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A framework for assessing forest habitat connectivity loss and optimising reforestation efforts on the example of a hydropower project
No full textThe development of renewable energy, such as hydropower, often leads to the loss and fragmentation of terrestrial habitats, with significant effects on biodiversity. However, these impacts are often overlooked or underestimated in Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs). In this study, we proposed a framework that explicitly integrates forest habitat connectivity into EIAs and environmental planning, addressing both impact assessment and recommendations for offset. The framework included (i) an evaluation of forest habitat connectivity loss by comparing before- and after-construction scenarios and (ii) a spatial analysis to prioritise reforestation activities aimed at restoring connectivity for wildlife species with varying movement abilities. We applied this framework to a proposed hydropower project in Nepal and found a major loss of forest habitat connectivity within the project footprint and up to 15 km away, indicating substantial loss of forest connectivity and a landscape-scale impact. In total, 94.1 km2 of deforested areas were identified, and potential reforestation sites were ranked using the Integral Index of Connectivity across three dispersal distances (500 m, 1 km and 2 km). Priority reforestation sites were identified both at landscape-level and within riparian zones, with 15% and 36% of the sites, respectively, emerging as top priorities for reforestation across all the dispersal distances. Our findings highlight the importance of explicitly addressing habitat connectivity in EIAs and environmental planning and show how connectivitybased prioritisation can guide effective reforestation offsets, promoting a better balance between energy development and biodiversity conservation
A Few Remarks on the Roots of Fuzziness Measures
No full textForty years have passed since the first publication of DeLuca and Termini “A definition of a nonprobabilistic entropy in the setting of fuzzy sets theory” [5], and from then on many cunning ways of measuring the inherent fuzziness in our perception of the world have been devised
Visible-light activated photodegradation of DNA and lipid membranes by nitrogen-doped titanium dioxide-gold nanorods composites
No full textThe growing challenge of antibiotic resistance calls for alternative therapeutic strategies beyond conventional antibiotics. Antibacterial Photodynamic Therapy (aPDT), based on the light-induced generation of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS), offers a non-specific approach that is detrimental to bacterial cells at multiple levels. Here, we explore the photocatalytic properties of nitrogen-doped titanium dioxide (N-TiO2) and compare them with those of the N-TiO2/AuNRs composite, a colloidal hybrid system formed by combining N-TiO2 with gold nanorods (AuNRs) upon excitation with a blue visible light centered at 420 nm. The synthesized materials underwent thorough in-depth morphological characterization to investigate their structural and functional features. Their photocatalytic activity was first evaluated using methyl orange as a model molecule, and subsequently on DNA and model lipid membranes, key components of bacterial life. Spectroscopic techniques were employed to highlight details on the oxidative damages at the molecular level. Scavenging experiments were performed to identify the reactive species involved in the photocatalytic process. The results highlight the potential of the composite N-TiO2/AuNRs as promising agent for photodynamic therapy, providing insights into how oxidative processes alter molecular targets
La tutela del simbolo dei partiti politici eredi della Democrazia cristiana in una recente sentenza
No full textThe paper offers a brief commentary on ruling no. 2874 of 2025 of the Tribunale di Roma, which ruled on the claims brought by C. Leonetti and N. Luciani, who brought legal action seeking recognition for their party of the exclusive use of the symbols and insignia of the Democrazia cristiana, claiming exclusive political and legal continuity with the party founded by De Gasper
Theory of Computation, Fuzziness and a Physics of the Immaterial
No full textRelationships between Hard and Soft Sciences have a long-standing and well studied history. We have previously discussed the role of Fuzzy Sets Theory as a methodological bridge between the seemingly disconnected worlds of humanities and science [28, 29]
La normalità contesa. Guida allo studio della sociologia della devianza e del crimine
No full textThe volume is an essential tool for students who wish to understand the complexity of deviant and criminal phenomena beyond superficial definitions. Born from an experimental project between the “Virgilio Floriani” High School of Human Sciences in Vimercate (MB) and the “Bodies, Rights, Conflicts” Interdisciplinary Research Laboratory of the Department of Culture and Society at the University of Palermo, this book offers a critical approach to the study of deviance and crime.
Through the lens of sociological analysis, we seek to recognize that concepts such as “normal” and “deviant” are not objective facts but powerful social constructions influenced by power, culture, and historical contexts. The aim is to shift the focus from individual causes to the labeling processes and social reactions that transform an act into a crime and an individual into an “outsider.” Furthermore, it explores how laws and justice are shaped by social conflicts and how definitions of what is “illicit” often serve to consolidate the interests of dominant groups.
