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During an election campaign in Germany international investors were named “locusts” to discredit their behaviour and the effects of their actions. The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the links of this biblical metaphor and the contemporary financial industry, assuming that the common denominator can be seen in risk and the attitudes in dealing with risk. This link, so it is argued here, can be found in the changes of the understanding of risk as developing from punishment over representing evil to a postsocial opportunity to maximise profit in the globalised world of today.

The paper contrasts the origin of a publicly used metaphor about financial industry to describe risk with risk management based on recent research on the financial industry.

Developments of the international financial markets of the past three decades undermine the common understanding of risk and risk management at least from two directions. The methods used in risk management and investment represent a level of abstraction only specialists can deal with. And – more important for the everyday experience – certain forms of investment and risk management have developed in a way which is threatening to many people in companies producing goods or providing services. The development of financial industry into a postsocial reality of its own nevertheless has intense effects on other sectors of economy and society.

The author calls for an ethics of markets.

The comparative study between urban regions gathered by the 2010 National Project of Relevant Interest financed by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR – PRIN 2010) re-opened, in Italy, the debate on regional comparison of data, especially the ones of land use monitoring, which are difficult to collect, and to compare. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate some results of comparative studies based on regional and national data sets of land use indicators. Further considerations of land use change (LUC) assessment and its effect on environmental policies extended to the whole metropolitan area of Milan are outlined.

The adopted methodology collects different types of information from the existent databases on land uses/land covers (national/regional) and presents an assessment between the selected case of studies (urban regions), leading a shift from a quantitative evaluation to a qualitative one. A comparative study was conducted applying a geographical and statistical difference of land uses among different time thresholds. Subsequently, a cross-tabulation analysis allows an in-depth LUC analysis for the Milan urban region.

The results of the study display an autonomous pattern for the Milan urban region, which is the most densely populated area in Italy and seems to be the only comparable to other international cases of studies due to its extension and characteristics. Nevertheless, it is not the urban region that is affected by the highest rate of land take, which takes place in the Italian context where densities of settlements are lower and sprawled. According to Soja’s (2011) interpretation, the post-metropolitan condition of Milan seems to be proved.

The study was aimed at creating the first online National Atlas which has been used to overcome traditional problems of homogenization of LUC data in Italy. The quantification and qualification of LUC patterns allow us to understand if, and where, post-metropolis condition occurs. This research gives a clear indication of the kind of ongoing phenomena for policy orientation to planners and administrators, especially the one of the green infrastructure approach at the city-region level to solving the emerging environmental challenges.

To study the magnetic shielding of buried high‐voltage (HV) cables by adding conductive metal plates on the ground surface above the cables.

The field is calculated with eight rectangular conductive plates above the cables, positioned with their long edge either parallel to the cables or transversal to the cables. Here, the circuit method is used. In this method, the shield is replaced by a grid of straight filaments in which the unknown currents are searched by solving an electrical circuit.

It is observed from the calculation results that it is important to have a perfect electrical connection between adjacent plates. In the area above the shield, an “infinite” contact resistance between neighbouring plates results roughly in double field amplitude compared to the situation with contact resistance zero. The positioning of the rectangular plates (parallel or transversal to the cables) has not much influence on the shielding. The shielding efficiency as a function of the shield size is studied as well. The circuit method is validated by measurements on an experimental setup at reduced scale.

The circuit method is applied to conductive objects and not to ferromagnetic objects.

As the circuit method is rather fast also for 3D geometries with thin plates, the shielding of HV cables can be evaluated in a computationally more efficient way than by using, e.g. finite elements.

The circuit method is already described in the literature. The originality of this paper is the study – by this circuit method – of the effect of several parameters (size of the shield, contact resistance, orientation of the plates) on the shielding efficiency.

To study the magnetic shielding and the losses of non‐linear, hysteretic multilayered shields by using fast to evaluate analytical expressions.

In order to evaluate the shield in the frequency domain, the non‐linear shield is divided into a sufficient number of piecewise linear sublayers. Each sublayer has a permeability that is constant (space independent) and complex (to model hysteresis). This expression for the permeability is found from the Preisach model by a Fourier transform. Once H is known in the entire shield, analytical expressions calculate the eddy current losses and hysteresis losses in the material. The validity of the analytical expressions is verified by numerical experiments.

In the Rayleigh region, the shielding factor of perfectly linear material is better than the one of non‐linear metal sheets, but also the eddy current losses are higher. The results of the optimization show that steel is only a useful shielding material at low frequencies.

The analytical method is valid for infinitely long shields and for weak imposed fields in the Rayleigh region.

As the analytical expressions can be evaluated very fast (in comparison with slow finite elements models), many magnetic shields can be compared in parametric studies.

