Assessment of thermo-hygrometric quality in museums: Method and in-field application to the “Duccio di Buoninsegna” exhibition at Santa Maria della Scala (Siena,Italy)

Maintaining the microclimatic parameters at the desired value is essential for artefacts preservation. In order to control the status of the microclimatic parameters, a continuous monitoring of the indoor environmental provides conservators, curators, restorers, and lenders with an exact knowledge of the microclimatic conditions under which the works of art are kept. Moreover, the monitoring results give important information in order to make adequate changes to the control strategy of microclimatic parameters. From this point of view, monitoring is an essential tool to develop an actual preventive control programme aimed at maintaining the optimal microclimatic conditions for preservation. As a consequence, long-term monitoring has to be applied to prevent deterioration of works of art. The widespread opinion that a correct approach to the topic of microclimate control for artefacts preservation is not only and necessarily to provide buildings with sophisticated environmental control systems, but mainly to investigate the actual environmental dynamics and, before any structural intervention, to define the compatibility between the climate control potentials and the preservation requirements, has become more and more firm among the experts. Monitoring also allows to verify the capacity of the “building and Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC)” system to maintain the desired thermo-hygrometric values within the operating conditions. To this aim, the Italian Standard UNI 10829 (1999) defining monitoring, elaboration and analysis of the microclimatic data as supporting actions for artefacts preservation, led to the need of a long-term monitoring and of a statistical approach to the data management. The approach proposed by the Italian Standard has been recently adopted by a European Standard (EN 15251, 2007). In accordance with the Standards mentioned above, in this paper an operational procedure to assess the thermo-hygrometric quality in museums is firstly synthetically presented and than applied to a case study. In particular, the procedure is developed in order to define the thermo-hygrometric quality level of the exhibition areas in the large museum complex of “Santa Maria della Scala” in Siena (Italy) during the international temporary exhibition “Duccio. La nascita della pittura senese” (“Duccio. The birth of Sienese Painting”).     

The influence of natural stabilizers and natural fibres on the mechanical properties of ancient Roman adobe bricks

Adobe is a construction technique that uses raw clayey earth mixed and moulded to form blocks to realize a bearing wall. Romans were also used to add sand or coarse sand into the mixture to “degrease” clay and to allow to make it into a mixture. Fibres such as straw were often added into the mixture. Anyway, ancient home brick-makers have not had a chance to do scientific experimental investigation on the balance of ingredients and the optimisation of this production. This paper elaborates on how workability and mechanical properties of Roman ancient adobe earthen bricks change by varying the percentage of an on situ soil, straw and coarse sand into the mixture to produce them. The comparisons were also made with the only-earth samples. Breaking manners of all the samples were also compared.     

The economic impact of technological procurement for large-scale research infrastructures: Evidence from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, is the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator. Its construction (1995–2008) required frontier technologies and close collaboration between CERN scientists and contracting firms. The literature on “Big Science” projects suggests that this collaboration generated economic spillovers, particularly through technological learning. CERN granted us access to its procurement database, including suppliers of LHC from 35 countries for orders over 10,000 Swiss Francs. We gathered balance-sheet data for more than 350 of these companies from 1991 to 2014, which include the years before and after that of the first order received. The study assesses, in quantitative terms, whether becoming a CERN supplier induced greater R&D effort and innovative capacity, thus enhancing productivity and profitability. The findings – which controlled for firms’ observable characteristics, macroeconomic conditions, and unobserved time, country, industry and firm-level fixed effects – indicate a statistically significant correlation between procurement events and company R&D, knowledge creation and economic performance. The correlation is chiefly driven by high-tech orders; for companies receiving non-high-tech orders, it is weaker, or even statistically not significant.     

CFD application to optimise the ventilation strategy of Senate Room at Palazzo Madama in Turin (Italy)

Over the last years, there was an increasing interest in keeping suitable microclimatic conditions for the preservation of artefacts: the artefacts preservation requirements may diverge from those of the museums visitors, willing to enjoy the works of art in a situation of psycho-physical wellness. The HVAC designers and engineers will have then to cooperate closely with the curator, in order to define a compromise between conflicting environmental performance requirements. In particular at the stage of air-conditioning system design or retrofit, it is extremely important to carry out a series of preliminary analysis to evaluate and monitor the existing environmental conditions and to anticipatory simulate and predict the post-intervention conditions. To this aim, advanced fluid-dynamic investigation tools (Computational Fluid Dynamic [CFD] techniques) enable to deal with the specificity of such topics and provide a useful decision-making support.     

