Social Life Cycle Assessment: State of the art and challenges for supporting product policies

Well-being is considered one of the main development goals of modern society. Assessing what could improve well-being and what may undermine it is a key element in public policies, looking at social benefit and impacts. Cultural elements, different values and lifestyles affect the way social issues are perceived. Moreover, social impacts along supply chains are increasingly assessed by different stakeholders, such as government, business and NGO’s. Life cycle-based methodologies have been developed to assess environmental impacts along supply chains, from extraction of raw materials to end of life of products. Social life cycle assessment (SLCA) integrates traditional life cycle assessment by having social aspects as focus. In fact, sustainability assessment requires that environmental, social and economic impacts and benefit are taken into account. The present report aims at presenting: i) the state of the art in Social Life Cycle Assessment, illustrating the main theoretical and methdological elements under discussion in scientific domain. ii) overlaps and synergies with traditional Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) towards a common framework; iii) examples of application at macro scale (EU-28) and at sector scale (Metal sector) of a set of indicators.JRC.H.8 - Sustainability Assessmen

Improving Sustainability and Circularity of European Food Waste Management with a Life Cycle Approach

In the past years, several research initiatives have been promoted in the area of food waste. Many of these were focused on the identification of key drivers of food wastage and on the quantification of food waste generation. While these initiatives provided fairly accurate information over European food waste generation and management routes, they did not always deliver comprehensive and comparable knowledge on the sustainability of food waste management and on ways to mitigate negative consequences at environmental, economic and social levels. Building on most recent methodological advancement and policy needs, the work presented in this report aims at providing policy/decision makers and waste managers with a life-cycle based framework methodology to quantify the environmental and economic sustainability performance of European food waste management. This methodology can help identify options for improvement of such performance, thus can offer relevant insight to the decision making process. A numerical case study is also developed. This is meant to give an example of simplified application of the proposed methodology to a fictitious European waste management context. The environmental dimension has been evaluated with the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) software EASETECH, while the economic assessment is conducted based on a number of different indicators expressing the costs associated with food waste management. This methodology makes use of multi-objective optimization and Pareto optimality concepts in order to help identify most sustainable management options for food waste, intended as those that minimize environmental and economic impacts. In any case, the proposed methodology is meant to only provide relevant information that can support science-based decision making. The final choice will in fact depend on a number of additional aspects that are beyond the scope of this report and also depends on the preferences of the decision maker.JRC.H.8-Sustainability Assessmen

Early death in Munchausen Syndrome: a case report

This case contributes to raising awareness and understanding of the complex clinical presentations of Munchausen syndrome (MS). Education of staff to the seriousness and genuineness of this disorder should be implemented, especially in hospital units, in order to detect such complex clinical situations quickly and accurately, preventing iatrogenic risks

Role of brain 2-[18F]fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose-positron-emission tomography as survival predictor in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Purpose The identification of prognostic tools in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) would improve the design of clinical trials, the management of patients, and life planning. We aimed to evaluate the accuracy of brain 2-[18F]fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose-positron-emission tomography (2-[18F]FDG-PET) as an independent predictor of survival in ALS. Methods A prospective cohort study enrolled 418 ALS patients, who underwent brain 2-[18F]FDG-PET at diagnosis and whose survival time was available. We discretized the survival time in a finite number of classes in a data-driven fashion by employing a k-means-like strategy. We identified “hot brain regions” with maximal power in discriminating survival classes, by evaluating the Laplacian scores in a class-aware fashion. We retained the top-m features for each class to train the classification systems (i.e., a support vector machine, SVM), using 10% of the ALS cohort as test set. Results Data were discretized in three survival profiles: 0–2 years, 2–5 years, and > 5 years. SVM resulted in an error rate < 20% for two out of three classes separately. As for class one, the discriminant clusters included left caudate body and anterior cingulate cortex. The most discriminant regions were bilateral cerebellar pyramid in class two, and right cerebellar dentate nucleus, and left cerebellar nodule in class three. Conclusion Brain 2-[18F]FDG-PET along with artificial intelligence was able to predict with high accuracy the survival time range in our ALS cohort. Healthcare professionals can benefit from this prognostic tool for planning patients’ management and follow-up. 2-[18F]FDG-PET represents a promising biomarker for individual patients’ stratification in clinical trials. The lack of a multicentre external validation of the model warrants further studies to evaluate its generalization capability

Molecular detection of tick-borne pathogens in wild red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) from Central Italy

Spleen samples from 153 red foxes, shot during regular hunting season in the province of Pisa (Central Italy), were examined to detect DNA of Anaplasma phagocytophilum, Ehrlichia canis, Coxiella burnetii, Francisella tularensis, Hepatozoon canis and Babesia sp./Theileria sp. DNA of vector-borne pathogens was detected in 120 (78.43%; 95% CI: 71.06–84.66%) foxes. Specifically, 75 (49%; 95% CI: 40.86–57.22%) animals scored PCR-positive per H. canis, 68 (44.44%; 95% CI: 36.42–52.69%) for E. canis, 35 (22.88%; 95% CI: 16.48–30.35%) for piroplasms (Theileria annae), 3 (1.96%; 95% CI: 0.41–5.62%) for C. burnetii and 1 (0.65%; 95% CI: 0.02–3.59%) for A. phagocytophilum. No positive reaction was observed for F. tularensis. Fifty-six animals (36.6%; 95% CI: 28.97–44.76%) were positive for two or three pathogens. Red foxes result to be involved in the cycle of vector-borne pathogens that are associated to disease in dogs and humans