1,721,006 research outputs found
Design & Crafts in Italia: l'altra origine degli oggetti. Gli scenari futuri dell'handmade. Tra artigianato, industria e Made in Italy
No full textLa ricerca, un viaggio tutto italiano intorno alla relazione contemporanea tra design e handmade, vuole essere il risultato di una condivisione di intenti e contributi incrociati che ha permesso di costruire attorno ad un ambito importante quale la disciplina del design, una linea di pensiero trasmissibile e aperta ad ulteriori sviluppi, con l’obiettivo di proporre una possibile analisi del panorama attuale mettendo a sistema una selezione ragionata di autori e progetti che, negli ultimi dieci anni, hanno lasciato una traccia significativa anche a livello internazionale, riconducibili ad un fenomeno-movimento identificato come Design & Crafts. Un lavoro coinvolgente, che ha avuto come premessa alcune considerazioni circa il sistema del design italiano, la relazione tra artigianato e industria del secolo scorso, il ruolo della cultura manifatturiera e lo sconfinamento che sta segnando la diffusione di una tendenza pronta a tracciare traiettorie alternative del design Made in Italy. Tali valutazioni sono basate sull’esistenza di un nuovo tipo di percorso, parallelo all’industrial design, che appare assolutamente contemporaneo e frutto di trasformazioni concettuali e formali in sintonia con la cultura internazionale.
La ricognizione prende il via da una indagine attorno all’allargamento di campo di cui è stato protagonista negli ultimi dieci anni il mondo del progetto, e alla conseguente evoluzione della figura del designer, nel tentativo di capire come è cambiato, e sta cambiando, l’approccio alla progettazione degli oggetti.
Il fenomeno è ancora in fieri, e anche se provare a sintetizzare lo svolgersi di un’operazione che si ha ancora sotto gli occhi può risultare un’impresa rischiosa, o peggio presuntuosa, il volume intende offrire un aggiornamento del significato e del ruolo dell’artigianato italiano e individua il filo rosso che lo lega al sistema del design contemporaneo. Lo scenario preso in considerazione viene descritto attraverso un’interessante operazione di mappatura che coinvolge la generazione dei progettisti under 40. I protagonisti vengono individuati con l’obiettivo di mettere a sistema i lavori e le opere che si sono riappropriati di quel settore tecnico e pratico fondato sull’uso colto dei materiali, sullo sviluppo delle relazioni tattili e sulla valorizzazione delle abilità manuali che rappresentano il fiore all’occhiello dell’eccellenza italiana. La campionatura prende forma grazie al contributo di alcuni curatori ed esperti di design, abili osservatori e interpreti dei cambiamenti in atto.The research, an all-Italian journey around the contemporary relationship between design and handmade, is intended to be the result of a sharing of intents and cross-contributions that has made it possible to build around an important field such as the discipline of design, a line of thought that is transmissible and open to further development, with the aim of proposing a possible analysis of the current panorama by systematizing a reasoned selection of authors and projects that, in the last ten years, have left a significant trace also at the international level, traceable to a phenomenon-movement identified as Design & Crafts. An engaging work, whose premise was some considerations about the Italian design system, the relationship between craftsmanship and industry in the last century, the role of manufacturing culture and the encroachment that is marking the spread of a trend ready to trace alternative trajectories of Made in Italy design. These assessments are based on the existence of a new type of path, parallel to industrial design, which appears to be absolutely contemporary and the result of conceptual and formal transformations in tune with international culture.
The reconnaissance begins with an investigation around the widening of the field in which the design world has been protagonist in the last decade, and the consequent evolution of the figure of the designer, in an attempt to understand how the approach to the design of objects has changed, and is changing.
The phenomenon is still a work in progress, and although trying to summarize the unfolding of an operation that is still in front of one's eyes may be a risky undertaking, or worse presumptuous, the volume intends to offer an update of the meaning and role of Italian craftsmanship and identifies the red thread that binds it to the contemporary design system. The scenario considered is described through an interesting mapping operation involving the generation of designers under 40. The protagonists are identified with the aim of systemizing the works and works that have reappropriated that technical and practical field founded on the cultured use of materials, the development of tactile relations and the enhancement of manual skills that represent the flagship of Italian excellence. The sampling takes shape thanks to the contributions of a number of curators and design experts, skilled observers and interpreters of the changes taking place
Optimization of Electric-Vehicle Charging: scheduling and planning problems
No full textThe progressive shift from traditional vehicles to Electric Vehicles (EVs ) is considered one of the key measures to achieve the objective of a significant reduction in the emission of pollutants, especially in urban areas. EVs will be widely used in a not-so-futuristic vision, and new technologies will be present for charging stations, batteries, and vehicles. The number of EVs and Charging Stations (CSs) is increased in the last years, but, unfortunately, wide usage of EVs may cause technical problems to the electrical grid (i.e., instability due to intermittent distributed loads), inefficiencies in the charging process (i.e., lower power capacity and longer recharging times), long queues and bad use of CSs. Moreover, it is necessary to plan the CSs installation over the territory, the schedule of vehicles, and the optimal use of CSs.
This thesis focuses on applying optimization methods and approaches to energy systems in which EVs are present, with specific reference to planning and scheduling decision problems.
In particular, in smart grids, energy production, and storage systems are usually scheduled by an Energy Management System (EMS) to minimize costs, power losses, and CO2 emissions while satisfying energy demands. When CSs are connected to a smart grid, EVs served by CSs represent an additional load to the power system to be satisfied, and an additional storage system in the case of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology is enabled. However, the load generated by EVs is deferrable. It can be thought of as a process in which machines (CSs) serve customers/products (EVs) based on release time, due date, deadline, and energy request, as happens in manufacturing systems.
