3,591 research outputs found
Preface
Full text linkThis second volume presents an overview of the direct measurement techniques of evapotranspiration with related applications to the water use optimization in the agricultural practice and to the ecosystems study.
The measurements are necessary to evaluate the spatial and temporal variability of ET and to refine the modeling tools. Besides the basic concepts, examples of applications of the different measuring techniques at leaf level (porometry), at plant-level (sap-flow, lysimetry) and agro-ecosystem level (Surface Renewal, Eddy Covariance, Multi layer BREB) are illustrated in detail.
The agricultural practice requires a careful management of water resources, especially in the areas where water is naturally scarce. The detailed knowledge of the transpiration demands of crops and different cultivars, as well as the testing of new irrigation techniques and schemes, allows the optimization of the water consumptions. Besides some basic concepts, the results of different experimental irrigation techniques in semi-arid areas (e.g. subsurface drip) and optimization of irrigation schemes for different crops in open-field, greenhouse and potted grown plants are presented. Aspects on ET from crops in saline environments are also presented.
Finally, effects of ET on groundwater quality in xeric environments as well as the application of ET to climatic classification are presented.
All the works, chosen from well reputed researcher in the field, have been carefully peer reviewed and contribute to report the state of the art of the ET research in the different applicative fields. The book provides an excellent overview both for the researchers and the students who intends to address these issue
Al cinema con gli occhiali. Regia, spazio, attore al tempo di Avatar.
No full textA cura di Mario Gerosa. Saggi di: Elio Ghirlanda, Alessandro Amaducci, Simone Arcagni, Federico Giordano, Maurizio Terzo, Fabio Bonvicini, Christian Uva, Mario Gerosa, Luca Lisci, Gabriella Taddeo, Massimiliano Spanu,Giovanni Ziccardi. Intervista a Alberto Noti e Alberto Ziello
The aesthetisation of artisanal food in the urban Hipster Economy
No full textThe advent of the twenty-first century has given back to artisanal products their honoured place back in post-industrial society (Kroezen et al., 2021) in the heart and palate of consumers. The urban ‘hipster economy’, especially food and beverage sectors, is leading this phenomenon (Ocejo, 2017). Chris Land (2018) defines this movement as ‘neo-craft’, describing how the preservation of traditional craft imaginary combines with innovative, skilful manufacturing of high-quality products.
Based on a corpus of 40 semi-structured interviews with neo-craft entrepreneurs, this conference presentation will illustrate some key insights from a forthcoming monograph – titled ‘The Hipster Economy: Taste and Authenticity in Late Modern Capitalism’. In particular, it will illustrate how neo-craft entrepreneurs operate as taste and cultural intermediaries (Gerosa, 2021; Smith Maguire & Matthews, 2012) to aestheticise food with an artisanal, authentic aura. To make sense of this process of aesthetisation, it is necessary to properly embed the aesthetisation of artisanal food into the complex entanglement of macro-level aesthetic regimes of consumption and meso-level economic imaginaries of consumption. In particular, the aesthetisation of artisanal food is one of the purest manifestations of a hip aesthetic regime of consumption founded on authenticity, and a neo-craft economic imaginary of consumption. The contextualisation into macro and meso-level taste and market processes highlights the contradictory stance of such aesthetisation processes, between (sometimes explicit) counter-cultural or post-capitalist aspirations and functionality to market processes of capital accumulation. The latter part of the presentation will then focus on the contradicting features of the aesthetisation process, with particular attention to issues of class inequality and heritage
In the Name of Passion: Passionate Work and Precariousness in Food and Beverage Italian Micro-entrepreneurs
No full textThanks to a sector characterized by a rapid transformation toward an omnivorous taste for authentic experiences and a historically rooted tradition of coffee bars and food, to open a small food or drink business in Italy has become one of the most accessible entry-points to a humbler and labourintensive variant of the «creative economy». This study analyses micro-entrepreneurs in food and beverage sector in Milan, Italy through ethnographic material composed by 40 interviews and participant observation at events hosted at their businesses, using the concepts of passionate work and precariousness as theoretical lenses. Three main results are discussed: micro-entrepreneurs in their everyday work realize a «passionate sacrifice», as they declare themselves willing to sacrifice economic value for ethical value in the production of the goods or services sold to the customers, that is both a voluntary act that tries to transform labour into attractive labor and an obliged ritual to be a recognized member of the market niche and survive as micro-entrepreneur; to frame their work as fulfilled «in the name of passion» becomes fundamental to identify themselves as a different category from more traditional businesses in the same field and to offset the more manual-intensive component of their job that persists and the stress related to precariousness and the generally low economic earnings; the choice to become a micro-entrepreneur, facing high risks and precariousness, depends on the desire to achieve a satisfying job in comparison with employed labour, considered often similarly precarious but without the benefits of being «employers of themselves»
Alcohol and the city
No full textNoLo, an acronym for ‘North of Loreto’. is the way a semi-peripheral area of Milan has been recently renamed by a group of new inhabitants, middle-class students or workers between the thirties and the forties attracted by affordable rents that triggered an upscaling process in an area with a previously bad reputation (Novak & Andriola, 2008). Due to this sudden transformation two co-existent stratified visibilities are still visible (Brighenti, 2010): the first is that of an unsafe neighbourhood devoured by urban blight, threatened by drunken people that when the sun goes down swarm through the streets bringing alcoholism and drug addiction; the other is that of a growing trendy scene of cool bars serving craft beers and cocktails. Alcohol, with its containments, leaks and overflows is a protagonist of both visibilities with two evident, opposite directions: in the first it is an intoxicating poison, in the second a ‘liquid pleasure’ (Burnett, 2001)
The inherent tensions in the post-capitalist ethos of neo-craft entrepreneurs
No full textRichard Sennet (2008, p. 108) said that ‘by the mid-nineteenth century, [...] the
enlightened hope dimmed that artisans could find an honoured place in the industrial order’.
