Milan’s pollution charge : sustainable transport and the politics of evidence

Non peer reviewedPostprin

Methodologies for analysing urban mobility in a GIS environment

Jusqu'à aujourd'hui la mobilité urbaine était principalement mesurée à partir de méthodes classiques d'entretiens et de questionnaires auto-administrés. La complexité des déplacements intra-urbains n'a cessé d'augmenter et leur dimension stochastique est alimentée par une nouvelle conceptualisation de la mobilité qui émerge de plus en plus dans la littérature. Ces nouvelles approches nécessitent des données plus riches et permettant de prendre en compte le référentiel spatiale de l'environnement. Cette contribution propose d'explorer les méthodes et les outils les plus récents pour la collecte de données au sujet de la mobilité piétonne intra-urbaine en alliant géolocalisation et informations relatives aux activités. Ces données sont analysées dans un SIG (Système d'Information Géographique) pour identifier les patrons d'activités et construire des indicateurs spatiotemporels. La cartographie thématique et les modèles de densité seront proposés comme des méthodes pertinentes pour visualiser les comportements spatiaux des individus dans l'espace urbain. Les analyses s'appuient sur les données d'une enquête réalisée sur le campus de l'Université de Milan-Bicocca et stockées au SAMIT, le nouveau centre de recherche sur les données environnementales et spatiales. Up to now urban mobility has been mainly measured by conventional methods and techniques, largely based on interview and self-administered survey questionnaires. The rising complexity of urban movements and their increasingly stochastic quality, compounded by new conceptualisations of mobility itself, powerfully emerging in the theoretical sociological literature, requires richer and more analytical data, and a more consistent analytical environment capable of managing the spatial dimension. The paper explores cutting-edge issues concerning methods and tools for data collection on pedestrian mobility by GPS, integrated with activity data, for the transformation of track-points into relevant time-space indicators as well as analysis of-mobility pattern inside a GIS (Geographical Information System) environment. Thematic mapping and density models will be proposed as relevant methods for visualising human behaviour in the urban space. Methodological issues will be supported by experimental data coming from a survey held in the University Campus of Milano-Bicocca and stored in SAMIT, the new research centre on spatial and environmental data

A Nudging Approach to Promote Healthier and More Sustainable Food Consumption and Lifestyles at the University of Milano-Bicocca

Since it was founded in 1998, the University of Milano-Bicocca has worked to make its structures environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable, not only to reduce the costs and environmental impact of its management processes, but also to promote sustainable behaviour on the part of its employees, lecturers and students. This report focuses on the measures implemented by the university in order to make food consumption and lifestyles healthier and more sustainable. Inspired by nudge theory (according to which in order to achieve a change in behaviour it is necessary to act on indirect encouragement and enablement rather than on direct instruction, enforcement and punishment), these measures aimed to promote healthier and more appropriate styles of food consumption, in particular at university canteens. The interventions were oriented both towards offering healthier products and towards modifying the environment in order to encourage more balanced food choices. The programme of interventions was divided into three phases: firstly an investigation of eating behaviours and lifestyles; secondly planning the interventions; and finally evaluating the project and disseminating good practice

La citta\u300 metropolitana: sfide, rischi e opportunita\u300

Basta interrogare anche per pochi minuti la Rete per rendersi conto dell\u2019insieme di sfide, rischi ed opportunit\ue0 che sono connesse alla realizzazione delle Citt\ue0 metropolitane

Waveform Modelling for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna

LISA, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, will usher in a new era in gravitational-wave astronomy. As the first anticipated space-based gravitational-wave detector, it will expand our view to the millihertz gravitational-wave sky, where a spectacular variety of interesting new sources abound: from millions of ultra-compact binaries in our Galaxy, to mergers of massive black holes at cosmological distances; from the beginnings of inspirals that will venture into the ground-based detectors' view to the death spiral of compact objects into massive black holes, and many sources in between. Central to realising LISA's discovery potential are waveform models, the theoretical and phenomenological predictions of the pattern of gravitational waves that these sources emit. This white paper is presented on behalf of the Waveform Working Group for the LISA Consortium. It provides a review of the current state of waveform models for LISA sources, and describes the significant challenges that must yet be overcome.Comment: 239 pages, 11 figures, white paper from the LISA Consortium Waveform Working Group, invited for submission to Living Reviews in Relativity, updated with comments from communit

Burnout among surgeons before and during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: an international survey

