Renewable energy sources in Latin America and the Caribbean: situation and policy proposals

Includes bibliography

Assessment of surface water in two Amazonian rivers impacted by industrial wastewater, Barcarena City, Pará State (Brazil)

No ano de 2007, águas superficiais foram coletadas a partir de 21 pontos de amostragem na cidade de Barcarena, Região Norte, Brasil: um ponto de amostragem localizado em um pequeno córrego que recebe descarga de resíduos a partir da indústria de beneficiamento do caulim e deságua no Rio Curuperê, três pontos de amostragens localizados próximos de fontes que emergem na margem esquerda e deságuam no Rio Curuperê, nove pontos de amostragem no Rio Curuperê, que deságua no Rio Dendê, e oito no Rio Dendê, afluente da margem esquerda do Rio Pará. Para todas as amostras de água foram quantificadas 14 variáveis físico-químicas e níveis de 12 metais. Os resultados nos pontos próximos das fontes do Rio Curuperê apresentaram perfil físico-químico e níveis de metais típicos para águas superficiais e esses valores foram utilizados como referência para comparar e identificar possíveis alterações nas características químicas para os demais pontos de amostragem. Quando os resultados das fontes do rio Curuperê foram comparados com os resultados do ponto próximo a descarga de resíduos industriais foram observadas fortes alterações nos valores de 6 variáveis físico-químicas (pH, condutividade elétrica (EC), total de sólidos suspensos (TDS), nitrogênio amoniacal (N-NH4), sulfato (SO4) e salinidade) e aumento em magnitude dos níveis de quatro metais (Al, Fe, Mn e Zn), caracterizando que esses resíduos eram descarregados no ambiente sem tratamentos adequados. Os resultados nos demais pontos de amostragem demonstraram que estas condições anômalas também foram encontradas ao longo dos Rios Curuperê e Dendê, principalmente durante a maré baixa. A partir desta caracterização química das águas foram identificadas condições prejudiciais aos ecossistemas aquáticos e potencial risco à saúde da população local que usa os rios para consumo, recreação e transporte.

A Gestão ambiental no distrito industrial I de Maracanaú - Região metropolitana de Fortaleza-CE

Pós-graduação em Geografia - IGCE

Relações raciais: a pesquisa na pós-graduação em educação no Brasil (2005 – 2010)

A educação é o processo de inserção de homens e mulheres no mundo cultural. E a educação, dentro das sociedades mais complexas como as capitalistas industriais, é uma atividade planejada, que implica a elaboração de objetivos e a indicação de meios para atingi-los. A compreensão das tramas de construção de práticas formalizadas é ligada a agentes que determinam os objetivos da educação e suas intenções educativas sobre Relações Raciais no Brasil. Dediquei-me às atividades de levantamento acadêmico sobre a produção de teses de doutoramento, concluídas entre os anos 2005-2010, e a respeito de pesquisas e estudos sobre Educação e Relações Raciais nos Programas de Pós-Graduação em Educação. Investiguei sobre a circulação da temática relações raciais em espaços de elaboração de políticas educacionais, especificamente programas do Governo Federal que atendam à demanda de inclusão da temática no sistema de ensino no Brasil. Pois, a partir de 2003, a temática passa por uma fase de institucionalização, principalmente pelo conjunto jurídico que estabelece novo marco legal à educação. O objeto pesquisado incluiu a configuração de práticas formalizadas que desenvolvem quadros de agentes especializados sobre relações raciais. Analisar a relação intencional entre as práticas formalizadas sobre relações raciais que prescrevem a formulação de objetivos educacionais nos diferentes níveis e instâncias sociais. Identificar os objetivos do sistema de ensino descritos nos programas do Governo Federal destinados à promoção da educação para igualdade racial. Relacionar as práticas formalizadas no campo da pesquisa em educação às intenções descritas nos programas do Governo Federal. Explicar quais os interesses que movem essas práticas formalizadas a partir das demandas educacionais da temática relações raciais. A escrita da tese pauta-se na defesa de análise em que a obrigatoriedade da temática relações raciais é movida por duas forças antagônicas, uma direcionada à constituição de direito à cidadania movida por intenções de construir uma sociedade para a igualdade racial, de oportunidades de acesso a bens materiais e simbólicos e livre de práticas discriminatórias; outra relacionada aos interesses existentes dentro de um jogo de poder a ponto de converter a educação no centro de tão acerba disputa que desfavorece dissimuladamente a equidade racial no Brasil.

