The book describes significant multidisciplinary research findings at the Università Politecnica delle Marche and the expected future advances. It addresses some of the most dramatic challenges posed by today’s fast-growing, global society and the changes it has caused, while also discussing solutions to improve the wellbeing of human beings. The book covers the main research achievements made in the social sciences and humanities, and includes chapters that focus on understanding mechanisms that are relevant to all aspects of economic and social interactions among individuals. In line with Giorgio Fuà’s contribution, the interdisciplinary research being pursued at the Faculty of Economics of Università Politecnica delle Marche is aimed at interpreting the process of economic development in all of its facets, both at the national and local level, with a particular focus on profit and non-profit organizations. Various disciplines are covered, from economics to sociology, history, statistics, mathematics, law, accounting, finance and management.

An improved procedure based on the intercept method of measuring the grain size of single-phase microstructures has been developed that provides a quantitative description of the grain size yet is fast. The procedure combines the statistical advantage of using large numbers with the advantage of interpreting the data as a normal distribution, as verified by the chi square test. Application of the procedure to ferritic microstructures representative of best and worst case conditions indicates that accuracies on the order of 3 percent at a 95 percent confidence level can be achieved. In addition, the procedure is sensitive enough to distinguish a randomly mixed duplex grain structure. The measurements associated with a two-phase microstructure can be more precisely quantified through determination of volume fractions using a Pp measurement based on the use of an appropriate grid network, the coefficient of variation statistic, and the Poisson distribution. The analysis is demonstrated for an a priori system for which the percent accuracy and confidence level can be specified for the volume fraction measurement simply from calculation of the average value for Pp.