Does regional development explain international youth mobility? Spatial patterns and global/local determinants of the recent emigration of young Italians

In this essay, we tackle the issue of the international mobility of young Italians in relation to regional disparities. Our intention is to determine if and to what extent a relationship exists between regional development and the international mobility of young people. We analyze the international migration of Italian citizens aged 15-34 who left the country in the period 2010-2017 using several variables that reflect the varying conditions found in different NUTS 3-level regions in terms of economic dynamism, labor-market efficiency, social fragility, educational underdevelopment and spatial peripherality. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) models show that the international mobility of young Italians is very much dependent on local conditions and affected by spatial differences. It is greatest in the most economically dynamic areas of the country, in border regions and in metropolitan areas, with factors relating to spatial proximity and peripherality, imbalances in local labor markets, and paucity of human capital proving particularly significant

Non-mean-field effects in systems with long-range forces in competition

We investigate the canonical equilibrium of systems with long-range forces in competition. These forces create a modulation in the interaction potential and modulated phases appear at the system scale. The structure of these phases differentiate this system from monotonic potentials, where only the mean-field and disordered phases exist. With increasing temperature, the system switches from one ordered phase to another through a first-order phase transition. Both mean-field and modulated phases may be stable, even at zero temperature, and the long-range nature of the interaction will lead to metastability characterized by extremely long time scales

Citizen participation and awareness raising in coastal protected areas. A case study from Italy

In this chapter, part of the research carried out within the SECOA project (www.projectsecoa.eu) is presented. Attention is devoted to methods and tools used for supporting the participatory process in a case of environmental conflict related to the definition of boundaries of a coastal protected area: the Costa Teatina National Park, in Abruzzo, central Italy. The Costa Teatina National Park was established by the National Law 93/2001. Its territory includes eight southern Abruzzo municipalities and covers a stretch of coastline of approximately 60 km. It is a coastal protected area, which incorporates land but not sea, characterized by the presence of important cultural and natural assets. The Italian Ministry of Environment (1998) defines the area as “winding and varied, with the alternation of sandy and gravel beaches, cliffs, river mouths, areas rich in indigenous vegetation and cultivated lands (mainly olives), dunes and forest trees”. The park boundaries were not defined by the law that set it up, and their determination has been postponed to a later stage of territorial negotiation that has not ended yet (Montanari and Staniscia, 2013). The definition of the park boundaries, indeed, has resulted in an intense debate between citizens and interest groups who believe that environmental protection does not conflict with economic growth and those who believe the opposite. That is why the process is still in act and a solution is far from being reached. In this chapter, the methodology and the tools used to involve the general public in active participation in decision making and to support institutional players in conflict mitigation will be presented. Those tools have also proven to be effective in the dissemination of information and transfer of knowledge. Results obtained through the use of each instrument will not be presented here since this falls outside the purpose of the present essay. The chapter is organized as follows: in the first section the importance of the theme of citizen participation in decision making will be highlighted; the focus will be on participation in the processes of ICZM, relevant to the management of coastal protected areas. In the second section a review of the most commonly used methods in social research is presented; advantages and disadvantages of each of them will be highlighted. In particular, the history and the evolution of the Delphi method and its derivatives are discussed; focus will be on the dissemination value of the logic underlying such iterative methods. In the third section the tools used in the case of the Costa Teatina National Park will be presented; strengths and weaknesses will be highlighted and proposals for their improvement will be advanced. Discussion and conclusions follow

Migración y movilidad de las personas calificadas : nuevos enfoques teóricos, territorios y actores

Este artículo analiza, desde una perspectiva teórica, los nuevos patrones de migración y movilidad calificadas, tanto de naturaleza temporal como permanente, laborales y no laborales, en un mundo globalizado y tecnológicamente avanzado. El artículo define una tipología de migrantes calificados: trabajadores de las trasnacionales, estudiantes y académicos y empresarios étnicos. Aborda también el papel que juegan las instituciones, los estados-nación y las organizaciones supranacionales, que favorecen o entorpecen la migración y la movilidad de estos actores. El artículo sugiere que las nuevas formas de movilidad calificada están relacionas no sólo con factores materiales, como son las oportunidades formativas o la carrera profesional y académica, sino también al deseo de experimentar, de sentirse libre, de conocerse mejor o de ser reconocidoThis paper examines theoretically new patterns of skilled migration and mobility, temporary and permanent, labour and non-labour in a globalized and technologically advanced world. The article defines a typology of skilled migrants: TNC workers, students and academics, and ethnic entrepreneurs. It also addresses the role of institutions, nation states and supranational organizations that help or hinder the migration and mobility of these actors. The article suggests that new forms of skilled mobility relate not only to material factors, such as training opportunities or professional and academic career, but also experimentation, sense of freedom, knowledge and self-knowledg

