Implementing Circular Economy in Universities. Successful Practices at Politecnico di Torino (Italy)

The circular economy (CE) concept reported a growing interest as an operationalizing framework, able to support the implementation of sustainable production and consumption, resource use and waste prevention broader concepts. Even if CE is different from waste management, it has traditionally been associated with waste reduction, recycling improvement, and minimization of environmental impacts in cities and territories. Additionally, CE could be a driver for the achievement of multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). On the other side, universities are recognized as key actors in the transition towards sustainable development at the territorial level. Given the use of CE as a possible change paradigm to decouple economic growth from associated environmental impacts, this paper aims at highlighting some of the main successful practices put forwards by an Italian university, Politecnico di Torino, in implementing CE principles.Keyword: Circular Economy, University Sustainability, waste managemen

Determination of the Lorentz Angle in Microstrip Silicon Detectors with Cosmic Muons

The microstrip silicon tracker of the CMS experiment will operate in a 4 T magnetic field in the harsh radiation environment of the Large Hadron Collider. The drift motion of the charge carriers will be therefore affected by the Lorentz force due to the high magnetic field. Furthermore, radiation damage will change in time the properties of this drift. In this note a method to measure the Lorentz angle from reconstructed tracks is presented and results obtained on Magnet Test and Cosmic Challenge data are compared to the values expected from a model, developed by the authors, which takes into account all the relevant parameters during the tracker lifetime (e.g. temperature and depletion voltage of the detectors)

Key Performance Indicators for Sustainable Urban Development: Case Study Approach

Abstract Built environment energy efficiency improvement at the urban scale plays a key role to reduce the detrimental environmental impacts. However, the design and implementation of sustainable development scenarios is a complex process involving a large number of decision criteria and actors. An on-going Interreg project, "CesbaMED", emphasizes to employ a common sustainability assessment framework at the urban scale, which is a set of eight regional assessment tools, named CESBA MED SNTool. This tool is an innovative decision-making process, which supports the development of energy efficiency plans for building stock in the context of their surrounding neighbourhoods. Moreover, this tool produces the MED Passport, which compares the sustainability performances of buildings and neighbourhoods. This study aims at presenting the on-going research activities with a specific focus on the selection of the set of relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) among the indicators of CesbaMED project for the case study of the city of Turin (Italy), based on stakeholders' preferences. A workshop was organized to select the criteria and to assign the stakeholders' preferences using the "Delphi" survey method. This method is used in order to investigate the stakeholders' perspectives on the impact of each indicator on the different future sustainable scenarios. The results show that the stakeholders decided to remove and modify some KPIs for the specific case study of Turin with respect to its particularities

Envisioning green solutions for reducing the ecological footprint of a university campus

This paper aims to report strategies towards a green campus project at Politecnico di Torino University, a 33,000-students Italian higher education institution (HEI), and estimate the avoided ecological footprint (EF) of different scenarios accounted for open spaces. Design/methodology/approach A consumption-based study has been developed to analyse the current EF of the main campus site. Data were collected from different departments and administrative units to identify the measure of the pressure exerted by the campus activities on the ecosystem. Then, possible scenarios were accounted for open spaces along five different design layers: energy, water, landscape, food and mobility. Acting on the spaces by means of biophilic design and user-driven design requires complex considerations on university’s anticipated future needs and a wide-ranging evaluation of the most appropriate pathways forward according to all university stakeholders, far beyond the mere accounting of avoided EF. Findings A reduction of the 21 per cent of the current EF can be achieved through the solutions envisaged in the green campus project along the open space layers. Moreover, universities have the opportunity to not only improve the sustainability of their facilities but also demonstrate how the built environment can be designed to benefit both the environment and the occupants. Research limitations/implications The acknowledgement of predicted behavioural change effects is a question left open to further researchers on methods and indicators for social impact accounting and reporting in truly sustainable university campuses. Originality/value This is the first research that estimates the EF of an Italian HEI. The research represents also an innovative approach integrating the EF reduction scenarios in the design process of the new masterplan of open spaces, trying to identify the connection between environmental impact reduction and improvement in users’ perception

Breast Cancer Preoperative Staging: Does Contrast-Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Mammography Modify Surgery?

