Development of a software tool for the evaluation of the shading factor under complex boundary conditions

12th Conference of International Building Performance Simulation Associatio

Geo-material provenance and technological properties investigation in Copper Age menhirs production at Allai (central-western Sardinia, Italy)

During the 2nd millennium BC anthropomorphic menhirs belonging to a 3rd millennium BC sanctuary were reused as building material in the Arasseda Nuraghe (Sardinia, Italy). To analyse the Arasseda menhirs and the local Monte Ironi geological samples (presenting similar visual features), chemical (pXRF, ICP-OES, ICP-MS), mineralogical-chemical (PXRD) and physical (Mohs hardness) measurements were performed. Through the experimental data, the menhirs source provenance and the technological properties (workability, durability) of the raw material chosen for sculptural purposes during Copper Age were investigated. To the authors’ knowledge this is the first archaeometric study on the Arasseda menhirs (the third on Sardinian menhirs) and one between the few recently developed on European megaliths

Island geopoetics and the postcolonial discourse of Sardinia in German-language literature

From the second half of the 17th century onwards, Sardinia has fascinated many German-speaking travelers and writers, whose works have given rise to a particular literary tradition, based on a prismatic image of this island. Through a large and often unexplored corpus, consisting of travelogues, diaries, novels, short stories, and poetry, a specific literary discourse of the island has been constructed over the centuries, and Sardinia has acquired the distorted image of either a waste land, an exile, and prison, or an uncorrupted paradise, where human beings can still retrieve a deep relationship with the Earth. This paper aims to give an account of this discourse to highlight, from a diachronic perspective, the construction of the image of an island more or less influenced by a Eurocentric perspective. Using a geopoetic approach, several texts are analysed in a hermeneutic process which outlines not only the island’s colonial past, but also the construction of a recent neocolonial project made up of uncontrolled urbanization, industrialization, mass tourism, and (nuclear) pollution

Landschaft und schicksal sind einander nahe: sul rapporto tra paesaggio e destino in Sardinien di Max Niehaus

L’opera Sardinien, ein Reisebuch, pubblicata nel 1938 presso la casa editrice Societäts Verlag1, è una delle opere più significative in cui un autore di lingua tedesca racconta le straordinarie impressioni del suo viaggio in Sardegna. Sardinien fa parte di un corpus di grande rilievo del quale, tuttavia, solo pochi scritti sono noti al grande pubblico, soprattutto a causa dell’assenza di una loro traduzione in lingua italiana2

"… und zu dem Menschen eben redet die Geschichte”. A proposito del "Wallenstein" di Friedrich Schiller e di Alfred Döblin

By means of an analysis of the characteristics of the two works, the different historic interest of the two authors becomes manifest. Döblin's novel is remarkable in its strict adherence to the available sources on the Thirty Years' War and on the character of Wallenstein, as well as for its utterly negative judgement of the protagonist and of his conduct. What predominates in the trilogy by Schiller, on the other hand, is the dramatist’s interest for the general issues on the theory of history, and particularly on the relationship between freedom and necessity

Vaterhass e Mutterhass. Il tema del conflitto generazionale nell’opera di Josef Haslinger e Robert Menasse

La vasta e complessa opera degli scrittori austriaci Josef Haslinger e Robert Menasse svolge, attraverso la rielaborazione di diversi temi, una significativa critica della realtà contemporanea e tende a rivalutare la funzione dell’intellettuale nel presente. Attraverso una moltitudine di anti-eroi, spesso pensatori e scrittori inconcludenti che si scontrano con una realtà percepita come ostile, Haslinger e Menasse danno nuovo slancio al dibattito culturale su una possibile ‘missione’ dell’intellettuale nella contemporaneità. Tali presupposti si snodano alla luce di complesse tematiche che innervano la loro scrittura, non da ultimo la rappresentazione del conflitto tra genitori e figli che allude sempre a una mancata rielaborazione del passato nazionalsocialista. Nella presente riflessione si ripercorrono i principali lavori dei due scrittori alla luce di un’analisi del rapporto genitori-figli per contribuire, attraverso il supporto di alcune note teorie psicanalitiche, alla ridefinizione del ruolo dell’intellettuale nella contemporaneità.The vast and complex work of the Austrian writers Josef Haslinger and Robert Menasse, by developing several themes, sharply criticises the contemporary society and tends to reassert the role of intellectuals in the present. Through a large number of anti-heroes, mainly thinkers and writers unable to fit in a hostile social context, Haslinger and Menasse give a fresh impetus to the debate about the possible ‘mission’ of contemporary intellectuals. These assumptions develop within complex themes which characterize their writings, such as the conflict between children and parents, also caught in their relationship to the Nazi past. This work aims to analyze Haslinger’s and Menasse’s main works through the fil rouge of generational conflicts and, by means of well-known psychoanalytic theories, to contribute to the debate on the role of contemporary intellectuals

