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La sicurezza come pratica e network eterogeneo: la sala operatoria e l'allineamento della sociomaterialità
No full textLa mia tesi di dottorato si presenta come un lavoro di ricerca empirica che ha messo a fuoco la questione della sicurezza organizzativa quale pratica situata, vale a dire non come mera “assenza di errori”, ma piuttosto come capacità emergente di un contesto organizzativo di funzionare in maniera affidabile, ri-configurando le attività degli attori organizzativi quando si verifica un breakdown. Riferimento empirico della tesi è la sala operatoria, dove la sicurezza di pazienti ed operatori costituisce un elemento inscindibile dalle pratiche lavorative e dalle dinamiche organizzative, dove socialità e materialità risultano intrecciate grazie all’elevata densità tecnologica dell’ambiente operatorio e dove l’interprofessionalità contraddistingue il lavoro d’équipe.
Attraverso l’etnografia organizzativa e lo shadowing all’interno dei blocchi operatori di due ospedali italiani, ho indagato quali sono le dinamiche organizzative e lavorative che permettono agli attori organizzativi di performare pratiche mediche sicure, nonché la maniera in cui le diverse dinamiche che entrano in gioco nel corso delle attività quotidiane in sala operatoria favoriscono/ostacolano la creazione e la stabilizzazione della sicurezza. Nella prima parte della tesi ho illustrato il framework teorico e metodologico, mentre nella seconda viene illustrata l’analisi della ricerca condotta. Ciò che è emerso dall’analisi del materiale empirico è che la sicurezza operatoria si costruisce a partire dall’allineamento di tre dinamiche organizzative, quali: processi tecnologici, competenze esperte e conoscenze sensibili, dinamiche comunicative Ciascuna di queste dinamiche fornisce stabilità alle pratiche mediche che hanno luogo in sala ed alla sicurezza operatoria grazie alla maniera in cui si allinea alle altre. Rispetto dunque agli studi sino ad oggi realizzati sul tema, il mio lavoro vuole fornire spunti di riflessione per guardare alla sicurezza come pratica che prende forma a partire non più dal modo in cui una singola dinamica organizzativa consente o ostacola la realizzazione delle attività in sala (in maniera esente da rischi o pericoli potenziali), ma dal modo in cui ciascuna dinamica si aggancia e si allinea alle altre. In tal senso, la sicurezza organizzativa può essere letta ed analizzata quale pratica e network sociomateriale. Nello studio della sicurezza organizzativa, la comprensione e l’analisi della “natura” dei legami tra gli elementi del network permette anche di andare oltre la separazione (spesso forzata) tra gli studi di stampo clinico e manageriale e la letteratura di matrice sociologica: poiché entrambe le letterature sono oggi giunte all’individuazione di alcune dinamiche chiave (in buona parte coincidenti) nella creazione e stabilizzazione della sicurezza organizzativa, potrebbe risultare interessante integrare i risultati prodotti da ricerche condotte da prospettive differenti
Rappresentare il cambiamento: fonti storico-cartografiche per la conoscenza e l'agire territoriale: il caso trentino
No full textLa presente ricerca espone i risultati di un primo censimento e dello studio sulle fonti cartografiche storiche conservate in archivi trentini, nazionali ed esteri, che hanno ad oggetto la rappresentazione del Tirolo meridionale, e del Trentino in particolare, prima dell’annessione al Regno d’Italia nel 1919. Particolare attenzione è stata rivolta alle testimonianze cartografiche a grande e grandissima scala (catastali, peritali, topografico-militari), comprese fra il XVII e il XIX s., e per buona parte insondate nel loro valore euristico di documenti del territorio.
Si tratta di un lavoro di carattere esplorativo, che ha dato priorità da un lato al censimento delle fonti (al momento quantificato in più di 1000 pezzi cartografici), con una prima sistematizzazione delle stesse e l’ideazione di una scheda ragionata di classificazione, dall’altro, attraverso una selezione dei materiali censiti, all’elaborazione di alcuni exempla metodologici, ricostruttivi e applicativi, su aree campione (la conca di Trento, la Valle del Rio Cavallo, la Valle del Basso Sarca).