Simulação da dispersão de poluentes atmosféricos e avaliação da qualidade do ar na área de abrangência do Distrito Industrial de Barcarena-PA

A poluição atmosférica é considerada atualmente um dos maiores problemas da sociedade contemporânea, por ameaçar sua qualidade de vida, pois gera impactos negativos no meio ambiente natural e antrópico. Dentre as formas de controle da poluição atmosférica de fontes fixas podem-se destacar a diluição das emissões na atmosfera devido aos efeitos de dispersão, a adoção de equipamentos de controle antes do lançamento dos gases ou a realocação de fonte, visto ser uma possibilidade a ser sugerida durante o procedimento de licenciamento ambiental de empreendimentos com potencial poluidor do ar. Atualmente modelos computacionais de dispersão de poluentes na atmosfera vêm sendo amplamente utilizados na simulação da concentração de poluentes, visando auxiliar órgãos ambientais no prognóstico da qualidade do ar ou suprir deficiências de monitoramento de emissões atmosféricas. O presente trabalho estudou a qualidade do ar e avaliou a dispersão de poluentes atmosféricos sobre Vila do Conde e áreas de influência do Distrito Industrial de Barcarena, no município de Barcarena, estado do Pará, com auxílio do modelo AERMOD View, visto a possibilidade de se estabelecer uma relação entre os níveis de emissões dos poluentes na fonte, com as concentrações dos mesmos no ar, bem como identificar pontos críticos de poluição. O Índice de Qualidade do Ar – IQA e as fragilidades das populações humanas das áreas afetadas pelos poluentes atmosféricos, também foram mensurados na pesquisa. A metodologia empregada permitiu mensurar a concentração média de poluentes atmosféricos durante um determinado tempo de modelagem, informações quanto ao alcance da pluma de poluentes foram alcançados também. São fornecidos ainda informações quanto à relação entre o valor de pico e o valor médio da concentração nas áreas receptoras, provocadas por empreendimentos com características operacionais similares ao modelado. Os resultados demostram que a influência de parâmetros meteorológicos, na dispersão de poluentes são indispensáveis e determinantes na previsão do impacto na qualidade do ar e no planejamento do uso e ocupação do solo de áreas que abrigam atividades poluidoras da atmosfera.

Post-Embryonic Development in Zaprionus indianus (Diptera: Drosophilidae)

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Empresariado industrial e desenvolvimento socioeconômico: estudo do discurso do empresariado calçadista paulista frente ao mundo globalizado (1995-2010)

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Avaliação ambiental em empresas do distrito industrial Antônio Crepaldi, Presidente Prudente/SP

The sustainable development is the center of many discussions about the environment, economy and society. Environmental issues bring out problems with the fauna and flora, water resources, land use, population growth, residues, basic sanitation, and others. In this sense, the aim of the present work was to develop an environmental diagnostics and propose measures to mitigate the most significant environmental impacts generated by four enterprises in Antonio Crepaldi Industrial District, located at the city of Presidente Prudente/SP. In the study, it was used the methodology proposed by Moreira (2006), and it was done the following activities: monitoring and analyses of the production process, identification of potential environmental aspects and impacts; assessment of the impacts according to its nature, relevance and significance; proposition of measures to mitigate the critical impacts. As a final result, it was obtained an environmental diagnosis about the situation of each of the four companies studied, and it was possible to know the level of criticality of the impacts in each one, and proposing mitigation measures to control or minimizing them, bringing many benefits to the organization

Diagnóstico ambiental da área de influência do distrito industrial de Rio Claro - SP

Economic activities, whether large or small, can cause a range of environmental changes, not always reversible, harming society and its quality of life. Many potentially polluting activities have already been installed in various Brazilian cities, just as at the industrial district of Rio Claro / SP, which allow the synthesis of the many environmental impacts. In this sense, this report aims to make an environmental assessment in the influence area of the industrial district of Rio Claro / SP, located in the urban area of the city. As a result, the existence of prior related studies was observed, especially the diagnosis and study of the many implications that arises from activities impacting, and further, there was a demarcation of the influence area of the district and its derivatives impacts in the influence area, the steps of prediction and mitigation measures and if these activities meet the minimum technical requirements in planning and environmental applicable legislation.