Women with newly diagnosed breast cancer may have lesions undetected by conventional imaging. Recently contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance mammography (CE-MRM) showed higher sensitivity in breast lesions detection. The present analysis was aimed at evaluating the benefit of preoperative CE-MRM in the surgical planning. From 2005 to 2009, 525 consecutive women (25–75 years) with breast cancer, newly diagnosed by mammography, ultrasound, and needle-biopsy, underwent CE-MRM. The median invasive tumour size was 19 mm. In 144 patients, CE-MRM identified additional lesions. After secondlook, 119 patients underwent additional biopsy. CE-MRM altered surgery in 118 patients: 57 received double lumpectomy or wider excision (41 beneficial), 41 required mastectomy (40 beneficial), and 20 underwent contra lateral surgery (18 beneficial). The overall false-positive rate was 27.1% (39/144). CE-MRM contributed significantly to the management of breast cancer, suggesting more extensive disease in 144/525 (27.4%) patients and changing the surgical plan in 118/525 (22.5%) patients (99/525, 18.8% beneficial)

The effect of Process Parameters on Alignment of Tubular Electrospun Nanofibers for Tisue Regeneration Purposes

Electrospinning is known to be an effective and straightforward technique to fabricate polymer non woven matrices made of nano and microfibers. Micro patterned morphology of electrospun matrices results to be outmost advantageous in the biomedical field, since it is able to mimic extracellular matrix (ECM), and favors cell adhesion and proliferation. Controlling electrospun fibers alignment is crucial for the regenerative purposes of certain tissues, such as neuronal and vascular. In this study we investigated the impact of electrospinning process parameters on fiber alignment in tubular nanofibrous matrices made of Poly (L-lactide-co-ε-caprolactone) (PLA-PCL); a Design of Experiments (DoE) approach is here proposed in order to statistically set up the process parameters. The DoE was studied keeping constants the previously set material and environmental parameters; voltage, flow rate and mandrel rotating speed were the process parameters here investigated as variables. Orientation analysis was based on ImageJ and plugin Orientation J analysis of SEM images. The results show that voltage combined with flow rate has significant impact on electrospun fiber orientation, and the greatest orientation is achieved when all the three input parameters (voltage, flow rate and mandrel rotation speed) are at their maximum value

Tracker Operation and Performance at the Magnet Test and Cosmic Challenge

During summer 2006 a fraction of the CMS silicon strip tracker was operated in a comprehensive slice test called the Magnet Test and Cosmic Challenge (MTCC). At the MTCC, cosmic rays detected in the muon chambers were used to trigger the readout of all CMS sub-detectors in the general data acquisition system and in the presence of the 4 T magnetic field produced by the CMS superconducting solenoid. This document describes the operation of the Tracker hardware and software prior, during and after data taking. The performance of the detector as resulting from the MTCC data analysis is also presented

Exploring assessment frameworks and interlinkages analysis for implementing circular economy strategies in European urban contexts

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen

Performances of the CMS Tracker

With a total area of almost 200 square meters, about 15000 silicon modules, and nearly 10 million readout channels, the CMS Silicon Strip Tracker is by far the largest silicon strip detector ever built. Inside the Strip Tracker, a Pixel Detector made of three barrel layers closed by two forward/backward disks on each side of the interaction region, provides a crucial contribution to pattern recognition, as well as primary and secondary vertices reconstruction. Altogether the Tracker reconstructs the trajectories of charged particles, measures their momentum, and plays a major role in lepton identification and heavy quark tagging. The strip detector has been integrated and commissioned in a dedicated assembly hall on the surface, then inserted in CMS, and re-commissioned using cosmic triggers from the CMS muon system. Excellent results have been achieved in terms of detector performance and preliminary alignment results. The pixel barrel and forward detectors have been built and commissioned separately, and then integrated in CMS. Re-commissioning with the rest of the detector has been done with cosmic triggers