Outrage at Oklahoma: Campus Protests in the Weeks after the Kent State Shootings

Runner-up for the Griswold Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Historical Scholarship“Outrage at Oklahoma: Campus Protests in the Weeks after the Kent State Shootings,” by Dominic Granello, uses deep research in memoirs, campus newspapers, and oral history to paint a nuanced portrait of OU in the tumultuous 1960’s. Granello finds that the university’s demographic makeup and the tactfulness of the university’s leaders helped OU escape the violence that wracked so many of the nation’s universities. Implicit in Granello’s analysis is the idea that lives saved and battles avoided are as important to the shaping of history as tragedy and bloodshed are. It takes a subtle scholar to appreciate the unsung efforts of officials who reached out, opened a calm dialogue, and kept the community’s violent passions at bay. –Raphael Folsomhttp://history.ou.edu/journal-2014undergraduat

Productive Waterscapes in the West-South of Europe: Using Circular Economy Theory to Drive the Change from a Linear to a Circular Paradigm of Water and Greenways

Re-thinking, re-design, re-use are the keywords of the ecological economy that seek to link social, economic and environmental aspects together. These fundamental principles can be observed in the theories proposed by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and are the basis of the new discipline called “Circular Economy.” Recent studies seem to advise that the transition to sustainability (Foro Springtif 2015) is being stopped for political, cultural, economic, and infrastructural reasons. This article shows and discusses, through presenting different case studies, the situation of the circular economy applied to peri-urban greenways and waterfronts. Presenting obstacles and opportunities, the researchers want to give some advice and trace a method capable of shifting from a linear economy to a circular economy in urbanism and land management. The focus on the historical link between cities and water, shows that the linear economy is in a continuous relationship of love and hate, thanks to the force of the water and the engineering knowledge of the human beings: a strong relationship when water was used for the industrial revolution, of distance and fear when the water was wide and polluted. In the last decade, this relationship seems to be skipped. Thanks to climate change, flood events appear to occur with increasing frequency and intensity, but municipalities allow industry and logistical compounds to settle near the rivers, affecting the aquifer. The paradigm shift to a circular economy should include a democratic society where citizens are promoting different lifestyles and push the decision-makers to develop new strategy and policy. This new vision is well applied in different contexts but doesn’t seem to be able to face and influence the protection of the last ecological corridors present in peri-urban areas, the reclaiming of derelict and polluted industrial areas, and the development of a virtuous approach to new industrial and logistical settlements. The conclusion of the paper collects positive case studies, using them to show some methods and strategies able to drive the change through a new balance between ecological restoration and economic development. Re-thinking, re-design, re-use are keywords of the ecological economy that seek to link social, economic and environmental aspect together

Il contratto a termine: effetti attuali e potenziali dell'introduzione delle causali ad opera del decreto dignità

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Green Belt of Brescia, Lombardy. From Resilience Strategy to Sustainable Planning in Practice.

The paper focuses on the methods on which it is built the planning strategy for the ‘Parco delle Cave’ (Park of Pits) in Brescia (Lombardy, Italy). This research, begun in 2010 thanks to the insights offered by a master\u27s degree thesis, in February 2016 led to the approval of the variation to Plan of Government of the Territory of the City of Brescia. The authors, at the time, respectively, supervisor and author of the thesis ‘Park of Pits, from protest to proposal\u27 have gradually followed the different stages of approach to the proposed variant through a real multidisciplinary action. The argument that the study and promotion of the realities present in the Brescia area would give a sum of positive values such that they would automatically lead to a virtuous model for the creation of a territorial landscape system has proved partly correct and partly not. At the moment, this large area represents a great solution of continuity in the ecological green belt that surrounds Brescia, not allowing the basis for the correct development of a natural habitat hosting biodiversity and blocking the completion of town outskirts greenway. This research indicates in the ‘Parco delle Cave’ (Pits’ Park) as the necessary ring to complete the Brescia green belt that includes the ‘Parco delle Colline di Brescia’ (Brescia Hills Park), the linear park of the River Mella, and a strong vegetal system along the South Brescia highway (proposed also)

THE BRICS COUNTRIES: STRIDES TOWARD GREATER REPRESENTATION IN INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

This thesis discusses the BRICS organization and its recent creation of the New Development Bank to serve as an alternative to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It also addresses the various attempts by the BRICS countries to work together to increase their soft power in the fields of technology infrastructure, academics, sport, and regional trade agreements. The efficacy of these projects varies significantly, but BRICS seems to be more successful in its projects that are more internationally visible. The thesis continues on to discuss the recently-formed New Development Bank and the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement, the role they might play in global finance, and the reactions of the World Bank and the IMF. This thesis concludes with the prediction that the BRICS grouping will survive as an organization and might even expand depending on the policy decisions of the BRICS governments, especially China. The increased presence and influence of the BRICS countries in international institutions will require countries in the West to reconsider their attitudes and actions towards the BRICS. This thesis draws from and engages with the work of economists who have written about the BRICS including Jim O’Neill, Padraig Carmody, Iulia Monica Oehler-Şincai, William Gumede, Leslie Elliot Armijo, and Cynthia Roberts

Automotive Battery Charging based on Efficient Capacitive Power Transfer

Isolated power converters find application in different fields of electric mobility, such as battery charging, where galvanic insulation between on-board storage system and electrical grid is required. Conventional isolated systems are based on the use of transformers, which have the drawback to be bulky and expensive. Nevertheless, insulation implemented by capacitances can be attractive due to the recent technological advances, contributing to increasingly compact, cheap and efficient converters. In this paper, an isolated power converter based on capactive power transfer (CPT), along with the switched capacitor concept, is proposed. GaN FETs are employed as switching power devices in order to handle high operation frequencies with limited power losses. In this work a 500 kHz switching frequency has been selected, with notable benefits brought to the overall power converter in terms of compactness. The developed prototype has been experimentally tested according to a target power level of 3 kW, to prove the proper operation of the proposed converter. The experimental tests have demonstrated a power transfer efficiency as high as 95%

Power bus management techniques for space missions in low earth orbit

In space vehicles, the typical configurations for the Solar Array Power Regulators in charge of managing power transfer from the solar array to the power bus are quite different from the corresponding devices in use for terrestrial applications. A thorough analysis is reported for the most popular approaches, namely Sequential Switching Shunt Regulation and parallel-input Pulse Width Modulated converters with Maximum Power Point Tracking. Their performance is compared with reference to a typical mission in low Earth orbit, highlighting the respective strengths and weaknesses. A novel solar array managing technique, the Sequential Maximum Power Tracking, is also introduced in the trade-off and was demonstrated able to boost energy harvesting, especially in the presence of mismatching in the solar array. It also can achieve top levels of reliability using a rather simple control hardware. Its operation was verified both by a Matlab–Simulink model and by an experimental breadboard