Pertanto la ricerca d’archivio è stata accompagnata dall’indagine sul campo mirata all’individuazione delle componenti territoriali restituite dalla rappresentazione cartografica, dei sedimenti che hanno segnato i precedenti cicli di territorializzazione e che oggi possono costituire l’oggetto di una rinnovata progettualità. La pianificazione paesaggistica e il governo del territorio devono potersi confrontare con le indagini geostoriche come chiave di lettura per comprendere e spiegare la complessità culturale e paesaggistica dei territori attuali
Economic Security for the Working Poor? Trade-Linked Labor Standards, Workers' Rights, and the Politics of Representation of Bangladesh's Garment Workers
Get PDFLabor standards have been introduced in both developed and developing countries with the presumption that there is synergy at work in the relationship of labor standards and workers’ rights. Standards translate into workers’ rights, and enhance workers’ economic security. The question I address in this dissertation is whether the inherent link in the nexus makes the transformation towards workers’ economic security possible, and what factors do shape standards to transform into rights, and in turn, influence economic security. Focusing on the forms of labor standards, I argue that the choice of instruments and the transformation process determine whether the link automatically creates synergy, or produces tensions /conflicts. The dissertation shows that synergistic or conflicting relationship depends upon the internal dynamics of the institutional mechanisms, and myriad of interest groups through which workers’ interests are (mis)represented. Taking labor standards installation in Bangladesh and the concomitant transformation mechanisms for the increasingly globalized garment sector workers as a case in point, I claim that the issue of workers’ economic security has been lost in the whirlpool of standards, rights, and representation. This study shows that labor standards in Bangladesh installed through three routes— rights legislation, rights conditionality, and corporate codes—have hardly translated into workers’ rights, and these provisions largely have failed to promote the workers’ economic security. The failure to transform labor standards into workers’ rights and workers’ economic security is best explained by the lack of adequate and effective representation of the working poor by the various interest groups. I argue that the inability of the institutional mechanisms to address the needs of the working poor is due to acts of omission and/or commission by both the state and non-state actors. The ‘standards-rights-economic security’ nexus can only work for an equitable outcome for workers if there are adequate and effective forms of workers’ representation in the institutional mechanisms. The politics of representation drives the outcome of the nexus
Matrices and strategies for complex tissue regeneration
No full textIn the field of Tissue Engineering, a new concept has been developed in the last few years. The formation of new tissue induced by a tissue engineered system needs to be accompanied by the achievement of a complete tissue functionality and scaffold properties have to be designed following the principles of biomimetics, i.e. the complexity of the physiological environment has to be translated and reproduced in the cell-scaffold construct.
This approach is especially challenging when the interface between two tissues has to be restored. In this case, the scaffold has not only to sustain the regeneration of two different tissues, but also to ensure the regeneration of a functional interfacial zone between them. Therefore, scaffold properties must reflect the complexity of tissue boundary structures, in terms of controlled gradients in morphological, chemical and mechanical properties.
The aim of this research work was the application of these advanced principles to the regeneration of the osteochondral defect, which is a degenerative pathology involving both cartilage and bone tissue, whose current treatments are uneffective in the long term.
In this work, a multiphasic scaffold for osteochondral Tissue Engineering was produced and characterized. Silk fibroin-based 3D sponges were employed for the chondral and subchondral components for cartilage and bone regeneration, respectively, to exploit the biocompatibility and versatility of silk fibroin in Tissue Engineering applications. For the restoration of a functional interface, a nanometric net was used to separate the two components, in order to allow a dialogue among cells between the two phases thanks to a physiological solute flow, while preventing cell migration towards the chondral site, especially of blood cells which may cause mineralization of the non-calcified cartilage.
