2017 April - 197 articles
Most research on biochar has focused either on the mechanistic or the biophysical aspects, and there has been relatively little research into the social applicability and acceptance of biochar as a soil enhancer in agriculture. However, whether to ad...
Most thalassotherapy centres in Spain do not have any quality certification but they are carrying out several actions of quality management in an attempt to obtain better results. Consequently, the aim of this research is to study if the implementati...
Nowadays, the high power consumption of data centers is the biggest challenge to making cloud computing greener. Many researchers are still seeking effective solutions to reduce or harvest the energy produced at data centers. To address this challeng...
This paper aims to reveal the nexus for sulfur dioxide (SO2) emission and income, as well as the effects of technical progress on SO2 emission in China based on environment Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. The spatial panel technique is used in case t...
Although several studies have explained the effect of urbanization on China’s carbon emissions, most have focused on population urbanization, while ignoring the urban spatial form. This study investigates the impact of urban spatial form, measured by...
This study examines the dominance of the D/H ratio as a design element for an enclosed urban square, long claimed by numerous urban designers. It claims that like the D/H ratio, other design elements significantly affect the perceptual quality of an...
Caragana microphylla, a native perennial leguminous shrub, is widely used for desertification control in China’s Horqin Sandy Land. We investigated the effects of afforestation using C. microphylla in areas with fixed and active dunes on soil carbon...
To date the concept of the bioeconomy—an economy based primarily on biogenic instead of fossil resources—has largely been associated with visions of “green growth” and the advancement of biotechnology and has been framed from within an industrial per...
The aim of this paper is to guide the next steps of a PhD thesis through a structured review of the state of the art and implementation of Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA), and to identify challenges and potentials for its adoption at an a...
Ecosystem services (ES) in cities and surrounding suburban areas are one of the major factors which guarantee quality of life. Most studies directly referring to urban ecosystem services are conducted on a local scale or for selected cities. There ar...
In the current era, competition among countries and regions is in fact among cities. Thus, how to measure urban competitiveness precisely is a basic and important question. The two main approaches to this are comprehensive evaluation based on a set o...
In response to the call of the Chinese government to support low-carbon development, the issue has come to the view gradually as to whether the behaviors of banks’ green credit will contribute to easing their own credit risk. To reflect the behaviors...
China, as the world’s largest cement producer, accounts for more than 60% of global cement production. With the continuous development of the Chinese economy, resource and environmental constraints are becoming increasingly serious, and energy saving...
Land expropriation, during the rapid urbanization process in China, results in rural conflicts and presents barriers in sustainable development. Collective strategies of major stakeholders should be clearly understood for finding effective measures t...
Social sustainability is a relatively underexposed dimension of the sustainability debate. Diversified and discipline-specific study perspectives and the lack of contextualization make it difficult to gain a comprehensive understanding of social sust...
Data centers have become ubiquitous in the last few years in an attempt to keep pace with the processing and storage needs of the Internet and cloud computing. The steady growth in the heat densities of IT servers leads to a rise in the energy needed...
Bioenergy is an important renewable energy source in the UK, but the bioenergy industry and in particular the wood fuel sub sector, is relatively under-developed. Socioeconomic factors have been identified as critical for facilitating deployment leve...
The disease outbreak of Xylella fastidiosa subsp. pauca strain CoDiRO (Complesso del Disseccamento Rapido dell’Olivo) in Salento (Apulia, South Italy) associated with severe cases of olive quick decline syndrome may represent not just a new disease p...
Sustainability of cities and the environmental implications of high resource utilization by the domestic sector are growing concerns related to urban regions. Well-informed urban planning decision-making is an essential tool to help in the task and,...
This paper proposes an extended data envelopment analysis (DEA) model for deriving eco-efficiency. In order to derive eco-efficiency, the proposed model utilizes the concepts of operational efficiency and environmental efficiency. Since DEA can separ...
With the increasing environmental awareness, apparel manufacturers have begun to consider environmental issues in supplier evaluation and selection. It is crucial to assess suppliers based on their environmental performance along with other criteria...
The evaluation of urban development plans is a key concern of the strategic planning of the city of Cartagena de Indias (Colombia) due to the pressure exerted by both public and private sectors. Any strategic planning requirement deserves the inclusi...
This study develops an original framework to explore the influence of excessive product packaging on green brand attachment and to discuss the mediation roles of green brand attitude and green brand image. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is applie...
Indemnificatory housing programs—a kind of state-backed urban low-end and nonmarket housing programs which used to be welfare—have now increasingly evolved to be the vehicle to promote capital accumulation. Most of these housing communities show peri...
In this paper, an efficient testing system for measuring a PV module’s I-V curve is proposed. The proposed system is based on a controlled DC-DC boost converter. The advantage of using a DC-DC converter is that this converter is typically used in PV...
