La danza di Mao. Corpo e rivoluzione nella Nuova Cina (1940-1960)

Il saggio intende tracciare le linee generali e individuare alcuni nodi problematici della storia della danza cinese durante un periodo cruciale per la nascita e l’affermazione della Nuova Cina. Si tratta del periodo compreso tra gli anni Quaranta e Sessanta del secolo scorso, prima quindi della presa del potere da parte della cosiddetta ‘Banda dei Quattro’ e prima dell’inizio della Rivoluzione Culturale la cui veemente iconoclastia avrebbe in gran parte cancellato i risultati raggiunti nel campo delle arti nel ventennio qui da noi analizzato che ha per protagonista Mao Tse-Tung. La questione del recupero delle forme spettacolari etniche e nazionali cinesi acquistò nella polemica contro l’arte borghese decadente significati etici e politici straordinari e per molti versi contraddittori se non paradossali. Il saggio si propone di mettere a fuoco forme e motivi di questo apparente “paradosso comunista” che vide un movimento politico rivoluzionario sposare nel ventennio 1940-1960 forme e generi spettacolari sostanzialmente legati a quel mondo feudale che la lotta politica contribuiva negli stessi anni a far scomparire dalla storia della Cina

Come Il lago dei cigni è diventato Il distaccamento femminile rosso

Il saggio vuole mettere in luce l’importante ruolo culturale della danza in Cina nel Novecento, nel momento del passaggio da impero a nazione, attraverso l’analisi del balletto più rappresentativo della Rivoluzione culturale, Il distaccamento femminile rosso (1964), una delle otto “opere modello” promosse da Mao Zedong in un’ottica di propaganda dell’ideologia comunista. Partendo dal contesto socio-culturale in cui si è sviluppata questa forma di balletto “rivoluzionario”, ispirato paradossalmente non tanto alla danza libera e moderna occidentale quanto al balletto sovietico, l’autore si interroga sulla centralità che assume la figura femminile e sull’uso del suo corpo rispetto alla tradizione teatrale cinese.This essay aims to highlight the important cultural role of dance in twentieth-century China, when it transformed from empire into a nation. The analysis will focus on one of the most representative ballets of the Cultural Revolution, The Red Detachment of Women (1964), one of the Eight Model Operas promoted by Mao Zedong from the point of view of the communist ideology. Starting from the socio-cultural context in which this sort of “revolutionist” ballet developed, inspired paradoxically to the Soviet ballet instead of the free and modern Western dance, the author discusses the relevant position of the female figure and the use of her body as compared to Chinese theatrical tradition

Le funzioni dello Spettacolo

Lo spettacolo di danza nella seconda metà del novecento nella sua relazione con l'esperienza e le teorie americane della performance.The dance in the second half of the twentieth century in its relationship with the American experience and theories of performance

Program schemes with deep pushdown storage.

Inspired by recent work of Meduna on deep pushdown automata, we consider the computational power of a class of basic program schemes, TeX, based around assignments, while-loops and non- deterministic guessing but with access to a deep pushdown stack which, apart from having the usual push and pop instructions, also has deep-push instructions which allow elements to be pushed to stack locations deep within the stack. We syntactically define sub-classes of TeX by restricting the occurrences of pops, pushes and deep-pushes and capture the complexity classes NP and PSPACE. Furthermore, we show that all problems accepted by program schemes of TeX are in EXPTIME

Microelectrode arrays of diamond-insulated graphitic channels for real time detection of exocytotic events from cultured chromaffin cells and slices of adrenal glands

A microstructured graphitic 4x4 multielectrode array was embedded in a single crystal diamond substrate (4x4 {uG-SCD MEA) for real-time monitoring of exocytotic events from cultured chromaffin cells and adrenal slices. The current approach relies on the development of a parallel ion beam lithographic technique, which assures the time effective fabrication of extended arrays with reproducible electrode dimensions. The reported device is suitable for performing amperometric and voltammetric recordings with high sensitivity and temporal resolution, by simultaneously acquiring data from 16 rectangularly shaped microelectrodes (20x3.5 um^2) separated by 200 um gaps. Taking advantage of the array geometry we addressed the following specific issues: i) detect both the spontaneous and KCl-evoked secretion simultaneously from several chromaffin cells directly cultured on the device surface, ii) resolve the waveform of different subsets of exocytotic events, iii) monitoring quantal secretory events from thin slices of the adrenal gland. The frequency of spontaneous release was low (0.12 Hz and 0.3 Hz respectively for adrenal slices and cultured cells) and increased up to 0.9 Hz after stimulation with 30 mM KCl in cultured cells. The spike amplitude as well as rise and decay time were comparable with those measured by carbon fiber microelectrodes and allowed to identify three different subsets of secretory events associated to "full fusion" events, "kiss and-run" and "kiss-and-stay" exocytosis, confirming that the device has adequate sensitivity and time resolution for real-time recordings. The device offers the significant advantage of shortening the time to collect data by allowing simultaneous recordings from cell populations either in primary cell cultures or in intact tissues

Post-correlation radio frequency interference classification methods

We describe and compare several post-correlation radio frequency interference classification methods. As data sizes of observations grow with new and improved telescopes, the need for completely automated, robust methods for radio frequency interference mitigation is pressing. We investigated several classification methods and find that, for the data sets we used, the most accurate among them is the SumThreshold method. This is a new method formed from a combination of existing techniques, including a new way of thresholding. This iterative method estimates the astronomical signal by carrying out a surface fit in the time-frequency plane. With a theoretical accuracy of 95% recognition and an approximately 0.1% false probability rate in simple simulated cases, the method is in practice as good as the human eye in finding RFI. In addition it is fast, robust, does not need a data model before it can be executed and works in almost all configurations with its default parameters. The method has been compared using simulated data with several other mitigation techniques, including one based upon the singular value decomposition of the time-frequency matrix, and has shown better results than the rest.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures (11 in colour). The software that was used in the article can be downloaded from http://www.astro.rug.nl/rfi-software

An operational approach to real-time dynamic measurement of discharge

Based on the maximization of entropy, microwave sensors are becoming standard approaches for converting point surface velocity measurements into discharge. Unfortunately, this conversion is conditioned by cross-section regularity and by the need to take the surface measures above the vertical where the maximum velocity occurs. Cross-section irregularities and the presence of floodplains, vegetation and/or local bed depressions can change the theoretical applicability conditions of the proposed methods and, due to the wandering of the current, the microwave sensor must be continuously moved to track the maximum velocity. We describe the theoretical development and practical application of a new approach to operationally convert surface velocity and water level, measured using a fixed installation, into discharge. The resulting equation that links the surface point velocity measurement to the discharge is a function of two parameters describing the velocity distribution within the cross-section plus an additional correction factor which describes the non-homogeneity of the different vertical slices into which the cross-section is divided. Interesting results of the approach are shown for the gauging section of Tavagnasco on the Dora Baltea River in Italy with high performances both in terms of calibration and validation