Low-E paints enhanced building components: Performance, limits and research perspectives

In the latest years, different solutions have been developed in order to increase the energy performance of opaque building envelopes as far as the heat losses are concerned. Most of them are mainly focused on the bulk properties of materials and are aimed at reaching very low values of thermal conductivity, i.e., super insulating materials. Contemporarily research has been carried out aimed at exploiting the low emissivity in order to reduce the radiative heat transfer between surfaces separated by cavities and, if applied as an internal coating, in order to increase the indoor thermal comfort. In this paper, several solutions that have been experimentally investigated in the latest two years by the authors are presented

Serological evidence of Midichloria mitochondrii circulation in humans parasitized by I. ricinus in Germany and development of a marker for tick bite

The tick Ixodes ricinus transmits several microorganisms of medical and veterinary importance. Midichloria mitochondrii (order Rickettsiales; family Midichloriaceae) is an intracellular symbiont present in the ovaries and salivary glands of 100% of adult I. ricinus females (Sassera et al., 2008) and is transmitted to the vertebrate host during the tick bite (Mariconti et al., 2012; Bazzocchi et al., 2013) despite its infective role is not demonstrated.In this experimental study, a total of 324 human from different areas of Germany were analysed in order to investigate the seropositivity against the flagellar FliD protein of M. mitochondrii using an ELISA approach. Fifty sera were collected from patients living in non-endemic areas and used as negative controls while 274 sera were obtained from subjects exposed to tick bite and suffering from several symptoms referred to tick borne diseases and collected at the BCA clinic in Augsburg.Since the positivity for the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi transmitted by I. ricinus is indicative for the tick bite, we considered also this additional information.The obtained results showed that 82 out of 274 sera were positive to M. mitochondrii and 42 out of 175 sera of subjects negative to B. burgdorferi were positive to M. mitochondrii to confirm the good property of FliD protein as a tick bite marker. However, the high number (133 out of 274) of subjects parasitized by I. ricinus but negative to both bacteria prompted us to detect new more suitable I. ricinus/M. mitochondrii antigenic proteins to use as markers for tick bite. For this purpose, three I. ricinus proteins and one surface protein of M. mitochondrii were selected and 12 synthetic peptides were designed in order to set-up a new ELISA test for investigating the exposure of humans and animals to this tick species

Switching from static to adaptable and dynamic building envelopes: A paradigm shift for the energy efficiency in buildings

The key role of the building envelope in attaining building energy efficiency and satisfactory indoor comfort has long been established. Nevertheless, until recent times, all efforts and attention have mainly been focused on increasing and optimizing the thermal insulation of the envelope components. This strategy was a winning approach for a long time, but its limitations became obvious when users and designers started to consider the overall energy demand of a building and started to aim for Zero Energy Building (ZEB) or nearly ZEB goals. New and more revolutionary concepts and technologies needed to be developed to satisfy such challenging requirements. The potential benefits of this technological development are relevant since the building envelope plays a key role in controlling the energy and mass flows from outdoors to indoors (and vice versa) and, moreover, the facades offer a significant opportunity for solar energy exploitation. Several researches have demonstrated that the limitation of the existing facades could be overcome only by switching from ‘static’ to ‘responsive’ and ‘dynamic’ systems, such as Multifunctional Facade Modules (MFMs) and Responsive Building Elements (RBE). These components are able to continuously and pro-actively react to outdoor and indoor environment conditions and facilitate and enhance the exploitation of renewable and low exergy sources. In order to reduce the energy demand, to maximize the indoor comfort conditions and to produce energy at the site, these almost ‘self-sufficient’, or even ‘positive energy’ building skins frequently incorporate different technologies and are functionally connected to other building services and installations. An overview of the technological evolution of the building envelope that has taken place, ranging from traditional components to the innovative skins, will be given in this paper, while focusing on the different approaches that have characterized this development. Examples of innovative solutions for responsive and dynamic components and the future trends of development will also be described

Editorial to the Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Sustainability in Energy and Buildings (SEB 2016)

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