Food banks make up an increasing phenomenon of nonprofit organizations answering to new social needs related to the global socioeconomic crisis. In order to explore if they are suitably adapting to their environments in Spain, one of the countries mo...
To avoid the risk of single and homogeneous development, China’s coal enterprises have explored a diversified development model and are actively developing coal-based industries such as electric power, coal chemical, coal equipment manufacturing, log...
Ensuring sustainable consumption and production is one of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Sustainable consumption can be supported through regulatory processes. Voluntary private regulatory schemes claiming to contribute to sustain...
Outdoor lighting is becoming increasingly widespread, and residents are suffering from serious light pollution as a result. Residents’ awareness of their rights to protection has gradually increased. However, due to the sometimes-inaccessible nature...
Based on stochastic frontier analysis and translog input distance function, this paper examines the total factor energy efficiency of China’s industry using input-output data of 30 sub-industries from 2002 to 2014, and decomposes the changes in estim...
Gasification of biomass gives off syngas that is contaminated mostly by carbon particulates and tars. The degree of contamination is attributed to factors such as gasification process, type of gasifier and type of biomass material. Downdraft gasifier...
Several studies focus on sustainable context-awareness of a mobile device to which power is supplied from a limited battery. However, the existing studies did not consider an unnecessary sensing operation in exclusive contexts wherein it is not possi...
This paper divides the typical social scientific research process into two stages: the research development stage and the research innovation stage, with personnel as a shared input between them. We construct an input-shared multi-period two-stage DE...
This paper catalogs the suburban expansion of San Antonio, Texas by decade between the years 1890 and 2009, a time frame that saw the city reorganize its morphological structure four times. The city inhabited a 36-square mile grid until the late nine...
Reducing carbon emissions is a major way to achieve green development and sustainability for China’s future. This paper elaborates the detailed features of China’s carbon flow for 2013 with the carbon flow chart and shows the changing characteristics...
As a pillar industry in supporting Chinese economy, Chinese manufacturing industry consumes a large amount of energy and causes serious environmental pollutants. Better understanding the greening level of manufacturing industry is important to promot...
This study tried to understand the mountainous households’ perception of climate change and its impacts on food security in the Lamjung district of Nepal. The study attempted to find out changes in households food security and daily activities in the...
Recent policy changes in sustainability reporting, such as the ones related to the new European Directive on non-financial disclosure (2014/95/EU), the standards issued by the American Sustainability Accounting Standard Board (SASB), the G4 guideline...
The implementation of rural tourism membership can aid in boosting economic growth in rural areas. This study examines households’ preferences for rural tourism experience in association with sales of local agricultural products. Using a choice exper...
Saudi Arabia is one of the largest countries in the Middle East region in terms of population, geographic area and scale of economy. It has a fast growing energy sector with over 76% of the total electricity being consumed in the building sector. Dom...
Precise and accurate prediction models for duration and cost enable contractors to improve their decision making for effective resource management in terms of sustainability in construction. Previous studies have been limited to cost-based estimation...
For centuries, olive growing has played a major role in the central regions of Italy, with hectares of olive groves surrounding hill towns and hamlets as part of a strong deep-rooted farming tradition. With reference to Lazio and Abruzzo, this articl...
Yields of rainfed potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) in China’s semiarid region are restricted by limited precipitation. Climate change could cause significant fluctuation in the rain-fed agricultural production due to the spatiotemporal changes in temper...
The technology of freezing saline water irrigation (FSWI) with plastic mulching has been regarded as an effective way to reclaim the highly saline soil in coastal plains, which enabled the growth of crops in heavy saline soil that was not suitable fo...
Identifying irrigation strategies that improve agricultural water use efficiency (WUE) have a pivotal role to play in sustainable water development. In this study, the AquaCrop model was used to examine the impact of different irrigation scheduling o...
This paper explores the relationship between the practices of good governance and the quality of life at the municipal level in Spain. A composite indicator of the quality of life of 393 Spanish municipalities in 2011 is estimated using varied statis...
With China’s rapid economic development, restructuring the economy will require a development model based on high-to-low carbon transition. The development of logistics enterprises has its own characteristics associated with the trend of low carbon....
Smart home technologies offer exciting opportunities to promote more efficient uses of energy. For instance, programmable thermostats, centralized lighting controls, and rooftop solar panels all have potential for energy conservation and efficiency....
The biogeophysical effects of land cover change (LCC) on land surface temperature are largely understood, especially in tropical and boreal zones, but fewer studies have reported the biogeophysical consequences of ecological restoration of mining are...
Decisions made at early stages of the design are of the utmost importance for the energy-efficiency of buildings. Wrong decisions and design failures related to a building’s general layout, shape, façade transparency or orientation can increase the o...
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