Industrial 3D printing in Italy

This paper aims at providing a comprehensive outlook on the economic and organisational rationale of 3D printing technologies and their implications for innovation in the Italian manufacturing industry. Despite its limited impact on the industrial world, the idea of printing actual 3D objects has clearly capturing the popular imagination; 3D printing is often linked to \u2018big changes\u2019 or to sometimes indefinite industrial revolutions in progress because it is considered that 3D printing will eventually enable \u2018mass customisation\u2019. None of the most significant actual applications of AM in Italian manufacturing, however, suggests that any real \u2018manufacturing revolution\u2019 has started or can be foreseen in the near future for consumer goods. For these AM is neither competitive today, nor can it be made so in the future, unless some sort of technological quantum leap occurs

A quantum computational semantics for epistemic logical operators. Part I: epistemic structures

Some critical open problems of epistemic logics can be investigated in the framework of a quantum computational approach. The basic idea is to interpret sentences like “Alice knows that Bob does not understand that π is irrational” as pieces of quantum information (generally represented by density operators of convenient Hilbert spaces). Logical epistemic operators (to understand, to know. . .) are dealt with as (generally irreversible) quantum operations, which are, in a sense, similar to measurement-procedures. This approach permits us to model some characteristic epistemic processes, that concern both human and artificial intelligence. For instance, the operation of “memorizing and retrieving information” can be formally represented, in this framework, by using a quantum teleportation phenomenon

Connectivity and a Problem of Formal Geometry

Let $P=\mathbb P^m(e)\times\mathbb P^n(h)$ be a product of weighted projective spaces, and let $\Delta_P$ be the diagonal of $P\times P$. We prove an algebraization result for formal-rational functions on certain closed subvarieties $X$ of $P\times P$ along the intersection $X\cap\Delta_P$.Comment: 9 pages, to appear in the Proceedings volume "Experimental and Theoretical Methods in Algebra, Geometry and Topology", series Springer Proceedings in Mathematics & Statistic

Informing additive manufacturing technology adoption: total cost and the impact of capacity utilisation

Informing Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology adoption decisions, this paper investigates the relationship between build volume capacity utilisation and efficient technology operation in an inter-process comparison of the costs of manufacturing a complex component used in the packaging industry. Confronting the reported costs of a conventional machining and welding pathway with an estimator of the costs incurred through an AM route utilising Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS), we weave together four aspects: optimised capacity utilisation, ancillary process steps, the effect of build failure and design adaptation. Recognising that AM users can fill unused machine capacity with other, potentially unrelated, geometries, we posit a characteristic of ‘fungible’ build capacity. This aspect is integrated in the cost estimation framework through computational build volume packing, drawing on a basket of sample geometries. We show that the unit cost in mixed builds at full capacity is lower than in builds limited to a single type of geometry; in our study, this results in a mean unit cost overstatement of 157%. The estimated manufacturing cost savings from AM adoption range from 36 to 46%. Additionally, we indicate that operating cost savings resulting from design adaptation are likely to far outweigh the manufacturing cost advantage

Strain improvement and strain maintenance revisited. The use of actinoplanes teichomyceticus atcc 31121 protoplasts in the identification of candidates for enhanced teicoplanin production

Multicellular cooperation in actinomycetes is a division of labor-based beneficial trait where phenotypically specialized clonal subpopulations, or genetically distinct lineages, perform complementary tasks. The division of labor improves the access to nutrients and optimizes reproductive and vegetative tasks while reducing the costly production of secondary metabolites and/or of secreted enzymes. In this study, we took advantage of the possibility to isolate genetically distinct lineages deriving from the division of labor, for the isolation of heterogeneous teicoplanin producer phenotypes from Actinoplanes teichomyceticus ATCC 31121. In order to efficiently separate phenotypes and associated genomes, we produced and regenerated protoplasts. This approach turned out to be a rapid and effective strain improvement method, as it allowed the identification of those phenotypes in the population that produced higher teicoplanin amounts. Interestingly, a heterogeneous teicoplanin complex productivity pattern was also identified among the clones. This study suggests that strain improvement and strain maintenance should be integrated with the use of protoplasts as a strategy to unravel the hidden industrial potential of vegetative mycelium

Classical statistical distributions can violate Bell-type inequalities

We investigate two-particle phase-space distributions in classical mechanics characterized by a well-defined value of the total angular momentum. We construct phase-space averages of observables related to the projection of the particles' angular momenta along axes with different orientations. It is shown that for certain observables, the correlation function violates Bell's inequality. The key to the violation resides in choosing observables impeding the realization of the counterfactual event that plays a prominent role in the derivation of the inequalities. This situation can have statistical (detection related) or dynamical (interaction related) underpinnings, but non-locality does not play any role.Comment: v3: Extended version. To be published in J. Phys.

Linear Toric Fibrations

These notes are based on three lectures given at the 2013 CIME/CIRM summer school. The purpose of this series of lectures is to introduce the notion of a toric fibration and to give its geometrical and combinatorial characterizations. Polarized toric varieties which are birationally equivalent to projective toric bundles are associated to a class of polytopes called Cayley polytopes. Their geometry and combinatorics have a fruitful interplay leading to fundamental insight in both directions. These notes will illustrate geometrical phenomena, in algebraic geometry and neighboring fields, which are characterized by a Cayley structure. Examples are projective duality of toric varieties and polyhedral adjunction theory

Extended Representations of Observables and States for a Noncontextual Reinterpretation of QM

A crucial and problematical feature of quantum mechanics (QM) is nonobjectivity of properties. The ESR model restores objectivity reinterpreting quantum probabilities as conditional on detection and embodying the mathematical formalism of QM into a broader noncontextual (hence local) framework. We propose here an improved presentation of the ESR model containing a more complete mathematical representation of the basic entities of the model. We also extend the model to mixtures showing that the mathematical representations of proper mixtures does not coincide with the mathematical representation of mixtures provided by QM, while the representation of improper mixtures does. This feature of the ESR model entails that some interpretative problems raising in QM when dealing with mixtures are avoided. From an empirical point of view the predictions of the ESR model depend on some parameters which may be such that they are very close to the predictions of QM in most cases. But the nonstandard representation of proper mixtures allows us to propose the scheme of an experiment that could check whether the predictions of QM or the predictions of the ESR model are correct.Comment: 17 pages, standard latex. Extensively revised versio