1,943 research outputs found
From project to process: school gardens as vehicle for territorial sustainability. A case study from the Milan metropolitan area.
No full textThe study will examine at first the great importance of food education by framing it in the wider context of some globally present critical phenomena. Accelerated urban population growth, dramatic shrinking of rural areas and food systems as well as progressive unsustainability are today profoundly altering our territories and ways of living. A key occasion for a worldwide reflection upon the latter is represented by the Milan 2015 EXPO, that however should be imagined not as limited temporal event but instead should be a stimulus for creating a higher awareness. Accordingly to this vision, in its core a part of the paper will analyze a bottom-up design and social experience, located in the Milan metropolitan area, that chooses the schools' network as a strategic mean for both future generations education and adult public sensitizing. In particular, the study will illustrate how a micro-architectural project (vertical garden prototype), if intended as a process (discussion and action catalyst involving simultaneously designers, public and private actors, and children), has the potential to address in effective way the poor conditions of current food education. The vertical garden, realized by the same students, is in fact conceived as a starting point for exploring broader themes like: food systems, water in urban environment, food packaging and recycling. Thus, the process goes beyond the school garden boundaries and aims at real positive impact for the overall territorial development. Within the conclusive section the paper will discuss the main difficulties to tackle with, and the potentialities to be valorized and experimented in other contexts
Stories of life during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in italy: A qualitative study
No full textThe COVID-19 pandemic has imposed on people the need to find meaning in many unprecedented ways. The aim of this qualitative study was to explore how the general Italian population dealt with government restrictions and to understand personal experiences connected with the first wave of the pandemic in light of the personal construct theory (PCT) framework. One hundred and sixteen people (over 18 years old) completed an online survey between May and June 2020. Two independent researchers ran inductive thematic content analysis on data using a specifically developed international codebook. Five major themes were identified in the participants’ narrations: difficulties, emotions, coping with lockdown measures, going back to normal, and change. The results, interpreted within the PCT transitions, showed that the pandemic represented a threat to participants’ life plans, beliefs, and certainties. Some coped with it mainly by waiting for the pandemic to end and remaining firm in their beliefs and certainties, whereas others coped by trying to find alternative ways of giving sense to this experience and reconstructing personal meanings, claiming a change in their life and in society. Differentiating personal experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic is fundamental to designing personalised strategies to promote well-being
Ab Initio Study of S Dynamics on Iron Surfaces
No full textDensity functional theory was employed to examine the interactions of atomic sulfur with the Fe(1 0 0) and Fe(1 1 0) surfaces. Vibrational frequency calculations were performed to determine the nature of stationary points at the high symmetry atop, bridge and hollow adsorption sites and to indicate the direction the adsorbate would move across the surface. The values were also used in the determination of the rate constant for hopping of S from one energy minimum site to another. Ab initio molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were then performed to monitor the mobility of the S atom on the (1 0 0) surface at different temperatures up to the melting point of Fe (1808 K) and were compared to our previously obtained ab initio MD results for S/Fe(1 1 0) [N. Todorova, M.J.S. Spencer, I. Yarovsky, Australian Institute of Physics 16th Biennial Congress, 2005, Canberra, Australia, ISBN 0-9598064-8-2]
Construing the COVID-19 Pandemic in the UK: A Qualitative Study
No full textThe COVID-19 pandemic and measures used to contain it have had a significant psychosocial impact. This paper reports a study of its psychological effects in 108 UK residents who completed an online survey between the first and second waves of the pandemic asking them to describe the main difficulties that they experienced and how they coped with these, what they had learnt from the pandemic, and their anticipations of a post-pandemic future. Deductive thematic content analysis of the results in terms of diagnostic constructs of personal construct psychology identified overarching themes of transitions, with themes of anxiety, threat, loss of role, sadness, contempt, and stress; strategies, with themes of constriction, hostility, and individual coping strategies; reconstruction, including revision of superordinate constructs, revision of subordinate constructs, and no reconstruction; and anticipations, with themes of recovery of certainty and structure, constriction, dilation, aggression, and no anticipation. Two contrasting patterns were observed, one characterized by failure to reconstrue, hostility, and/or constriction, and the other by revision of superordinate constructs, dilation, and/or aggression
Taxas de decaimento para a energia associada a um sistema semilinear de ondas elásticas em Rn com potencial do tipo dissipativo
No full textDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Ciências Físicas e Matemáticas. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Matemática Pura e Aplicada, Florianópolis, 2013Neste trabalho estuda-se a existência e a unicidade de soluções globais do problema de valor inicial, associado ao sistema semilinear de ondas elásticas em um meio isotrópico, com uma não linearidade do tipo não absorvente. O coeficiente do termo dissipativo é um potencial não constante em Rn e estudam-se os casos quando esse potencial dissipativo é do tipo considerado crítico e não crítico. Taxas de decaimento da energia total também são estudadas para os casos linear e semilinear. A existência e o decaimento para o problema semilinear são obtidos mediante a hipótese de dados iniciais pequenos. Neste trabalho seguimos ideias de Charão-Ikehata [6] e de Ikehata-Todorova-Yordanov [10].Abstract : We study the existence and uniqueness of global solutions of the initial value problem associated to the semi-linear system of elastic waves in an isotropic medium with a nonlinearity of type nonabsorption. The coefficient of the dissipative term is non constant potential in Rn and we study the case where the potential type of damping is considered critical and noncritical. Decay rates of the total energy are also studied for linear and semi-linear system. The global existence and the asymptotic behavior of the semi-linear problem are obtained on the hypothesis of small initial data. In this work we fallow ideas of Charão-Ikehata [6] and Ikehata- Todorova-Yordanov [10]
Trading and non-trading period realized market volatility: Does it matter for forecasting the volatility of US stocks?
