La poesia a teatro: una lettura del Libro di Ipazia di Mario Luzi.

Il mio lavoro di tesi ha come obiettivo l’analisi della prima opera teatrale, Libro di Ipazia, realizzata dal poeta fiorentino Mario Luzi. Mario Luzi non è stato uomo di teatro in senso “tecnico”, ma soprattutto uomo di poesia e questo elemento non può essere trascurato se ben si vogliono comprendere tutte le dinamiche e le scelte condotte dal poeta in fase di elaborazione teatrale

An Analysis of the Influence that Community Demographic Data have on Student Performance on 2012 NJASK 8 Language Arts and Mathematics

This correlational, explanatory, cross-sectional quantitative study intended to analyze the influence that community demographic factors had on student performance on the 2012 Grade 8 New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJ ASK). The data that were analyzed were procured from the New Jersey Department of Education website as well as the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Factfinder. The sample size included all New Jersey school districts with an eighth grade population of 25 or more students. This ultimately equated to a sample size of N = 409. The studied explored the community demographic variables that explained the greatest amount of variance on students scoring Advanced Proficient and Proficient on the 2012 NJ ASK 8 Language Arts and Mathematics. The statistical analysis showed that three independent variables (predictors) explained the greatest amount of variance on student performance in both Language Arts and Mathematics: no high school diploma, all people under poverty level, and employment status. Language Arts scores related an R-square value of 67.2% with a margin of error of +/- 7.1 and Mathematics had an R-square value of 63.2% with a margin of error of +/- 9.8 when the independent variables were analyzed. The statistically significant variables combined to accurately predict the percentage of students scoring Proficient or Advanced Proficient in 89.0% of school districts on the Language Arts section of the 2012 NJ ASK 8 and 89.2% of school districts on the Mathematics section of the 2012 NJ ASK 8. This predictive power is remarkable and provides data that demonstrate undeniably that student performance is strongly influenced by factors that abrogate from teaching and learning in the classroom. The results from this study revealed that community demographic factors influenced student results on the 2012 NJ ASK 8

An Analysis of the Influence that Community Demographic Data have on Student Performance on 2012 NJASK 8 Language Arts and Mathematics

This correlational, explanatory, cross-sectional quantitative study intended to analyze the influence that community demographic factors had on student performance on the 2012 Grade 8 New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJ ASK). The data that were analyzed were procured from the New Jersey Department of Education website as well as the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Factfinder. The sample size included all New Jersey school districts with an eighth grade population of 25 or more students. This ultimately equated to a sample size of N = 409. The studied explored the community demographic variables that explained the greatest amount of variance on students scoring Advanced Proficient and Proficient on the 2012 NJ ASK 8 Language Arts and Mathematics. The statistical analysis showed that three independent variables (predictors) explained the greatest amount of variance on student performance in both Language Arts and Mathematics: no high school diploma, all people under poverty level, and employment status. Language Arts scores related an R-square value of 67.2% with a margin of error of +/- 7.1 and Mathematics had an R-square value of 63.2% with a margin of error of +/- 9.8 when the independent variables were analyzed. The statistically significant variables combined to accurately predict the percentage of students scoring Proficient or Advanced Proficient in 89.0% of school districts on the Language Arts section of the 2012 NJ ASK 8 and 89.2% of school districts on the Mathematics section of the 2012 NJ ASK 8. This predictive power is remarkable and provides data that demonstrate undeniably that student performance is strongly influenced by factors that abrogate from teaching and learning in the classroom. The results from this study revealed that community demographic factors influenced student results on the 2012 NJ ASK 8