For the chondral component, two different strategies were explored. First, pure silk fibroin sponges produced by salt leaching were combined to static or dynamic culture conditions to evaluate the chondrogenic potential of adipose- derived stem cells (ASCs). These cells have indeed many advantages for cartilage Tissue Engineering applications, such as abundance, easy accessibility, ability of self-renewal and stability during in vitro culture. The best differentiation of ASCs towards chondrocytes was achieved after 28 days of culture in a static environment and chondrogenic media, in terms of higher chondrogenic gene expression, new cartilage extracellular matrix deposition and increase of compressive mechanical properties. ASC/scaffold constructs were then implanted in vivo in a rat xiphoid critical size defect for 8 weeks and also in this case, the best outcomes in terms of new tissue volume and quality were obtained when static conditions and chondrogenic medium were employed during pre-culture.
The aim of the second strategy presented in this work was to modify silk fibroin (SF) sponges with the addition of hyaluronic acid (HA). Besides hyaluronic acid is a natural component of cartilage and contributes to its biomechanics thanks to its ability to retain a remarkable amount of water, it has been shown to modulate chondrocyte phenotype when employed in scaf- folds for cartilage regeneration. Therefore, we exploited its properties producing silk fibroin/hyaluronic acid scaffolds by salt leaching at different HA concentrations, eventually cross-linked by genipin to improve HA retention. SF/HA sponges were completely characterized in terms of physical, chemical and mechanical properties and then used to culture primary chondrocytes in vitro. Results demonstrated that the scaffolds with the highest amount of hyaluronic acid both with and without cross-linking elicited better responses in cartilage cells with respect to pure silk fibroin sponges, in terms of chondrogenic phenotype enhancement and new cartilage extracellular matrix deposition. The nanometric net of the multicomponent scaffold for osteochondral regeneration was produced by electrospinning of poly-d,l-lactid acid/polyethylene glycol (PdlLA/PEG) blends. PdlLA was employed since it is a well-known biocompatible polymer and it is easy to process with this technique, while PEG was added to avoid fiber shrinkage in an aqueous environment. Nets were characterized in terms of morphology and thermal properties, then assembled to a silk fibroin sponge without any modification to their geometry. To preliminarily evaluate the biological properties of PdlLA/PEG electrospun nets, a system to co-culture chondrocytes on scaffolds with net and osteoblasts was designed and validated, so that the biochemical communications between cells could take place through the net fibers. In the future, this system will be employed to evaluate how osteoblasts can improve chondrocyte response in
terms of phenotype maintenance and new cartilage tissue deposition. The results reported in this research work will be the basis for the final design of a multicomponent scaffold which comprises the best outcomes obtained. Hence, SF/HA scaffolds which elicited the best responses on chondrocytes will be used in combination with ASCs, in order to verify their potential to sus- tain chondrogenesis in vitro. Then, they will be assembled to the nanometric net and, before moving to an appropriate in vivo study, the co-culture system will be employed to assess how the cellular dialogue with osteoblasts can have beneficial effects on the chondrogenic differentiation of adipose-derived stem cells
Critical Analysis of Pyrolysis and Gasification Applied to Waste Fractions with Growing Energetic Content
No full textThe present Ph.D. research has made important contributions towards the optimization of light packaging waste to energy alternative processes such as pyrolysis and gasification. Over more the development of an original integrated municipal solid waste scenario model that integrates the experimental results obtained in the thesis have a practical meaning suitable for large scale application.
The experimental study of light packaging waste pyrolysis has brought some valuable information on: mass variation and balance (the results can be applied on a kinetic model development), activation energy, energy potential of solid and liquid by-products and chemical composition of solid and liquid pyrolysis products. The optimal temperature for light packaging waste pyrolysis (paper, cardboard and plastics) was established to be more than 500°C.
This experimental study leads to the optimisation of air gasification process parameters at industrial scale in a rotary reactor lab-pilot installation using light packaging waste mixtures. It was concluded that hhigher equivalent ration lowers the gas quality because of oxidization reactions at occurs at the being of the process. Without taking into account the CnHm hydrocarbons except CH4, in the present experiments the syngas low heating value will reach to its maximum at 5600 Nm3/kgpackaging waste at 900°C with an equivalent rate(ER) of 0.2. The solid residue is composed by char and ash and reaches to its maxim of 17 % from the initial feed input at 800°C and 0.2 ER. At 800 °C the gas flow rate and ER ranging between 0.2 -0.3 is 1.5-1.99 Nm3/kg . As it was expected, the gas yield increases with the increasing of temperature and gasifying agent. At 900 °C and 0.2-0.3 ER the gas flow rate registered varies between 1.58-2.1 Nm3/kg packaging waste.
