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Papers by Marcello Biocca

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY

Lecture notes in civil engineering, 2023

Informatore Agrario, Oct 30, 2005

The objective of the paper is to show some aspects of the enforcement of the recent European Dire... more The objective of the paper is to show some aspects of the enforcement of the recent European Directive CE 128/09 in Italy and discussing some weakness and strength points of Italian organization of inspections. The framework Directive on the sustainable use of pesticides (CE 128/09) completed the European legislative background aimed at satisfy the "life-cycle" concept to address all major aspects related to the pesticides. For the first time, it is established (article 8) that member states shall ensure that pesticide application equipments in professional use shall be subject to inspections at regular intervals. Italian Regions have started programs aimed at periodical inspection during around the last 15 years, but so far there is not a general and complete organization of controls. Difficulty in implementing an universal mandatory system in Italy can be noticed, considering, for example, that many sprayers are obsolete (especially in small farms) so they cannot pass any inspection, giving a political problem to reject a large number of machinery. In the paper different technical possibilities to overcome the main problems are discussed.

The aspects of functionality and safety of agricultural operating machines are being studied at C... more The aspects of functionality and safety of agricultural operating machines are being studied at CRA-ING, since about twenty years by Testing Centre of Agricultural Machinery (CPMA). According to ISO and EN standards and to comply with some provisions of the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC, this activity includes control tests of pressure and sound power levels emitted by mounted, trailed and self-propelled machines, the values of which must be declared by the manufacturer in the user and maintenance manual. As example of CPMA test activity, accredited as Testing Laboratory (ACCREDIA no. 1141) in accordance with the requirements of the EN ISO/IEC 17025:2005 standard, this paper reports the results of tests on a pneumatic seed drill, aimed at verifying the noise emitted. The measurements of the sound pressure levels (according to EN ISO 4254-1:2010 and EN ISO 11201:2010) and of the sound power levels (according to EN ISO 3744:2010 and EN ISO 4254-1:2010) are among the tests accredited. The former are measured for frequency bands in 1 / 3-octaves in the range 100 Hz to 10.000 Hz, as the latter are measured in 10 micro-phonic positions dislocated on an hemispherical measurement surface. A Brüel&Kjaer instrumental chain is employed, consisting of a real-time frequency analyzer, a microphone and a sound level calibrator. The test results, provided with the associated measurement uncertainty, showed a sound pressure level of 90.6 dB (A) ± 1.4 dB, above the limit of 80 dB (A) indicated by the Machinery Directive, requiring to measure of the sound power level. This resulted of 106.5 dB (A) ± 3.2 dB.

Periodical testing and inspections of sprayers are considered an essential tool in reduction and ... more Periodical testing and inspections of sprayers are considered an essential tool in reduction and correct use of plant protection products. Therefore in many European countries, as well as in some Italian regions, these tests are compulsory. The tests are carried out according to standard methodologies, where the machinery safety is not directly included in the inspection. The aim of the paper is to stress which points of testing methodology are directly or indirectly related to the operator safety and which points are susceptible to be modified or implemented in the methodology in order to enhance the safety of spraying for the farmer. After both an analytical analysis of the methodology and the potential risks of spraying for the farmer, some suggestions are given in the paper in order to better clarify this issue and a proposal of integration of periodical inspections with safety control of the machinery is given.

Although seed treatment is considered as a safe pesticide application method, treated seeds can p... more Although seed treatment is considered as a safe pesticide application method, treated seeds can pose environmental risks when abraded pesticide-laden seed particles are expelled during sowing. Shortly after relating bee killing incidents to neonicotinoidladen dust particles expelled by vacuum based precision maize drills, the dust drift topic received increasingly more attention from different research groups. CREA-IT and ILVO have both developed devices to mitigate the adverse effects during sowing with vacuum based precision drills. Both mitigation strategies were coared to a conventional drill and to each other using the validated indoor dust drift setup of CREA-IT and two type of seeds, i.e. seeds coated with thiacloprid and seeds coated with a tracer. In addition, Heubach values and physicochemical properties of the seeds used were measured. Ground and airborne drift deposition results confirmed the important drift reduction capacities of both technologies with drift reduction values ranging from 44% up to 90% compared with the conventional technique with air deflectors. These results confirm that this static method is capable to assess the efficiency of drift reduction devices in a relatively fast and efficient way compared with field trials.