Still, the advent of the twenty-first century seems to have given back to artisans their honoured
place back in post-industrial society (Kroezen et al., 2021), particularly in the heart and palate
of consumers. Jobs like the bartender, the street food vendor, the tailor, and the glassblower,
have all become part of what Chris Land (2018) defines as the ‘neo-craft industries’, i.e.
alternative configurations of work combining manual skills and the preservation of traditional
craft imaginary with innovative, skilful manufacturing of high-quality products. They are
labelled as ‘neo’ because they do not embody a simple return to the past. They mythicise the
pre-industrial past, but are well embedded in the post-Fordist, neo-liberal economy, and some
of them even wish to go beyond it envisioning a post-capitalist entrepreneurial ethos. In the
words of Richard E. Ocejo (2017), neo-craft industries consist of old jobs reinvented and
transformed in the new urban economy.
Based on a corpus of 40 semi-structured interviews with neo-craft entrepreneurs
conducted for the author’s doctoral dissertation, this contribution illustrates some key
contributions from a forthcoming book titled ‘The Hipster Economy: Taste and Authenticity
in Late Modern Capitalism’. In particular, by analysing neo-craft entrepreneurs in their role as
cultural intermediaries (Smith Maguire & Matthews, 2012) and taste dealers (Gerosa, 2021), it
will explore how they constitute a potential alternative model of entrepreneurship, framing
themselves as social agents of change. Through their distinctive entrepreneurial action, they
aim to reach meaningfulness for themselves, provide authentic life experiences to their
customers, and realise a more ethical market economy detached from a purely capitalist logic
of profit accumulation. By doing so, they adhere, manipulate and circulate a shared ‘neo-craft
economic imaginary of consumption’, based on the polar star of authenticity. Nevertheless, the
ambiguous status of authenticity, at the centre of both projects of liberation from industrial and
capitalist alienation and of co-optation by large capitalist companies, introduces challenges and
potential contradictions in the neo-craft post-capitalist entrepreneurial ethos
Il quartiere NoLo, un caso di rebranding dal basso: tra creatività, innovazione sociale e criticità
No full textil Comune di Milano, nell’ultimo Piano di Governo del Territorio, ha legittimato e adottato il nome “NoLo” per l’identificazione del quartiere che si dispiega a nord di piazzale Loreto, tra la massicciata a sud-est della Stazione Centrale e via Palmanova. Il termine è stato adottato nel contesto della tendenza che vede Milano evolvere da città già storicamente eterodeterminata a città sempre più policentrica e glocal grazie a interventi di rigenerazione urbana dall’inizio del 2015. Infatti, un’operazione di rebranding territoriale dal basso ha investito quest’area portando alla nascita di un nuovo distretto. Esso, tutt’ora, sta cercando di integrare la sua natura popolare e multietnica ad una rinnovata vocazione creativa e riformatrice, intrecciandosi e scontrandosi con un crescente processo di gentrificazione
Ozone flux measurement and modelling on leaf/shoot and canopy scale.
Full text linkThe quantitative study of the ozone effects on agricultural and forest vegetation requires the knowledge of the pollutant dose absorbed by plants via leaf stomata, i.e. the stomatal flux. Nevertheless, the toxicologically effective dose can differ from the stomatal flux because a pool of scavenging and detoxification processes reduce the amount of pollutant responsible of the expression of the harmful effects. The measurement of the stomatal flux is not immediate and the quantification of the effective dose is still troublesome.
The paper examines the conceptual aspects of ozone flux measurement and modelling in agricultural and ecological research. The ozone flux paradigm is conceptualized into a toxicological frame and faced at two different scales: leaf/shoot and canopy scales.
Leaf and shoot scale flux measurements require gas-exchange enclosure techniques, while canopy scale flux measurements need a micrometeorological approach including techniques such as eddy covariance and the aerodynamical gradient. At both scales, not all the measured ozone flux is stomatal flux. In fact, a not negligible amount of ozone is destroyed on external plant surfaces, like leaf cuticles, or by gas phase reaction with biogenic volatile compounds. The stomatal portion of flux can be calculated from concurrent measurements of water vapour fluxes at both scales. Canopy level flux measurements require very fast sensors and the fulfilment of many conditions to ensure that the measurements made above the canopy really reflect the canopy fluxes (constant flux hypothesis). Again, adjustments are necessary in order to correct for air density fluctuations and sensor-surface alignment.
As far as regards flux modelling, at leaf level the stomatal flux is simply obtained by multiplying the ozone concentration on the leaf with the stomatal conductance predicted by means of physiological models fed by meteorological parameter. At canopy level the stomatal flux is calculated by SVAT models often based on the energy balance of the soil-vegetation-atmosphere system and on the big-leaf concept. This latter assumes the canopy as equivalent to a single leaf having a leaf area equal to the total area of all the plant s leaves and lying at a certain height above the ground. The complexity of SVAT models ranges from one-dimensional to three-dimensional models. The most used are one-dimensional models in single-layer, dual-source or multilayer version. The main uncertainties in flux modelling are currently associated to the estimation of the non-stomatal flux component and to the up-scaling process from leaf to canopy and stand level. For the latter a separate representation of sun and shaded leaves is recommended
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