The novelty of the research in given by the development of a flexible and environmental friendly integrated municipal solid waste scenario model. The system model combines the selective collection rate, recycling processes, advanced mechanical sorting, solid recovered fuel production and proposes two waste to energy recovery facilities (combustion or gasification). The analyzed system complies with the EU principle of biodegradable materials minimization and is in agreement with the principle of adopting energy recovery after the implementation of material recycling options. In all cases studied, the analyzed integrated municipal solid waste system (IMSWS) minimizes the landfilling of materials and increases the energetic potential of the waste sent to energy recovery
TMS and fMRI studies investigating the neural mechanisms of tool perception
No full textHuman occipitotemporal cortex (OTC) is organized into distinct areas that are selectively activated by the visual presentation of different categories, like faces (Kanwisher et al., 1997), bodies (Downing et al., 2001), tools (Chao et al., 1999), hands (Bracci et al., 2010), and places (Epstein et al., 1999). However, the precise role of these areas in processing their preferred stimulus category is still unclear. Moreover, the debate on how such brain organization originates is still unresolved. In order to investigate these issues, we focused on one of these selective areas: a region in left lateral-occipitotemporal cortex (lLOTC) that has been shown to be selective to both hands and tools and that is functionally connected to left intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and premotor cortex (PM), regions involved in action processing (Bracci et al., 2012). Although tools and hands are visually very different, they are both involved in object-directed actions. Thus, lLOTC might process both categories in order to efficiently communicate with IPS and PM. Alternatively, however, tool selectivity in lLOTC may simply reflect epiphenomenal association of tools with hands, for example related to mental imagery. Furthermore, the role of feedback projections between IPS and lLOTC in shaping tool selectivity in lLOTC has not yet been investigated.
Using fMRI, we found that lLOTC was more strongly activated when participants processed action-related properties of tools (deciding on the typical hand action associated with a tool), as compared to when they processed contextual properties of tools (deciding on the typical location associated with a tool). Importantly, TMS over lLOTC led to a specific decrease in accuracy for action judgments but not for contextual judgments, supporting a causal role for lLOTC in processing tool actions. We investigated lLOTC-IPS connections by interleaving repetitive TMS with short fMRI scans. In a first experiment, we applied TMS over left IPS and found a decrease in BOLD signal in left IPS, confirming that TMS suppressed neural processing in the target area. Moreover, BOLD responses also decreased in left dorsal PM and right IPS, suggesting that these two areas receive projections from left IPS. However, no significant change was found in lLOTC, indicating that tool selectivity in lLOTC does not require feedback from IPS. In a second study, we stimulated lLOTC. In this study, however, no significant TMS-induced BOLD changes were found in the target region, possible reflecting insufficient statistical power.
In conclusion, our results show that lLOTC is critical in processing action-related properties of tools, indicating that tool selectivity in this area reflects processes that are necessary for understanding tool actions. As a consequence, the finding that lLOTC is causally selective for both tools and hands, even if these two categories are visually very different, supports the hypothesis that the functional organization of OTC partly reflects non-visual organizational principles. Finally, the fact that we did not find significant back projections from IPS to lLOTC suggests that the role of lLOTC in processing tools does not arise as a consequence of activity in higher areas, but that lLOTC is relatively autonomous in processing action-related properties of tools
Deception Detection in Italian Court testimonies
No full textEffective methods for evaluating the reliability of statements issued by witnesses and defendants in hearings would be extremely valuable to decision-making in Court and other legal settings. In recent years, methods relying on stylometric techniques have proven most successful for this task; but few such methods have been tested with language collected in real-life situations of high-stakes deception, and therefore their usefulness outside laboratory conditions still has to be properly assessed.