Análise do conforto de aplicadores para terapia estética sob a ótica da ergonomia

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Comparison between the six-minute walk test and the six-minute step test in post stroke patients

Abstract Background The Stroke remains one of the major chronic diseases worldwide, and is considered a major cause of disability, which results not only in persistent neurological deficits, but also in the high physical deconditioning, nevertheless there are not many forms of assessing functional capacity in this population. We aimed to investigate the feasibility of the Six Minute Walk Teste and the Six-Minute Step Test (6MST) in post-stroke patients and compare the behavior of physiological variables during the 6MST and the Six-Minute Walk Test (6MWT), by correlating the functional performance obtained in both tests. Method The 6MWT was carried out according to the American Thoracic Society (ATS) and the 6MST was performed in six minutes in order to compare it to the 6MWT in a 20 cm step. Was included post-stroke individuals able to walk without aid. All of them did the 6MWT and the 6MST. Results 12 patients participated in the study. There was no statistical difference in the parameters analyzed when tests were compared. There was poor correlation between the functional performance in both tests. Conclusion The 6MWT and the 6MST is feasible for post-stroke patients and physiological responses are equal during the performance of both tests. However, there was no correlation with respect to functional performance, which was assessed by the distance walked in the 6MWT and by the number of steps climbed in the 6MST.

The Emergence of the Post-Socialist Welfare State - The Case of the Baltic States : Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

This dissertation takes a step towards providing a better understanding of post-socialist welfare state development from a theoretical as well as an empirical perspective. The overall analytical goal of this thesis has been to critically assess the development of social policies in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania using them as illustrative examples of post-socialist welfare state development in the light of the theories, approaches and typologies that have been developed to study affluent capitalist democracies. The four studies included in this dissertation aspire to a common aim in a number of specific ways. The first study tries to place the ideal-typical welfare state models of the Baltic States within the well-known welfare state typologies. At the same time, it provides a rich overview of the main social security institutions in the three countries by comparing them with each other and with the previous structures of the Soviet period. It examines the social insurance institutions of the Baltic States (old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, short-term benefits, sickness, maternity and parental insurance and family benefits) with respect to conditions of eligibility, replacement rates, financing and contributions. The findings of this study indicate that the Latvian social security system can generally be labelled as a mix of the basic security and corporatist models. The Estonian social security system can generally also be characterised as a mix of the basic security and corporatist models, even if there are some weak elements of the targeted model in it. It appears that the institutional changes developing in the social security system of Lithuania have led to a combination of the basic security and targeted models of the welfare state. Nevertheless, as the example of the three Baltic States shows, there is diversity in how these countries solve problems within the field of social policy. In studying the social security schemes in detail, some common features were found that could be attributed to all three countries. Therefore, the critical analysis of the main social security institutions of the Baltic States in this study gave strong supporting evidence in favour of identifying the post-socialist regime type that is already gaining acceptance within comparative welfare state research. Study Two compares the system of social maintenance and insurance in the Soviet Union, which was in force in the three Baltic countries before their independence, with the currently existing social security systems. The aim of the essay is to highlight the forces that have influenced the transformation of the social policy from its former highly universal, albeit authoritarian, form, to the less universal, social insurance-based systems of present-day Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This study demonstrates that the welfare–economy nexus is not the only important factor in the development of social programs. The results of this analysis revealed that people's attitudes towards distributive justice and the developmental level of civil society also play an important part in shaping social policies. The shift to individualism in people’s mentality and the decline of the labour movement, or, to be more precise, the decline in trade union membership and influence, does nothing to promote the development of social rights in the Baltic countries and hinders the expansion of social policies. The legacy of the past has been another important factor in shaping social programs. It can be concluded that social policy should be studied as if embedded not only in the welfare-economy nexus, but also in the societal, historical and cultural nexus of a given society. Study Three discusses the views of the state elites on family policy within a wider theoretical setting covering family policy and social policy in a broader sense and attempts to expand this analytical framework to include other post-socialist countries. The aim of this essay is to explore the various views of the state elites in the Baltics concerning family policy and, in particular, family benefits as one of the possible explanations for the observed policy differences. The qualitative analyses indicate that the Baltic States differ significantly with regard to the motives behind their family policies. Lithuanian decision-makers seek to reduce poverty among families with children and enhance the parents’ responsibility for bringing up their children. Latvian policy-makers act so as to increase the birth rate and create equal opportunities for children from all families. Estonian policy-makers seek to create equal opportunities for all children and the desire to enhance gender equality is more visible in the case of Estonia in comparison with the other two countries. It is strongly arguable that there is a link between the underlying motives and the kinds of family benefits in a given country. This study, thus, indicates how intimately the attitudes of the state bureaucrats, policy-makers, political elite and researchers shape social policy. It confirms that family policy is a product of the prevailing ideology within a country, while the potential influence of globalisation and Europeanisation is detectable too. The final essay takes into account the opinions of welfare users and examines the performances of the institutionalised family benefits by relying on the recipients’ opinions regarding these benefits. The opinions of the populations as a whole regarding government efforts to help families are compared with those of the welfare users. Various family benefits are evaluated according to the recipients' satisfaction with those benefits as well as the contemporaneous levels of subjective satisfaction with the welfare programs related to the absolute level of expenditure on each program. The findings of this paper indicate that, in Latvia, people experience a lower level of success regarding state-run family insurance institutions, as compared to those in Lithuania and Estonia. This is deemed to be because the cash benefits for families and children in Latvia are, on average, seen as marginally influencing the overall financial situation of the families concerned. In Lithuania and Estonia, the overwhelming majority think that the family benefit systems improve the financial situation of families. It appears that recipients evaluated universal family benefits as less positive than targeted benefits. Some universal benefits negatively influenced the level of general satisfaction with the family benefits system provided in the countries being researched. This study puts forward a discussion about whether universalism is always more legitimate than targeting. In transitional economies, in which resources are highly constrained, some forms of universal benefits could turn out to be very expensive in relative terms, without being seen as useful or legitimate forms of help to families. In sum, by closely examining the different aspects of social policy, this dissertation goes beyond the over-generalisation of Eastern European welfare state development and, instead, takes a more detailed look at what is really going on in these countries through the examples of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. In addition, another important contribution made by this study is that it revives ‘western’ theoretical knowledge through ‘eastern’ empirical evidence and provides the opportunity to expand the theoretical framework for post-socialist societies.