Migración y movilidad de las personas calificadas: nuevos enfoques teóricos, territorios y actores

Este artículo analiza, desde una perspectiva teórica, los nuevos patrones de migración y movilidad calificadas, tanto de naturaleza temporal como permanente, laborales y no laborales, en un mundo globalizado y tecnológicamente avanzado. El artículo define una tipología de migrantes calificados: trabajadores de las trasnacionales, estudiantes y académicos y empresarios étnicos. Aborda también el papel que juegan las instituciones, los estados-nación y las organizaciones supranacionales, que favorecen o entorpecen la migración y la movilidad de estos actores. El artículo sugiere que las nuevas formas de movilidad calificada están relacionas no sólo con factores materiales, como son las oportunidades formativas o la carrera profesional y académica, sino también al deseo de experimentar, de sentirse libre, de conocerse mejor o de ser reconocid

Automatic motion planning of redundant double-armed collaborative robots for bin picking appplications

LAUREA MAGISTRALELo scopo della tesi è lo sviluppo di un software per la pianificazione automatica di traiettoria per robot collaborativi, ridondanti a doppio braccio. La pianificazione automatica di traiettoria è uno dei rami di ricerca di maggior interesse industriale nell’ambito della robotica. Negli ultimi anni vari gruppi di ricerca hanno prodotto grandi quantità di articoli scientifici, che descrivono soluzioni alternative per confrontarsi con il problema di modellare ambienti e complesse architetture robot, gestendo accuratamente la loro interazione e la necessità di trovare velocemente traiettorie prive di collisioni per il robot. Alcuni dei più importanti esempi di algoritmi per la pianificazione automatica di traiettoria sviluppati negli ultimi decenni sono la famiglia degli algoritmi RRT e l’algoritmo SBL. Nella maggior parte delle applicazioni industriali, i sistemi di visione sono il modo migliore di fornire a questi algoritmi le informazioni riguardo l’ambiente e l’obiettivo da raggiungere. Ovviamente le tecniche per la pianificazione automatica di traiettoria hanno alcuni tipici problemi di implementazione. Per queste ragioni, il loro impiego nell’attuale panorama industriale è limitato a poche applicazioni pratiche. Una delle più importanti è di certo quella della presa da cassone. I robot industriali, guidati da sistemi di visione, sono già frequentemente utilizzati per prelevare oggetti disposti casualmente in un cassone, ma tipicamente lo scopo finale di questa tecnologia è sempre stato quello di rifornire altre macchine, nastri trasportatori o pallettizzatori. La principale novità di questa tesi risiede nello sviluppo di metodologie di pianificazione di traiettoria per una tipologia di robot relativamente nuova: il robot collaborativo, ridondante, doppio-braccio ABB Yumi, progettato specificatamente per emulare le capacità cinematiche umane. Yumi ha le potenzialità per estendere l’operazione di presa da cassone standard, già realizzata da robot tradizionali, a nuovi contesti industriali come quelli dell’assemblaggio e della cooperazione uomo-robot. Questo robot è già utilizzato per operazioni di presa, ma è necessario organizzarne metodicamente l’area di lavoro e programmarne in anticipo i movimenti. Combinando le caratteristiche dei sistemi di visione e della pianificazione automatica di traiettoria con le capacità di Yumi, è possibile automatizzare le operazioni di assemblaggio di piccoli oggetti, senza la necessità di progettare rigidi sistemi di movimentazione, ma con la semplicità e flessibilità di un’operazione di presa da cassa. Il software sviluppato risolve alcuni problemi intrinseci collegati all’uso del robot Yumi in questo tipo di applicazioni. Prima di tutto la necessità di gestire la complessa struttura cinematica ridondante. Inoltre, il problema che gli algoritmi di pianificazione automatica di traiettoria standard non sono studiati per gestire più di un’entità in movimento. La tesi presenta differenti approcci, sviluppati negli anni, per la soluzione di questo tipo di problematica e ne propone uno capace di aggirarla efficacemente. 6 Il software si basa su una delle più affidabili, efficienti e meglio organizzate librerie opensource per la programmazione robot disponibili in rete: Klamp’t. È stata studiata la sua capacità di gestire strutture cinematiche ridondanti e multi-braccio ed è stata sviluppata una procedura per applicazioni di prese da cassone a due braccia coordinate, basata sulle sue funzionalità. La tesi è stata svolta in collaborazione con l’azienda ISS, presso la quale sono state svolte molte delle attività di programmazione e sperimentali. ISS è uno spin-off del Politecnico e una delle maggiori aziende italiane nello sviluppo di sistemi di guida robot con applicazioni nel campo della presa da cassone. • Il capitolo 1 è una breve introduzione al contest industrial e alle possibili motivazioni per lo