This educational path does not limit itself to providing answers; it stimulates the ability to ask the right questions, developing the awareness and critical analysis skills indispensable for resisting prejudice and actively participating in the improvement of society. The goal is to train citizens who can look beneath the surface of facts, critically analyzing the role of the media, institutions, and science in the construction of deviant and criminal social reality
The Rise of Black British Consciousness and Its Effects on British Cultural Identity
No full textAssuming the arrival of the Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks (Essex) in 1948 as a historical and cultural watershed, the chapter examines the renewed (self-)perception of British identity that the literary practices ensuing from the event itself brought about from the inception of the second half of the twentieth century to the first decades of the third millennium.
Through the lenses of a multi-layered interpretative model conjugating the theoretical tenets of Gender, Post-colonial and (Black) British Cultural Studies, the analysis will focus on the complex representational dynamics of the pluralisation of British cultural identity as activated particularly in the realm of literature thanks to innovatively interwoven formal and thematic solutions.
The imaginative space of the literary works examined (among which those by Bernardine Evaristo in particular are worthy of specific critical scrutiny) will thus prove to be permeated by the fruitful porosity between forms of generic contamination – absorbing, most notably, the fluid stylistic formulas of orality – and, on a thematic level, by oppositional hyphenated subjectivities conversant with Anglophone diasporic backgrounds.
In light of the specific critical perspective adopted, the undecidability of the generic level is to be seen as deliberately interconnected with the complex spectrum of the new identity models – from (post-)colonial to British Asian and Black British subjectivities. In turn, the deriving cross-cultural mosaics, with their often contradictory negotiations, as well as the development of related areas of literary criticism are interpreted as arenas of political transformation intended to progressively dismantle the traditionally exclusionary construct of British monolithic whiteness
Generating Synthetic Data with Large Language Models for Low-Resource Sentence Retrieval
No full textSentence similarity search is a fundamental task in information retrieval, enabling applications such as search engines, question answering, and textual analysis. However, retrieval systems often struggle when training data are scarce, as is the case for low-resource languages or specialized domains such as ancient texts. To address this challenge, we propose a novel paradigm for domain-specific sentence similarity search, where the embedding space is shaped by a combination of limited real data and a large amount of synthetic data generated by Large Language Models (LLMs). Specifically, we employ LLMs to generate domain-specific sentence pairs and fine-tune a sentence embedding model, effectively distilling knowledge from the LLM to the retrieval model. We validate our method through a case study on biblical intertextuality in Latin, demonstrating that synthetic data augmentation significantly improves retrieval effectiveness in a domain with scarce annotated resources. More broadly, our approach offers a scalable and adaptable framework for enhancing retrieval in domain-specific contexts. Source code and trained models are available at https://github.com/aimagelab/ biblical-retrieval-synthesis
Enhancing value creation in inner areas through dynamic performance governance
No full textInner areas are contexts with rich and diverse cultural heritage and environmental assets (e.g., high-quality agricultural products, natural landscapes, archeological & historical settlements, museums, etc.) but distinct from urban settings because of their low population density and distance from key welfare services like healthcare, education, and transportation (Ottomano et al., 2022) (Ros. Such contexts face numerous challenges (e.g., depopulation, urban decay, aging population, limited job opportunities, outmigration, etc.) that worsen the existing constraints and limitations in their respective environments. These problems have a negative impact on the economic dynamism of these areas, leading to a decrease in public service provisions, external investments, and the overall quality of life and attractiveness of the area (Almeida, 2018). Such problems, referred to as “wicked problems” by Rittel and Webber (1973), have a feedback loop that worsens the already declining conditions of the socioeconomic, cultural, and ecological systems. These exhibit a growing blurriness, stemming from the complex structure of the relationships across different governance levels, making the policy agenda difficult to plan. Addressing such problems requires, on the one side, a long-term perspective that identifies the underlying causes and considers the broader systemic context to produce lasting change, and, on the other, adopting innovative modes of planning (Ansell and Torfing, 2014) to foster public value creation (Osborne, 2021). In this perspective, by adopting effective policies, public sector organizations (PSOs) have the potential to profoundly shape society’s path. Based on this, we posit the following. To address the above-mentioned challenges, it is crucial to involve different stakeholders (PSOs, businesses, and civil society) in co-planning, co-designing, co-producing, and co-evaluating holistic policy solutions (Bovaird, 2007) and to manage public programs or assets (Ansell and Gash, 2008) (p. 2). By collaborating – through formal and informal dialogue – stakeholders jointly create rules and structures guiding their interactions and deliberations, involving