DeCour - DEception in COURt corpus - has been built with the aim of training models suitable to discriminate, from a stylometric point of view, between sincere and deceptive
statements. DeCour is a collection of hearings held in four Italian Courts, in which the speakers lie in front of the judge. These hearings become the object of a specific criminal proceeding for calumny or false testimony, in which the deceptiveness of the statements of the defendant is ascertained. Thanks to the final Court judgment, that points out which lies are told, each utterance of the corpus has been annotated as true, uncertain or false, according to its degree of truthfulness. Since the judgment of deceptiveness follows a judicial inquiry, the annotation has been realized with a greater degree of confidence than
ever before. In Italy this is the first corpus of deceptive texts not relying on ‘mock’ lies created in laboratory conditions, but which has been collected in a natural environment.
In this dissertation we replicated the methods used in previous studies but never before applied to high-stakes data, and tested new methods. Among the best known proposals
in this direction are methods proposed by Pennebaker and colleagues, who employed their lexicon - the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (liwc) - to analyze different texts or transcriptions of spoken language, in which deception could have been used, but collected in an artificial way. In our experiments, we trained machine learning models relying both on lexical features belonging to liwc and on surface features. The surface features were selected calculating their Information Gain, or simply according to the frequency they appear in the texts. We also considered the effect of a number of variables including the degree of certainty the utterances were annotated as truthful or not and the homogeneity of the dataset. In particular, the classification task of false utterances was carried out against the only utterances annotated as true, or against the utterances annotated as true and as uncertain together. Moreover subsets of DeCour were analysed, in which the statements were issued by homogeneous categories of subject, e.g. speakers of the same gender, age or native language. Our results suggest that accuracy at deception detection clearly above chance level can be obtained with real-life data as well
Cu' nesci, arrinesci? Mobilità sociale e mobilità geografica dei migranti interni italiani
Get PDFIn this work I seek to understand whether the migratory experience brings, in addition to economic benefits, social advantages for Italian internal migrants.
The goal is to understand if geographical mobility corresponds to social mobility, if geographical mobility is a channel through which to ensure greater social mobility, and whether migration reduces inequalities both of distributive and of relational order. I use the social mobility approach based on occupation. I argue that occupational mobility is a broader and more complete social indicator than economic indicators, such as income and wage differentials, for measuring improving living conditions. Furthermore, I focus on intergenerational mobility, on changes in social class that occur from the parents’ to the children’s generation.
The main hypotheses to test are the following: upward social mobility experienced by a) high-educated migrants, b) migrants who return to the place of origin after a period spent elsewhere and c) migrants who have moved to Northern Italy. For my analysis I use data from a panel survey, the ILFI (Indagine Longitudinale sulle Famiglie Italiane)
Sustainable energy performances of urban morphologies
No full textThis dissertation examines the concept of sustainable energy within a urban design context. In essence, the research aims to answer the question: “what role does the city’s built environment morphology play, if any, in the sustainability of its energy system?”. To answer this question, I first derive an operational definition of sustainable energy in the post carbon era: maintaining the capability to provide non-declining energy services in time. Providing non-declining energy services, in an urban design context, depends on urban morphologies ability to save and conserve energy, be efficient and produce energy from renewable sources without decrease the level of energy services. In other words we can think of a more sustainable energy urban built environment as one that saves energy, is efficient and produces energy from renewable resources per unit of throughput, with energy sustainability measured by urban morphologies energy performances and throughput measured by land unit. This is a normative framework. It can only indicate relative levels of sustainable energy of urban morphologies. Within a specific urban system this framework can allow us to measure which part of the city produce more sustainable energy urban patterns.
To employ this framework I utilize a Spatial Pattern Oriented Modelling approach.
The energy performance of an urban morphology metric comes from its basis in the international debate on urban energy sustainability, its ability to account for a specific aspect of sustainable energy and the possibility for its derivation from the spatial pattern analysis. Drawing from the large research based on exploring the role of the urban morphology on urban energy system, I derived several spatial patterns indicators that assess the influence of urban morphology on energy performances of urban settlements. These spatial patterns metrics, combined, enable the exploration of sustainable energy within a given urban morphology configuration.