sviluppo di questo lavoro di tesi; • Il capitolo 2 introduce all’attuale stato dell’arte per i sistemi di visione e le tecniche di pianificazione del moto; • Il capitolo 3 è una breve descrizione dei principali concetti riguardanti la cinematica dei robot; • Il capitolo 4 presenta i più importanti algoritmi di pianificazione del moto e descrive una procedura utilizzata per la scelta del codice più adatto all’applicazione finale; • Il capitolo 5 descrive il software sviluppato ed i test sull’applicazione finale; • Il capitolo 6 descrive I possibili futuri miglioramenti al softwareThe aim of this thesis is the development of a software for collaborative redundant multiarmed robot’s automatic trajectory planning. Automatic trajectory planning is one of the most interesting research branches in the robotic field. In the last years various research groups have published tons of papers describing alternative methods to face the problem of modelling complex robot kinematics and environments, managing properly their interactions and the necessity of finding in a fast and computationally-efficient way a safe, free-of-collisions trajectory for the robot. Some of the most relevant examples of path planning algorithms and techniques developed in the last decades are the RRT family of planners and the SBL one. In most of the industrial implementations, vision systems are the best way to provide to these algorithms informations about the environment and the targets that the robot have to reach. Of course, automatic motion planning techniques have some typical implementation problems. For these reasons, their usage in the contemporary industrial sector is limited to few practical applications. One of the most important is of course the bin picking one. Industrial robots guided by vision-based devices are already extensively used to pick randomly-oriented objects from a bin, but the typical final aim of this technology has always been the feeding of an other machine, belt or palettizer. The main novelty of this thesis is in the development of trajectory planning methodologies for of a relatively new type of industrial manipulator: the collaborative, redundant, doublearmed ABB Yumi robot, specially designed to mimic human capabilities. Yumi has the potentialities to extend the basic bin picking operation, already performed by standard industrial robots, to new industrial contexts such as the assembling or the human cooperation ones. This robot is already used for picking operations, but it’s always needed to organize its working area and programming its movements a priori. Combining vision systems and automatic motion planning features with Yumi capabilities, it’s possible to fully automize small objects assembly operations without designing rigid and expensive feeding systems, but with the flexibility and simplicity of a bin picking procedure. The developed software solves some intrinsic problems related to the use of the Yumi robot in this type of applications. First of all, the necessity of managing its complex, redundant kinematic structure. Secondary and most important, the problem that standard automatic planning algorithms are not studied to interact with this type of robot. The coordination of its two arms, in fact, is of fundamental importance in order to guarantee a high productivity of the future applications, but automatic planners are typically not capable to manage more than one moving entity. The thesis presents different approaches, developed in the last years, for the resolution of this kind of problem and proposes a method capable of bypassing it. 4 The software is based on one of the most efficient, well-organized and reliable open-source libraries for robot programming free available on the web: Klamp’t. Its capabilities of managing redundant, multi-armed kinematic structures have been explored and a smart procedure for double-armed coordinated bin picking applications, based on its functionalities, has been developed. The thesis has been developed in collaboration with the ISS company, in which most of the programming and experimental works were done. ISS is a Politecnico spin-off and one of the main Italian company in the development of robot guidance systems based on vision devices with applications in the bin picking field. The thesis has the following structure: • Chapter 1 is a short introduction to the industrial context and the possible reasons for the developing of this work; • Chapter 2 introduces the current state of art about vision systems and motion planning algorithms and technologies; • Chapter 3 is a brief explanation of the main concepts regarding robot kinematics; • Chapter 4 presents the main motion planning algorithms and describes a procedure useful to choose the most suitable algorithm for the final application; • Chapter 5 describes the development of the software and the tests on the real application; • Chapter 6 describes future improvement for the softwar

