Global population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, increasing pressure on food production (Godfray et al., 2010). Constraintson crop production areparticularly acute in Africa where population growth is greatest and where 80% of all food is produced by small holder farmers on farm sizes of less than one hectare (Stevenson and Belmain, 2016). Crop losses caused by pests and diseases are t...

The Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a standardized procedure generally used, in Italy, in industrial engineering to evaluate the economic-environmental efficiency of production processes. LCA is aimed at optimizing the design, with special emphasis on environmental sustainability. Also in the construction sector, LCA has recently gained a fundamental role as a quantitative measurement tool able ...

In the early 1960s recognition of the adverse effects of environmental contamination due to industrial, pesticide, and agricultural pollution led to the emergence of the field of ecotoxicology (Ramade, 1992). Today, marine estuary and inshore ecosystems continue to be negatively impacted by environmental contamination (Short & Wyllie-Echeverria 1996; Orth et al., 2006; Osborn & Datta, 2006). In...

Investigating the impacts of predicted changes in our atmosphere and climate change on insect– plant interactions is a widely pursued area of research. To date, the majority of experimental studies have tested the impacts of single environmental factors on insect–plant interactions, but meta-analyses have clearly illustrated the importance of investigating multiple factors in tandem (Zvereva an...

Codling moth, Cydia pomonella (L.), remains a principal insect pest of tree fruit orchards throughout the temperate regions of the world (Barnes 1991; Beers et al. 1993). Its larvae bore deep into the fruits of apple, pear and walnut making them unmarketable. The majority of conventional growers still rely on chemical insecticides to control this insect. However, concerns regarding development ...

The Choosing Wisely campaign began in the United States in 2012, founded by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Foundation. It helps specialists to agree lists of interventions that should be used with more caution because they are often unnecessary and therefore wasteful and potentially harmful (see box 1 for examples). More than 60 US specialist societies will have created lists by...

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In utero and early life environmental exposure programming may be critical to the onset of many diseases and dysfunctions in adulthood (Barker, 2007; Heindel, 2006), such as an increased risk of hypertension, cardiovascular disease (Palinski et al. 2007), diabetes (Armitage et al. 2008), and breast cancer (Xue and Michels, 2007). Some in utero and early life environmental exposures have demonst...

The access to safe water is of great importance to reduce the spread of diseases caused by water-related pathogens and to assure the life quality to the human-beings. According to the World Health Organization (WHO, 2011), diarrhea, for example, is responsible for two million deaths every year, mainly among children under the age of five. The environmental effects of some pollutants (e.g. endoc...