The virtuous cycle of stakeholder engagement in developing a sustainability culture: Salcheto winery

Stakeholder engagement in sustainability represents a powerful driver for value creation. Drawing from stakeholder theory, this paper explores how a firm with a proactive sustainable behaviour engages stakeholders in developing innovation and creating value. A longitudinal, single case study of the Salcheto winery was carried out. Since the late 1990s, Salcheto has been at the forefront of wine eco-innovation and it has played a key role in the development of Montepulciano (Tuscany, Italy) as one of the first sustainable wine clusters worldwide. The development of a sustainable wine culture is one of the firm's various innovations. In doing so, the firm has had to face three challenges - identity creation, legitimization and enhancement - and has engaged its stakeholders through three specific mechanisms (adoption and development; co-creation and diffusion; exploitation and contamination). This virtuous cycle of stakeholder engagement has resulted in value creation at a firm, stakeholder and local level

Effect of heat treatment and defects on the tensile behavior of a hot work tool steel manufactured by laser powder bed fusion

Microstructure and tensile properties of a hot work tool steel manufactured via laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) were investigated. Specimens were built under two different orientations and subjected to two quenching and tempering heat treatments, featuring different austenitizing and tempering temperatures and the eventual presence of a sub-zero step. Microstructural analyses revealed a homogeneous tempered martensite structure after both heat treatments, with the only distinction of a higher alloying segregation at a sub micrometric scale length in samples subjected to the highest tempering temperatures. Hardness and tensile tests indicated a negligible effect of building orientation on mechanical properties, but a significant influence of heat treatment parameters. The treatment featuring the lower tempering temperatures and the sub-zero step resulted in higher hardness, tensile strength, and elongation, attributed to a lower martensite tempering and alloying segregation. Tensile fracture occurred via crack initiation and unstable propagation from large LPBF defects in all the investigated conditions

Design and Experimental Validation of an LTE-based Synchrophasor Network in a Medium Voltage Distribution Grid

We present and experimentally validate in a real-scale medium voltage (MV) grid a synchrophasor network that exploits the availability of a public 4G LTE communication infrastructure. An 18 buses, 10\,kV feeder located in Huissen, The Netherlands, has been equipped with 10 Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) connected to the MV grid by means of dedicated voltage and current sensors. The PMUs stream synchrophasor data through a public 4G LTE network via an information-centric networking-based middleware, named C-DAX. The measurements are received and time-aligned at a phasor data concentrator and fed to a real-time state estimation application. The paper presents the various field-trial components and validates the feasibility of exploiting the 4G LTE technology for PMU-based applications. Specifically we assess the performance of the adopted wireless telecommunication infrastructure with and without the C-DAX middleware, as well as the accuracy of the real-time state estimation process

Two-Dimensional Spectroscopy of Extended Molecular Systems: Applications to Energy Transport and Relaxation in an α-Helix

A simulation study of the coupled dynamics of amide I and amide II vibrations in an α-helix dissolved in water shows that two-dimensional (2D) infrared spectroscopy may be used to disentangle the energy transport along the helix through each of these modes from the energy relaxation between them. Time scales for both types of processes are obtained. Using polarization-dependent 2D spectroscopy is an important ingredient in the method we propose. The method may also be applied to other two-band systems, both in the infrared (collective vibrations) and the visible (excitons) parts of the spectrum.

Precessing jets from a moving source and bright X-ray filaments in galaxy clusters

We present hydrodynamical calculations carried out with the 3D yguazu-a code of a precessing jet model, which interacts with a plane parallel wind. This scenario describes an extragalactic jet, in which the jet source is in motion with respect to the surrounding intra-cluster medium. From the numerical results, synthetic emission maps and spectra in X-ray band were obtained. We compare these predictions with observations of the radio jets emanating from the radio-galaxy 4C 26.42 (in the Abell 1795 galaxy cluster). We find that the general morphology of the radio jets can be described by a point-symmetric precessing jet system interacting with a plane parallel wind (i.e., the intra-cluster medium flowing past the galaxy). We also find that our synthetic X-ray emission maps reproduce the observed large scale structures (with sizes of the order of tens of kpc).Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A - 7 Pages, 6 figure

