Il rapporto 'MobilitAria' dell’Istituto sull’inquinamento atmosferico del Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche e del Gruppo mobilità sostenibile del Kyoto Club evidenzia, nel decennio 2006-2016, una lieve riduzione della media delle concentrazioni annuali di inquinanti, sebbene le città risultino ancora caratterizzate da superamenti giornalieri oltre i limiti. La ricerca, condotta a Bari, Bologna, Cagliari, Catania, Firenze, Genova, Messina, Milano, Napoli, Palermo, Reggio Calabria, Roma, Torino e Venezia, confronta i livelli raggiunti dall’inquinamento con le politiche di mobilità

È stato presentato oggi a Roma 'MobilitAria 2018', rapporto realizzato dall’Istituto sull’inquinamento atmosferico del Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche (Iia-Cnr) e dal Gruppo mobilità sostenibile del Kyoto Club, un quadro della qualità dell’aria e della mobilità urbana nelle quattordici principali città italiane - Bari, Bologna, Cagliari, Catania, Firenze, Genova, Messina, Milano, Napoli, Palermo, Reggio Calabria, Roma, Torino e Venezia - prendendo a riferimento il decennio 2006-2016. Sono stati analizzati valori e superamenti di alcuni inquinanti secondo le disposizioni della normativa in vigore sulla qualità dell’aria, il D.Lgs 155/2010, quali il Particolato atmosferico (PM10 e PM2,5) ed il biossido di azoto (NO2), più correlabili con le emissioni da traffico e i cui sforamenti sono costati all’Italia l’avvio di una procedura infrazione da parte della Commissione europea. Dallo studio emerge che, sebbene negli anni 2006-2016 si riscontri un miglioramento diffuso della qualità dell’aria, con una lieve riduzione della media delle concentrazioni annuali, le città sono ancora caratterizzate da livelli di concentrazione e numero di superamenti giornalieri oltre i limiti (PM10: 50 μg/m3 giornalieri, da non superare più di 35 volte per anno, 40 μg/m3 di media annua; PM2,5: valore annuale 25 μg/m3; NO2: limite orario 200 μg/m3 per massimo 18 volte l’anno; limite annuale 40 μg/m3).

The aerial photo shows forest fragments of the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest in Northeastern Brazil (Mata Atlântica), surrounded by sugar cane plantations. Photo: Mateus Dantas de Paula

Tropical forests around the world play a key role in the global carbon cycle and harbour more than half of the species worldwide. However, increases in land use during the past decades caused unprecedented losses of tropical forest. Scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) have adapted a method from physics to mathematically describe the fragmentation of tropical forests. In the scientific journal Nature, they explain how this allows to model and understand the fragmentation of forests on a global scale. They found that forest fragmentation in all three continents is close to a critical point beyond which fragment number will strongly increase. This will have severe consequences for biodiversity and carbon storage. In order to analyse global patterns of forest fragmentation, a UFZ research group led by Prof. Andreas Huth used remote sensing data that quantify forest cover in the tropics in an extremely high resolution of 30 meters, resulting in more than 130 million forest fragments. To their surprise they found that the fragment sizes followed on all three continents similar frequency distributions. For example, the number of forest fragments smaller than 10,000 hectares is rather similar in all three regions: 11.2 percent in Central and South America, 9.9 percent in Africa and 9.2 percent in Southeast Asia. "This is surprising because land use noticeably differs from continent to continent," says Dr. Franziska Taubert, mathematician in Huth's team and first author of the study. For instance, very large forest areas are transformed into agricultural land in the Amazon region. By contrast, in the forests of Southeast Asia, often economically attractive tree species are taken from the forest.

 Professor Ryan Donnelly

Queen’s University Belfast is playing a central role in an international consortium that hasannounced the development of a patch delivery system which will lower the chances of infection for those at very high risk of HIV. HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (or PrEP) is when people at very high risk for HIV take HIV medicines daily to lower their chances of getting infected. PrEP can stop HIV from taking hold and spreading throughout the body. Queen’s, along with their collaborators, PATH, ViiV Healthcare, the Population Council and LTS Lohmann Therapie-Systeme AG will combine their complementary expertise to develop a novel microarray patch for HIV PrEP in preparation for future clinical trials.  The consortium have been granted over $10 million by USAID for their research.  USAID is the lead U.S. Government agency that provides global leadership; supports country-led efforts; and applies science, technology and innovation to support the implementation of cost-effective, sustainable and appropriately integrated HIV/AIDS interventions at scale to achieve HIV/AIDS epidemic control.

The collaborators will work with women and healthcare workers in Kenya, South Africa and Uganda to design a microarray patch product that meets their needs. Microarray patches are a discreet, easy-to-use technology that contains tiny projections that painlessly penetrate the top layer of skin to deliver a drug.  The novel high-dose patches to be developed here have been pioneered at Queen’s. The projections themselves contain large amounts of HIV medications in the form of microscopic solid particles. When the projections dissolve in skin, the tiny particles release the medication over weeks and months.