Le Community Enterprises in Gran Bretagna: imprese sociali come modello di rigenerazione

Nel dibattito italiano, sia accademico che giornalistico, le questioni che riguardano la riduzione della spesa pubblica, la dismissione del patrimonio pubblico, la rigenerazione urbana delle periferie, la partecipazione ed il coinvolgimento delle comunità nei processi di pianificazione, rappresentano temi di crescente rilevanza. In risposta a queste problematiche, la Gran Bretagna - paese in cui da sempre la pianificazione del territorio ha una dimensione multidisciplinare - ha riconosciuto il ruolo di alcune imprese sociali definite community enterprises. Queste organizzazioni sono nate da processi spontanei e distinti, in uno stretto dualismo tra l’azione locale e gli indirizzi delle politiche nazionali, affermandosi come strumento di rigenerazione urbana sostenibile. L’efficacia d’azione delle community enterprises consiste nella promozione di processi di capacity bulding, che pongono al centro della rigenerazione le comunità con le proprie risorse, favorendone l’attitudine ad operare per il proprio welfare e proponendo formule redistributive di sviluppo urbano. La recente trasformazione culturale e politica nota come “from the Big State to Big Society” ha riconosciuto la capacità d’azione di queste imprese, ma ne ha allo stesso tempo messo in discussione il ruolo, individuando come maggior limite delle stesse la dipendenza dal sostegno pubblico quale elemento necessario a garantirne lo sviluppo e la loro azione sui territori. In questo contributo1 si propone una lettura dell’evoluzione delle politiche urbane del Regno Unito e un inquadramento generale delle diverse tipologie di community enterprises, con particolare riferimento ai Community Development Trust. Nello specifico è stato approfondito il caso del Westway Development Trust di Londra, il suo potenziale di sviluppo e i risultati raggiunti in termini di attività e capacità economiche

Green machining for the dry milling process of stainless steel 304

Dry machining represents an eco-friendly method that reduces the environmental impacts, saves energy costs, and protects operator health. This paper presents a multi-response optimization which aims to enhance the power factor and decrease the energy consumption as well as the surface roughness for the dry machining of a stainless steel 304. The cutting speed (V), depth of cut (a), feed rate (f), and nose radius (r) were the processing conditions. The outputs of the optimization are the power factor, energy consumption, and surface roughness. The relationships between inputs and outputs were established using the radial basis function models. The experimental data were normalized, with the use of the grey relational analysis. The principal component analysis is applied to calculate the weight values of technical responses. The desirability approach is used to observe the optimal values. The results showed that the technical outputs are primarily influenced by the feed rate and cutting speed. The reductions of energy consumption and surface roughness are approximately 34.85 % and 57.65 %, respectively, and the power factor improves around 28.83 %, compared to the initial process parameter settings. The outcomes and findings of the investigated work can be used for further research in sustainable design and manufacturing as well as directly used in the knowledge-based and expert systems for dry milling applications in industrial practices

Prototyping of DSSDs for Particle Tracking and Spectroscopy within the EXL Project at Fair

Prototype double-sided silicon strip detectors (DSSD$s$) of 300 $\mu$m thickness produced at PTI St. Petersburg (Russia) were tested for the use as position sensitive, $\Delta E$ and E detectors for tracking and particle identification in the EXL (EXotic nuclei studied in Light-ion induced reactions at the NESR storage ring) setup at the FAIR (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research) project at GSI. We describe the characteristics of detectors with $16 \times 16,\;64\times 64$ and $64\times 16$ strips, respectively. The response of these detectors for $^{241}$Am $\alpha$ particles injected either from the p or n side was examined. The test measurements were performed partially at GSI and the University of Edinburgh. A first in-beam test with a proton beam of 50 MeV with the latter two DSSDs and two 6.5 mm thick Si(Li) detectors was also done at KVI Groningen, the Netherlands. The results reveal good spectroscopic properties of these detectors

Sustaining effective COVID-19 control in Malaysia through large-scale vaccination

Introduction: As of 3rd June 2021, Malaysia is experiencing a resurgence of COVID-19 cases. In response, the federal government has implemented various non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) under a series of Movement Control Orders and, more recently, a vaccination campaign to regain epidemic control. In this study, we assessed the potential for the vaccination campaign to control the epidemic in Malaysia and four high-burden regions of interest, under various public health response scenarios. Methods: A modified susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered compartmental model was developed that included two sequential incubation and infectious periods, with stratification by clinical state. The model was further stratified by age and incorporated population mobility to capture NPIs and micro-distancing (behaviour changes not captured through population mobility). Emerging variants of concern (VoC) were included as an additional strain competing with the existing wild-type strain. Several scenarios that included different vaccination strategies (i.e. vaccines that reduce disease severity and/or prevent infection, vaccination coverage) and mobility restrictions were implemented. Results: The national model and the regional models all fit well to notification data but underestimated ICU occupancy and deaths in recent weeks, which may be attributable to increased severity of VoC or saturation of case detection. However, the true case detection proportion showed wide credible intervals, highlighting incomplete understanding of the true epidemic size. The scenario projections suggested that under current vaccination rates complete relaxation of all NPIs would trigger a major epidemic. The results emphasise the importance of micro-distancing, maintaining mobility restrictions during vaccination roll-out and accelerating the pace of vaccination for future control. Malaysia is particularly susceptible to a major COVID-19 resurgence resulting from its limited population immunity due to the country's historical success in maintaining control throughout much of 2020

