Corruption in Public projects and Megaprojects: There is an elephant in the room!

Despite the relevance of corruption in project selection, planning and delivery, the project management literature pays little attention to this crucial phenomenon. This paper sets the background to foster the discussion concerning how to select, plan and deliver infrastructure in corrupt project contexts. It presents the different types of corruptions and the characteristics of projects that are more likely to suffer from it. Corruption is particularly relevant for large and uncommon projects where the public sector acts as client/owner or even as the main contractor. Megaprojects are “large unique projects” where public actors play a key role and are very likely to be affected by corruption. Corruption worsens both cost and time performance, and the benefits delivered. This paper leverages the institutional theory to introduce the concept of “corrupt project context” and, using the case study of the Italian high-speed railways, shows the impact of a corrupt context on megaprojects

Data acquisition electronics for NESTOR experiment: Project and tests

The NESTOR detector, at present under construction, is a telescope for high-energy neutrino astronomy. The apparatus, based on Cherenkov light detection, will be deployed in deep sea (about 4000m) near the S.W. Greek coast. We briefly describe the NESTOR detector, then we describe with more details the electronics for NESTOR data acquisition and transmission. The detector signals are sampled at 200MHz and all the resulting information are transmitted to the laboratory on 30km long electro-optical cable. The estimated Mean Time Between Failure of the full electronics system is greater than 20 years. Tests performed on the first prototypes confirm the main characteristics of these electronics: the dynamic range allowed for the signals is bigger than 1000, the pulse shape is reconstructed with an 8 bit ADC accuracy and the resolution in the measurement of the signal "threshold crossing time" is better than 200ps

Sulla plaquette montaliana "La casa dei doganieri e altri versi" (1932)

The contribution focuses on a small collection of poems published by Montale on 1932. In this booklet poems are alternated with drawings made by some of the artists of the Antico Fattore restaurant in Florence, where they met and found a prize of the same name, which was awarded to Montale on 1931. The contribution examines material characteristics of this plaquette, the connection between poems and drawings, the literary importance of these five Montale’s poems, which are placed between the second edition of "Ossi di seppia" (1928) and the print of "Le occasioni" (1939)