Circular Economy Business Models: The Complementarities with Sharing Economy and Eco-Innovations Investments

The transition from the linear economy to the circular economy exhibits some criticalities that can be solved through the identification of factors pushing and pulling the transition itself. By adopting a public good perspective in analysing the main features of the circular business models, this study underlines how the sharing economy business models are well integrated and complementary to some features of the circular economy, representing a strong pulling factor. Other loops of the circular economy need an explicit push factor, individuated in a strong impulse to eco-efficiency, to be reached through consistent incentives to invest in R&D for eco-innovations. Seven case studies are investigated in their aims, feasibility and implementation to support the interpretative framework.

Alternatives in Education—Rat and Mouse Simulators Evaluated from Course Trainers’ and Supervisors’ Perspective

Simulators allow the inexperienced to practice their skills prior to exercise on live animals. Therefore, they bear great potential in overcoming the dilemma between the present demand for high-quality practical training involving live animals whilst implementing the 3R principle according to the Directive 2010/63/EU. Currently, one mouse and six rat simulators are commercially available. As data on their impact are lacking, this project aimed at providing an overview of the awareness, implementation, and methodical and practical satisfaction provided by 35 course trainers and supervisors of laboratory animal training courses for mice and rats regarding the simulators available. Although simulators facilitate training of relevant techniques and relatively high awareness of them seemed to be present, their implementation is currently very low, possibly due to lack of meeting the respondents’ demands. Thus, this study revealed the overall approval of simulator training and general demand for user-optimized, realistic, and financially affordable simulators and, hence, indicates a strong impulse for new developments strengthening the 3Rs as a benefit to all animals used in research.

Rappresentazioni planimetriche, vedutistiche e tridimensionali per la fortificazione di due isole del Mediterraneo occidentale: Elba e Palmaria (secolo XIX)

Planimetric maps, views and three-dimensional representations for the fortification of two western Mediterranean islands: Elba and Palmaria (nineteenth century)The French expansion and domination in Italy between the Revolutionary Age and the Empire based on a widespread activity of territorial knowledge, which rested in the Corps of Engineers-Geographers and in the Military Genius the main actors. The paper summarizes the results of long research on this activity, carried out in the islands of Elba (Tuscany) and Palmaria (Liguria): two strategic islands in the western Mediterranean. The need to equip the territories dominated by the French with increasingly functional defenses, gave a strong impulse to the renewal of surveying and cartography, with the use of geodetic projections, views and three-dimensional models. Elba example is significant for the complete triangulation of the island connected to the Corsica one (with part of Sardinia and the smaller islands of the Tuscan archipelago). Geographer engineers such as Tranchot, Simonel, Moynet, Puissant worked on these activities and produced some maps and a small model of part of Elba. In the Palmaria example the three-dimensional reproduction (plan-relief) was contextual to the work of Genius engineers who produced a vast and organic corpus of maps of various scales, views, sketches and watercolors, suitable to represent the most complete visualization of the landscapes where to insert defensive buildings. The collaboration between French and Italian engineers took advantage of this first experience in designing some batteries. However, it was the post-Napoleonic decades that made Palmaria island a powerful “fortress island” to defend the entrance to the Gulf of La Spezia, where the military arsenal (commissioned by Cavour and built by Domenico Chiodo) arose.

Fault Diagnosis of Rotating Machinery Based on Multi-Sensor Signals and Median Filter Second-Order Blind Identification (MF-SOBI)

Feature extraction plays a crucial role in the diagnosis of rotating machinery faults. However, the vibration signals measured are inherently complex and non-stationary and the features of faulty signals are often submerged by noise. The principle and method of blind source separation are introduced, and we point out that the blind source separation algorithm is invalid in an environment of strong impulse noise. In order to solve the problem of fast separation of multi-sensor signals in an environment of strong impulse noise, first, the window width of the median filter (MF) is calculated according to the sampling frequency, so that the impulse noise and part of the white noise can be effectively filtered out. Next, the filtered signals are separated by the improved second-order blind identification (SOBI) algorithm. At the same time, the method is tested on the strong pulse background noise and rub impact dataset. The results show that this method has higher efficiency and accuracy than the direct separation method. It is possible to apply the method to real-time signal analysis due to its speed and efficiency.

