In this paper we review the dry port concept and its outfalls in terms of optimal design and management of freight distribution. Some optimization challenges arising from the presence of dry ports in intermodal freight transport systems are presented and discussed. Then we consider the tactical planning problem of defining the optimal routes and schedules for the fleet of vehicles providing transportation services between the terminals of a dry-port-based intermodal system.

The modeling of various physical questions in plasma kinetics and heat conduction lead to nonlinear boundary value problems involving a nonlocal operator, such as the integral of the unknown solution, which depends on the entire function in the domain rather than at a single point. This talk concerns a particular nonlocal boundary value problem recently studied in [1] by J.R.Cannon and D.J.Galiffa, who proposed a numerical method based on an interval-halving scheme.

We introduce a new connection between density functional theory and kinetic theory. In particular, we show that the Kohn-Sham equations can be reformulated as a macroscopic limit of the steady-state solution of a suitable single-particle kinetic equation. We derive a Boltzmann-like equation for a gas of quasiparticles, where the potential plays the role of an external source that generates and destroys particles, so as to drive the system towards its ground state.

Inversion of the radiative transfer equation to retrieve the vertical profile of temperature from high resolution radiance spectra is an important problem in remote sensing of atmosphere. Because of its non linearity and ill conditioning, regularization techniques have been resorted in order to reduce the error of the retrieval.

The effect of the nitrification inhibitor 3,4-dimethylphyrazole phosphate (DMPP) on N-fertilized crop growth and soil N2O emissions were studied at two experimental sites in Southern Italy, characterised by a Mediterranean climate and different soil texture. The experiments were a randomized block design of two treatments: crop fertilized with NH4NO3 (considered the control treatment) or amended with DMPP plus NH4NO3 (considered the DMPP treatment).