I apply the framework to a case study area located in northern Italy between Alps, the transect Trento-Pergine-Valsugana, utilizing data from different sources and exploring the possibilities given by a high-resolution 3D spatial database, a LiDAR survey, and by a geolocalized human activities database, internet 2.0, for the urban morphology analysis with focus to energy. The Principal Component Analysis is used to estimate the correlation between different spatial patterns indicators while a ranking system, based on arbitrary thresholds and classes, is used to visually compare the scores of different sustainable energy performances of urban morphologies
Povertà e deprivazione in Italia, Spagna, Francia e Germania: una disamina degli aspetti concettuali, metodologici e dei meccanismi generativi
No full textThe process of European integration forces the scientific community to reflect on the importance of the national level as the appropriate one for the analyses of social inequalities. Especially among the studies on poverty and deprivation there is growing concern about the choice of the proper geographical reference. Indeed, within the research on poverty, beside the ‘traditional’ approach based on a national poverty line other studies rely on different geographical thresholds, either supra-national (the pan-european approach) or sub-national (the regional approach). I aimed to add to this debate an additional level of investigation, centred on the theoretical relevance of trans-national clusters of European regions that is cluster of regions that could belong to different nation-states but that nonetheless show more economic, social and institutional similarities than those existing among different ‘areas’ belonging to the same nation-state.
In order to analyse the micro and macro determinants of poverty, I organized this thesis balancing both theoretical and methodological aspects.
The first chapter reviews the most important literature on social inequality, distinguishing between the micro-level perspective (i.e. individualization theory versus cumulative risks theory) and, the macro-level one emphasizing, above all, the institutional rules in shaping social inequalities underlined by the political economy, the economic sociology, the urban sociology and the economic theories. In the second chapter I overviewed, discussed and problematized the several conceptualizations, operationalisations and measurations of poverty, therefore it represents a theoretical and methodological contribution at the contemporary debate on poverty as well as an important starting point for the analysis presented in the three empirical chapters.
From a methodological point of view, on the one hand I used complex statistics techniques (the multiple imputation methods) to create an high-quality database for the analysis of poverty by a multidimensional, longitudinal and regional-comparative perspective. On the other one, this thesis is valuable for using cutting edge techniques in the area of poverty and social exclusion. More specifically, in the first two empirical chapters (Ch. 3 and 4) I specified several multilevel models (random intercept and random slope too) in order to disentangle the household and individual level determinants of poverty from the macro-level ones, and also to describe which of the macro-institutional perspective (national, European, regional or trans-national) is the most useful in describing e predicting the distribution of poverty within the European regions analysed. While in the last empirical chapter (Ch. 5) I specified an econometric panel model to specifically analyse the true state dependence in poverty; so doing I focused also at the social exclusion phenomena. Furthermore, every model presented in the three empirical chapters has been specified using several operationalization of poverty (that is, using the national, European, regional and trans-national poverty lines).
The main conclusions of this thesis are linked with the validity and reliability of the relative poverty measure and the institutional concepts of welfare-states, economic regions and trans-national clusters.
First of all, it seems that the relative measure of poverty is a good one to predict and describe the phenomena. Indeed, the micro-determinant of poverty are not affected by the poverty line (national, European, regional or trans-national) used in the models proposed. Obviously the number of people at risk of poverty are affected by such definitions, but the relative structure of relation among the individual and household determinant are not.
Secondly, it seems that the macro-determinant of poverty are affected by the poverty line definition and, above all, the variation produced on the country-variables effect is not coherent with the welfare state interpretation of poverty and social exclusion. On the contrary, the regional and the trans-national perspectives effects are more stable regardless the poverty line adopted, and they help to capture the most part of the regional variance among the European regions analysed.
Furthermore, I pointed out the interaction effect between the individual characteristics linked to labour market position (i.e. unemployed status) and the regional framework: the random slope models show the significant impact of the regional context in shaping the social exclusion experience.
Finally, it is important that these results are coherent with both multilevel and panel models