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Teaching computer graphics in an effective way is a challenging task. Different approaches are proposed in the literature, some focusing on traditional teacher-led lectures, others on interactive teaching methods. This paper describes an experiential learning approach applied in a university-level course in computer engineering. Students were involved in the realization of a digital humanities project, the 3-D modeling of the city of Pavia, Italy, as it was in the 16th century. Traditional lectures introduced key theoretical elements, but students were subsequently given specific assignments and retrieved additional content when completing the tasks assigned to them under the overall guidance of their supervisors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last decade and a half have seen a renewed interest in the development of the IT industry in Italy and the role of the 1950s pioneers. The aim of the article is to retrace key stages of the first Italian project aimed at creating an electronic calculator, carried out by the University of Pisa in collaboration with Olivetti. The re-evaluation of the documents kept in the University's archives, including the technical projects, has proved fruitful and has shed light on lesser-known aspects of a project that opened the way to the birth of computer science in the country as a business and as a scientific discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new challenge in power systems design and operation is to organize and control smart micro grids supplying aggregation of users and special loads as electric vehicles charging stations. The presence of renewable and storage can help the optimal operation only if a good control manages all the elements of the grid. New models of green buildings and energy communities are proposed. For a real application they need an appropriate and advanced power system equipped with a building automation control system. This article presents an economic model predictive control approach to the problem of managing the electric and heating resources in a smart building in a coordinated way, for the purpose of achieving in real time nearly zero energy consumption and automated participation to demand response programs. The proposed control, leveraging a mixed integer quadratic programming problem, allows to meet manifold thermal and electric users’ requirements and react to inbound demand response signals, while still guaranteeing stable operation of the building's electric and thermal storage equipment. The simulation results, performed for a real case study in Italy, highlight the peculiarities of the proposed approach in the joint handling of electric and thermal building flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]