after cross-current leaching of indium with H2SO4. The experimental work consists of scraps characterization, washing procedure optimization to remove residual acid, mortar production, performance testing, and life cycle assessment (LCA). The results show that LCD scraps exhibit little or no pozzolanic activity. This delay on reactivity can be ascribed to organic residues that prevent the pozzolanic reaction and/or to a lower fineness than that typical of binders or fillers. For this reason the actual investigation focuses to exploit the waste as partial replacement of traditional aggregates. (© 2016 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

In 2014, the European Union identified 20 raw materials critical for economic importance and high supply risk. Indium, used in several innovative technologies, is among such critical raw materials. Generally, it is mined as a by-product of zinc from a mineral named sphalerite, with a concentration between 1 and 100 ppm. Currently, the largest producer of indium is China and about 84% of the worldwide indium consumption is used for liquid crystal display (LCD) production, in particular to form an indium-tin-oxide (ITO) film with transparent conductor properties. The fast evolution of LCD technologies caused a double effect: the growth of indium demand and an increase of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). Considering these two factors, the aim of this study is to make the end-of-life LCDs a secondary indium resource. With this purpose, an indium recovery process was developed carrying out an acidic leaching, followed by a zinc cementation. The first step allowed a complete indium extraction using 2M sulfuric acid at 80 °C for 10 min. The problem of low indium concentration in the scraps (around 150 ppm) was overcome using a cross-current configuration in the leaching phase that allowed an increase of metal concentration and a decrease of reagents consumption. An indium recovery higher than 90% was obtained in the final cementation step, using 5 g/L of zinc powder at pH 3 and 55 °C for 10 min. Considering its high efficiency, this process is promising in a context of circular economy, where a waste becomes a resource. (© 2016 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

The extracellular DNA pool in marine sediments is the largest reservoir of DNA of the world oceans and it potentially represents an archive of genetic information and gene sequences involved in natural transformation processes. However, no information is at present available for the gene sequences contained in the extracellular DNA and for the factors that influence their preservation. In the present study, we investigated the depurination and degradation rates of extracellular DNA in a variety of marine sediment samples characterized by different ages (up to 10,000 years) and environmental conditions according to the presence, abundance and diversity of prokaryotic gene sequences. We provide evidence that depurination of extracellular DNA in these sediments depends upon the different environmental factors that act synergistically and proceeds at much slower rates than those theoretically predicted or estimated for terrestrial ecosystems. These findings suggest that depurination in marine sediments is not the main process that limits extracellular DNA survival. Conversely, DNase activities were high suggesting a more relevant role of biologically driven processes. Amplifiable prokaryotic 16S rDNA sequences were present in most benthic systems analysed, independent of depurination and degradation rates and of the ages of the sediment samples. Additional molecular analyses revealed that the extracellular DNA pool is characterized by relatively low-copy numbers of prokaryotic 16S rDNA sequences that are highly diversified. Overall, our results suggest that the extracellular DNA pool in marine sediments represents a repository of genetic information, which can be used for improving our understanding of the biodiversity, functioning and evolution of ecosystems over different timescales.

The female gonads of moles (genus Talpa) are composed of a cortex, functioning as an ovary, and a medulla, which is structurally similar to that of the testis. In the female reproductive apparatus there are masculine glandular annexes, such as a bilobate prostate, two Cowper glands, and a penis-like clitoris. All these features have recently led to the hypothesis of the presence of hermaphroditism due to sex-reversal in Talpa. The purpose of this study is to understand the functional significance of the structural organization of the female gonads in order to verify this hypothesis. Histological, histochemical and ultrastructural analyses have been carried out on several gonads of both sexes of two species: T. europaea and T. romana, including three fetuses. In both species, the cortical region of the female gonad shows a regular oogenetic activity. While the medulla is composed of interstitial cells that are partly organized in cord-like structures, no spermatogenetic activity has been ever observed inside of them. A histochemical analysis shows that in both sexes the interstitial cells secrete steroids, presumably estrogens as well as androgens. The presence of androgens in the female gonads would therefore explain the persistence of male glandular annexes in the female reproductive apparatus and both the sexual and behavioral monomorphism typical of the genus Talpa. Nonetheless, the female gonad of moles is a real ovary and a well-defined gonochorism exists. Therefore, there is no reason to assert the presence of hermaphroditism due to sex reversal. J. Exp. Zool. 286:745–754, 2000. © 2000 Wiley-Liss, Inc.