Urban Growth on Two Continents in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Technology, Networks, Finance and Public Regulation

lo sviluppo delle infrastrutture fra 800 e 900 ha subito numerosi condizionameni di natura economica finanziaria e tecnologic

Networks of power and networks of capital: evidence from a peripheral area of the first globalisation. The energy sector in Naples: from gas to electricity (1862–1919)

At the moment of Italian political unification, the Mezzogiorno (i.e. Southern Italy) was affected by a deep institutional change and it entered the wave of financial market openness, attracting all forms of investments from international capital markets. Naples – after having lost its previous role as the Bourbon kingdom’s capital city – enabled projects of large scale urban planning, beginning with basic public utilities. In this process, public and private lighting was chronologically the first area of interest – parallel with railway development planning – where international finance played a role. As evidence of the dynamics which brought this peripheral European area into the orbit of the first globalisation, this article addresses the complex business of energy supply in Naples – between 1862 and World War I – both from the point of view of its financial dynamics and the parallel evolution and organisational characteristics of the business actors involved. The Social Network Analysis (SNA) will support the reconstruction of the diversified and transnational businesses which the Neapolitan energy business was integrated in, at the same time giving evidence of both the bindings linking legally independent companies and the multiple relations between the actors involved. The transition from gas to electricity during this time marked the transition from weak to strong corporate ties according to the evolutionary trends both of technology and international financial markets

Cognitive AutonomouS CAtheters Operating in Dynamic Environments

Advances in miniaturized surgical instrumentation are key to less demanding and safer medical interventions. In cardiovascular procedures interventionalists turn towards catheter-based interventions, treating patients considered unfit for more invasive approaches. A positive outcome is not guaranteed. The risk for calcium dislodgement, tissue damage or even vessel rupture cannot be eliminated when instruments are maneuvered through fragile and diseased vessels. This paper reports on the progress made in terms of catheter design, vessel reconstruction, catheter shape modeling, surgical skill analysis, decision-making and control. These efforts are geared towards the development of the necessary technology to autonomously steer catheters through the vasculature, a target of the EU-funded project CASCADE (Cognitive AutonomouS CAtheters operating in Dynamic Environments). Whereas autonomous placement of an aortic valve implant forms the ultimate and concrete goal, the technology of individual building blocks to reach such ambitious goal is expected to be much sooner impacting and assisting interventionalists in their daily clinical practice