Search

The paper deals with the most used metadata formats and thesauri suitable for describing scientific and research papers in the domains agriculture, food industry, aquaculture, environment and rural areas. These include the Dublin Core (DC), Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS), Virtual Open Access Agriculture and Aquaculture Repository Metadata Application Profile (VOA3R AP) and the AGROVOC thesaurus. Having analyzed the metadata formats and research paper lifecycle, the authors would recommend that each paper should entail metadata description as soon as it is published. The metadata are to describe the content and properties of the paper. One of the most suitable metadata formats is the VOA3R AP that is partially patterned on the DC and combined with the AGROVOC thesaurus. As a result, an effective description, availability and automatic data exchange between and among local and central repositories should be attained. The knowledge and data presented in the present paper were obtained as a result of the following research programs and grant schemes: the Grant No. 20121044 of the Internal Grant Agency titled „Using Automatic Metadata Generation for Research Papers“, the Grant agreement No. 250525 funded by the European Commission corresponding to the VOA3R Project (Virtual Open Access Agriculture & Aquaculture Repository: Sharing Scientific and Scholarly Research related to Agriculture, Food, and Environment), http://voa3r.eu and the Research Program titled „Economy of the Czech Agriculture Resources and their Efficient Use within the Framework of the Multifunctional Agrifood Systems“ of the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport number VZ MSM 6046070906. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors of this paper report on the changing character of household waste, in the Czech Republic between 1999 and 2009 in households differentiated by their heating methods. The data presented are the result of two projects, financed by the Czech Ministry of Environment, which were undertaken during this time period with the aim of focusing on the waste characterisation and complete analysis of the physicochemical properties of the household waste. In the Czech Republic, the composition of household waste varies significantly between different types of households based on the methods of home heating employed. For the purposes of these studies, the types of homes were divided into three categories - urban, mixed and rural. Some of the biggest differences were found in the quantities of certain subsample categories, especially fine residue (matter smaller than 20 mm), between urban households with central heating and rural households that primarily employ solid fuel such coal or wood. The use of these solid fuels increases the fraction of the finer categories because of the higher presence of ash. Heating values of the residual household waste from the three categories varied very significantly, ranging from 6.8 MJ/kg to 14.2 MJ/kg in 1999 and from 6.8 MJ/kg to 10.5 MJ/kg in 2009 depending on the type of household and season. The same factors affect moisture of residual household waste which varied from 23.2% to 33.3%. The chemical parameters also varied significantly, especially in the quantities of Tl, As, Cr, Zn, Fe and Mn, which were higher in rural households. Because knowledge about the properties of household waste, as well as its physicochemical characteristics, is very important not only for future waste management, but also for the prediction of the behaviour and influence of the waste on the environment as the country continues to streamline its legislation to the European Union's solid waste mandates, the results of these studies were employed by the Czech Ministry of Environment to optimise the national waste management strategy., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)