L'a(rche)tipico Brian O'Nolan. Comico e riso dalla tradizione al post-

This study aims at analysing Brian O'Nolans literary production in the light of a reconsideration of the role played by his two most famous pseudonyms ,Flann Brien and Myles na Gopaleen, behind which he was active both as a novelist and as a journalist. We tried to establish a new kind of relationship between them and their empirical author following recent cultural and scientific surveys in the field of Humour Studies, Psychology, and Sociology: taking as a starting point the appreciation of the comic attitude in nature and in cultural history, we progressed through a short history of laughter and derision, followed by an overview on humour theories. After having established such a frame, we considered an integration of scientific studies in the field of laughter and humour as a base for our study scheme, in order to come to a definition of the comic author as a recognised, powerful and authoritative social figure who acts as a critic of conventions. The history of laughter and comic we briefly summarized, based on the one related by the French scholar Georges Minois in his work (Minois 2004), has been taken into account in the view that humorous attitude is one of man’s characteristic traits always present and witnessed throughout the ages, though subject in most cases to repression by cultural and political conservative power. This sort of Super-Ego notwithstanding, or perhaps because of that, comic impulse proved irreducible exactly in its influence on the current cultural debates. Basing mainly on Robert R. Provine’s (Provine 2001), Fabio Ceccarelli’s (Ceccarelli 1988), Arthur Koestler’s (Koestler 1975) and Peter L. Berger’s (Berger 1995) scientific essays on the actual occurrence of laughter and smile in complex social situations, we underlined the many evidences for how the use of comic, humour and wit (in a Freudian sense) could be best comprehended if seen as a common mind process designed for the improvement of knowledge, in which we traced a strict relation with the play-element the Dutch historian Huizinga highlighted in his famous essay, Homo Ludens (Huizinga 1955). We considered comic and humour/wit as different sides of the same coin, and showed how the demonstrations scientists provided on this particular subject are not conclusive, given that the mental processes could not still be irrefutably shown to be separated as regards graduations in comic expression and reception: in fact, different outputs in expressions might lead back to one and the same production process, following the general ‘Economy Rule’ of evolution; man is the only animal who lies, meaning with this that one feeling is not necessarily biuniquely associated with one and the same outward display, so human expressions are not validation proofs for feelings. Considering societies, we found that in nature they are all organized in more or less the same way, that is, in élites who govern over a community who, in turn, recognizes them as legitimate delegates for that task; we inferred from this the epistemological possibility for the existence of an added ruling figure alongside those political and religious: this figure being the comic, who is the person in charge of expressing true feelings towards given subjects of contention. Any community owns one, and his very peculiar status is validated by the fact that his place is within the community, living in it and speaking to it, but at the same time is outside it in the sense that his action focuses mainly on shedding light on ideas and objects placed out-side the boundaries of social convention: taboos, fears, sacred objects and finally culture are the favourite targets of the comic person’s arrow. This is the reason for the word a(rche)typical as applied to the comic figure in society: atypical in a sense, because unconventional and disrespectful of traditions, critical and never at ease with unblinkered respect of canons; archetypical, because the “village fool”, buffoon, jester or anyone in any kind of society who plays such roles, is an archetype in the Jungian sense, i.e. a personification of an irreducible side of human nature that everybody instinctively knows: a beginner of a tradition, the perfect type, what is most conventional of all and therefore the exact opposite of an atypical. There is an intrinsic necessity, we think, of such figures in societies, just like politicians and priests, who should play an elitist role in order to guide and rule not for their own benefit but for the good of the community. We are not naïve and do know that actual owners of power always tend to keep it indefinitely: the ‘social comic’ as a role of power has nonetheless the distinctive feature of being the only job whose tension is not towards stability. It has got in itself the rewarding permission of contradiction, for the very reason we exposed before that the comic must cast an eye both inside and outside society and his vision may be perforce not consistent, then it is satisfactory for the popularity that gives amongst readers and audience. Finally, the difference between governors, priests and comic figures is the seriousness of the first two (fundamentally monologic) and the merry contradiction of the third (essentially dialogic). MPs, mayors, bishops and pastors should always console, comfort and soothe popular mood in respect of the public convention; the comic has the opposite task of provoking, urging and irritating, accomplishing at the same time a sort of control of the soothing powers of society, keepers of the righteousness. In this view, the comic person assumes a paramount importance in the counterbalancing of power administration, whether in form of acting in public places or in written pieces which could circulate for private reading. At this point comes into question our Irish writer Brian O'Nolan(1911-1966), real name that stood behind the more famous masks of Flann O'Brien, novelist, author of At Swim-Two-Birds (1939), The Hard Life (1961), The Dalkey Archive (1964) and, posthumously, The Third Policeman (1967); and of Myles na Gopaleen, journalist, keeper for more than 25 years of the Cruiskeen Lawn column on The Irish Times (1940-1966), and author of the famous book-parody in Irish An Béal Bocht (1941), later translated in English as The Poor Mouth (1973). Brian O'Nolan, professional senior civil servant of the Republic, has never seen recognized his authorship in literary studies, since all of them concentrated on his alter egos Flann, Myles and some others he used for minor contributions. So far as we are concerned, we think this is the first study which places the real name in the title, this way acknowledging him an unity of intents that no-one before did. And this choice in titling is not a mere mark of distinction for the sake of it, but also a wilful sign of how his opus should now be reconsidered. In effect, the aim of this study is exactly that of demonstrating how the empirical author Brian O'Nolan was the real Deus in machina, the master of puppets who skilfully directed all of his identities in planned directions, so as to completely fulfil the role of the comic figure we explained before. Flann O'Brien and Myles na Gopaleen were personae and not persons, but the impression one gets from the critical studies on them is the exact opposite. Literary consideration, that came only after O'Nolans death, began with Anne Clissmann’s work, Flann O'Brien: A Critical Introduction to His Writings (Clissmann 1975), while the most recent book is Keith Donohue’s The Irish Anatomist: A Study of Flann O'Brien (Donohue 2002); passing through M.Keith Booker’s Flann O'Brien, Bakhtin and Menippean Satire (Booker 1995), Keith Hopper’s Flann O'Brien: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Post-Modernist (Hopper 1995) and Monique Gallagher’s Flann O'Brien, Myles et les autres (Gallagher 1998). There have also been a couple of biographies, which incidentally somehow try to explain critical points his literary production, while many critical studies do the same on the opposite side, trying to found critical points of view on the author’s restless life and habits. At this stage, we attempted to merge into O'Nolan's corpus the journalistic articles he wrote, more than 4,200, for roughly two million words in the 26-year-old running of the column. To justify this, we appealed to several considerations about the figure O'Nolan used as writer: Myles na Gopaleen (later simplified in na Gopaleen), who was the equivalent of the street artist or storyteller, speaking to his imaginary public and trying to involve it in his stories, quarrels and debates of all kinds. First of all, he relied much on language for the reactions he would obtain, playing on, and with, words so as to ironically unmask untrue relationships between words and things. Secondly, he pushed to the limit the convention of addressing to spectators and listeners usually employed in live performing, stretching its role in the written discourse to come to a greater effect of involvement of readers. Lastly, he profited much from what we labelled his “specific weight”, i.e. the potential influence in society given by his recognised authority in determined matters, a position from which he could launch deeper attacks on conventional beliefs, so