No full textWe study the potential merits of using trading and non-trading period market volatilities to model and forecast the stock volatility over the next one to 22 days. We demonstrate the role of overnight volatility information by estimating heterogeneous autoregressive (HAR) model specifications with and without a trading period market risk factor using ten years of high-frequency data for the 431 constituents of the S&P 500 index. The stocks’ own overnight squared returns perform poorly across stocks and forecast horizons, as well as in the asset allocation exercise. In contrast, we find overwhelming evidence that the market-level volatility, proxied by S&P Mini futures, matters significantly for improving the model fit and volatility forecasting accuracy. The greatest model fit and forecast improvements are found for short-term forecast horizons of up to five trading days, and for the non-trading period market-level volatility. The documented increase in forecast accuracy is found to be associated with the stocks’ sensitivity to the market risk factor. Finally, we show that both the trading and non-trading period market realized volatilities are relevant in an asset allocation context, as they increase the average returns, Sharpe ratios and certainty equivalent returns of a mean–variance investor.No Full Tex
Occult Communism: culture, science and spirituality in late socialist Bulgaria
No full text"“Occult Communism” explores the unlikely infusion of state-sponsored spiritualism into the materialist ideology of Bulgarian late communism. In the 1970s, Minister of Culture Lyudmila Zhivkova initiated grandiose state programs to inject the “occult” into Bulgaria’s national culture, art, science and even political philosophy. Inspired by her Eastern religious beliefs, she sought to ‘breed’ a nation of “all-round and harmoniously developed individuals,” devoted to spiritual self-perfection, who would ultimately “work, live and create according to the laws of beauty.” My project focuses on how Zhivkova translated her religio-philosophical worldview into state policies. I examine three realms of what I have termed “occult communism:” Zhivkova’s domestic and international cultural initiatives; occult religiosity and the mystical movement known as the White Brotherhood; and occult science as embodied by the Scientific Institute of Suggestology. I contend that as quixotic as Zhivkova’s vision was, her policies contributed to the liberalization of art and culture in a period that has long been associated exclusively with stagnation and decay. In so doing, my work questions the failure of utopianism in late socialism and demonstrates that impulses to attach ""a human face” to the communist project endured even after the Prague Spring of 1968. Occult Communism” demonstrates that late communism was far less monolithic and dull than typically imagined while challenging our understanding of the relationship between communism, spirituality, and science in the global 1970s and 1980s."Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2019-05-01The student, Veneta Ivanova, accepted the attached license on 2017-04-21 at 15:12.The student, Veneta Ivanova, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2017-04-21 at 15:29.This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2017-04-25 at 14:03.DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #10989 on 2017-08-10 at 14:32:30Made available in DSpace on 2017-08-10T19:52:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 3
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Topology formation in IEEE 802.15.4: Cluster-tree characterization
No full textThe IEEE 802.15.4 standard defines a set of procedures to set-up a Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Network where nodes self-organize into a logical communication structure through which data can be routed, hop by hop, from sources to destinations. The network formation of the IEEE 802.15.4 does not impose constraints on the topology. The ZigBee Alliance uses the IEEE 802.15.4 layers to build a complete protocol stack for the implementation of wireless sensor networks. ZigBee specifies the network layer for star, tree and peer-to-peer topologies. Starting from these, more complex cluster-tree topologies can be formed. To control the network topology ZigBee fixes the maximum number of routers and end-devices that each router may have as children and also fixes the maximum depth of the tree. To better understand the importance of these constraints we simulate and analyze the IEEE 802.15.4 formation procedure in different network settings (single-sink and multisink scenarios). The goal is to provide guidelines for the practical implementation of ZigBee network formation with the aforementioned constraints. © 2008 IEEE
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