Kufic ornamental motifs in the wall paintings of six churches in Southern Italy

The churches we are concerned with here are in South eastern Italy where, more than in other parts of Southern Italy (with the exception of Calabria),the Byzantine presence and Byzantine influence were obviously strong. Islam arrived on the Apulian coast from the 11th to 13th century was often mediated by Byzantium: this is verifiable in techniques, iconographies and styles. One case in particular concerns the epigraphic characters of Islamic derivation which abound in many media and, specifically, in architectural decoration: in other words, stone, stucco, mosaic, painting and so on. But, if the Byzantine mediation is evident, it is very important to observe that the labour is always local. We will look at six churches. They do not constitute a «catalogue», but offer a good «sample» of pseudo-kufic of the 13th century. First of all, I wish to present the map of the six churches with frescoes. Four of them are in Apulia: Gravina (province of Bari), Massafra (province of Taranto), Squinzano (on the road between Lecce and Brindisi) and Otranto (both provinces of Lecce). The other two are in the present day Lucania (or Basilicata): Matera and the former town of Anglona, near Tursi (province of Matera). Furthermore, I wish to specify that three of them (those in Massafra, Gravina and Matera) are rock churches, small chapels hewn out of the rock, without doors

Simplified Bethe-Salpeter Description of Basic Pseudoscalar-Meson Features

We assess a description of pseudoscalar mesons as pseudo-Goldstone bosons by its compatibility with some Gell-Mann-Oakes-Renner-type relation.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, contributed to "QCD@Work 2018 - International Workshop on Quantum Chromodynamics: Theory and Experiment" (25 - 28 June 2018, Matera, Italy

Zygmunt Bauman’s Ethical Warnings in the Area of Economics. The Third Millennium’s Perspective

Zygmunt Bauman is not only a sociologist and philosopher reputable in the world of science, he is also a father figure for people interested in the phenomenon of globalization. Bauman investigates how current economic and political changes influence the lives of particular societies. It was important to underline that also economists can make use of Bauman’s ideas but with a few reservations That is why the following crucial areas were proposed relating to economic aspects: the meaning of consumptionism and wastage; global inequalities; the reasons and consequences of the global economic crisis, and some heterodox matters such as happiness, welfare, and well-being, all of which can be helpful in understanding the multidimensional globalization process

Materadio, a Radio Airing in View of Matera European Capital of Culture 2019

Radio continues to be capable of showing a good level of an audience in comparison to TV and the new media that arose in the Internet era. In Italy, the State Broadcasting RAI (Italian Radio Television) maintains its traditional role of being an official voice, and a credible place of quality shows, especially in the cultural sector. Private free/democratic radio stations are traditionally oriented to the easy listening audience or in supporting selected political parties. RAI runs three traditional radio stations, of which Radio 3 is the cultural channel. Its palimpsest is dedicated to any aspect of culture and highbrow music. In 2011, the chief of the committee for the future candidate European Capital of Culture (ECoC) Matera had the intuition to propose a radio transmission regarding the city of Matera to the Director of Radio 3. Thus, Materadio – la festa di Radio 3 was born, being the very first radio airing specifically dedicated to a Southern Italian city. This paper reports the story of Materadio from its birth until today and its role in supporting the candidacy of Matera in ECoC versus other Italian competing cities. It also reports the ongoing organization in view of Matera 2019. Direct observations during the two preceding years and face-to-face interviews to actors involved in organizing Matera 2019 have been made. Results show how the discreet and indirect sustain of Materadio to the ECoC candidacy has been important in two directions. Outwards, because it allowed important contacts with an audience very keen to cultural events. Inwards, because the airing of Materadio from the very place of Matera caused the popular involvement, an integral part of the Matera 2019 strategy

Lo stato di conservazione dei Sassi di Matera: correlazione tra il degrado e le condizioni ambientali attraverso tecniche di analisi spaziale

In questo contributo è descritto un metodo per la valutazione dello stato di conservazione dei Sassi di Matera, sito iscritto nella lista del Patrimonio Mondiale dell'UNESCO dal 1993 (i Sassi e il Parco delle Chiese Rupestri di Matera) e recentemente elett

On the value set of small families of polynomials over a finite field, II

We obtain an estimate on the average cardinality of the value set of any family of monic polynomials of Fq[T] of degree d for which s consecutive coefficients a_{d-1},...,a_{d-s} are fixed. Our estimate asserts that \mathcal{V}(d,s,\bfs{a})=\mu_d\,q+\mathcal{O}(q^{1/2}), where \mathcal{V}(d,s,\bfs{a}) is such an average cardinality, \mu_d:=\sum_{r=1}^d{(-1)^{r-1}}/{r!} and \bfs{a}:=(a_{d-1},...,a_{d-s}). We also prove that \mathcal{V}_2(d,s,\bfs{a})=\mu_d^2\,q^2+\mathcal{O}(q^{3/2}), where that \mathcal{V}_2(d,s,\bfs{a}) is the average second moment on any family of monic polynomials of Fq[T] of degree d with s consecutive coefficients fixed as above. Finally, we show that \mathcal{V}_2(d,0)=\mu_d^2\,q^2+\mathcal{O}(q), where \mathcal{V}_2(d,0) denotes the average second moment of all monic polynomials in Fq[T] of degree d with f(0)=0. All our estimates hold for fields of characteristic p>2 and provide explicit upper bounds for the constants underlying the \mathcal{O}--notation in terms of d and s with "good" behavior. Our approach reduces the questions to estimate the number of Fq--rational points with pairwise--distinct coordinates of a certain family of complete intersections defined over Fq. A critical point for our results is an analysis of the singular locus of the varieties under consideration, which allows to obtain rather precise estimates on the corresponding number of Fq--rational points.Comment: 36 page

On the computation of rational points of a hypersurface over a finite field

We design and analyze an algorithm for computing rational points of hypersurfaces defined over a finite field based on searches on "vertical strips", namely searches on parallel lines in a given direction. Our results show that, on average, less than two searches suffice to obtain a rational point. We also analyze the probability distribution of outputs, using the notion of Shannon entropy, and prove that the algorithm is somewhat close to any "ideal" equidistributed algorithm.Comment: 31 pages, 5 table