Digital politics and voting geography. Potential connections between online storytelling and electoral results in the Campania regional elections

Digital political communication has undergone a revolution due to the emergence of new digital media platforms, significantly impacting electoral campaigns. However, there remains limited understanding of the implications of digital communication in local elections and its correlation with territorial vote concentration. The objective of this study is to investigate these relationships during the 2020 regional elections in Campania. Specifically, the focus is on four candidate profiles from the outgoing president’s political list. The employed methodology follows a quantita- tive approach, entailing a secondary analysis of an extensive dataset encompassing the candi- dates’ digital profiles and electoral outcomes within the Naples district. The digital content from their public Facebook pages is extracted using Api strategies, encompassing textual aspects, language style, political communication sentiment, and follower engagement. Through spatial analysis of the candidates’ obtained votes, potential relationships between the geographical distribution of votes and candidates’ digital activity are identified and summarized using the Digital activity index. The findings suggest promising avenues for future research concerning the evolution of political communication in the digital era and its interplay with electoral outcomes

Discharge measurement with salt dilution method in irrigation canals: direct sampling and geophysical controls

An important starting point for designing management improvements, particularly in irrigation areas, is to record the baseline state of the water resources, including the amount of discharge from canals. In this respect discharge measurements by means of the salt dilution method is a traditional and well-documented technique. However, this methodology can be strongly influenced by the natural streaming characteristics of the canal (e.g. laminar vs. turbulent flow) and accurate precautions must be considered in the choice of both the measuring section and the length of the measuring reach of the canal which can affect the plume shape. The knowledge of plume distribution in the measuring cross-section is of primary importance for a correct location of sampling points aimed in obtaining a reliable measurement. To obtain this, geophysical imaging of an NaCl plume from a slug-injection salt dilution test has been performed within this paper by means of cross-flow fast electric resistivity tomography (FERT) in a real case history. Direct sampling of the same plume has been also performed with a multisampling optimization technique to obtain an average value over the measuring section by means of contemporarily sampling water in nine points. Results show that a correct visualization of the passage of the salt plume is possible by means of geophysical controls and that this can potentially help in the correct location of sampling points

MELCOR-To-MELCOR Coupling Method in Severe Accident Analysis Involving Core and Spent Fuel Pool

A lot of effort has been spent to prevent the occurrence of SA in nuclear plant and to develop Severe Accidents (SA) Management to mitigate the consequences of a SA. Those consequences are mainly related to limit the release of fission product to the environment. The core in the vessel is not the only source of fission products as the Spent Fuel Pool (SFP) hosting the fuel removed by the core is, in some NPP, inside the containment and SA conditions can also occur. This is especially important in reactors having proximity between the RPV and SFP such as the VVER-1200. This close proximity implies that any SA occurring in the SFP potentially affects the RPV and vice-versa. This potential combination might cause unexpected evolution in the SA progression to whom the safety systems are not able to contain. MELCOR code is a widely used, flexible powerful SA code but it is incapable (due to the uniqueness of the COR package use inside the same input) to reproduce a situation in which both the fuel in vessel core and the fuel in the SFP, inside the same containment, are going to experience a severe accident scenario. The current study presents a MELCOR-to-MELCOR coupling method to simulate simultaneously scenarios with both, core and SFP, as sources capable of H2 generation, fuel damage and FP release in a VVER-1200 NPP. The coupling is performed by running two simulations in parallel and with the data exchange supervised and managed by a dedicated Python coupling supervising script developed at NINE

A smart algorithm to optimally manage the charging strategy of the Home to Vehicle (H2V) and Vehicle to Home (V2H) technologies in an off-grid home powered by renewable sources

The reduction of electrical energy needs in buildings is accompanied by the use of hybrid renewable energy systems (HRES) for the production of energy on-site to be used for appliances and lighting and also for mobility through electric vehicle (EV) charging. With reference to this framework, the paper compared the tradition Home to Vehicle (H2V) technology with the Vehicle to Home (V2H) technology in HRES for residential users. The HRES consists of a photovoltaic (PV) generator, a wind generator, an electrical storage system and a charging station for an EV, in a stand-alone context. V2H technology provides for the use of the EV as an emergency energy source if the generation and storage systems are unable to guarantee the satisfaction of the residential load. Considering an off-grid single-family user located in the Sila National Park (Calabria, Italy), two enhanced EV charging strategies were investigated that both foresee the possibility of EV charging at night and an additional extra charge during the day to reduce the load demand and the produced HRES excess energy, which must be dissipated in an off-grid context. The two charging strategies differ in the choice of whether or not to carry out nocturnal charging depending on the EV state of charge. For this purpose, an algorithm is proposed that can optimally manage both enhanced EV charging strategies for both H2V and V2H technologies. The dynamic simulations of the HRES operation were carried out through TRNSYS, for the dynamic simulation of the PV and wind systems, which is coupled with MATLAB to dynamically simulate the residential battery and the H2V and V2H technologies. Starting from the hourly results obtained, weekly and yearly energy analyses were carried out for two different residential storage system sizes to identify in which conditions V2H and charging strategies provide beneficial effects in terms of energy missing to satisfy the load and overall energy required by the load