complying with the duty of a comic we hypothesised before: that of criticising society even in threat of losing the benefits the post guarantees. That seemingly masochistic tendency has its rationale. Every representative has many privileges on the assumption that he, or she, has great responsibilities in administrating. The higher those responsibilities are, the higher is the reward but also the severer is the punishment for the misfits done while in charge. But we all know that not everybody accepts the rules and many try to use their power for their personal benefit and do not want to undergo law’s penalties. The comic, showing in this case more civic sense than others, helped very much in this by the non-accessibility to the use of public force, finds in the role of the scapegoat the right accomplishment of his task, accepting the punishment when his breaking of the conventions is too stark to be forgiven. As Ceccarelli demonstrated, the role of the object of laughter (comic, ridicule) has its very own positive side: there is freedom of expression for the person, and at the same time integration in the society, even though at low levels. Then the banishment of a ‘social’ comic can never get to total extirpation from society, revealing how the scope of the comic lies on an entirely fictional layer, bearing no relation with facts, nor real consequences in terms of physical health. Myles na Gopaleen, mastering these three characteristics we postulated in the highest way, can be considered an author worth noting; and the oeuvre he wrote, the whole collection of Cruiskeen Lawn articles, is rightfully a novel because respects the canons of it especially regarding the authorial figure and his relationship with the readers. In addition, his work can be studied even if we cannot conduct our research on the whole of it, this proceeding being justified exactly because of the resemblances to the real figure of the storyteller: its ‘chapters’ —the daily articles— had a format that even the distracted reader could follow, even one who did not read each and every article before. So we can critically consider also a good part of them, as collected in the seven volumes published so far, with the addition of some others outside the collections, because completeness in this case is not at all a guarantee of a better precision in the assessment; on the contrary: examination of the totality of articles might let us consider him as a person and not a persona. Once cleared these points, we proceeded further in considering tout court the works of Brian O'Nolan as the works of a unique author, rather than complicating the references with many names which are none other than well-wrought sides of the same personality. By putting O'Nolan as the correct object of our research, empirical author of the works of the personae Flann O'Brien and Myles na Gopaleen, there comes out a clearer literary landscape: the comic author Brian O'Nolan, self-conscious of his paramount role in society as both a guide and a scourge, in a word as an a(rche)typical, intentionally chose to differentiate his personalities so as to create different perspectives in different fields of knowledge by using, in addition, different means of communication: novels and journalism. We finally compared the newly assessed author Brian O'Nolan with other great Irish comic writers in English, such as James Joyce (the one everybody named as the master in the field), Samuel Beckett, and Jonathan Swift. This comparison showed once more how O'Nolan is in no way inferior to these authors who, greatly celebrated by critics, have nonetheless failed to achieve that great public recognition O’Nolan received alias Myles, awarded by the daily audience he reached and influenced with his Cruiskeen Lawn column. For this reason, we believe him to be representative of the comic figure’s function as a social regulator and as a builder of solidarity, such as that Raymond Williams spoke of in his work (Williams 1982), with in mind the aim of building a ‘culture in common’. There is no way for a ‘culture in common’ to be acquired if we do not accept the fact that even the most functional society rests on conventions, and in a world more and more ‘connected’ we need someone to help everybody negotiate with different cultures and persons. The comic gives us a worldly perspective which is at the same time comfortable and distressing but in the end not harmful as the one furnished by politicians could be: he lets us peep into parallel worlds without moving too far from our armchair and, as a consequence, is the one who does his best for the improvement of our understanding of things.