Prevalence of occupational voice disorders in teachers

Introduction. In Italy the number of teachers among private and public schools is around one million. Voice disorders are thought to be one of the major occupational hazards of school teaching; in fact the teachers often use their voice with high-intensity, in noisy classes, for a long time and without suitable breaks. The aim of the study was to assess the prevalence of voice problems in teachers of Naples district, identifying risk factors for develop- ing voice pathology. Methods. In this study we evaluated 504 teachers (322 F - 182 M) with an age ranging between 24 and 62 years, randomly choiced in 28 schools of the district of Naples submitted to a questionnaire to determine the prevalence of voice disorders. In our study we have also introduced a comparison group of not-teachers workers of 402 subjects (244 F - 158 M); they were in the same age range as the teacher sample (range: 22- 65 years). The control group was also submitted to a question- naire regarding sociodemographic characteristics, smoking and alcohol use, a self-report of voice problems, voice symptoms, frequency of acute and chronic voice problems, absenteism due to voice problems. Results. The prevalence of reporting a current voice problem was significantly greater in teachers compared with not-teachers (8.7% vs 2.9%), as the prevalence of voice disorders during their lifetime too (51.4% vs 25.9%), c2 = 86.672, p inf. 0.001. Women, compared with men had a higher lifetime prevalence of voice disorders. An other important data evidenced, is that 116 work- ers of the teachers group (23.01%) have been forced, during their professional activity, to miss job for problems related to voice; only 22 subjects of control group (5.47%) instead, missed job for voice troubles. Discussion and Conclusions. This study confirms that teachers have a higher rate of self-reported voice problems than subjects working in other occupations. Teachers, compared with not- teachers, were significantly more likely to have experienced multiple voice symptoms including hoarseness, discomfort while using their voice, difficulty projecting their voice and tiring or change in voice quality after short use. Large proportion of these problems may be preventable and prevention programs need to be developed and evaluated. Italian teachers do not receive any preventive voice training; that, in combination with poor hygienic work conditions, could increase health problems. Thus, voice training of teachers and teacher college students in some cases should be considered as a useful tool to prevent voice disorders

Epidemiological study on vocal disorders in paediatric age

Few studies analyzed the diffusion of vocal alterations especially in childhood. Aim of our study was to quantify the numbers of subjects, in paediatric age, in which dysphonia was diagnosed in our department of Phoniatrics, during a period of 5 years, (January 2002-December 2006), and also to evaluate the influence of some potential risk factors. In the considered period it emerged that the diagnosis of dysphonia was made in 312 children (17.2% of the patients affected from dysphonia), aged between 2 and 16 years old, with a major prevalence amongst males (57%) than females (43%). On the contrary in the adult population the prevalence was: 23% in males and 77% in females. In paediatric population, the most affected range of age is the one between 8 and 14, in both male and female gender (59.6%). In 82.4% of the cases there were vocal fold lesions. The 90.3% of children with vocal fold alterations presented lesions secondary to vocal abuse and misuse and classifiable as functional dysphonia. The proportion of functional dysphonia in our sample was 92%. The 65% of children belonged to large families with more than two children, and the 30% had a family history of dysphonia (brothers, parents). The study of the behavioural characteristics has shown aggressive and hyperactive attitudes in 83% of the cases. Since in the ethiopathogenesis of the childhood dysphonia the tendency to vocal abuse has a predominant role, it would be useful to encourage the diffusion of programmes of information to show the risks linked to this abuse in children, in order to prevent the development of dysphonia in paediatric age

A lumped stress method for plane elastic problemsand the discrete-continuum approximation

This paper proposes a rational method to approximate a plane elastic body through a latticed structure composed of truss elements. The method is based on the introduction of a relaxed stress energy that allows an extension of the original problem to a larger space of admissible stress fields, including stresses concentrated along lines. Use is made of polyhedral approximations of the Airy stress function. The truss analogy is employed to obtain a displacement formulation. The paper includes several numerical applications of the method to sample problems, a numerical convergence study and comparisons with exact solutions and standard finite element approximations

Application of the modified finite particle method to the simulation of the corneal air puff test

We present a numerical procedure for the simulation of the air puff test, a medical procedure used by ophtalmologists for the identification of the Intra Ocular Pressure, and potentially useful for the identification of material properties of the human cornea. The problem involves the modeling of the cornea, that is a biological tissue, modelled as an hyperelastic material, and the aqueous humor, that is, the fluid filling the anterior chamber of the eye, that is treated as a Newtonian fluid, and modelled using a meshfree formulation, useful for the solution of a Fluid-Structure Interaction problem. Fluid and Structure are coupled using a Dirichlet-Neumann iterative approach, which permits the adoption of a partitioned coupling approach and explicit, fast solvers for the different subproblems

Anisotropic constitutive equations and experimental tensile behavior of brain tissue

The present study deals with the experimental analysis and mechanical modeling of tensile behavior of brain soft tissue. A transversely isotropic hyperelastic model recently proposed by Meaney (2003) is adopted and mathematically studied under uniaxial loading conditions. Material parameter estimates are obtained through tensile tests on porcine brain materials accounting for regional and directional differences. Attention is focused on the short-term response. An extrapolation of tensile test data to the compression range is performed theoretically, to study the effect of the heterogeneity in the tensile/compressive response on the material parameters. Experimental and numerical results highlight the sensitivity of the adopted model to the test direction