Citizens and Institutions as Information Prosumers. The Case Study of Italian Municipalities on Twitter

The aim of this paper is to address changes in public communication following the advent of Internet social networking tools and the emerging web 2.0 technologies which are providing new ways of sharing information and knowledge. In particular public administrations are called upon to reinvent the governance of public affairs and to update the means for interacting with their communities. The paper develops an analysis of the distribution, diffusion and performance of the official profiles on Twitter adopted by the Italian municipalities (comuni) up to November 2013. It aims to identify the patterns of spatial distribution and the drivers of the diffusion of Twitter profiles; the performance of the profiles through an aggregated index, called the Twitter performance index (Twiperindex), which evaluates the profiles' activity with reference to the gravitational areas of the municipalities in order to enable comparisons of the activity of municipalities with different demographic sizes and functional roles. The results show that only a small portion of innovative municipalities have adopted Twitter to enhance e-participation and e-governance and that the drivers of the diffusion seem to be related either to past experiences and existing conditions (i.e. civic networks, digital infrastructures) developed over time or to strong local community awareness. The better performances are achieved mainly by small and medium-sized municipalities. Of course, the phenomenon is very new and fluid, therefore this analysis should be considered as a first step in ongoing research which aims to grasp the dynamics of these new means of public communication

Photocycloadditions for the Design of Reversible Photopolymerizations

The quest for circular designs and ways to reuse polymer materials demands further advances in the development of reversible chemistries. Stimuli-responsive systems incorporated into polymer materials that enable the formation and cleavage of covalent bonds, hold great potential to reversibly decompose materials into their original building blocks. [2π+2π] photocycloadditions, for which the addition and reversion mechanism can be triggered by disparate wavelengths, stand as an attractive platform for triggering such controlled and reversible photoligation towards achieving renewable polymer materials. This perspective highlights the potential of this type of photochemistry to incorporate solid polymer materials and generate reversible polymerizations. The design of effective photoresponsive materials with specific functions requires the consideration of a number of parameters. Following a bottom-up approach – from molecular chemistry to macromolecular functionality – this perspective provides a recipe of the key aspects to consider in the design of such advanced renewable materials. Furthermore, examples of the state of the art in the field are highlighted and an overview of the fundamental challenges that remain is provided. Finally, an outlook on the next frontiers to cross is proposed

Citizen Science and noise pollution: NoiseScapes and the city of Siena

L’avvento di nuove tecnologie, lo sviluppo del Web così come la sempre maggiore sensorizzazione dei suoi utenti, permette un’osservazione nuova dei fenomeni che circondano il nostro viver quotidiano. Un nuovo approccio che alla misura, oggettiva, riesce ad aggiungere la percezione che della stessa il singolo ha, in un contesto in cui quest’ultimo è sempre più portato a reclamare un ruolo primario nella gestione della problematica che porta all’esigenza di quella medesima misurazione. NoiseScapes si pone come esempio di questa nuova e crescente tradizione: un’analisi dell’inquinamento acustico nella città di Siena basata totalmente su informazioni generate dagli utenti di un’applicazione open source, NoiseTube, all’interno di un progetto di Citizen Scienze.The advent of new technologies, the development of the Web as well as the increasing sensing of its users, allows observation of new phenomena that surround our daily living. A new approach that is able to add at the measure the individual perception, in a context in which the latter is always more inclined to claim a leading role in the management of the environment problem. NoiseScapes stands as an example of this new and growing tradition: an analysis of noise pollution in the city of Siena totally based on User Generated Content created through an open source application, NoiseTube, within a project of Citizen Science

The geometry of modified Riemannian extensions

We show that every paracomplex space form is locally isometric to a modified Riemannian extension and give necessary and sufficient conditions so that a modified Riemannian extension is Einstein. We exhibit Riemannian extension Osserman manifolds of signature (3,3) whose Jacobi operators have non-trivial Jordan normal form and which are not nilpotent. We present new four dimensional results in Osserman geometry

Sustainability and Resilience in Small-Scale Land-Based Livelihoods in Maine

Global sustainability can be understood as an oxymoron since no global society has ever managed to be truly sustainable. Effective examples of sustainable and resilient societies do exist on a much smaller scale, however. This study examined small-scale land-based livelihoods, or homesteads, to understand what factors contributed to their environmental sustainability and climate resilience. Through participant observation as well as long form loosely structured interviews, conceptions of resilience and sustainability on the homestead scale were developed. By understanding the philosophical, spiritual, and political frameworks that inform the homesteaders’ approaches to their livelihoods, three deliverables were developed to exemplify these approaches in practice. A composting toilet, a solar still, and a pair of saplings served to demonstrate visceral awareness of resource cycles, acceptance of the slow gifts of passive energy, and consideration of a future far beyond our own lifetimes. What these all show is that resilience and sustainability are achieved as byproducts of lifestyles based on healthy relationships between human society and the nonhuman environment within which it exists

A Phenomenon to Monitor: Racial Discrimination at NASA, 1974-1985

As NASA propelled mankind beyond the limits of the earth, women and African American employees fought against discriminatory structures and systems within the agency. Since its inception, NASA administrators and NASA’s black employees had a tenuous relationship. Black employees did not trust their supervisors, NASA Equal Employment Opportunity staff, or the discrimination reporting processes. Utilizing the case files of the class action lawsuit MEAN v Fletcher, new oral interviews, NASA EEO and administrative archives, and US Congressional hearings, this thesis argues that NASA was structurally and systemically racially discriminatory. NASA’s problems were similar to those at other technological agencies, both within the US and globally, but NASA lagged behind other US governmental agencies in both the number and the percentage of minority employees