Facility layout problem: Bibliometric and benchmarking analysis

Facility layout problem is related to the location of departments in a facility area, with the aim of determining the most effective configuration. Researches based on different approaches have been published in the last six decades and, to prove the effectiveness of the results obtained, several instances have been developed. This paper presents a general overview on the extant literature on facility layout problems in order to identify the main research trends and propose future research questions. Firstly, in order to give the reader an overview of the literature, a bibliometric analysis is presented. Then, a clusterization of the papers referred to the main instances reported in literature was carried out in order to create a database that can be a useful tool in the benchmarking procedure for researchers that would approach this kind of problems

American transcendental vision: Emerson to Chaplin

Ralph Waldo Emerson\u27s publication of Nature in 1836 began a process of creating a new condition of American thinking, severed from European cultural and intellectual influences. The subsequent lectures The American Scholar and The Divinity School Address furthered this process, calling for an original American literature. Emerson\u27s writing called consistently for poets with the ability to see past the material, apparent world to the world of eternal forms, which shaped nature in accordance with a divine moral imperative. Through this connection, man-as-poet would discover God in himself. In short, Emerson effectively transferred divinity from Unitarian doctrine to the individual, thereby asserting each individual as the center of his own moral universe. Emerson\u27s prose utilizes visual metaphors to express ideas which escape conventional language usage. The poet, according to Emerson, would have the ability to trace words back to their original associations with things, and thus reveal the true world of facts. His emphasis on seeing (in all aspects of that term) dominates Emerson\u27s writing and determines an aesthetic which is as much visual as it is verbal. Emerson\u27s theories found disciples in Thoreau and Whitman, but the most interesting extension of his aesthetic came with the development of the motion picture. In the early twentieth century, D. W. Griffith singlehandedly changed the status of films from sideshow amusements to narrative art. Griffith\u27s techniques for creating visual narrative were intuitive and inspired from his imagination, an essential quality of the Emersonian poet. Griffith\u27s own moral imperative was similar to Emerson\u27s; he envisioned a medium which could educate more effectively than language. Charles Chaplin was, from 1920 through 1936, the most recognizable figure in the world because of his unique screen comedies. Chaplin\u27s enduring character, the Tramp, evokes much of Emerson\u27s qualities of the poet in that he envisioned the world beyond the apparent, and creatively reconstituted this world in the way Emerson had done with visual metaphor. Chaplin combined the humanism of Emerson with the democratic possibilities of Whitman to create a uniquely American cinema with universal appeal. Chaplin\u27s body of work remains America\u27s most logical extension of Emersonian philosophy

Project management information systems (Pmiss): A statistical-based analysis for the evaluation of software packages features

Project Managers (PMs) working in competitive markets are finding Project Management Information Systems (PMISs) useful for planning, organizing and controlling projects of varying complexity. A wide variety of PMIS software is available, suitable for projects differing in scope and user needs. This paper identifies the most useful features found in PMISs. An extensive literature review and analysis of commercial software is made to identify the main features of PMISs. After-wards, the list is reduced by a panel of project management experts, and a statistical analysis is performed on data acquired by means of two different surveys. The relative importance of listed features is properly computed, and the interactions between the respondent’s profiles and PMIS features are also investigated by cluster and respondents’ analyses. The paper provides information for researchers and practitioners interested in PMISs packages and their applications. Furthermore, the analyses may help practitioners when choosing a PMIS, and also for developers of PMISs software in understanding user needs

Occupational health and safety issues in human-robot collaboration: State of the art and open challenges

Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) refers to the interaction of workers and robots in a shared workspace. Owing to the integration of the industrial automation strengths with the inimitable cognitive capabilities of humans, HRC is paramount to move towards advanced and sustainable production systems. Although the overall safety of collaborative robotics has increased over time, further research efforts are needed to allow humans to operate alongside robots, with awareness and trust. Numerous safety concerns are open, and either new or enhanced technical, procedural and organizational measures have to be investigated to design and implement inherently safe and ergonomic automation solutions, aligning the systems performance and the human safety. Therefore, a bibliometric analysis and a literature review are carried out in the present paper to provide a comprehensive overview of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) issues in HRC. As a result, the most researched topics and application areas, and the possible future lines of research are identified. Reviewed articles stress the central role played by humans during collaboration, underlining the need to integrate the human factor in the hazard analysis and risk assessment. Human-centered design and cognitive engineering principles also require further investigations to increase the worker acceptance and trust during collaboration. Deepened studies are compulsory in the healthcare sector, to investigate the social and ethical implications of HRC. Whatever the application context is, the implementation of more and more advanced technologies is fundamental to overcome the current HRC safety concerns, designing low-risk HRC systems while ensuring the system productivity

Economic and Environmental Assessment of Biomass Power Plants in Southern Italy

In 2019, Europe adopted the New Green Deal as a strategic plan to become a competitive, resource-efficient, and driven economy by reducing its gas emissions and carbon footprint. Due the COVID-19 pandemic, this strategic plan was recently updated to expedite the green transition of European industries. Therefore, the present paper deals with the problem of deciding an appropriate size for a biomass plant that directly produces electric energy by means of two different conversion processes: combustion and gasification. After an initial estimation of the energy potential in western Sicily, GIS data of biomass growth were used to identify the appropriate size for the power plants under investigation. The economic feasibility of biomass utilization was evaluated over a capacity range of 10 to 30 MW, considering total capital investments, revenues from energy sales, and total operating costs. Moreover, the effect of variations on incentive prices was analyzed by means of a sensitivity analysis. Comparing the different plant solutions considered, the environmental sustainability was also analyzed using the life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. The results showed that the combustion solution had a higher profitability and a lower environmental impact for each plant size. The obtained results also demonstrated that providing power from residual biomass in small agricultural communities would significantly reduce their environmental impacts while improving the economic feasibility of their waste management practices