Artistic Vanguards in Brazil, 1917–1967

The 1922 Modern Art Week is considered the initial landmark of artistic vanguards in Brazil. However, before it was held, Anita Malfatti’s 1917 exhibition, which presented expressionism to Brazilians, and the articles of Oswald de Andrade announcing in the local press the poetry of Mário de Andrade and futurism caused significant polemics and opened the way for renovation. In the middle of the 1920s, the contacts of various artists with European vanguards—especially cubism—and the reinterpretation of the national element and popular culture with the incorporation of this repertoire, with an emphasis on cosmopolitism, established and solidified modernism in various artistic areas. In the 1930s, social commitment, the revalorization of the regional, and adhesion to leftwing ideologies changed the focus of artistic production, leading to the reorganization of groups and the emergence of new protagonists: Patrícia Galvão and Flávio de Carvalho, among others. The return to classic forms and new experimentalisms marked the 1940s and 1950s, characterized by the reappearance of the sonnet, with Vinicius de Moraes, Cecília Meirelles, Murilo Mendes, and Jorge de Lima; renovations in language that reached a peak with Guimarães Rosa; photomontages by Jorge de Lima. Concrete art and poetry, notably the National Concrete Art Exhibition (1956) and neo-concretism, returning to the strategy of the manifestos and journals of the 1920s, revived the same polemical reception and bitter rivalries. In the following decade, the revisiting of Oswald de Andrade’s work, especially the idea of anthropophagy, gave a strong impulse to tropicalism, Cinema Novo, and a greater renewal in Brazilian theater, with the staging of O Rei da Vela by the Teatro Oficina group (1967), the culminating point of a fifty-year cycle of artistic vanguards in Brazil.

TRANSFORMASI KONFRONTATIF KOMPOSISI GAMELAN BARU: Revitalisasi Penciptaan Inovatif dan Peran Vital Perguruan Tinggi Seni

AbstrakInovasi sebebas-bebasnya tanpa batas adalah persoalan konfrontatif yang sesungguhnya tengah mengancam eksistensi musik tradisi dalam korelasinya dengan masalah jati diri beserta dinamika konservasinya di era tuntutan yang serba mutakhir. Sejatinya orientasi komposisi gamelan baru itu berbasis pada akar tradisinya yang utuh, sebagai wujud inovasi kreatif, puncak dari akumulasi keilmuan karya-karya tradisi sebelumnya, karena desakan dominasi tuntutan kepentingan materialistik, atau memang sebatas ajang pelarian atas sikap frustasinya sebab ketidakmampuan mengusai basis tradisi yang mumpuni – berbagai model kontradiksi semacam ini tentu menjadi persoalan urgensif untuk ditelaah serius. Saat ini kita dapat melihat substansi masalahnya pada wujud karya gamelan non tradisi. Dorongan kuat semangat “modernisasi” berbalut lebat ideologi materialisme memang telah mengkonstruksi kesadaran kuat bahwa gamelan seolah dapat disandingkan dengan instrumen musik apapun, dicampur-sarikan dengan sistem musik apapun, dikolaborasikan dengan hitungan frekuensi apapun, fleksibel ditransformasikan ke dalam bentuk komposisi apapun, dan bahkan bebas direkayasa liar tanpa perlu pertimbangan kognitif yang didasarkan pada pengetahuan yang holistik. Perguruan Tinggi Seni tentu memiliki peran vital dan inheren dengan masalah konfrontasi ini sehingga perlu merumuskan rekonsiliasi ideologis melalui dialektika kritis yang berkesinambungan. Transformasi inovatif gamelan dalam entitas apapun idealnya dapat berjalan konsisten di atas konservasi kemapanan yang dinamis. Tiap hembusan nafas kebaruan yang diciptakan adalah kreasi inovatif yang berbasis pada sintesis dengan progresi intelektualitas yang dinamis, atraktif, impresif, dan konstruktif sehingga memperkaya eksistensi seni tradisi di era mutakhir.Kata Kunci: Konfrontasi, Komposisi, Transformasi, GamelanAbstract Unlimited freedom in innovation is a confronting problem that is seriously threatening the existence of traditional music in with regards to the issue of identity and the dynamics of its conservation in an era that demands one keeps up to date. By right, the orientation of new gamelan compositions should be based on its intact traditional roots: as a form of creative innovation they are the culmination of knowledge found in previous traditional works. However, because of the dominating pressures of materialistic concerns, or indeed as an excuse for the inability to achieve mastery in traditional competencies, this type of contraindicative model is certainly an urgent matter for serious study. At present we can see the substance of the problem in the form of non-traditional gamelan works. The strong impulse of the spirit of “modernization” clad in the ideology of materialism has indeed constructed a strong awareness that the gamelan seems to be juxtaposed with any musical instrument, mixed with any music system, collaborated with any frequency count, flexibly transformed into any composition, and even wildly engineered without the need for cognitive consideration based on holistic knowledge. Higher Education in the Arts certainly has a vital and inherent role with this confronting problem, making it necessary to formulate ideological reconciliation through continuous critical dialectics. The innovative transformation of gamelan in any entity can ideally run consistently above dynamic establishment conservation. Every breath of novelty created is an innovative creation based on synthesis with dynamic, attractive, impressive and constructive intellectual progressions that enrich the existence of traditional art in the current era.Keywords: Confrontation, Composition, Transformation, Gamelan.