Leukocyte telomere length variability as a potential biomarker in patients with polyQ diseases

SCA1, SCA2, and SCA3 are the most common forms of SCAs among the polyglutamine disorders, which include Huntington's Disease (HD). We investigated the relationship between leukocyte telomere length (LTL) and the phenotype of SCA1, SCA2, and SCA3, comparing them with HD. The results showed that LTL was significantly reduced in SCA1 and SCA3 patients, while LTL was significantly longer in SCA2 patients. A significant negative relationship between LTL and age was observed in SCA1 but not in SCA2 subjects. LTL of SCA3 patients depend on both patient's age and disease duration. The number of CAG repeats did not affect LTL in the three SCAs. Since LTL is considered an indirect marker of an inflammatory response and oxidative damage, our data suggest that in SCA1 inflammation is present already at an early stage of disease similar to in HD, while in SCA3 inflammation and impaired antioxidative processes are associated with disease progression. Interestingly, in SCA2, contrary to SCA1 and SCA3, the length of leukocyte telomeres does not reduce with age. We have observed that SCAs and HD show a differing behavior in LTL for each subtype, which could constitute relevant biomarkers if confirmed in larger cohorts and longitudinal studies

Time-resolved studies define the nature of toxic IAPP intermediates, providing insight for anti-amyloidosis therapeutics

Islet amyloidosis by IAPP contributes to pancreatic β-cell death in diabetes, but the nature of toxic IAPP species remains elusive. Using concurrent time-resolved biophysical and biological measurements, we define the toxic species produced during IAPP amyloid formation and link their properties to induction of rat INS-1 β-cell and murine islet toxicity. These globally flexible, low order oligomers upregulate pro-inflammatory markers and induce reactive oxygen species. They do not bind 1-anilnonaphthalene-8-sulphonic acid and lack extensive β-sheet structure. Aromatic interactions modulate, but are not required for toxicity. Not all IAPP oligomers are toxic; toxicity depends on their partially structured conformational states. Some anti-amyloid agents paradoxically prolong cytotoxicity by prolonging the lifetime of the toxic species. The data highlight the distinguishing properties of toxic IAPP oligomers and the common features that they share with toxic species reported for other amyloidogenic polypeptides, providing information for rational drug design to treat IAPP induced β-cell death

Modeling the Halpha line emission around classical T Tauri stars using magnetospheric accretion and disk wind models

Spectral observations of classical T Tauri stars show a wide range of line profiles, many of which reveal signs of matter inflow and outflow. Halpha is the most commonly observed line profile due to its intensity, and it is highly dependent on the characteristics of the surrounding environment of these stars. Our aim is to analyze how the Halpha line profile is affected by the various parameters of our model which contains both the magnetospheric and disk wind contributions to the Halpha flux. We used a dipolar axisymmetric stellar magnetic field to model the stellar magnetosphere and a modified Blandford & Payne model was used in our disk wind region. A three-level atom with continuum was used to calculate the required Hydrogen level populations. We use the Sobolev approximation and a ray-by-ray method to calculate the integrated line profile. Through an extensive study of the model parameter space, we have investigated the contribution of many of the model parameters on the calculated line profiles. Our results show that the Halpha line is strongly dependent on the densities and temperatures inside the magnetosphere and the disk wind region. The bulk of the flux comes, most of the time, from the magnetospheric component for standard classical T Tauri stars parameters, but the disk wind contribution becomes more important as the mass accretion rate, the temperatures and densities inside the disk wind increase. We have also found that most of the disk wind contribution to the Halpha line is emitted at the innermost region of the disk wind. Models that take into consideration both inflow and outflow of matter are a necessity to fully understand and describe classical T Tauri stars.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. Revised version with English correction

Vibrational Spectra of a Mechanosensitive Channel

We report the simulated vibrational spectra of a mechanosensitive membrane channel in different gating states. Our results show that while linear absorption is insensitive to structural differences, linear dichroism and sum-frequency generation spectroscopies are sensitive to the orientation of the transmembrane helices, which is changing during the opening process. Linear dichroism cannot distinguish an intermediate structure from the closed structure, but sum-frequency generation can. In addition, we find that two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy can be used to distinguish all three investigated gating states of the mechanosensitive membrane channel.