Strategic scenarios of global logistics: what lies ahead for Europe?

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Smart Urban Planning : Evaluating Urban Logistics Performance of Innovative Solutions and Sustainable Policies in the Venice Lagoon : the Results of a Case Study

Currently, remarkable gaps of operational, social and environmental efficiency and overall sub-optimization of the logistics and mobility systems exist in urban areas. There is then the need to promote and assess innovative transport solutions and policy-making within SUMPs (Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans) to deal with such critical issues in order to improve urban sustainability. The paper focuses on the case study of the Venice Lagoon, where islands—despite representing a relevant feature of urban planning—face a tremendous lack of accessibility, depopulation, social cohesion and they turn out to be poorly connected. By developing an original scenario-building methodological framework and performing data collection activities, the purpose of the paper consists of assessing the feasibility of a mixed passenger and freight transport system —sometimes called cargo hitching. Mixed passenger and freight systems/cargo hitching are considered as an innovative framework based on the integration of freight and passenger urban systems and resources to optimize the existing transport capacity, and thus, urban sustainability. Results show that the overall existing urban transport capacity can accommodate urban freight flows on main connections in the Lagoon. The reduction in spare public transport capacity, as well as in the number (and type) of circulating freight boats show—in various scenarios—the degree of optimization of the resulting urban network configuration and the positive impacts on urban sustainability. This paves the way for the regulatory framework to adopt proposed solutions

Lo sviluppo di servizi di trasporto innovativi a supporto della mobilità dei crocieristici : una valutazione di fattibilità strategica per il porto di Ragusa (Dubrovnik) = Developing innovative transport services to support the mobility of cruise passengers: a strategic feasibility assessment for the port of Ragusa (Dubrovnik)

A seguito dello sviluppo del traffico crocieristico, l’area urbana di Ragusa (Dubrovnik) ha visto accrescersi gli effetti negativi sul sistema di trasporto urbano, soprattutto in termini di congestione ed inquinamento, in particolare in relazione agli assi principali che consentono l’accesso dei turisti dal principale terminal crocieristico (Gravosa/Gruž) al Centro Storico. A partire dalle evidenze e dalle criticità rilevate attraverso un’estesa ricerca in letteratura nonché da un’analisi di best practice, lo scopo del presente lavoro è quello di realizzare una valutazione preliminare originale di un possibile servizio di trasporto locale marittimo, complementare al tradizionale percorso pedonale seguito dai turisti e ai mezzi di trasporto pubblico terrestre utilizzati dagli stessi per dirigersi verso il Centro Storico. In particolare, il lavoro, partendo dall’analisi dello stato di fatto della rete urbana, presenta una valutazione strategica, sia finanziaria che socio-economica, di una proposta di servizio marittimo locale – sostenuta dagli stakeholder locali – che viene messa a confronto, in un ambito costi-benefici, con l’ipotesi alternativa di un tunnel pedonale, in modo da fornire un supporto rigoroso ai policy-maker. I risultati indicano, anche attraverso analisi di sensitività, la fattibilità fianziaria della proposta di servizio locale marittimo – in grado di assorbire una quota rilevante dei flussi crocieristici determinando, quindi, una signficativa riduzione della congestione e dell’inquinamento nel centro storico della città – nonché gli elementi decisionali fondamentali, da un punto di vista sociale, relativi al rapporto con l’alternativa del tunnel. Following the increase of cruise traffic area of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) suffers from the negative impacts on the urban transport system, especially in terms of congestion and pollution, along the main connections from the main cruise terminal (Gruž) to the Old Town. The aim of the paper consists of carrying out an original feasibility study – fostered by local stakeholders and policy-makers – based on a sound empirical methodology and data collection so as to put forward an innovative local maritime transport service complementary to traditional urban transport solutions, which mainly consist of pedestrian routes and land-based public transport services. Following a comprehensive literature review and a best practice analysis, the paper builds upon a number of original scenarios comparing the current situation with a number of transport alternatives (a local maritime service and a pedestrian tunnel) to be used by cruise tourists accessing the historical center so as to support local policy-makers. Results show the feasibility of the local maritime option, which determines a significant reduction in urban congestion and pollution

A comparison study of co-simulation frameworks for multi-energy systems: the scalability problem

