Terragni y Bontempelli en la casa del Fascio

Peer Reviewe

The influence of religious and cosmological beliefs on the solar architecture of the ancient world

In the earliest civilizations of the Ancient World, sun worship developed in parallel with an understanding of the movement of the stars. That was the origin of an architecture that expressed a number of religious and cosmological beliefs. Studies of ancient archaeological remains have revealed that astronomical orientations strongly influenced the construction of some of the most important ancient architectural monuments. Besides its religious role, the sun regulated the culture of the Ancient World in many of its more practical aspects. For instance, the observation of solar and lunar cycles allowed people to anticipate seasonal change. This provided man with a means of organizing and improving agricultural and livestock activities and, in turn, influenced the construction of the large civil and religious buildings. The complex relationships that developed between cosmology, sun worship, early mathematics, and the orientation of buildings with respect to the position of the sun, also decisively influenced the birth and development of what has come to be known as passive solar design. This article describes some of these influences dating from the megalithic period to the development of Mesopotamian and Egyptian architecture.Postprint (published version

Absolutely Maximally Entangled states, combinatorial designs and multi-unitary matrices

Absolutely Maximally Entangled (AME) states are those multipartite quantum states that carry absolute maximum entanglement in all possible partitions. AME states are known to play a relevant role in multipartite teleportation, in quantum secret sharing and they provide the basis novel tensor networks related to holography. We present alternative constructions of AME states and show their link with combinatorial designs. We also analyze a key property of AME, namely their relation to tensors that can be understood as unitary transformations in every of its bi-partitions. We call this property multi-unitarity.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figures. Comments are very welcom

Long wave generation induced by differences in the wave-group structure

The propagation of bichromatic wave groups with differences in the wave-group structure and its influence in long-wave generation are investigated. The wave-group structure is controlled by the number of wave groups (Ng) within a repetition period. Consequently, an important energy content is measured at lower frequencies than the group frequency fg, in particular, at the repetition frequency fr. The cross-shore evolution of the energy at fr is partly explained by nonlinear energy transfers from the primary frequencies and partly by a breakpoint forcing. When Ng increases, the energy transfer to fr during wave group shoaling reduces. When Ng=3, the amplitude of fr suddenly grows at the breakpoint displaying a node-antinode pattern within the surf zone. In this case, the observed dominance of the breakpoint forcing over the energy transfers is justified by the combination of steep-slope regime and steep-wave conditions. The resultant cross-shore structure is in agreement with the Symonds et al. (1982, https://doi.org/10.1029/JC087iC01p00492) mechanism. A new methodology is proposed to identify the amplitude and phase cross-shore evolution of the radiated and reflected components. Due to energy dissipation of short waves and long waves at fg, the swash zone motion can be dominated by wave motions occurring at fr.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

LOCATE: prediction of plastic hotspots in coastal regions using numerical simulations in a coupled system

Los mecanismos de transporte de basura marina flotante en zonas costeras no se conocen bien, y su seguimiento con modelos numéricos es complejo debido a la geometría, procesos hidrodinámicos y la influencia de los procesos costeros, con estos últimos siendo especialmente complicados de incorporar. La herramienta LOCATE fue desarrollada para simular el movimiento y la acumulación de partículas de plástico en zonas costeras, usando mallas anidadas de diferentes resoluciones y escalas espaciales (2,5 km, 350 m y 70 m) para tener en cuenta los procesos costeros. La herramienta LOCATE acopla datos hidrodinámicos eulerianos con un modelo lagrangiano, requiriendo configuración y optimización para un funcionamiento adecuado. El modelo ha sido aplicado a la costa de Barcelona donde la geometría de costa y procesos costeros pueden actuar como acumuladores de basura y las concentraciones encontradas son comparables a otras zonas altamente contaminadas.Transport mechanisms of floating marine litter (FML) in coastal zones are poorly understood. Tracking FML dispersion with numerical models is complex due to the geometry, hydrodynamic processes and the influence of coastal processes, the latter being especially challenging to incorporate. The LOCATE tool was developed to simulate the motion and accumulation of plastic particles in coastal areas, using nested grids of varying spatial scales and resolutions (2.5 km, 350 m and 70 m) to account for coastal processes. LOCATE couples Eulerian hydrodynamic data with a Lagrangian particle solver, thus requiring configuration and optimization. As proof of concept, the model has been applied to the Barcelona coastline where the coastal geometry and processes can behave as marine litter traps and concentrations are comparable to some other heavily polluted areas