Analytical expressions exist for the shielding factor and the losses of linear materials. In this paper, the method is extended for non‐linear hysteretic materials. The effects of several parameters (material parameters, incident fields parameters) on the shielding and the losses are shown.

Discusses the book of guidelines for environmental impact assessment on human health published by the Flemish Government in an attempt to introduce conformity in environmental impact statements. Outlines these guidelines and how they should be used in an assessment. Discusses the interrelationship between the environment and human health.

The first purpose of this paper is to identify – by an inverse problem – the unknown material characteristics in a permanent magnet synchronous machine in order to obtain a numerical model that is a realistic representation of the machine. The second purpose is to optimize the machine geometrically – using the accurate numerical model – for a maximal torque to losses ratio. Using the optimized geometry, a new machine can be manufactured that is more efficient than the original.

A 2D finite element model of the machine is built, using a nonlinear material characteristic that contains three parameters. The parameters are identified by an inverse problem, starting from torque measurements. The validation is based on local BH‐measurements on the stator iron.

Geometrical parameters of the motor are optimized at small load (low‐stator currents) and at full load (high‐stator currents). If the optimization is carried out for a small load, the stator teeth are chosen wider in order to reduce iron loss. An optimization at full load results in a larger copper section so that the copper loss is reduced.

The identification of the material parameters is influenced by the tolerance on the air gap – shown by a sensitivity analysis in the paper – and by 3D effects, which are not taken into account in the 2D model.

The identification of the material parameters guarantees that the numerical model describes the real material properties in the machine, which may be different from the properties given by the manufacturer because of mechanical stress and material degradation.

The optimization is more accurate because the material properties, used in the numerical model, are determined by the solution of an inverse problem that uses measurements on the machine.

The use of multiple-capacity rail-guided vehicles (RGVs) has made automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) optimization more complex. The paper performs dual-RGV scheduling considering loading/unloading and collision-avoidance constraints simultaneously as these issues have only been considered separately in the previous literature.

This paper proposes a novel model for dual-RGV scheduling with two-sided loading/unloading operations and collision-avoidance constraints. To solve the proposed problem, a hybrid harmony search algorithm (HHSA) is developed. To enhance its performance, a descent-based local search with eight move operators is introduced.

A group of problem instances at different scales are optimized with the proposed algorithm and the results are compared with those of two other high-performance methods. The results demonstrate that the proposed method can efficiently solve realistically sized cases of dual multi-capacity RGV scheduling problems in AS/RSs.

For the first time in the research on dual multi-capacity RGV scheduling in an AS/RS, two-sided loading/unloading operations and collision avoidance constraints are simultaneously considered. Furthermore, a mathematical model for minimizing the makespan is developed and the HHSA is developed to determine solutions.

Following the “Patient Quality and Safety Contract” launch by the Belgian Federal Authorities, Belgian hospital web sites were scrutinized. The aim of this paper is to assess the presence of some sort of quality management strategy within Belgian Acute Care Hospital digital external communications.

Digital communications were assessed using a pre‐established grid focusing on direct quality improvement testimonies, like a quality manager presence, a quality committee, a specific strategy, etc.

Two hypotheses explain the poor results: structured quality improvement exists in organizations but senior managers do not feel the need to transparently communicate the subject; and quality improvement does not exist in a sufficiently structured way to allow open communication.

The proposed Federal Contract should improve both quality initiative quality and frequency as well as transparent communication to healthcare workers and patients.

The paper underlines the urgent need for Belgian healthcare executives to be aware of structured quality management strategy's importance and to be eager to openly communicate the strategy.

To design an optimal active shield for the mitigation of the magnetic stray field around an induction heating device.

The active shield consists of several compensation coils in series and generates a counter field opposite to the main field. One extra compensation winding – the “generating compensation winding” (GCW) – is positioned close to the excitation coil and works as the secondary winding of a transformer. The power in this winding is used to drive the other compensation coils (the active shield), which are the load of the transformer. A circuit with passive components is inserted between the GCW and the other compensation coils. The shield is optimal if it achieves a high field reduction, while the energy dissipation is low. By using a genetic algorithm (GA) that minimizes an objective function, the optimization algorithm finds the optimal geometry and the optimal current for the GCW and the other compensation coils. The objective function uses time harmonic and axisymmetric finite element calculations.

The transformer driven active shield reduces the magnetic field effectively. It is cheap and easy to build, but it works well only for one frequency.

The shield is sensitive to tuning of the passive circuit and to changes in the frequency of the induction heater.

This transformer driven shield is an alternative for the classical active shield with external power supply.

An active shield that does not need an external power supply is a cheap solution for the shielding of magnetic fields.