The transition to a low-carbon society will completely change the structure of energy systems from a standalone hierarchical centralised vision to cooperative and dis- tributed Multi-Energy Systems. The analysis of these complex systems requires the collaboration of researchers from different disciplines in the energy, ICT, social, economic, and political sectors. Combining such disparate disciplines into a single tool for modeling and analyzing such a complex environment as a Multi-Energy System requires tremendous effort. Researchers have overcome this effort by using co-simulation techniques that give the possibility of integrating existing domain-specific simulators in a single environment. Co-simulation frameworks, such as Mosaik and HELICS, have been developed to ease such integration. In this context, an additional challenge is the different temporal and spatial scales that are involved in the real world and that must be addressed during co-simulation. In particular, the huge number of heterogeneous actors populating the system makes it difficult to represent the system as a whole. In this paper, we propose a comparison of the scalability performance of two major co-simulation frameworks (i.e. HELICS and Mosaik) and a particular implementation of a well-known multi-agent systems library (i.e. AIOMAS). After describing a generic co-simulation framework infrastructure and its related challenges in managing a distributed co-simulation environment, the three selected frameworks are introduced and compared with each other to highlight their principal structure. Then, the scalability problem of co-simulation frameworks is introduced presenting four benchmark configurations to test their ability to scale in terms of a number of running instances. To carry out this comparison, a simplified multi-model energy scenario was used as a common testing environment. This work helps to understand which of the three frameworks and four configurations to select depending on the scenario to analyse. Experimental results show that a Multi-processing configuration of HELICS reaches the best performance in terms of KPIs defined to assess the scalability among the co-simu- lation frameworks

Roles of the Raf/MEK/ERK and PI3K/PTEN/Akt/mTOR pathways in controlling growth and sensitivity to therapy-implications for cancer and aging

Dysregulated signaling through the Ras/Raf/MEK/ERK and PI3K/PTEN/Akt/mTOR pathways is often the result of genetic alterations in critical components in these pathways or upstream activators. Unrestricted cellular proliferation and decreased sensitivity to apoptotic-inducing agents are typically associated with activation of these pro-survival pathways. This review discusses the functions these pathways have in normal and neoplastic tissue growth and how they contribute to resistance to apoptotic stimuli. Crosstalk and commonly identified mutations that occur within these pathways that contribute to abnormal activation and cancer growth will also be addressed. Finally the recently described roles of these pathways in cancer stem cells, cellular senescence and aging will be evaluated. Controlling the expression of these pathways could ameliorate human health

Advances in Targeting Signal Transduction Pathways

Over the past few years, significant advances have occurred in both our understanding of the complexity of signal transduction pathways as well as the isolation of specific inhibitors which target key components in those pathways. Furthermore critical information is being accrued regarding how genetic mutations can affect the sensitivity of various types of patients to targeted therapy. Finally, genetic mechanisms responsible for the development of resistance after targeted therapy are being discovered which may allow the creation of alternative therapies to overcome resistance. This review will discuss some of the highlights over the past few years on the roles of key signaling pathways in various diseases, the targeting of signal transduction pathways and the genetic mechanisms governing sensitivity and resistance to targeted therapies

Oltre il Segno/OltreMare

La realizzazione di un volume contenente le incisioni scelte all’interno della Scuola di Grafica d’Arte dell’Accademia di Belle Arti di Palermo, coordinata dai Proff. Giovanni D’Alessandro e Riccardo Mazzarino rappresenta motivo di orgoglio e di soddisfazione per la nostra Istituzione che costruisce i percorsi didattici dei propri corsi a partire dall’esperienza laboratoriale. L’incisione grafica è tra le tecniche artistiche più antiche ma nel contempo più contemporanee. La gestualità intrinseca al segno, che si manifesta nella carta, svela universi della visione inaspettati.(Mario Zito - Direttore dell’Accademia di Belle Arti di Palermo) Il segno è il risultato di un gesto a volte deciso, a volte contorto, a volte leggero, i cui risultati spesso sono inattesi e sorprendenti. Il volume contiene esemplari di incisioni fortemente caratterizzanti della scuola di Grafica d’Arte che vanta all’interno del proprio corso di studi docenti-artisti che consapevoli della ricchezza del loro bagaglio esperienziale offrono agli studenti gli strumenti necessari per far sì che l’arte del saper fare artigianale, si trasformi in mera poetica artistica