Search results for "Residential"
showing 10 items of 168 documents
The Present Through the Past: Polish Presidents and the Post-Communist Debate, 1989–2010
2013
I argue that the category of post-communism, though fuzzy in meaning and theoretically unrefined, did mark an essential point of dispute (albeit symbolic) in the democratization period of the Polish political system between 1989–2010. The dispute over post-communism in Poland was initially conditioned mainly by ideological divisions (first half of the 1990s) and later by a ‘competition of power’ (especially from 2000). The specific role played by the presidents in the debate over the communist past and post-communist reality of Poland resulted from his insufficiently defined position in the political system, as well as from the fact that up to 2010 the presidency was held by key actors on t…
Presidential speeches and the online politics of belonging : Affective-discursive positions toward refugees in Finland and Estonia
2019
The so-called ‘refugee crisis’ has added urgency to the social dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in European societies. This study explores how emotions figure in this politics of belonging by studying their discursive mobilization in Finnish and Estonian public debates on asylum seekers. Focusing on presidential speeches addressing the refugee issue, on the one hand, and their reception by online commenters on popular tabloid news sites, on the other, the comparative analysis highlights both similarities and differences in how emotional expressions are employed in these two countries with very different experiences of taking refugees. Despite employing common discursive elements in thei…
Affect, Uncertainty, and Decision-Making
2016
International audience; Decision-making is a complex cognitive process of selecting an action among various alternatives. Everyday life is full of situations calling for multiple decisions: living somewhere, moving home, choosing a route, changing route are all decisions that determine our life setting and way of life. These decisions may have a limited impact or over the longer term may cause slight inconvenience, a fleeting feeling of well-being or deep unease, or possibly even unbearable anxiety.
Dialogic Feminist Gatherings: Impact of the Preventive Socialization of Gender-Based Violence on Adolescent Girls in Out-of-Home Care
2020
Gender-based violence is a social scourge with an increasing incidence at younger ages. Many studies have focused on finding effective solutions for overcoming this problem
Utilizing the tourist Ecolabel-award scheme for singling out useful criteria for assessing a new environmental brand for residential buildings.
2009
The Eco-label scheme is becoming ever more important in the environmental certification of products and services, especially in light of the recent ambitious aim of containing greenhouse emissions and improving the efficiency of utilizing energy sources and resources. A recently-introduced hypothesis concerns the European eco-label scheme relating to buildings, due in part to the awareness that the construction industry is of primary importance to the whole economic and social life of states. This scheme should adopt an integrated approach to environmental problems and include construction, day-to-day management and the possible disposal of building materials, throughout the life cycle of t…
On Introducing Proportionality in American Presidential Elections: An Historical Analysis, 1828-2008
2011
It is well known that the President of the United States is elected by the Electoral College and not directly by the population. Every time a candidate who does not win the most popular votes is elected President, detractors of the Electoral College call for its abolishment and supporters extol its undoubtedly merits. This article investigates what would have happened if a solution halfway between both extremes (a direct national election and the current system) had been used in historical Presidential elections; namely, a proportional rule with thresholds to assign electors in each state. This system would generate electoral colleges closer to popular will, reduce the risk of electing a mi…
Energy, economic and environmental analysis on RET-hydrogen systems in residential buildings
2008
The aim of this study was to analyze energy, economic and environmental performances of a set of scenarios dealing with the production and the use of hydrogen as energy carriers in residential applications in combination with renewable energy (RE). The authors also made an investigation into the required economic conditions necessary for making H2–RE residential systems competitive with conventional ones, which are based on the use of grid electricity and natural gas. A case study was enacted in a small residential district in Palermo (Italy) made by five multi-storey buildings. Many energy systems have been considered according to several fuel-device combinations (electric grid, fuel cell,…
On the ranking criteria for energy retrofitting building stocks: Which building goes first? The role of the building size in the establishment of pri…
2017
Abstract The energy retrofit of the existing building stocks is considered a preeminent strategy to lowering the energy consumption of the building sector. Other than the definition of the most successful combination of energy saving measures, the definition of a suitable ranking of all the buildings of the stock, on which implementing established energy retrofit measures, is quite a relevant issue. The most eligible criterion for prioritizing the buildings seems their energy consumption because it combines the building energy performance and their size. To investigate the role played by the building dimension in determining the order of priority of all the buildings of a given stock, this …
Assessing the feasibility of cogeneration retrofit and district heating/cooling networks in small Italian islands
2017
Sustainability of energy supply strategies in small islands has been emerging as a severe issue, due to the large margins for improvement and rationalization of the most frequently adopted solutions. In most of the European islands, large amounts of heat are wasted by the operation of engine-based power plants; conversely, heat is produced by boilers (supplied by liquid fuels) or by electric equipment for a number of different uses, like domestic hot water production or space heating in winter. In this paper a techno-economic analysis is proposed to assess the feasibility of CHP-retrofit of the existing power plants and the possible utilization of the recovered heat to supply, via a distric…
On the architectural and energy classification of existing buildings: a case study of a district in the city of Palermo
2016
Town Administrations are increasingly facing the challenge to identify smart planning actions to reduce the cities' energy demand by improving the efficiency of the urban energy systems. Buildings play an important role in this regarding both the demand and supply energy. In this scenario, the neighborhood or district scale seems to be the most appropriate to implement a multi-disciplinary approach on which smart planning relies. This paper shows the application, to a district of the city of Palermo (Sicily, Italy), of a methodology for architectural-energy classification of existing buildings. Such methodology provides, regarding the building sector, an easy tool that can support smart pla…