Selection of novel geopolymeric mortars for sustainable construction applications using fuzzy topsis approach

Construction is recognized as one of the most polluting and energy consuming industries worldwide, especially in developing countries. Therefore, Research and Development (R&D) of novel manufacturing technologies and green construction materials is becoming extremely compelling. This study aims at evaluating the reuse of various wastes, originated in the Kraft pulp-paper industry, as raw materials in the manufacture of novel geopolymeric (GP) mortars whose properties fundamentally depend on the target application (e.g., insulating panel, partition wall, structural element, furnishing, etc.). Five different wastes were reused as filler: Two typologies of Biomass Fly Ash, calcareous sludge, grits, and dregs. The produced samples were characterized and a multi criteria analysis, able to take into account not only the engineering properties, but also the environmental and economic aspects, has been implemented. The criteria weights were evaluated using the Delphi methodology. The fuzzy Topsis approach has been used to consider the intrinsic uncertainty related to unconventional materials, as the produced GP-mortars. The computational analysis showed that adding the considered industrial wastes as filler is strongly recommended to improve the performance of materials intended for structural applications in construction. The results revealed that the formulations containing 5 wt.% of calcareous sludge, grits, and dregs and the one containing 7.5 wt.% of calcareous sludge, grits, dregs, and Biomass Fly Ash-1 have emerged as the best alternatives. Furthermore, it resulted that the Biomass Fly Ash-2 negatively influences the structural performance and relative rank of the material. Finally, this case study clearly shows that the fuzzy Topsis multi-criteria analysis represents a valuable and easy tool to investigate construction materials (either traditional and unconventional) when an intrinsic uncertainty is related to the measurement of the quantitative and qualitative characteristics

Sustainable vehicle routing based on firefly algorithm and TOPSIS methodology

In a sustainable management of logistics, transportation plays a crucial role. Traditionally, the main purpose was to solve the Vehicle Routing Problem minimizing the cost associated with the travelled distances. Nowadays, the economic profit cannot be the only driver for achieving sustainability and environmental issues have to be also considered. In this paper, to satisfy the intricate limits involved in real vehicle routing problem, the study has been structured considering different types of vehicles in terms of maximum capacity, velocity and emissions, asymmetric paths, vehicle-client constraints and delivery time windows. The firefly algorithm has been implemented to solve the vehicle routing problem and the TOPSIS technique has been applied to integrate economic and environmental factors. Finally, to prove the effectiveness of the proposed approach, a numerical example has been proposed using data provided by a logistic company located in Sicily

The neurochaperonopathies: Anomalies of the chaperone system with pathogenic effects in neurodegenerative and neuromuscular disorders

The chaperone (or chaperoning) system (CS) constitutes molecular chaperones, co-chaperones, and chaperone co-factors, interactors and receptors, and its canonical role is protein quality control. A malfunction of the CS may cause diseases, known as the chaperonopathies. These are caused by qualitatively and/or quantitatively abnormal molecular chaperones. Since the CS is ubiquitous, chaperonopathies are systemic, affecting various tissues and organs, playing an etiologic-pathogenic role in diverse conditions. In this review, we focus on chaperonopathies involved in the pathogenic mechanisms of diseases of the central and peripheral nervous systems: the neurochaperonopathies (NCPs). Genetic NCPs are linked to pathogenic variants of chaperone genes encoding, for example, the small Hsp, Hsp10, Hsp40, Hsp60, and CCT-BBS (chaperonin-containing TCP-1-Bardet\u2013Biedl syndrome) chaperones. Instead, the acquired NCPs are associated with malfunctional chaperones, such as Hsp70, Hsp90, and VCP/p97 with aberrant post-translational modifications. Awareness of the chaperonopathies as the underlying primary or secondary causes of disease will improve diagnosis and patient management and open the possibility of investigating and developing chaperonotherapy, namely treatment with the abnormal chaperone as the main target. Positive chaperonotherapy would apply in chaperonopathies by defect, i.e., chaperone insufficiency, and consist of chaperone replacement or boosting, whereas negative chaperonotherapy would be pertinent when a chaperone actively participates in the initiation and progression of the disease and must be blocked and eliminated

Antiferroelectric liquid crystals with induced intermediate polar phases and the effects of doping with carbon nanotubes

By mixing a commercial broad-temperature-range nematic liquid crystal mixture with a single-component antiferroelectric chiral smectic exhibiting two different chiral smectic-C-type phases as only mesophases, we have induced three phases which appear in neither of the two components; the paraelectric SmA* phase and the so-called intermediate phases SmC b and SmC c, antiferroelectric and heli- electric in nature, respectively. The generation of the two latter phases in mixtures where one component is an essentially non-chiral nematic is highly unexpected, since these phases are generally linked to high degree of smectic order and/or strong chiral interactions. It is probably made possible through microphase segregation driven by the incompatibility of the fluorinated tail of the smectic compo- nent with the non-fluorinated constituents of the nematic mixture. We also doped the nematic with single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) before adding it to the smectic at the same concentration, allowing us to study the effect of SWCNTs on antiferroelectric liquid crystals. Although the final SWCNT concentration was very small (0.002 wt%) the phase sequence was radically altered, the ordin- ary SmC* phase now being present all the way between SmA* and crystallization, while all other variations of smectic-C-type order were suppressed