Rapid decrease of malaria morbidity following the introduction of community-based monitoring in a rural area of central Vietnam

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Despite a successful control programme, malaria has not completely disappeared in Vietnam; it remains endemic in remote areas of central Vietnam, where standard control activities seem to be less effective. The evolution of malaria prevalence and incidence over two and half years in a rural area of central Vietnam, after the introduction of community-based monitoring of malaria cases, is presented.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>After a complete census, six cross-sectional surveys and passive detection of malaria cases (by village and commune health workers using rapid diagnostic tests) were carried out between March 2004 and December 2006 in Ninh-Thuan province, in a population of about 10,000 individuals. The prevalence of malaria infection and the incidence of clinical cases were estimated.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Malaria prevalence significantly decreased from 13.6% (281/2,068) in December 2004 to 4.0% (80/2,019) in December 2006. <it>Plasmodium falciparum </it>and <it>Plasmodium vivax </it>were the most common infections with few <it>Plasmodium malariae </it>mono-infections and some mixed infections. During the study period, malaria incidence decreased by more than 50%, from 25.7/1,000 population at risk in the second half of 2004 to 12.3/1,000 in the second half of 2006. The incidence showed seasonal variations, with a yearly peak between June and December, except in 2006 when the peak observed in the previous years did not occur.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Over a 2.5-year follow-up period, malaria prevalence and incidence decreased by more than 70% and 50%, respectively. Possibly, this could be attributed to the setting up of a passive case detection system based on village health workers, indicating that a major impact on the malaria burden can be obtained whenever prompt diagnosis and adequate treatment are available.</p

Differential spatial modulation for high-rate transmission systems

This paper introduces a new differential spatial modulation (DSM) scheme which subsumes both the previously introduced DSM and high-rate spatial modulation (HR-SM) for wireless multiple input multiple output (MIMO) transmission. By combining the codeword design method of the HR-SM scheme with the encoding method of the DSM scheme, we develop a high-rate differential spatial modulation (HR-DSM) scheme equipped with an arbitrary number of transmit antennas that requires channel state information (CSI) neither at the transmitter nor at the receiver. The proposed approach can be applied to any equal energy signal constellations. The bit error rate (BER) performance of the proposed HR-DSM schemes is evaluated by using both theoretical upper bound and computer simulations. It is shown that for the same spectral efficiency and antenna configuration, the proposed HR-DSM outperforms the DSM in terms of bit error rate (BER) performance

High Energy Scattering in the Quasi-Potential Approach

Asymptotic behavior of the scattering amplitude for two scalar particles by scalar, vector and tensor exchanges at high energy and fixed momentum transfers is reconsidered in quantum field theory. In the framework of the quasi-potential approach and the modified perturbation theory a systematic scheme of finding the leading eikonal scattering amplitudes and its corrections are developed and constructed.The connection between the solutions obtained by quasi-potential and functional approaches is also discussed.The first correction to leading eikonal amplitude is found. Keywords: Eikonal scattering theory, Quantum gravity.Comment: 18 pages. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:0804.343

Efficient polygenic risk scores for biobank scale data by exploiting phenotypes from inferred relatives

Polygenic risk scores are emerging as a potentially powerful tool to predict future phenotypes of target individuals, typically using unrelated individuals, thereby devaluing information from relatives. Here, for 50 traits from the UK Biobank data, we show that a design of 5,000 individuals with first-degree relatives of target individuals can achieve a prediction accuracy similar to that of around 220,000 unrelated individuals (mean prediction accuracy = 0.26 vs. 0.24, mean fold-change = 1.06 (95% CI: 0.99-1.13), P-value = 0.08), despite a 44-fold difference in sample size. For lifestyle traits, the prediction accuracy with 5,000 individuals including first-degree relatives of target individuals is significantly higher than that with 220,000 unrelated individuals (mean prediction accuracy = 0.22 vs. 0.16, mean fold-change = 1.40 (1.17-1.62), P-value = 0.025). Our findings suggest that polygenic prediction integrating family information may help to accelerate precision health and clinical intervention

Plasmodium knowlesi malaria in Vietnam: some clarifications

A recently published comment on a report of Plasmodium knowlesi infections in Vietnam states that this may not accurately represent the situation in the study area because the PCR primers used may cross-hybridize with Plasmodium vivax. Nevertheless, P. knowlesi infections have been confirmed by sequencing. In addition, a neighbour-joining tree based on the 18S S-Type SSUrRNA gene shows that the Vietnamese samples clearly cluster with the P. knowlesi isolates identified in Malaysia and are distinct from the corresponding P. vivax sequences. All samples came from asymptomatic individuals who did not consult for fever during the months preceding or following the survey, indicating that asymptomatic P. knowlesi infections occur in this population, although this does not exclude the occurrence of symptomatic cases. Large-scale studies to determine the extent and the epidemiology of P. knowlesi malaria in Vietnam are further needed