1,721,147 research outputs found
Area dynamics and social participation: from the European Landscape Convention to the Observatori del Paisatge de Catalunya
No full textThe role of the European Landscape Convention has helped fuel a new inclusive idea of landscape whichought to take shape above all through a process of participation of the inhabitants, favouring landscape sustainability to improve the quality of life of the population.\ud
This article presents a case study of the Spanish region of Catalonia, where the cardinal principles of the European Landscape Convention have been transposed and translated into a highly effective landscape protection, management and planning law: the Llei 8/2005. One of the\ud
most innovative provisions of the law is the setting up of an organization – the Observatori del Paisatgede Catalunya– tosupport and cooperate with the regional government of Catalonia (Generalitat de Catalunya) with respect to area planning. The Observatory is not only a\ud
landscape reference centre and think tank, but also a consortium for the implementation of the European Landscape Convention. Finally, theGeneralitat de Catalunya has entrusted the Observatorito draw up landscape catalogues, documents of a technical nature, these too\ud
provided byLlei 8/2005, conceived as a landscape planning and management support tool. The main aim of the catalogues is to help incorporate landscape quality measures, criteria and objectives into the area plans, especially thePlanes territorialesparciales (PTP) adopting\ud
participatory processes
Gli osservatori del paesaggio tra istituzionalizzazione e azione dal basso. Esperienze regionali a confronto
No full textThis work wants to initiate a reflection about the institution and progress of Landscape Observatories in the Italian context as instruments which are trying to give an operative support to landscape management. In particular this study will debate the problem of the definition and the lack of a common legislative direction, which at the moment has created the most of problems with the correct activation of these
supporting instruments and the application of the European Landscape Convention. The most significant cases about the regions of Piemonte, Puglia and Veneto will be analyzed. The comparison between different local Observatories has been performed (by) analyzing the basic theoretical conditions, the operative choices and the social attitudes that emerged towards the Landscape asset, the territory and the inhabitants. Finally it has been highlighted how these landscape management efforts, if interconnected and linked with
other experiences, could begin a new way of understanding the administration, the development and the transformations of the territory
Recent Advances in Bioconjugated Transition Metal Complexes for Cancer Therapy
Full text linkThe introduction of biologically relevant organic moieties in the coordination sphere of transition metal complexes has recently become a well-established strategy to increase the selectivity and biocompatibility of metallodrugs. In this review, the major advances achieved in this area of research in the last three years are described in detail. Particular attention is given to the metal complexes bearing the main biomolecules of life: carbohydrates, lipids, nucleotides, proteins and vitamins. Each paragraph summarizes the synthetic strategy employed to obtain the complexes of interest as well as the most interesting biological results obtained with these potential metallodrugs. Moreover, the structure–activity relationships observed by the different research groups are described and discussed, with the goal of suggesting to the reader the ligand/metal centre combinations that provide the most promising results in the fight against cancer. Some of the compounds examined in this review as well as other bioconjugated metal complexes published in recent decades exhibit interesting selectivity towards cancer cells over normal ones and a specific mode of action. These latter aspects are the basis of what is commonly known as anticancer target therapy
Deformable sensors for soft robot by electrical impedance tomography
No full textSoft robots are by now an established trend in the robotic community. They are made by soft, deformable materials that enable them to easily conform to unstructured environment like biological systems do. In order to control this ability, sensors that return information about their spatial configuration and feedbacks from the environments are needed. Common solutions consist in the use of traditional type of sensors that can limit the capabilities of the deformable material. A different type of sensor has to be developed in order to exploit all the features of the material used for the robot structure. In this paper a first step toward the development of a novel type of sensor that enables sensing capabilities without limiting the deformation property of the soft material is presented. The sensor is based on a imaging technique known as Electrical Impedance Tomography
A flexible sensor for soft-bodied robots based on electrical impedance tomography
No full textSoft robotics is a well established research field that is already making an impact on the robotic community in many different ways. Despite this, the paradigm of soft materials brings also enormous challenges and unique problems. One of the most challenging topics is providing sensing capability to the soft device. In this paper we present a flexible sensors made with the same material used to build soft robots (silicon rubbers) over which a tomographic technique known as Electrical Impedance Tomography has been used as transduction method. The technique can be used to develop a flexible sensor with arbitrary size and shape that does not suffer from the presence of wires within the sensing area. This allows to have distributed and continuous sensing without the need to include multiple sensing elements. We tested the developed system by analysing its respond to the elongation and bending of the sensor. The results are promising and provide sound basis for the development of novel sensor for soft robots
