1,721,230 research outputs found
Incubators at the Frontiers of Capital: An Ethnographic Encounter with Startup Weekend in Khayelitsha, Cape Town
Full text linkTechnology incubators are one of the infrastructural ends at the urban frontiers of capital. When built in areas of poverty in cities of the Global South, these hubs cultivate entrepreneurialism and opportunities for profit at the intersection of development and technological innovation. They promise to address the social challenges of urban marginality with remunerative market solutions. In Cape Town, Africa’s so-called Silicon Cape, the largest technology incubator of the city ventured into its most marginal township— Khayelitsha—in 2015, pledging to lay the infrastructural groundwork for fruitful entrepreneurial innovation. This article recollects, ethnographically, an important moment at the outset of this incubator: a fifty-fourhour franchised hackathon, Startup Weekend, which took place in September 2015 as an inaugural event. The argument of this article is that such an incubator was a sociotechnical formation meant to create the conditions for entrepreneurship in a deprived urban area, relying on a web of material and immaterial connections; that it materialized the rationalities of millennial development as well as alternative goals; and that, as infrastructure, it was patched with diverse aspirations and improvised forms of sociality. The article thus contributes to an urban geography of development that acknowledges its uncertainties and singularities as political openings
Ecorcore® e vetroresina, confronto di analisi morfo-colorimetriche del biofouling. Primi risultati.
No full textE' stata condotta una sperimentazione su due materiali differenti: la vetroresina, che rappresenta il materiale elettivo per la costruzione di natanti, e l’ ECORCORE®, che rappresenta un materiale innovativo (Guerra, 2019; D’Amora, 2019). L’esperimento è consistito nel porre con un idoneo sistema di sospensione in acque libere tavolette dei due materiali, a diverse profondità (-25, -100, -250 cm) in due diversi siti di ancoraggio. Dopo ventuno giorni dall’ammaraggio delle predette strutture di sospensione campioni, è stata recuperata una prima quota di tavolette per effettuare le prime analisi degli effetti di colonizzazione. I campioni provenienti dai due siti hanno mostrato differenze di copertura, così come alle diverse profondità, via via crescenti. Da questa prima fase di analisi si evince che il nuovo materiale chiamato ECORCORE® è leggermente meno colonizzato rispetto alla vetroresina
Fintech urbanism in the startup capital of Africa
Full text linkFrom innovations in mobile money to bookkeeping devices, the burgeoning of financial-technologies (fintech) in the Global South has been critiqued by scholars concerned with financialization, datafication, and recently, neo-coloniality. While sympathetic to these concerns, this paper argues for a more descriptive, ambivalent, and urban reading of the implications and stakes of this fintech boom. Using Cape Town as a case study, we explore how the city has become and positioned itself as a/the capital of fintech innovation in Africa. With two detailed vignettes that look respectively at the recent histories of business process offshoring in the city and at the cycles of experimentation that via Cape Town bring fintech to the rest of the continent, we make three arguments. First, that the urban state has been instrumental in shaping how fintech lands in cities and how the infrastructures which support it develop. Second, that diverse cultural economies of experimentation engender the worlding practices through which local fintech ecosystems operate. Overall, we suggest that paying attention to these different ways in which fintech is enabled and mobilized by the urban state opens a necessary research agenda into the ambivalence of financial innovation in Africa
Queer Infrastructures: Objects of and Orientations towards Urban Research Practice
Full text linkDrawing on Ahmed’s seminal work on queer phenomenology, this intervention proposes the concept of “queer infrastructure”. Queer infrastructure, as we deploy it, reflects both an object of and orientation towards urban research practice. As an object, we discuss the function, use, and practice of (our) queer networks, specifically for research assumed to be unrelated to studies of sexuality and located in the urban African context. Here we centre questions of becoming, affect, and relationality. As an orientation, we discuss what can be “seen” both when entering the field through queer networks and by seeing urban spaces through queerness. In doing so, we suggest that sexuality is always present in urban research, even when not explicitly so
Sequences of the internal transcribed spacer II (ITSII) from different Galdieria species and strains
No full textThe taxonomic position of Cyanidium, Cyanidioschyzon and Galdieria: an update.
No full textThe ecophysiological, cytomorphological, biochemical and molecular data presently available for the acidophilic red algal species Cyanidium caldarium, Cyanidioschyzon merolae and Galdieria sulphuraria are summarised. The taxonomic position of the three genera is discussed and emendements to the generic diagnosis are presented
Flexible pipe behaviour investigation using two models of internal slug flow regime
No full textIn this work the behavior of a flexible pipe with an inner slug flow regime is presented. The main goal of this study is the comparison of the internal stresses of this type of pipe arising from two different simple models of the slug flow regime. Flexible marine risers in recent years may be considered as an important part of offshore production facilities in order to extract crude oil from natural reservoirs placed at deep sea depth. Their installation has been proved to be fully technically acceptable, also from an economic point of view and often they prove to be the unique solution to the task they are demanded. Along their length, a gaseous phase is often pumped in order to facilitate the suction of the oil. The slug flow is the most frequent multiphase regime involved during the operations. Thus, in this work the authors present two simple models in order to describe exertions which this type of regime puts upon the riser inner wall. In both cases, an equivalent monophase fluid having a travelling sinusoidal density was considered. However, in the second case, a space and time varied slug phase along the entire length of the pipe was implemented. External forces due to the wave motion in terms of Morison's equations, structural damping, bending moment, axial tension, structural damping and bed action (Pollio, 2006; Pollio et al., 2006; Marano et al., 2006) are also modelled. Some results from a numerical model in the time domain of the system, based on the lumped mass approach (Ghadimi, 1988), allowed the authors to make some considerations about the importance of a better description of the slug flow effects into a flexible marine riser characterized by a continuously varied inclination
Neochloris oleoabundans from nature to industry: a comprehensive review
No full textMicroalgae technology has been extensively studied during the last two decades. Thousands of species were isolated, and few are currently used in the market for multiple purposes. The current comprehensive review focuses on a promising species named Neochloris oleoabundans. It encompasses a historical overview of the species followed by a detailed description of its taxonomy, ecophysiology and morphology. Furthermore, a thorough screening is conducted to outline the production conditions employed to grow the microalga. In addition, multiple cell disruption and fractionation methods previously applied on N. oleoabundans are described and discussed together with the value chain creation after applying all the unit operations
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