shared norms and mutually beneficial interrelationships (Madden, 2015; Thomson et al., 2009; Wood and Gray, 1991) so as to leverage and foster tangible and intangible shared strategic resources (e.g., time, skills, knowledge, values, contacts, etc.) (Bianchi, 2021, 2022). Such collaboration also implies the need for performance management and governance systems able from the one side to capture the intrinsic dynamic complexity characterizing inner areas and the related wicked problems affecting such contexts, and from the other, to support stakeholders in collaborative initiatives to foster consistency across an organizational, interorganizational and context perspective of sustainable value creation. This requires a suitable method able to cut across different and interconnected viewpoints, i.e., time horizon, accountability, and field (Bianchi and Grippi, 2024). In this contribution, it will be highlighted that such collaborative initiatives necessitate strong performance management and governance approaches for framing critical strategic resources, drivers, outputs, and outcomes. In line with this, the chapter aims to illustrate how the Dynamic Performance Governance approach (DPG) (Bianchi, 2016, 2021, 2022; Bianchi and Vignieri, 2020; Vignieri, 2022) may effectively enhance collaboration through stakeholder learning, thereby facilitating the creation of public value in inner areas. It will be emphasized how, building on three bodies of knowledge i.e., system dynamics, performance management, and collaborative governance, DPG is able to support the design of performance management and governance systems that help frame trade-offs in time and space (Bianchi and Williams, 2015; Bianchi et al., 2019), so to deal with the intrinsic dynamic complexity of wicked problems affecting inner areas. In our view, stakeholders could benefit from systems modeling and causeand-effect models as tools for capturing public value drivers, outputs, and both intermediate and final outcomes, therefore contributing to a discussion on public value creation in collaborative settings. In line with this, this chapter addresses the following research questions: (1) How can DPG play a role in creating public value in inner areas? (2) Why can DPG be a methodological guidance to foster stakeholder collaboration? (3) What role could DPG play in fostering inner areas resilience? To make these questions the thrust of this chapter, we will first frame, in Section 2, inner areas as dynamic and complex systems experiencing a set of interrelated wicked problems and then will delve into how collaboration among different stakeholders could be a powerful tool to deal with the inner areas dynamic complexity and create sustainable value creation. Section 3 will present the Dynamic Performance Governance approach as a suitable method that may help stakeholders create a shared understanding of the feedback structure behind inner areas dynamic complexity. In line with this, the Sicani mountain example will be presented in sub-section 3.1. to better capture the functioning of the proposed method. Section 4, will, then, highlight the benefits of adopting such an approach in the investigated domain. Concluding remarks, implications, and future research are provided at the end of the chapter. The overall goal of the chapter is to propose an approach that integrates performance management with collaboration through systems thinking to tackle the dynamic complexity of inner areas. In doing so, it aims to fill the gap by introducing the DPG approach as a novel contribution to the discourse on inner areas. It recognizes inner areas as complex ecosystems with interdependent actors whose interactions in co-experiencing and co-producing public services contribute to creating public value (Strokosch and Osborne, 2020). The originality of this chapter lies in proposing the DPG framework to operationalize these principles in the context of inner areas. By combining system dynamics, collaborative governance, and performance management, the DPG approach provides a framework for coordinating stakeholder efforts to solve the dynamic complexity of wicked problems. It emphasizes how a place-based perspective can improve governance system design by facilitating stakeholder learning, framing trade-offs over time and space, and promoting long-term public value creatio
Designing and testing microtransit routes to improve social inclusion: A pilot study in a suburban area
No full textSuburbs are often characterized by a scarcity of mobility options to access services. Introducing microtransit is a promising way to improve public transport in suburbs, ensuring greater social inclusion and connecting isolated areas to main transit hubs. The paper aims to develop a multi-step GIS-based methodology for designing semi-flexible stop-based microtransit, having fixed routes and flexible routes (detours) and operating with real-time ride bookings (zero lead time). We considered a suburban area in Palermo, Italy, as study area. The identification of fixed and flexible routes was based on the forecasted passenger flows, through the estimate and the assignment of the daily origin-destination matrix for microtransit, also considering safety, spatial, and technical constraints. A small-scale pilot was carried out between November and December 2022 to test microtransit routes and the reliability of a mobile application to operate the service. A customer satisfaction and a willingness-to-pay survey were addressed to the users. The small-scale pilot showed that microtransit could improve public transportation in suburbs, being more accessible and reducing waiting times at stops. Particularly, the result of the design process led to a semi-flexible service accessible by 90 % of the resident population and with waiting times of less than 15 min in 76 % of the rides, lower than those currently experienced by bus users (20 min)