From local networks of SMEs to virtual districts?: Evidence from recent trends in Italy

Industrial districts as local networks of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) rooted their competitiveness in a mix of economic relationships and social ties. Recently, network technologies have promised gains of efficiency through a reduction in transaction costs and showed new commercial opportunities for small firms. Despite the morphological similarities between industrial districts and network technologies, a longitudinal analysis of ICT diffusion within Italian districts shows that the foreseen convergence between the district economic model and new technologies should not be taken for granted. The observed specific evolutionary paths concerning technology innovation in local systems also opens-up issues of economic policy.     

The Development and Psychometric Properties of the Teacher Social Stress Scale-Student Related (TSS-Sr)

Teacher burnout is a growing phenomenon that may dramatically reduce the quality of life of both teachers and students. Many studies have conceptualized teaching as a high-contact profession and, focusing on the emotional exhaustion dimension of burnout, they have highlighted the relation with students as a key dimension of teachers’ stress. This paper presents an original instrument (TSS-Sr) to measure teachers’ stress related to the interaction with their pupils. It provides the psychometric characteristic of this scale. Results support a model of measurement of teacher social stress based on four dimensions: verbal aggression, dislike students, awkward reactions, demanding requests. Implications about the use and the applications of this instrument are discussed.     

Student perceptions of interpersonal justice,engagement, agency and anger: a longitudinal study for reciprocal effects

Based on the premise that classroom interactions unfold through a complex series of circular influences between teacher and students, the aim of this longitudinal study was to test a reciprocal effects model connecting students’ perceptions of interpersonal justice, on the one hand, and student engagement, agency and anger, on the other. Self-report measures of interpersonal justice, student engagement, agency and anger were collected from 454 Year Nine students from Northern Italy in a 3-wave longitudinal research design. Structural equation modelling with latent variables indicated that interpersonal justice in wave 1 had a negative effect on both student agency and anger in wave 2, while interpersonal justice in wave 2 only negatively predicted student anger in wave 3. With respect to the reciprocal effects, student engagement in wave 2 was found to positively predict interpersonal justice in wave 3, while a negative effect close to statistical significance was observed from student agency in wave 2 to interpersonal justice in wave 3. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for teacher practice, as they emphasize that (a) the two main facets of student participation, namely engagement and agency, are differently interconnected with the learning environment, and (b) the perception of being treated fairly is important to the point that its deficiency triggers a persistent feeling of anger in students.

     

Tools in practice, mathematics in use

We seek to analyse the notion of structuring resources and their role in shaping mathematical activity, and more broadly to add to our understanding of mathematical epistemologies in workplace settings. Our analysis is of two nursing activities – drug administration and fluid balance monitoring – based on data collected in an in–depth study of paediatric nurses on the ward. In the first activity, we examine ways in which nurses conceptualise ratio and proportion problems, while in the second, we provide a case study of two nurses discussing conflicting strategies when monitoring the fluid balance of a patient. We discuss the ways in which the available resources give mathematical and professional meanings in these situations and draw out some implications for the design of viable didactical strategies in vocational mathematics teaching.     

Effects of the financial crisis on university choice by gender

This study analyses the university choices of male and female students in Italy over the 2003–2012 period and for two sub-periods before (2003–2008) and after (2009–2012) the 2008 financial crisis. The analysis is guided by human capital, signalling and preference theories and implemented through a competing destinations model that controls for the socio-economic features of both the region of origin and destination. The findings show that in the post-crisis period, males became more career-oriented in their university choices due to increasingly constrained and competitive labour markets. The constrained post-crisis labour markets led females to focus more on the educational experience than on future employability prospects. Our results suggest that the financial crisis maintained or even widened gendered social roles as they relate to university choices; specifically, males assumed an even greater career-centred family role, whereas females adopted more adaptive lifestyles that potentially place them at a disadvantage in the labour market and in society in years to come.