SECOA territories and conflicts: data dilemmas

The implementation of the principles of GIScience is strongly influenced by the definition of the phenomenon and the territory to be explored, the explanatory variables, and the availability of data. This chapter will deal with those issues: how the problems were placed in SECOA and which solutions have been adopted. The themes and topics characterizing SECOA are defined, and the variables chosen for analyzing, classifying, and modelling them are described. The themes characterizing SECOA are those connected to places and to conflicts. We first discuss place and territory followed by conflict and contrast. Then, SECOA places and conflicts are defined, and SECOA variables and data are presented

Experimental perspectives for systems based on long-range interactions

The possibility of observing phenomena peculiar to long-range interactions, and more specifically in the so-called Quasi-Stationary State (QSS) regime is investigated within the framework of two devices, namely the Free-Electron Laser (FEL) and the Collective Atomic Recoil Laser (CARL). The QSS dynamics has been mostly studied using the Hamiltonian Mean-Field (HMF) toy model, demonstrating in particular the presence of first versus second order phase transitions from magnetized to unmagnetized regimes in the case of HMF. Here, we give evidence of the strong connections between the HMF model and the dynamics of the two mentioned devices, and we discuss the perspectives to observe some specific QSS features experimentally. In particular, a dynamical analog of the phase transition is present in the FEL and in the CARL in its conservative regime. Regarding the dissipative CARL, a formal link is established with the HMF model. For both FEL and CARL, calculations are performed with reference to existing experimental devices, namely the FERMI@Elettra FEL under construction at Sincrotrone Trieste (Italy) and the CARL system at LENS in Florence (Italy)

Phase transitions of quasistationary states in the Hamiltonian Mean Field model

The out-of-equilibrium dynamics of the Hamiltonian Mean Field (HMF) model is studied in presence of an externally imposed magnetic field h. Lynden-Bell's theory of violent relaxation is revisited and shown to adequately capture the system dynamics, as revealed by direct Vlasov based numerical simulations in the limit of vanishing field. This includes the existence of an out-of-equilibrium phase transition separating magnetized and non magnetized phases. We also monitor the fluctuations in time of the magnetization, which allows us to elaborate on the choice of the correct order parameter when challenging the performance of Lynden-Bell's theory. The presence of the field h removes the phase transition, as it happens at equilibrium. Moreover, regions with negative susceptibility are numerically found to occur, in agreement with the predictions of the theory.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cross-border shopping tourism: the case of Hungary

By today the smooth functioning of the global economy has been highly dependent on the uninterrupted flow of factors across borders. The free flow of tourists is also inevitable for the proper functioning of the global tourism industry. However, tourism and various forms of cross-border (tourism) activities were put under unprecedented pressure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, since most countries, including Hungary, introduced serious restrictions on mobility to slow down the spread of the virus. This paper focuses on a relatively under-researched topic, cross-border shopping tourism in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the outbreak of the pandemic, shopping tourism was deemed to be an increasingly important component of the tourism value chain. Several studies have demonstrated that shopping has become one of the most favourable activities among tourists and one of the major categories of tourists’ expenditure. Based on the review of the relevant literature, the paper introduces the notion and forms of shopping tourism and discusses the major research topics with special regard to the effects of the pandemic and other types of crisis events. The impact of the pandemic on shopping tourism is observed through the example of Hungary, whereby the effects of restrictions, exchange rate fluctuations, and price-level differences on the number of in- and outbound shopping trips, and the related expenditures, are evaluated. Results show that re-bordering processes due to the pandemic have not only resulted in an unprecedented decline in cross-border shopping tourism, but they also contributed to the spatial restructuring of shopping (tourism) and retailing. The pandemic not only sustained cross-border differentials vital to shopping tourism but sometimes even created new forms of them; these differences, however, could not counter the negative effects of restricted international mobility. The paper aims to contribute to the literature on cross-border tourism by reviewing the effects and consequences of COVID-19 and related restrictions on shopping tourism