Il mondo scritto dei sensi di Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino lasciò incompiuto, al momento della sua morte, un libro dedicato ai cinque sensi. Di questo progetto interrotto rimangono alcuni racconti, pubblicati in un opera postuma intitolata Sotto il sole giaguaro. Questo articolo, partendo dai racconti ritrovati, vuole essere una riflessione sulle possibili motivazioni che hanno spinto lo scrittore ligure, negli ultimi anni della sua vita, a scrivere un testo sulla tematica sensoriale.When Italo Calvino died he left unfinished a book about the five senses. Of this interrupted project remain some stories, which have been published in a posthumous work under the title Sotto il sole giaguaro. This article, based on the stories found, contemplates the possible reasons that pushed the writer from Liguria to dedicate a book regarding the sensorial world during his last years.Italo Calvino lasciò incompiuto, al momento della sua morte, un libro dedicato ai cinque sensi. Di questo progetto interrotto rimangono alcuni racconti, pubblicati in un opera postuma intitolata Sotto il sole giaguaro. Questo articolo, partendo dai racconti ritrovati, vuole essere una riflessione sulle possibili motivazioni che hanno spinto lo scrittore ligure, negli ultimi anni della sua vita, a scrivere un testo sulla tematica sensoriale

Development of Speditive Explosibility Test (SET): a statistical reliable method for combustible dust explosibility investigation

The present work of thesis investigate the explosibility sensitivity and behavior of combustible solid materials, in the form of dusts. The first phase of the work has focused on the ignition sensitivity of combustible dusts, both in form of clouds than deposed as layers. Standard test methods has been used to assess ignition parameter of the samples, i.e. UNI EN 50821: 1999. MITC and MITL were measured for pure combustible dusts and for mixtures of different dusts. In particular mixtures of combustible and inert dusts were analyzed. The experimental results underlined the increase of the ignition temperature (both in clouds than in layers) as the weight content of inert material increase. Extinguishing powders with chemical heat depletion effect had demonstrated to be more effective in increasing the ignition temperature with respect to inert acting with physical inertia mechanism. MITC of two combustible dusts mixture have been analyzed and results have shown the poor accuracy of the standard procedure in defining the ignition temperature, particularly when there is little difference between ignition temperatures of the pure materials. The author has attempted to reduce this lack of accuracy, inadequate when a high level of details is required (like for scientific purposes) in ignition measurements through different statistical analysis of experimental data. This study has generated a statistical approach to the investigation of dust ignition temperature with the definition of the SIT (Statistical Ignition Temperature) and the definition of a Probability Escalation Interval (PEI); within PEI ignition probability of dusts vary between 0 and 1 with respect to temperature. The results obtained show that standard methods adopted worldwide could fail in determine the MITC of dusts and bring a new, more accurate methodology as a contribution on the definition of ignition concept of dusts. The statistical study could also apply to ignition criteria of the explosibility test proposed here, in order to give to SET procedures and results a more reliable statistical value. The Speditive Explosibility Test has the form of a screening procedures for defining explosibility of dust samples, with the aim of avoiding time and cost-consuming standard procedures. The test consist in different procedures derived from standards (mainly UNI EN 50821 and UNI EN 13821) which ignition conditions are modified to be “as worst as possible”, in order to avoid marginally explosive dusts to be classified as non explosible. Tests were performed on different dusts samples (by chemical composition, nature, PSD) and results were validated through explosion test in the 20 L Siwek-sphere. The test classification shows, for the majority of the samples collected, good agreement with literature standard explosibility tests. The SET could be assumed as standard test for the explosibility determination of a dust. A second experimental campaign was performed on non-traditional dusts coming from textile industries. All samples PSD was analyzed and 15 over 100 total were submitted to the SET with the aim to obtain more data on explosive behavior of those type of dusts

The Conflict Transformation Team of the Henry Martyn Institute and their Pursuit of Transformation