The Italian Stone Pine (Pinus pinea L.) is one of the most employed ornamental trees in towns wit... more The Italian Stone Pine (Pinus pinea L.) is one of the most employed ornamental trees in towns with Mediterranean climates. For example, in the city of Rome, Pinus is the most common genus, with more than 51,000 trees. Due to numerous reasons, the maintenance of this species may constitute a serious issue for the owners. Pruning and felling are the most frequent management operations of trees in towns and this study analyzes the technical and economic features of these operations carried out in 14 work sites (with a total of 25 observed trees). The operations were carried out either with aerial platforms (19 trees) or ascending the crown by tree-climbing (six trees). The operations were sampled with time studies (12 trees for pruning and 13 for felling). Work time was measured from the beginning of operations to the transport of the residual biomass to the collection and loading point, using centesimal stopwatches and video recording. The total residual biomass was weighed or assessed. Total observation time amounted to 63.1 h. The evaluation of the costs of each work site considered the fixed and the variable costs and the costs for the labor force. A multiple linear regression modeling was adopted to predict the gross time of the operations. This paper can contribute to optimize tree maintenance methods in urban sites and to assess the potential residual wood biomass attainable from urban forestry maintenance.

AIIA 2022: Biosystems Engineering Towards the Green Deal

Journal of Basic & Applied Sciences

Practices such as tree felling, pruning, logging and chipping wood can produce significant amount... more Practices such as tree felling, pruning, logging and chipping wood can produce significant amount of wood particles that can be inhaled by agricultural and forestry workers, triggering an important risk to the health of workers. Especially finest fractions of dust, less than 4 µm in diameter (the respirable fraction) may cause respiratory and dermal diseases, until to the risk of developing nose and sinus adenocancer. The aim of this work was to assess the particle size distribution of wood dust produced during chainsaw operations. In two separate trials (July and December), wood logs of three different species (Eucalyptus sp., Pinus radiata and Quercus cerris) were employed in cutting tests. Two chainsaws, one electric powered by batteries and one endothermic, were employed. To characterize the particle size distribution, samplings were carried out with a dust particle counter placed in the area surrounding the tests’ site. Results showed that the dust was characterized by a major ...

Assessment for Effective Intervention, 2001

... Brenda Smith Myles University of Kansas ... The impor-tant area of assessing joint attention ... more ... Brenda Smith Myles University of Kansas ... The impor-tant area of assessing joint attention in chil-dren and youth with ASD is discussed by Peter Mundy and Amy Vaughan, who give a concise overview of the nature of joint atten-tion and its importance for social and com ...

Agriculture

The performance of agricultural tires varies with the characteristics of both the terrain and the... more The performance of agricultural tires varies with the characteristics of both the terrain and the tractors on which they are mounted, which differently affect the rolling resistance, the traction capacity, and the slip. To reduce the variability of test conditions, CREA developed an original mobile test (MTB) bench which consists of a dynamometric single axle trailer pulled by a tractor and can be used both in traction performance tests (driving wheels) and in rolling resistance tests (driven wheels). A control system alternatively operates the adjustment of traction force or slip, so that each test is performed maintaining constant the desired values. The MTB underwent tests under different conditions (type of surface, pre-set values of force of traction and slip) aimed at verifying its accuracy and reliability. In a final test, two pairs of identical new tires were simultaneously mounted on the MTB and on the rear axle of the 2WD tractor that pulled it, to discover information on ...

Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, 2022

Chemical Engineering Transactions, 2017

Italy has a fragmented reality with an extremely rich and diverse territory; however, it has nowa... more Italy has a fragmented reality with an extremely rich and diverse territory; however, it has nowadays started to embrace precision farming techniques and several research activities are being carried out. This study followed a survey proposed by the Italian Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies (Mipaaf) promoted to explore and evidence weaknesses and strengths of the Italian panorama regarding precision farming researches and studies. The survey interested all the Italian Research Institutes and Universities, which include agricultural aspects within their missions.This study aims at conducting the first term mapping analysis of the precision agriculture research in Italy to elucidate its research structure. We applied a science mapping approach based on co-terms and citations analyses to a set of scientific publications retrieved from the Elsevier's Scopus database over the period 2000–2016. The key terms used for the Scopus search were "precision agricultur...

Sustainability

The current energy situation requires the effective utilization of all available resources, and r... more The current energy situation requires the effective utilization of all available resources, and residual wood biomass from urban forestry may represent an excellent opportunity for increasing the presence of short-range energy sources. In urban forestry management, two main operations can provide large amounts of wood biomass: The felling and pruning of trees. These operations are carried out with two principal techniques that differ in terms of mechanization intensity (i.e., accessing the trees’ crown with mechanized aerial lifts or utilizing ropes—tree-climbing). This study has investigated 18 felling and 15 pruning yards, carried out with aerial lifts (17 yards) or tree-climbing (16 yards), most of them located in the city of Rome (Italy), one of the greenest European capitals. The operations were sampled with time studies, and five elements of work time were measured from the beginning of work to the transport of the residual biomass to the loading point, using centesimal stopwa...