An Innovative Malaxer Equipped with SCADA Platform for Improving Extra Virgin Olive Oil Quality.

Agriculture 4.0 is gaining more attention, and all companies are thinking about innovating machines to increase income and improve the quality of the final products. In the agro-food sector, there is space for innovation, as it is far behind the industrial sector. This paper reports an industrial-scale study on the application of an innovative system for the extraction of Sicilian EVOO (extra virgin olive oil) to improve both process management and the quality of the product. Based on previous studies, the authors suggested an innovative machine equipped with a SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition system) for oxygen and process duration monitoring and control. The objective of the research was thus to discuss the development of a SCADA platform applied to the malaxer and the establishment of an optimized approach to control the main process parameters for obtaining high-quality EVOO. The SCADA system application in the EVOO extraction process allowed a qualitative improvement of the Sicilian EVOO of Nocellara del Belice and Cerasuola cultivars. The use of the innovative system made it possible to increase the values of tocopherols (by about 25%) in Cerasuola cultivar and total phenol content (by about 30%) in Nocellara del Belice cultivar EVOOs.

Socioeconomic inequality in non-communicable diseases in Europe between 2004 and 2015: evidence from the SHARE survey.

Background: The scope of this work was to investigate socioeconomic inequalities among European adults aged 50 or older in chronic diseases and behavioural risk factors for these diseases, namely, smoking habits, obesity and physical inactivity, between 2004 and 2015. Methods: Data for this study were drawn from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement (SHARE) in Europe, which is a panel database of microdata on health, socioeconomic status and social and family networks of people aged 50 years or older, covering most of the European Union. The predicted number of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) was used to estimate the concentration index and to find the contributions of determinants to socioeconomic inequalities in chronic diseases. Results: The inequality disfavoured the poor in both years, but the effect was stable from 2004 (C = -0.071) to 2015 (C = -0.081). Inequality was shown to be attributed mostly to physical inactivity and obesity and this contribution increased during the study period. Among socioeconomic status (SES) determinants, education and marital status were the most concentrated in both years, while physical inactivity and obesity were the most concentrated behavioural risk factors in both years. Conclusions: To prevent chronic diseases, health policy should aim not only to improve individual health behaviours in the population, but also to reduce socioeconomic inequality. Our study suggests promoting a healthy lifestyle in the most disadvantaged socioeconomic classes as a strategy to improve the health conditions of the whole population.