A Countryside to Sip: Venice Inland and the Prosecco’s Uneasy Relationship withWine Tourism and Rural Exploitation
Full text linkIn 2016, Italian production of wine exceeded 51 million hectolitres and among the twenty regions, the region with the most production by volume (millions of hectolitres) was the Veneto region, north-east of Italy, with almost 11 million. In particular, the success of Prosecco at the global level is the most important driving factor at both the economic and productivity levels. The worldwide success of Prosecco wine entails a remarkable change in both the local and regional configuration of agrarian landscapes. Traditional winegrowing swiftly changed into an intensive monoculture with remarkable investments and the spread of new viticulture entrepreneurships. The discussion proposed here intends to investigate the process of heritage construction or ‘heritagisation’, UNESCO candidacy, as an important issue for rural tourism promotion in the context of a productive winescape. We concentrated our analysis on the DOCG area, a complex space where several forces need to coexist; the productive drive of growing requests (global and local) of Prosecco, as well as rural representation based on local habits and a concrete hilly landscape. Rural tourism is clearly an important sector in terms of revenue and employment, especially for local communities, and it can help to ensure economic stability; however, doing so in a way that benefits the area and the landscape is not so straightforward. There are potential problems in facilitating increased urbanization, such as the standardization of landscape and damage to the area if plans are mismanaged. In the case of best practices, a desirable model of tourism can be tapped into while helping rural regions take advantage of more sustainable tourism development and landscape management
THE ‘WORLD’S MOST HAUNTED ISLAND’. Ghost narratives and practices around Poveglia, an abandoned island in the Venetian Lagoon.
No full textLocated in the Venetian Lagoon, the uninhabited island of Poveglia has recently gained global renown as ‘the world’s most haunted island’. This article reconstructs how this ghost island narrative originated and began to circulate and analyses the social, cultural and geographical preconditions that fostered it. It also considers how such a narrative rebounded on the island, attracting believers in the paranormal and tourists interested in ghosts. The research presented here is based on qualitative methods, such as the critical reading of various texts (social media content, newspaper articles, blogs, videos, pieces of music and television programmes) and semi-structured interviews with some of the involved actors. Behind an apparently trivial island narrative, the ‘in betweenness’ of ghosts (intended as cultural objects able to activate an emotional sphere that goes beyond the rational understanding of places) allows for a reconceptualization of the discontinuities of time and space, the disconnection between vernacular and academic cultures and many classical dichotomies assigned to insular spaces. The case of Poveglia demonstrates how ghosts can shape not only the way island narratives are told but also the way islands are approached and practiced.Located in the Venetian Lagoon, the uninhabited island of Poveglia has recently gained global renown as "the world's most haunted island". This article reconstructs how this ghost island narrative originated and began to circulate, and analyses the social, cultural and geographical preconditions that fostered it. It also considers how such a narrative rebounded on the island, attracting believers in the paranormal and tourists interested in ghosts. The research presented here is based on qualitative methods, such as the critical reading of various texts (social media content, newspaper articles, blogs, videos, pieces of music and television programmes) and semi-structured interviews with the involved actors. Behind an apparently trivial island narrative, the in-betweenness of ghosts (intended as cultural objects able to activate an emotional sphere that goes beyond the rational understanding of places) allows for a reconceptualisation of the discontinuities of time and space, the disconnection between vernacular and academic cultures and the classical dichotomies assigned to insular spaces. The case of Poveglia demonstrates how ghosts can shape not only the way island narratives are told, but also the way that islands are approached and practiced
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
“Partire da Zero: patrimonio ambientale e nuove territorialità lungo un corso d’acqua sorgivo del Veneto centrale"
No full textIl Veneto è una terra di acque, segnata e solcata da una complessa rete idrografica. Alcuni grandi fiumi, come il Piave, il Brenta e l’Adige incarnano l’immaginario simbolico, storico e sociale di questa terra; molti altri, considerati minori, contribuiscono a creare la fitta maglia che permette all’articolato sistema idraulico di sostenersi e al cosiddetto “paesaggio palladiano” di concretizzarsi. Tra questi possiamo annoverare il fiume Zero. Partendo da un’analisi geo-storica, il presente contributo cercherà di collocare il corso di questo fiume sorgivo all’interno del
sistema paesaggistico attraverso l’indagine di alcune peculiarità rivierasche, evidenziando alcune proposte riguardanti la Convenzione Europea del Paesaggio e i Contratti di Fiume per avviare una terapia urbanistica a partire dalla maglia idrografica
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