This capstone is looking at the Conflict Transformation (CT) team of the Henry Martyn Institute in their pursuit of transformation. For the CT team, conflicts, especially intractable conflicts, are multi-determinant. Hence, the initiatives to break the cycles of violence and cycles of intractability need to be multi-determinant. Taking this into account, the CT team works for transformation in many ways. They work to understand the need for social change, advocacy and transformation. The team works to design the appropriate actions in coordination with its partners in the field and execute them with flexibility and awareness. Working in regions of great diversity and many with current and regular outbreaks of physical violent conflict, the CT team must be purposeful about their actions. Awareness of the context as well as partnering with the appropriate organizations is a big aspect of the work of the CT team. Some of the work the CT team focuses on is facilitating workshops, teaching theory of conflict transformation and training, leading dialogues and mediating conflicts. This capstone looks at this process of need, design, action and evaluation of CT team initiatives. The purpose of this capstone is to look at an NGO working in the field of Conflict Transformation and see what the work of transformation may look like and see how it may be perceived

Analysis of the Communication Traffic for Blockchain Synchronization of IoT Devices

Blockchain is a technology uniquely suited to support massive number of transactions and smart contracts within the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, thanks to the decentralized accounting mechanism. In a blockchain network, the states of the accounts are stored and updated by the validator nodes, interconnected in a peer-to-peer fashion. IoT devices are characterized by relatively low computing capabilities and low power consumption, as well as sporadic and low-bandwidth wireless connectivity. An IoT device connects to one or more validator nodes to observe or modify the state of the accounts. In order to interact with the most recent state of accounts, a device needs to be synchronized with the blockchain copy stored by the validator nodes. In this work, we describe general architectures and synchronization protocols that enable synchronization of the IoT endpoints to the blockchain, with different communication costs and security levels. We model and analytically characterize the traffic generated by the synchronization protocols, and also investigate the power consumption and synchronization trade-off via numerical simulations. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that rigorously models the role of wireless connectivity in blockchain-powered IoT systems.Comment: Paper accepted at IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) 201

PREPARE: PREoPerative Anxiety Reduction. Development of a brief psychological intervention for the management of presurgical anxiety before pancreatic surgery.

Psychological interventions devoted to help patients dealing pancreatic surger

Obstructing left sided colorectal cancer. A retrospective single center study.

Background: In recent years, with population aging, there has been an increased number of colorectal cancer cases in elderly patients with severe occlusion symptoms. About 75% of obstructions due to malignant colorectal cancer (10-30%) occur distal to splenic flexure. Methods: The authors evaluated the best surgical therapeutic strategy to be used in cases of left-sided colorectal carcinoma in patients over 65 years old, especially considering the emergency condition, age of patients and efficacy in terms of postoperative morbidity, mortality and 5 years survival rate. Results: The management of left-sided obstructing colorectal carcinoma is controversial. Hartmann’s procedure is the best therapeutic choice in elderly patients. However, resection with intraoperative colonic wash-out and primary anastomosis has favorable outcome in low risk patients. Conclusions: A review of the literature reveals that primary resection and anastomosis for left-sided obstructing CRC is the correct therapeutic strategy in low risk patients with localized, resectable carcinoma, without peritonitis; Hartmann’s procedure should be adopted in doubtful cases and in high risk patients

On the Impact of Wireless Jamming on the Distributed Secondary Microgrid Control

The secondary control in direct current microgrids (MGs) is used to restore the voltage deviations caused by the primary droop control, where the latter is implemented locally in each distributed generator and reacts to load variations. Numerous recent works propose to implement the secondary control in a distributed fashion, relying on a communication system to achieve consensus among MG units. This paper shows that, if the system is not designed to cope with adversary communication impairments, then a malicious attacker can apply a simple jamming of a few units of the MG and thus compromise the secondary MG control. Compared to other denial-of-service attacks that are oriented against the tertiary control, such as economic dispatch, the attack on the secondary control presented here can be more severe, as it disrupts the basic functionality of the MG