Architectures and design patterns for functional design of logic control and diagnostics in industrial automation

Recently in most of the industrial automation process an ever increasing degree of automation has been observed. This increasing is motivated by the higher requirement of systems with great performance in terms of quality of products/services generated, productivity, efficiency and low costs in the design, realization and maintenance. This trend in the growth of complex automation systems is rapidly spreading over automated manufacturing systems (AMS), where the integration of the mechanical and electronic technology, typical of the Mechatronics, is merging with other technologies such as Informatics and the communication networks. An AMS is a very complex system that can be thought constituted by a set of flexible working stations, one or more transportation systems. To understand how this machine are important in our society let considerate that every day most of us use bottles of water or soda, buy product in box like food or cigarets and so on. Another important consideration from its complexity derive from the fact that the the consortium of machine producers has estimated around 350 types of manufacturing machine. A large number of manufacturing machine industry are presented in Italy and notably packaging machine industry,in particular a great concentration of this kind of industry is located in Bologna area; for this reason the Bologna area is called “packaging valley”. Usually, the various parts of the AMS interact among them in a concurrent and asynchronous way, and coordinate the parts of the machine to obtain a desiderated overall behaviour is an hard task. Often, this is the case in large scale systems, organized in a modular and distributed manner. Even if the success of a modern AMS from a functional and behavioural point of view is still to attribute to the design choices operated in the definition of the mechanical structure and electrical electronic architecture, the system that governs the control of the plant is becoming crucial, because of the large number of duties associated to it. Apart from the activity inherent to the automation of themachine cycles, the supervisory system is called to perform other main functions such as: emulating the behaviour of traditional mechanical members thus allowing a drastic constructive simplification of the machine and a crucial functional flexibility; dynamically adapting the control strategies according to the different productive needs and to the different operational scenarios; obtaining a high quality of the final product through the verification of the correctness of the processing; addressing the operator devoted to themachine to promptly and carefully take the actions devoted to establish or restore the optimal operating conditions; managing in real time information on diagnostics, as a support of the maintenance operations of the machine. The kind of facilities that designers can directly find on themarket, in terms of software component libraries provides in fact an adequate support as regard the implementation of either top-level or bottom-level functionalities, typically pertaining to the domains of user-friendly HMIs, closed-loop regulation and motion control, fieldbus-based interconnection of remote smart devices. What is still lacking is a reference framework comprising a comprehensive set of highly reusable logic control components that, focussing on the cross-cutting functionalities characterizing the automation domain, may help the designers in the process of modelling and structuring their applications according to the specific needs. Historically, the design and verification process for complex automated industrial systems is performed in empirical way, without a clear distinction between functional and technological-implementation concepts and without a systematic method to organically deal with the complete system. Traditionally, in the field of analog and digital control design and verification through formal and simulation tools have been adopted since a long time ago, at least for multivariable and/or nonlinear controllers for complex time-driven dynamics as in the fields of vehicles, aircrafts, robots, electric drives and complex power electronics equipments. Moving to the field of logic control, typical for industrial manufacturing automation, the design and verification process is approached in a completely different way, usually very “unstructured”. No clear distinction between functions and implementations, between functional architectures and technological architectures and platforms is considered. Probably this difference is due to the different “dynamical framework”of logic control with respect to analog/digital control. As a matter of facts, in logic control discrete-events dynamics replace time-driven dynamics; hence most of the formal and mathematical tools of analog/digital control cannot be directly migrated to logic control to enlighten the distinction between functions and implementations. In addition, in the common view of application technicians, logic control design is strictly connected to the adopted implementation technology (relays in the past, software nowadays), leading again to a deep confusion among functional view and technological view. In Industrial automation software engineering, concepts as modularity, encapsulation, composability and reusability are strongly emphasized and profitably realized in the so-calledobject-oriented methodologies. Industrial automation is receiving lately this approach, as testified by some IEC standards IEC 611313, IEC 61499 which have been considered in commercial products only recently. On the other hand, in the scientific and technical literature many contributions have been already proposed to establish a suitable modelling framework for industrial automation. During last years it was possible to note a considerable growth in the exploitation of innovative concepts and technologies from ICT world in industrial automation systems. For what concerns the logic control design, Model Based Design (MBD) is being imported in industrial automation from software engineering field. Another key-point in industrial automated systems is the growth of requirements in terms of availability, reliability and safety for technological systems. In other words, the control system should not only deal with the nominal behaviour, but should also deal with other important duties, such as diagnosis and faults isolations, recovery and safety management. Indeed, together with high performance, in complex systems fault occurrences increase. This is a consequence of the fact that, as it typically occurs in reliable mechatronic systems, in complex systems such as AMS, together with reliable mechanical elements, an increasing number of electronic devices are also present, that are more vulnerable by their own nature. The diagnosis problem and the faults isolation in a generic dynamical system consists in the design of an elaboration unit that, appropriately processing the inputs and outputs of the dynamical system, is also capable of detecting incipient faults on the plant devices, reconfiguring the control system so as to guarantee satisfactory performance. The designer should be able to formally verify the product, certifying that, in its final implementation, it will perform itsrequired function guarantying the desired level of reliability and safety; the next step is that of preventing faults and eventually reconfiguring the control system so that faults are tolerated. On this topic an important improvement to formal verification of logic control, fault diagnosis and fault tolerant control results derive from Discrete Event Systems theory. The aimof this work is to define a design pattern and a control architecture to help the designer of control logic in industrial automated systems. The work starts with a brief discussion on main characteristics and description of industrial automated systems on Chapter 1. In Chapter 2 a survey on the state of the software engineering paradigm applied to industrial automation is discussed. Chapter 3 presentes a architecture for industrial automated systems based on the new concept of Generalized Actuator showing its benefits, while in Chapter 4 this architecture is refined using a novel entity, the Generalized Device in order to have a better reusability and modularity of the control logic. In Chapter 5 a new approach will be present based on Discrete Event Systems for the problemof software formal verification and an active fault tolerant control architecture using online diagnostic. Finally conclusive remarks and some ideas on new directions to explore are given. In Appendix A are briefly reported some concepts and results about Discrete Event Systems which should help the reader in understanding some crucial points in chapter 5; while in Appendix B an overview on the experimental testbed of the Laboratory of Automation of University of Bologna, is reported to validated the approach presented in chapter 3, chapter 4 and chapter 5. In Appendix C some components model used in chapter 5 for formal verification are reported.

