Industrial Heritage in Albania: Architecture and Landscape. A New Resource for Fier

This paper proposes the research lines of a teaching experience developed in a laboratory degree carried out in the a.y. 2013-14 at the Politecnico di Bari, that is engaged since 2006 in many studies of the Albanian architectural heritage. In particular this study concerns the recovery and enhancement of the industrial landscape and architecture of the twentieth century in Albania. The specific case-study is the industrial area of Fier, one of the largest production sites created in the sixties in Albania, that includes a nitrate fertilizer plant and a thermal power station, a zone now almost entirely abandoned and degraded, but with great potential for transformation and reuse. The Laboratory involved various disciplines: Architectural and Urban Design, Urban Planning, Environmental Technical Physics, Architectural Restoration, with the aim of highlighting the environmental resources of this site, at territorial, urban and architectural scales. This study designated this area not as a large abandoned site available for new functions, but as a place with specific characters of space and landscape, rich in historical memories, that must be interpreted and recovered through the project. It was assumed as a possible heartland for the architectural and social redevelopment of the city and environmental enhancement through the redesign of the agricultural landscape with which it compares powerfully. So we could verify the possibility to establish here productive activities compatible with the environment, scientific research activities, cultural and recreational facilities for the city and the territory and housing functions, connected by extensive green areas organized as a large agricultural and technology park. Beside this mix of functions, this area preserves its original specificity of energy hub on a national scale, addressing towards renewable energy. The topic was considered with a multidisciplinary and inter-scalar approach, in relation to the issues of sustainable and eco-friendly development, the environmental remediation, the territorial and urban regeneration, up to face the problem of conversion and reuse of large industrial containers and some significant buildings. Particular attention was dedicated to the foreshadowing of spaces and architectural forms that may characterize this place, bringing it back to life and transforming this problematic area in a new resource for Fier

Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of WW bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at s=8\sqrt{s}=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13

Search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at √ s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum are reported. The search uses 20.3 fb−1 of √ s = 8 TeV data collected in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events are required to have at least one jet with pT > 120 GeV and no leptons. Nine signal regions are considered with increasing missing transverse momentum requirements between Emiss T > 150 GeV and Emiss T > 700 GeV. Good agreement is observed between the number of events in data and Standard Model expectations. The results are translated into exclusion limits on models with either large extra spatial dimensions, pair production of weakly interacting dark matter candidates, or production of very light gravitinos in a gauge-mediated supersymmetric model. In addition, limits on the production of an invisibly decaying Higgs-like boson leading to similar topologies in the final state are presente

Search for direct stau production in events with two hadronic tau-leptons in root s=13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of the supersymmetric partners ofτ-leptons (staus) in final stateswith two hadronically decayingτ-leptons is presented. The analysis uses a dataset of pp collisions corresponding to an integrated luminosity of139fb−1, recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LargeHadron Collider at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. No significant deviation from the expected StandardModel background is observed. Limits are derived in scenarios of direct production of stau pairs with eachstau decaying into the stable lightest neutralino and oneτ-lepton in simplified models where the two staumass eigenstates are degenerate. Stau masses from 120 GeV to 390 GeV are excluded at 95% confidencelevel for a massless lightest neutralino

Search for chargino-neutralino production with mass splittings near the electroweak scale in three-lepton final states in √s=13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for supersymmetry through the pair production of electroweakinos with mass splittings near the electroweak scale and decaying via on-shell W and Z bosons is presented for a three-lepton final state. The analyzed proton-proton collision data taken at a center-of-mass energy of √s=13  TeV were collected between 2015 and 2018 by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139  fb−1. A search, emulating the recursive jigsaw reconstruction technique with easily reproducible laboratory-frame variables, is performed. The two excesses observed in the 2015–2016 data recursive jigsaw analysis in the low-mass three-lepton phase space are reproduced. Results with the full data set are in agreement with the Standard Model expectations. They are interpreted to set exclusion limits at the 95% confidence level on simplified models of chargino-neutralino pair production for masses up to 345 GeV

Detecting DNA-binding helix–turn–helix structural motifs using sequence and structure information

In this work, we analyse the potential for using structural knowledge to improve the detection of the DNA-binding helix–turn–helix (HTH) motif from sequence. Starting from a set of DNA-binding protein structures that include a functional HTH motif and have no apparent sequence similarity to each other, two different libraries of hidden Markov models (HMMs) were built. One library included sequence models of whole DNA-binding domains, which incorporate the HTH motif, the second library included shorter models of ‘partial’ domains, representing only the fraction of the domain that corresponds to the functionally relevant HTH motif itself. The libraries were scanned against a dataset of protein sequences, some containing the HTH motifs, others not. HMM predictions were compared with the results obtained from a previously published structure-based method and subsequently combined with it. The combined method proved more effective than either of the single-featured approaches, showing that information carried by motif sequences and motif structures are to some extent complementary and can successfully be used together for the detection of DNA-binding HTHs in proteins of unknown function

NON-FINANCIAL REPORTING AS A NEW TREND IN SUSTAINABILITY ACCOUNTING

The non-financial reporting trend is expected to continue and grow as corporate stakeholders demand more information concerning environmental, social, and governance impacts. Hence, understanding the importance of sustainability accounting plays a pivotal role in offering stakeholders information that is more reliable and accurate. According to a Governance & Accountability Institute, 82% of the S&P 500 companies published Corporate Sustainability Reports in 2016. Dilemma for the business is no longer whether having a non-financial report or not, it is rather why, how and which report or option should companies choose to meet stakeholders needs and comply with the regulatory framework. The objectives of this paper are as follows: first, overview of the non-financial reporting and sustainability accounting, then its historical development will be presented. Finally, this paper will provide an overview on the new European legislative framework of non-financial reporting which will be presented and described

Installing hydrolytic activity into a completely <i>de novo </i>protein framework

The design of enzyme-like catalysts tests our understanding of sequence-to-structure/function relationships in proteins. Here we install hydrolytic activity predictably into a completely de novo and thermostable α-helical barrel, which comprises seven helices arranged around an accessible channel. We show that the lumen of the barrel accepts 21 mutations to functional polar residues. The resulting variant, which has cysteine–histidine–glutamic acid triads on each helix, hydrolyses p-nitrophenyl acetate with catalytic efficiencies that match the most-efficient redesigned hydrolases based on natural protein scaffolds. This is the first report of a functional catalytic triad engineered into a de novo protein framework. The flexibility of our system also allows the facile incorporation of unnatural side chains to improve activity and probe the catalytic mechanism. Such a predictable and robust construction of truly de novo biocatalysts holds promise for applications in chemical and biochemical synthesis