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Port and city authorities all over Europe and beyond are striving with finding solutions able to combine sustainability with economic growth. Several global urgencies in fact, such as climate change, energy transition, the exponential changes in the scale of ports and ships and last but not least the economic and health shock related to the coronavirus pandemic, are challenging the spaces where ports physically meet their cities, generating processes of caesura within the urban patterns with consequent impacts on the quality of life. In port cities, infrastructures and energy flows overlap with city flows and patterns that change with different rhythms and temporalities. This discrepancy creates abandonment and marginality between port and city. This today is no longer sustainable. New approaches and solutions that look at integration and circularity rather than separation are necessary.Circularity has been widely discussed in the literature. However, the concept still remains very controversial, especially when it comes to port cities where new definitions are needed in particular to better understand the spatial dimension of circularity. The Rotterdam therefore case study stands exemplary. Here, the concept of the circular economy refers mostly to the theme of obsolete industrial buildings and marginal that are reinserted again within the urban metabolism. The case of Rotterdam points out that the competition of the port today goes through the quality of its relationship spaces and the ability of the different actors involved in the planning process to hold together economic growth and environmental sustainability. The areas along the river are in fact the most fascinating places in the city and today they are ready for a different use. In order for the city to become an attractive place to live it is necessary to build new, innovative and sustainable spatial visions. This will lead to scenarios of sustainable coexistence between port and city. Therefore, these two agendas (sustainable port and city attractiveness) came together in the area known as Makers district (M4H) which, together with RDM campus, represents the Rotterdam testing ground for innovation.Therefore, this chapter, by arguing that ports will play a crucial role in the transition towards more circularity investigates how to make it happen and how to transform the challenges of the port into opportunities for a territorial regeneration towards new forms of integration. In order to answer the question, the case of Rotterdam is presented to analyse a model of urban regeneration where different planning agencies—mainly port authority, municipality, universities and private parties—work together at different scales to define a sustainable coexistence of interests. The research, which draws data on existing literature and policy documents analysis, firstly introduces the spatial and governance structures of the city of Rotterdam as part of a bigger metropolitan region. Secondly, it analyses the case of “Stadshavens strategy” as an emblematic example to overcome conflicts and path dependencies at the intersection of land and water. Finally, it concludes by highlighting some limitations and path dependencies that could make the transition to new forms of the circular economy very difficult in the future.

ObjectiveTo evaluate the efficacy, safety, and tolerability of noninvasive vagus nerve stimulation (nVNS; gammaCore; electroCore, LLC, Basking Ridge, NJ) for the acute treatment of migraine in a multicenter, double-blind, randomized, sham-controlled trial.MethodsA total of 248 participants with episodic migraine with/without aura were randomized to receive nVNS or sham within 20 minutes from pain onset. Participants were to repeat treatment if pain had not improved in 15 minutes.ResultsnVNS (n = 120) was superior to sham (n = 123) for pain freedom at 30 minutes (12.7% vs 4.2%; p = 0.012) and 60 minutes (21.0% vs 10.0%; p = 0.023) but not at 120 minutes (30.4% vs 19.7%; p = 0.067; primary endpoint; logistic regression) after the first treated attack. A post hoc repeated-measures test provided further insight into the therapeutic benefit of nVNS through 30, 60, and 120 minutes (odds ratio 2.3; 95% confidence interval 1.2, 4.4; p = 0.012). nVNS demonstrated benefits across other endpoints including pain relief at 120 minutes and was safe and well-tolerated.ConclusionThis randomized sham-controlled trial supports the abortive efficacy of nVNS as early as 30 minutes and up to 60 minutes after an attack. Findings also suggest effective pain relief, tolerability, and practicality of nVNS for the acute treatment of episodic migraine.ClinicalTrials.gov identifierNCT02686034.Classification of evidenceThis study provides Class I evidence that for patients with an episodic migraine, nVNS significantly increases the probability of having mild pain or being pain-free 2 hours poststimulation (absolute difference 13.2%).

Volcanic islands pose several major types of natural hazards, often interconnected and concentrated in relatively small areas. The quantification of these hazards must be framed from a multi-hazard perspective whilst building on existing single-hazard analyses. Ischia is a densely inhabited volcanic island with a long eruptive history lasting more than 150 ka (last in 1302 AD) characterized by the significant asymmetric resurgence of a caldera block. Here, we review the state-of-art of the natural hazards of Ischia, aiming at building a solid base for future holistic multi-hazard quantifications. We frame our analysis in three steps: i) review of geological, historical and current activity; ii) review of available hazard models and analyses; iii) development of an interpretative framework for the interdependent hazards. The results highlight that volcanic activity has been quite intense and many volcano-related hazardous phenomena have affected the island including in very recent times, both for eruptive (phreatic or magmatic eruptions) and non-eruptive (earthquakes, landslides, and tsunamis) phenomena. The effects of some of them (e.g. tsunamis, tephra) are also relevant beyond the island territory. Quantitative hazard assessments are almost absent and should be developed in the future considering the evident interconnections between hazards. To this end, we propose a conceptual interpretative multi-hazard framework that highlights the fundamental role played by the resurgent block in controlling and connecting the different hazards, in terms of both spatial distribution of the sources and temporal clustering.

The inter-arrival times of the post 2000 seismicity at Campi Flegrei caldera are statistically distributed into different populations. The low inter-arrival times population represents swarm events, while the high inter-arrival times population marks background seismicity. Here, we show that the background seismicity is increasing at the same rate of (1) the ground uplift and (2) the concentration of the fumarolic gas specie more sensitive to temperature. The seismic temporal increase is strongly correlated with the results of recent simulations, modelling injection of magmatic fluids in the Campi Flegrei hydrothermal system. These concurrent variations point to a unique process of temperature-pressure increase of the hydrothermal system controlling geophysical and geochemical signals at the caldera. Our results thus show that the occurrence of background seismicity is an excellent parameter to monitor the current unrest of the caldera.

SUMMARY Independent component analysis (ICA) is a recent and well-known technique used to separate mixtures of signals. This technique has been applied to the ground deformation time-series recorded at the permanent GPS network of the Osservatorio Vesuviano—INGV in order to characterize the deformation background level in the Neapolitan volcanic area. The analysis revealed the presence of five independent periodic signals common at all the GPS stations; some of them are interpreted as effects of earth tides. The residual signal at each station represent the local ground deformation. Unfortunately the ICA cannot provide the absolute amplitude of the components, indeed we are not able to obtain a residual amplitude at each station. Then we used a stationarity analysis in order to investigate the eventual presence of local transient deformations. The ICA technique combined with the stationarity analysis has shown to be a very interesting tool for individuating ground deformation trends and could be very useful in volcanic areas monitoring.

The results of an analysis of Dipolar Geoelectrical (DG), Magnetotelluric (MT) and Self-Potential (SP) data collected over the emerged portion of the Campi Flegrei (CF) caldera (South Italy) are presented. The DG and MT data are from previous surveys, while the SP data have been recently collected during a survey consisting of 265 pickup land sites. Although the emerged part of the CF caldera appears as a highly inhomogeneous structure, a few simple features have been highlighted through an integrated analysis of subsets of consistent data. A well resolved feature is the structural pattern of the caldera depression along a roughly E-W profile, deduced from a 2D combined interpretation of the MT and DG soundings. Resistivity dispersion effects have also been observed at both ends of this profile. They have been ascribed to the presence of hydrothermally altered zones related to the main fracture systems bordering the caldera. A pressure/temperature source body at a mean depth of about 5 km bsl under the Bay of Pozzuoli has been inferred from the analysis of the 3D SP tomography imaging.