La nutrizione-idratazione artificiale è terapia? All'interfaccia tra scienza, diritto e bioetica, il fine vita in Italia, secondo una prospettiva di comunicazione della scienza post-accademica e Science&Technologies Studies (STS)

The question “artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH) is therapy or not?” is one of the key point of end-of-life issues in Italy, since it was (and it is also nowadays) a strategic and crucial point of the Italian Bioethics discussion about the last phases of human life: determining if ANH is therapy implies the possibility of being included in the list of treatments that could be mentioned for refusal within the living will document. But who is entitled to decide and judge if ANH is a therapy or not? Scientists? The Legislator? Judges? Patients? This issue at first sight seems just a matter of science, but at stake there is more than a scientific definition. According to several scholars, we are in the era of post-academic Science, in which Science broaden discussion, production, negotation and decision to other social groups that are not just the scientific communities. In this process, called co-production, on one hand scientific knowledge derives from the interaction between scientists and society at large. On the other hand, science is functional to co-production of social order. The continuous negotation on which science has to be used in social decisions is just the evidence of the mirroring negotation for different way to structure and interpret society. Thus, in the interaction between Science and Law, deciding what kind of Science could be suitable for a specific kind of Law, envisages a well defined idea of society behind this choice. I have analysed both the legislative path (still in progress) in the living will act production in Italy and Eluana Englaro’s judicial case (that somehow collapsed in the living will act negotiation), using official documents (hearings, texts of the official conference, committees comments and ruling texts) and interviewing key actors in the two processes from the science communication point of view (who talks in the name of science? Who defines what is a therapy? And how do they do?), finding support on the theoretical framework of the Science&Technologies Studies (S&TS).