In this thesis, first, attention is focused on defining a discrete-time optimization problem in which fossil fuel production plants, storage systems, and renewables are considered to satisfy the grid's electrical load. The discrete-time formalization can use forecasting for renewables and loads without data elaboration. On the other side, many decision variables are present, making the optimization problem hard to solve through commercial optimization tools. For this reason, an alternative method for the optimal schedule of EVs characterized by a discrete event formalization is presented. This new approach can diminish the number of variables by considering the time intervals as variables themselves. Of course, the solution's optimality is not guaranteed since some assumptions are necessary.
Moreover, the last chapter proposes a novel approach for the optimal location and line assignment for electric bus charging stations. In particular, the model provides the siting and sizing of some CSs to maintain a minimum service frequency over public transportation lines
Distributed Model Predictive Control for Building Automation systems: a parallel ADMM approach
No full textThis paper proposes a distributed Model Predictive Control (MPC)-based approach for comfort temperature tracking and electric consumption minimization in building automation systems (BASs). The developed optimisation model and overall architecture were designed with real-world applications in mind, incorporating in-field controllers and sensors. A distributed optimization algorithm is here proposed, which extends the well-known alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) to handle inequality constraints (that are necessary to model the typical local temperature sensors and actuators in smart buildings). The
methodology is validated through testing on a real case study,
namely the Smart Energy Building (SEB) at the Savona Campus
of the University of Genoa, which is characterised by a geothermal heat pump, photovoltaics, storage systems, and charging stations. The algorithm enables reaching a comfortable temperature, limits power variation for the heat pump, and minimises costs. Regarding other solution methods, comparison with state-of-the-art approaches demonstrates a 25% reduction in the number of iterations needed for convergenc
A Multilevel Optimization Model for a Distribution Power Grid with the Active Participation of Electric Vehicles Via Aggregators
No full textThis paper formalizes a multi-level optimization problem for a distribution power grid. The grid is set up with Electrical Vehicles (EVs) to minimize the total energy cost and satisfy different loads distributed in the grid. At the higher level, the Distribution System Operator (DSO) must deal with a Balancing Market to minimize costs. Instead, at a lower level, Electrical Vehicle Aggregators (EVAs) aim at controlling the charging and discharging of Electrical Vehicles (EVs) maximizing their profit. The optimization problem of EVAs is solved analytically through KKT (Karush-Khun-Tucker) conditions and inserted into the DSO optimization problem. The complete optimization model has been implemented and tested in the IEEE 13-bus system. The results show that the proposed bi-level model significantly reduced the variation of peak consumption by 64.56% and the power cost by 3.07%
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Ipotesi su un approdo alla foce del Carrione
No full textLa città di Luni, come ci testimonia Strabone (Geografia, L'Italia. Libri V-VI), era dotata di un sistema portuale nel quale i diversi punti di approdo svolgevano funzioni differenti: commerciale, militare e civile. Come noto l’ubicazione degli approdi del sistema portuale del PortusLunae non è mai stata identificata con sicurezza, anche se recentemente sono stati fatti alcuni progressi in tal senso basati sia su attendibili ricostruzioni paleogeografiche che su nuove evidenze archeologiche. Per quanto riguarda l’approdo commerciale, era stata avanzata l’ipotesi che in Età Romana un bacino di incerta natura, ubicato ai piedi della conoide pedemontana del Carrione, avesse potuto ospitare il porto attraverso il quale i marmi apuani venivano massicciamente commercializzati. Ad oggi l’esistenza e l’ubicazione di un “porto orientale” manca di conferme archeologiche, sebbene la presenza del toponimo di “Marmorata” a nord dell’anfiteatro, rappresenti un indizio della presenza di un sito di stoccaggio dei marmi prossimi all’imbarco. Un assetto paleogeografico compatibile con l’ipotesi di un approdo commerciale ad ovest delle mura urbane di Luni necessitava di essere verificata attraverso una ricostruzione paleoambientale. Pertanto è stata recentemente condotta un’indagine puntuale sul cordone litorale più prospiciente alla linea di costa attuale (Fig.1), al fine di valutarne l’evoluzione diacronica come forma emersa, e quindi insediabile.Tale cordone, infatti, si presenta geometricamente connesso con quello “della Marinella”, dal quale è fisicamente separato dal tratto terminale del corso del T. Parmignola. Il cordone della Marinella è tradizionalmente considerato un’ “isola” già esistente in Età Romana. I dati di sottosuolo, solo parzialmente editi, testimoniano che la facies sedimentaria litorale, osservabile in superficie, permane sino ad una profondità di almeno 8 m dal piano di campagna. Questo fatto, pur in assenza di vincoli cronologici, implica una persistenza di questa unità morfologica nel tempo. Le ricerche di Fabiani suggeriscono che il cordone geometricamente connesso a SE con quello della Marinella, attualmente identificabile lungo il litorale toscano a S del T. Parmignola, si sarebbe formato a partire dal XVIII secolo. Lo studio combinato dell’assetto morfologico attuale dell’area, dei dati di sottosuolo disponibili e reperiti ad hoc e delle evidenze storico archeologiche, ha fornito elementi chiaramente interpretabili e fra di loro concordanti, che consentono di tratteggiare l’evoluzione paleogeografica dell’area in epoca storica e di suggerire la possibilità dell’esistenza, in epoca romana, di un approdo presso la foce del Carrione
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