Religion and Emotions

This chapter is an overview of emotions history in the context of religious studies. It remarks on several kinds of inquiry—including those having to do with popular and official religion; embodiment and objectification; words, knowledge, and feelings; religious meaning; and prospects. As intellectual history of a certain sort, the nearness of emotion to religion in the historical study of ethical thought models the ongoing influence of Christian language and the assumptions of emotional universality that are inscribed on that language. The ongoing resistance to claims for the constructedness of emotion in historical religious settings is less doctrinaire than it was in the mid to late twentieth century, but there is a strong impulse to take religious statements of emotion at face value. The result is some ongoing cultural tension between the scholarly querying of emotion and Christian-inflected thinking about religion.

Temporality and movement in the composition of 'Toba' by Branka Popović

The composition Toba for Symphony Orchestra by Branka Popović, according to the composer's own words, is a piece that "invokes the movement and energy of volcanic activity (...)". Over time it develops as a directed movement, with the reproduction and reduction of texture content. Such a shift of different intensities realised on a kinetic and colorful plane, leads to the constant flickering of the sections and to the creation of a kind of rhythmic texture that retains the melodic and harmonic musical properties. The movement through music time is always accomplished in the same way: a strong impulse of prolongation leads to an intensified texture movement and accumulation of energy that is released in one instant. Such a concept is disrupted at the moment of the intrusion of a contrasting section in which a circular motion occurs that is caused by the appearance of repetition. Not only will the specifics concerning the perception of music time be considered in this composition, when discussing the principle of the construction of temporality and movement. The time flow of the stylistic references of the work neutralised by the appearance of the texture itself indicates the authenticity and the specific stylistic determination of this composition.

The Rhetoric of Failure

This chapter considers the frequent revaluation of success and failure in Seth’s narratives, placing him in a Chekhovian tradition of storytelling that is characterized by “the irony of unfulfillment.” An examination of the “rhetoric of failure” – which David M. Ball identifies in the work of cartoonist Chris Ware – is framed by a critical approach that borrows from Francesco Orlando’s study of obsolete objects in literature. For Orlando, the failure of the obsolete body is the failure to function, a failure which is directly related to the passage of time. Many of Seth’s characters value objects precisely because of their age. The twilight, in-between tone of Seth’s work is accompanied by a strong impulse to save. Seth’s work repeatedly depicts an uncertain transmutation: failure develops in the direction of ambivalence, until it ultimately coincides with its opposite. Though such inversions are not stable, failures and obsolete objects are briefly redeemed.