10,863 research outputs found
Retorica e dialettica nell'opera di Alessandro Giuliani
No full textE' cosa nota fra gli studiosi che hanno avuto la fortuna di lavorare con Alessandro Giuliani come la retorica e la dialettica siano state temi su cui per tutta la stagione della sua fiorituraumana ed intellettuale il nostro abbia meditato. Chi si accinge a riflettere sui nsuoi scritti, non può avere mai l'avventura di non imbattersi in qualche consideraazione su queste materie.......Tutta la ricerca di Alessandro Giuliani è diretta a chiarire le strutture fondamentali di un emergente assetto sociale ed ordinamentale, fondato sulla pari dignità e sulla veridicità sia dei comportamenti che dei ragionamenti. Ed è solo perchè in tale assetto gioca un nruolo fondamentale un antico e nuovo tipo di logica, quella argomentativa, in cui si risolve per certi versi la stessa pratica umana, che il ruolo ed il significato della retorica vengono costantemente approfonditi....
Dynamic, multi-objective optimal design and operation of water-energy systems for small, off-grid islands
No full textSmall Mediterranean islands are remote, off-grid communities characterized by carbon intensive electricity systems coupled with high energy consuming desalination technologies to produce potable water. The aim of this study is to propose a novel dynamic, multi-objective optimization approach for improving the sustainability of small islands through the introduction of renewable energy sources. The main contributions of our approach include: (i) dynamic modelling of desalination plant operations, (ii) joint optimization of system design and operations, (iii) multi-objective optimization to explore trade-offs between potentially conflicting objectives. We test our approach on the real case study of the Italian Ustica island by means of a comparative analysis with a traditional non-dynamic, least cost optimization approach. Numerical results show the effectiveness of our approach in identifying optimal system configurations, which outperform the traditional design with respect to different sustainability indicators, limiting the structural interventions, the investment costs and the environmental impacts. In particular, the optimal dynamic solutions able to satisfy the whole water demand allow high levels of penetration of renewable energy sources (up to more than 40%) to be reached, reducing the net present cost by about 2–3 M€ and the CO₂ emissions by more than 200 tons/y.Federico Giudici, Andrea Castelletti, Elisabetta Garofalo, Matteo Giuliani, Holger R. Maie
Beyond natural antimicrobial peptides: multimeric peptides and other peptidomimetic approaches
No full textNaturally occurring antimicrobial peptides
(AMPs) present several drawbacks that strongly limit their
development into therapeutically valuable antibiotics.
These include susceptibility to protease degradation and
high costs of manufacture. To overcome these problems,
researchers have tried to develop mimics or peptidomimetics
endowed with better properties, while retaining the
basic features of membrane-active natural AMPs such as
cationic charge and amphipathic design. Protein epitope
mimetics, multimeric (dendrimeric) peptides, oligoacyllysines,
ceragenins, synthetic lipidated peptides, peptoids and
other foldamers are some of the routes explored so far. The
synthetic approach has led to compounds that have already
entered clinical evaluation for the treatment of specific
conditions, such as Staphylococcus (MRSA) infections.
Should these trials be successful, an important proof-ofconcept
would be established, showing that synthetic
oligomers rather than naturally occurring molecules could
bring peptide-based antibiotics to clinical practice and the
drug market for local and systemic treatment of medical
conditions associated with multi-drug resistant pathogens
Astroparticle physics review
Get PDFThis paper summarizes recent interesting achievements and future prospects in selected topics of astroparticle physics
The CUORE project: a large observatory for Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay and other rare events
No full text
Search for dark matter with the bolometric technique
No full textAfter a concise introduction about the dark matter issue and a discussion of the problematics related to its direct detection, the bolometric technique is presented in this context, with a special focus on double-readout devices. The bolometric experiments for the search for dark matter are then described and reviewed. Their present and future roles are discussed, arguing about pros and cons of this technology
Integrating Inverse Reinforcement Learning and Direct Policy Search for Modeling Multipurpose Water Reservoir Systems
Get PDFSystem identification and optimal control have always contributed to water resources systems planning and management. Although water control problems are commonly formulated as multi-objective Markov Decision Processes, accurately modeling reservoir systems controlled by human operators remains challenging due to the absence of a formal definition of the objective function guiding their behavior. In this letter, we introduce a mixed Reinforcement Learning approach to model the dynamics of multipurpose reservoir systems. Specifically, our method first uses Inverse Reinforcement Learning to extract the tradeoff among competing objectives from historical observations of the reservoir system dynamics. The identified objective function is then used in the formulation of an optimal control problem returning a closed-loop policy which allows the simulation of the observed dynamics of the reservoir system. We demonstrate the potential of the proposed method in a real-world application involving the multipurpose regulation of Lake Como in northern Italy. Results show that our approach effectively infers the tradeoff between flood control and water supply adopted in the observed system's operation, and yields a control policy that closely approximates the observed system dynamics
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