Background: SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has had many significant impacts within the surgical realm, and surgeons have been obligated to reconsider almost every aspect of daily clinical practice. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study reported in compliance with the CHERRIES guidelines and conducted through an online platform from June 14th to July 15th, 2020. The primary outcome was the burden of burnout during the pandemic indicated by the validated Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure. Results: Nine hundred fifty-four surgeons completed the survey. The median length of practice was 10 years; 78.2% included were male with a median age of 37 years old, 39.5% were consultants, 68.9% were general surgeons, and 55.7% were affiliated with an academic institution. Overall, there was a significant increase in the mean burnout score during the pandemic; longer years of practice and older age were significantly associated with less burnout. There were significant reductions in the median number of outpatient visits, operated cases, on-call hours, emergency visits, and research work, so, 48.2% of respondents felt that the training resources were insufficient. The majority (81.3%) of respondents reported that their hospitals were included in the management of COVID-19, 66.5% felt their roles had been minimized; 41% were asked to assist in non-surgical medical practices, and 37.6% of respondents were included in COVID-19 management. Conclusions: There was a significant burnout among trainees. Almost all aspects of clinical and research activities were affected with a significant reduction in the volume of research, outpatient clinic visits, surgical procedures, on-call hours, and emergency cases hindering the training. Trial registration: The study was registered on clicaltrials.gov "NCT04433286" on 16/06/2020

Black holes, gravitational waves and fundamental physics: a roadmap

The grand challenges of contemporary fundamental physics—dark matter, dark energy, vacuum energy, inflation and early universe cosmology, singularities and the hierarchy problem—all involve gravity as a key component. And of all gravitational phenomena, black holes stand out in their elegant simplicity, while harbouring some of the most remarkable predictions of General Relativity: event horizons, singularities and ergoregions. The hitherto invisible landscape of the gravitational Universe is being unveiled before our eyes: the historical direct detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO-Virgo collaboration marks the dawn of a new era of scientific exploration. Gravitational-wave astronomy will allow us to test models of black hole formation, growth and evolution, as well as models of gravitational-wave generation and propagation. It will provide evidence for event horizons and ergoregions, test the theory of General Relativity itself, and may reveal the existence of new fundamental fields. The synthesis of these results has the potential to radically reshape our understanding of the cosmos and of the laws of Nature. The purpose of this work is to present a concise, yet comprehensive overview of the state of the art in the relevant fields of research, summarize important open problems, and lay out a roadmap for future progress. This write-up is an initiative taken within the framework of the European Action on 'Black holes, Gravitational waves and Fundamental Physics'

Search for eccentric black hole coalescences during the third observing run of LIGO and Virgo

Despite the growing number of confident binary black hole coalescences observed through gravitational waves so far, the astrophysical origin of these binaries remains uncertain. Orbital eccentricity is one of the clearest tracers of binary formation channels. Identifying binary eccentricity, however, remains challenging due to the limited availability of gravitational waveforms that include effects of eccentricity. Here, we present observational results for a waveform-independent search sensitive to eccentric black hole coalescences, covering the third observing run (O3) of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. We identified no new high-significance candidates beyond those that were already identified with searches focusing on quasi-circular binaries. We determine the sensitivity of our search to high-mass (total mass M>70 M⊙) binaries covering eccentricities up to 0.3 at 15 Hz orbital frequency, and use this to compare model predictions to search results. Assuming all detections are indeed quasi-circular, for our fiducial population model, we place an upper limit for the merger rate density of high-mass binaries with eccentricities 0<e≤0.3 at 0.33 Gpc−3 yr−1 at 90\% confidence level

Ultralight vector dark matter search using data from the KAGRA O3GK run

Among the various candidates for dark matter (DM), ultralight vector DM can be probed by laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors through the measurement of oscillating length changes in the arm cavities. In this context, KAGRA has a unique feature due to differing compositions of its mirrors, enhancing the signal of vector DM in the length change in the auxiliary channels. Here we present the result of a search for U(1)B−L gauge boson DM using the KAGRA data from auxiliary length channels during the first joint observation run together with GEO600. By applying our search pipeline, which takes into account the stochastic nature of ultralight DM, upper bounds on the coupling strength between the U(1)B−L gauge boson and ordinary matter are obtained for a range of DM masses. While our constraints are less stringent than those derived from previous experiments, this study demonstrates the applicability of our method to the lower-mass vector DM search, which is made difficult in this measurement by the short observation time compared to the auto-correlation time scale of DM