2,355 research outputs found
Introduction
No full textThis proposed edited volume will be organized in two main sections, one devoted to the most relevant drivers and broader issues, the second one focusing on single Countries and Actors. These two sections will be introduced by a long critical introduction on the role of the Mediterranean region, within the changing international system as well as the existing literature and perspectives, moving from an historical and cultural approach in order to analyze the current geopolitical trends
States, Actors and Geopolitical Drivers in the Mediterranean. Perspectives on the New Centrality in a Changing Region
No full textThe book tend to study the changes in the diffusion of power within the international system towards the Asian macro-continent, new commercial initiatives such as the Road and Belt Initiative and China’s growing role in the Mediterranean are forging a new centrality of the Mediterranean also from a geo-economic and maritime economy perspectives. The book aims to analyze this new, critical centrality in the global scenario and to uncover the interactions and intertwining of those trends and dynamics offering a historical holistic perspective in order to understand the current geopolitical, social and economic challenges which involved the Mediterranean as well as all the international system. The volume is organized in two main sections, one devoted to the most relevant drivers and broader issues, the second one focusing on single Countries and Actors. These two sections will be introduced by a long critical introduction on the role of the Mediterranean region, within the changing international system as well as the existing literature and perspectives, moving from an historical and cultural approach in order to analyze the current geopolitical trends
Gender and Economics in Mediterranean: Looking for New Opportunities for North African Women
No full textSince the 1950s and the 1960s, the MENA region has made important
progress toward the improvement of women’s rights. The rates of
maternal mortality and fertility have decreased dramatically, meeting the
objectives set by the UN Millennium Goals with regard to improving
maternal health and reducing child mortality.1 Women’s education, access
to the labor market and political and social participation have improved
as well. Although these positive trends slowed down at the end of the1980s, socio-economic indicators concerning women’s empowerment
have continued to improve, and the rate of female schooling has been
rising very fast. In the 2000s, the MENA region succeeded in bringing
the ratio of girls to boys in primary and secondary education up to 0.96,
and in significantly increasing the ratio of young women attending university.
Nonetheless, women still constitute the least educated segment of the
population in several of the region’s countries. According to the World
Bank collection of development indicators, in Morocco, for instance, 35%
of women above 15 years of age are still illiterate, with the majority of
them concentrated in the country’s rural areas
"The love that made hell, paradise." Ouida re-writing the Paolo and Francesca theme in Held in Bondage
No full textThe bestselling Victorian author Ouida reveals in her novels, and, in particular, Held in Bondage, an extraordinary knowledge od Dante, by using characters and themes from the Commedia. The Paolo and Francesca theme actually constitutes part of the plot of the novel and is to be found in many of her other works, short stories and non-fiction writing
HERStory Makers 2023: Francesca Fotheringham
No full textFrancesca Fotheringham is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Edinburgh studying educational psychology with a focus on neurodiversity. She took part in HERStory Makers 2023.What is HERStory Makers?HERStory Makers is a social media competition for female-identifying early career researchers to share their research, their career journeys, and to inspire the next generation. Winners are selected by public vote. HERStory Makers is also part of EXPLORATHON, Scotland's contribution to European Researchers' Night.In 2022-23, EXPLORATHON Francescasupported by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council [grant number EP/X020762/1].Author contributions to contentFrancesca conceived, planned, and recorded the video content. Kirsty Ross edited the video content to insert HERStory Maker credits, added subtitles, and reduce video length to below Twitter/X limit of 2 mins and 20 secs.</p
Solid-fluid Transition in Granular Flows: MPM Simulations with a New Constitutive Approach
No full textMany natural phenomena (rock or snow avalanches, and debris flows) as well as industrial processes are characterized by the flow of solid particles. A key issue in the development of a numerical tool for the study of this problem is the implementation of a suitable constitutive model, capable of capturing the complex rheological behaviour of the granular material in a wide range of strain rates. At the micro-scale level, the grains interacts by enduring frictional contacts or by nearly instantaneous collisions. The first mechanism prevails at low shear rates, when the material behaves like a solid (quasi-static conditions); the latter prevails at high shear rates, when it behaves like a fluid or a granular gas (collisional conditions). This paper presents a new constitutive model able to describe the behaviour of granular materials from quasi-static to collisional conditions and the transition in between. The stress tensor is assumed to be the sum of a quasi-static and a collisional contribution: the former one is modelled by adopting an elasto-plastic model incorporating the critical state concept, whereas the latter stems from the kinetic theory of granular gases. The features of the constitutive model are illustrated with a volume element test; moreover the model has been implemented in the MPM code Anura3D and applied to the simulation of triaxial tests
MPM simulations of granular column collapse with a new constitutive model for the solid-fluid transition
No full textDry granular flows are very common both in many natural phenomena (flow-like landslides) as well as in industrial processes. To model granular flows in the
framework of continuum mechanics, a key issue is the formulation of a suitable constitutive model, capable of capturing the complex rheological behaviour of the
granular material in a wide range of strain rates. In this contribution, a physically based model capable of reproducing the behaviour of granular materials in different
flow regimes is briefly summarized. Both the stress tensor and the dissipated energy are calculated as the sum of a quasi-static and a collisional contribution: the former
one is modelled by employing an elasto-plastic model incorporating the critical state
concept, whereas the latter stems from the kinetic theory of granular gases. The constitutive model has been implemented in the MPM research code Anura3D and applied to the simulation of the collapse of a dry granular column. The results show that the model can deal with the phase transition between the solid- and the fluid-like behaviour. The evolution of the state variables, the state of stress and the energy contributions is investigated in details
Impact forces of granular flows on rigid structures: Comparison between discontinuous (DEM) and continuous (MPM) numerical approaches
No full textThe evaluation of forces due to the impact of flow-slides against structures is essential for both risk assessment and protection structure design. However, the impact process is very complex and not fully understood yet. Peak forces are in fact commonly evaluated by simplified empirical methods whose reliability is questionable. In this paper, the impact process is numerically investigated by comparing the results obtained from software based on a discontinuous Discrete Element Method (DEM) and a continuous Material Point Method (MPM). The impact process and its key features are highlighted and the principal parameters influencing the peak force value are identified. This study focuses on the impact phase, rather than on the propagation phase. The soil mass is initially positioned in front of the wall with a prescribed uniform velocity and the evolution of the impact force is monitored
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