SEeD for Change: The Systemic Event Design Project Applied to Terra Madre Salone del Gusto for the Development of Food Communities

In the contemporary era, food plays a key role in balancing environmental, social, and economic balances, not only due to its primary identity as a resource that nourishes living beings and the planet but also through the processes triggered by stakeholders who act at the internal local food systems. In the latter, an orientation towards sustainability is increasingly urgently required, capable of achieving a widespread creation of shared value. In this scenario, the International Slow Food Association operates, which also, through the Terra Madre Salone del Gusto initiative, coordinates communities and events located throughout the world on the theme of “good, clean and fair” food. This article aims to analyze, through the lens of the systemic approach, the interesting and multifaceted impacts of this event, as an opportunity to disseminate and contagion of ideas, attitudes, and behaviors around the themes of sustainability and biodiversity, but also as a moment of consolidation and creation of relationships between and within local food systems and local communities. The research project presented, entitled “SEeD for Change”, was coordinated by the University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo with the University of Turin and helped to focus on the actors, relationships and contexts that actually and virtually hosted the event: places in which through a common and shared language, change has been generated

SEeD for Change: The Systemic Event Design Project Applied to Terra Madre Salone del Gusto for the Development of Food Communities

In the contemporary era, food plays a key role in balancing environmental, social, and economic balances, not only due to its primary identity as a resource that nourishes living beings and the planet but also through the processes triggered by stakeholders who act at the internal local food systems. In the latter, an orientation towards sustainability is increasingly urgently required, capable of achieving a widespread creation of shared value. In this scenario, the International Slow Food Association operates, which also, through the Terra Madre Salone del Gusto initiative, coordinates communities and events located throughout the world on the theme of “good, clean and fair” food. This article aims to analyze, through the lens of the systemic approach, the interesting and multifaceted impacts of this event, as an opportunity to disseminate and contagion of ideas, attitudes, and behaviors around the themes of sustainability and biodiversity, but also as a moment of consolidation and creation of relationships between and within local food systems and local communities. The research project presented, entitled “SEeD for Change”, was coordinated by the University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo with the University of Turin and helped to focus on the actors, relationships and contexts that actually and virtually hosted the event: places in which through a common and shared language, change has been generated

Quantum Smoluchowski equation: Escape from a metastable state

We develop a quantum Smoluchowski equation in terms of a true probability distribution function to describe quantum Brownian motion in configuration space in large friction limit at arbitrary temperature and derive the rate of barrier crossing and tunneling within an unified scheme. The present treatment is independent of path integral formalism and is based on canonical quantization procedure.Comment: 10 pages, To appear in the Proceedings of Statphys - Kolkata I

Tooling design and microwave curing technologies for the manufacturing of fiber-reinforced polymer composites in aerospace applications

The increasing demand for high-performance and quality polymer composite materials has led to international research effort on pursuing advanced tooling design and new processing technologies to satisfy the highly specialized requirements of composite components used in the aerospace industry. This paper reports the problems in the fabrication of advanced composite materials identified through literature survey, and an investigation carried out by the authors about the composite manufacturing status in China’s aerospace industry. Current tooling design technologies use tooling materials which cannot match the thermal expansion coefficient of composite parts, and hardly consider the calibration of tooling surface. Current autoclave curing technologies cannot ensure high accuracy of large composite materials because of the wide range of temperature gradients and long curing cycles. It has been identified that microwave curing has the potential to solve those problems. The proposed technologies for the manufacturing of fiber-reinforced polymer composite materials include the design of tooling using anisotropy composite materials with characteristics for compensating part deformation during forming process, and vacuum-pressure microwave curing technology. Those technologies are mainly for ensuring the high accuracy of anisotropic composite parts in aerospace applications with large size (both in length and thickness) and complex shapes. Experiments have been carried out in this on-going research project and the results have been verified with engineering applications in one of the project collaborating companies

Delayed construction of the bilio-digestive anastomosis in right living donor liver transplantation

We describe a two-step procedure in the transplantation of a right lobe liver graft obtained from a living donor, in which the biliary anastomosis is delayed until the day after the actual implantation of the graft. The purpose of the two-step procedure is to minimize the factors that might contribute to biliary complications in living donor liver transplantation (LDLT). Three patients who received a graft with two hepatic ducts underwent Roux-en-Y hepatico-jejunostomies during a separate procedure the day after the implantation of the graft. Length of intubation, recovery of enteral alimentation, and hospital stay were similar to the patients who underwent one-step transplant. No biliary or infectious complications occurred. Delaying the hepatico-jejunostomy when two ducts are present and a bilio-digestive anastomosis is planned has no negative impact on the postoperative course of the patients but can ameliorate the conditions under which the anastomoses must be performed

Delayed Construction of the Bilio-Digestive Anastomosis in Right Living Donor Liver Transplantation

We describe a two-step procedure in the transplantation of a right lobe liver graft obtained from a living donor, in which the biliary anastomosis is delayed until the day after the actual implantation of the graft. The purpose of the two-step procedure is to minimize the factors that might contribute to biliary complications in living donor liver transplantation (LDLT). Three patients who received a graft with two hepatic ducts underwent Roux-en-Y hepatico-jejunostomies during a separate procedure the day after the implantation of the graft. Length of intubation, recovery of enteral alimentation, and hospital stay were similar to the patients who underwent one-step transplant. No biliary or infectious complications occurred. Delaying the hepatico-jejunostomy when two ducts are present and a bilio-digestive anastomosis is planned has no negative impact on the postoperative course of the patients but can ameliorate the conditions under which the anastomoses must be performed

Drop dynamics under strong oscillatory shear flows

Edited by F.J. Martinez Boza, A. Guerrero, P. Partal, J. M. Franco, and J. Muno