A servant of Two masters: the Translator Michel Angelo Corai as a Tuscan Diplomat (1599-1609)

On 14 January 1597, as recorded by the archivist in the Archivio di Stato di Mantova on the carta 475 of the Fondo Gonzaga, Fr Giovan Battista Ruffini wrote directly to Manerbio Aderbale, secretary of Duke Vincenzo I’s Chancellery, from Venice. Ruffini rejoices for having arrived in Venice on Christmas day after his journey to the Holy Land; with a tone of satisfaction, he reveals that he has brought a ‘special gift’ back for the Duke. With me I brought back a Syrian, who owns beautiful writings, and can make beautiful things with his hands; I would like you to consent for me to take him to meet His Serenissima Highness … He [the Syrian] has three or four very ancient books in Ajiam-Farsi, Chaldaic, and Arabic and I hope he will have something to please His Highness; he speaks very well; and he writes Arabic, Persian/Farsi, and Turkish. He is a person that I imagine will not displease His Highness; he was the personal scribe of Cigalah when this was the Sinan Pasha of Babylon, he has father, wife, and children in Aleppo but he came with me because he was persecuted by a fellow Turkish

Excised acoustic black holes: the scattering problem in the time domain

The scattering process of a dynamic perturbation impinging on a draining-tub model of an acoustic black hole is numerically solved in the time domain. Analogies with real black holes of General Relativity are explored by using recently developed mathematical tools involving finite elements methods, excision techniques, and constrained evolution schemes for strongly hyperbolic systems. In particular it is shown that superradiant scattering of a quasi-monochromatic wavepacket can produce strong amplification of the signal, offering the possibility of a significant extraction of rotational energy at suitable values of the angular frequency of the vortex and of the central frequency of the wavepacket. The results show that theoretical tools recently developed for gravitational waves can be brought to fruition in the study of other problems in which strong anisotropies are present.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figure

Translators, interpreters, and cultural negotiators : mediating and communicating power from the Middle Ages to the modern era.

This book reconsiders the intellectual, social and professional identity of translators and interpreters when their role involves an intercultural negotiation with institutional powers, be them medieval rulers, modern States, an army of invasion or a dominant culture. Surprisingly little is known of how historical mediations took place, how the mediators worked, and the ways in which transcultural mediations become implicit or explicit forms of power. The chapters seek to address how translators and interpreters can emerge in a position of power by presenting visions, methods, and case studies dealing with a wide thematic range of issues, such as historical concerns, cultural identity, and the role of translation in mediation and cultural transfer. With far-reaching analysis of history, politics, religion and literature, this book will appeal to researchers and students of translation, the history of communication, and institutional power

A selfconsistent theory of current-induced switching of magnetization

A selfconsistent theory of the current-induced switching of magnetization using nonequilibrium Keldysh formalism is developed for a junction of two ferromagnets separated by a nonmagnetic spacer. It is shown that the spin-transfer torques responsible for current-induced switching of magnetization can be calculated from first principles in a steady state when the magnetization of the switching magnet is stationary. The spin-transfer torque is expressed in terms of one-electron surface Green functions for the junction cut into two independent parts by a cleavage plane immediately to the left and right of the switching magnet. The surface Green functions are calculated using a tight-binding Hamiltonian with parameters determined from a fit to an {\it ab initio} band structure.This treatment yields the spin transfer torques taking into account rigorously contributions from all the parts of the junction. To calculate the hysteresis loops of resistance versus current, and hence to determine the critical current for switching, the microscopically calculated spin-transfer torques are used as an input into the phenomenological Landau-Lifshitz equation with Gilbert damping. The present calculations for Co/Cu/Co(111) show that the critical current for switching is $\approx 10^7A/cm^2$, which is in good agreement with experiment.Comment: 23 pages, 16 figure

U.ph.o and mago: Two useful instruments in support of photogrammetric uav survey

In emergency and critical scenarios, the UAV could play a key role in accessing unreachable sites in a safe and rapid way, guaranteeing at the same time the necessary accuracy and precision of the survey. In this context, UAV survey campaigns have been performed by the authors in Norcia (Italy), hit by tragic seismic events in August and October 2016. The surveys were motivated by the artistic and historical value of monuments, the need to plan and design the restoring and retrofitting of buildings, and also to quantify and manage the ruins. Goal of such surveys was the description of the structures geometry with a centimetric precision and a high level of reliability. Recently, the authors have conceived two tools, U.Ph.O (Unmanned Photogrammetric Office) and MAGO (Adaptive Mesh for Orthophoto Generation), dedicated to the planning and restitution phases of the survey, respectively. U.Ph.O. and MAGO are here applied to two different buildings in Norcia, i.e. the Civic Tower of Norcia and San Salvatore Church of Campi di Norcia. The former is a standing-out structure, surrounded by the complex of the historical centre, while the latter is located in an isolated site in the countryside. These features make the survey planning and the orthophoto reconstruction completely different, mainly due to the different optimal shooting geometry and the presence or absence of obstructions

Monitoring of Rain-Induced Landslides for the Territory Protection: The AD-VITAM Project

The authors refer in this paper some of the analyses already done and the planned activities in developing the AD-VITAM Project (InterReg V-A France \u2013 Italy \u2013 E.U. ALCOTRA), which aims to assess the most suitable techniques to obtain a reliable forecasting of rain-induced landslides, in order to enhance the territorial resilience when subject to such a risk. The authors refers about the procedure called LAMP (Landslides Monitoring and Predicting), consisting in an Integrated Hydrological/Geotechnical numerical model (IHG) fed by site-specific installed sensor-network, to help in the start-up calibration of some of the relevant parameters used by the model. The tuned-up simulation models is used to assess the landslide susceptibility to measured/predicted rainfall histories. The implementation of the numerical geotechnical/hydrological models on a GIS platform with regard to some of the selected sites, and the preliminary tests performed on the sensors to be installed on-site in order to monitor the real-time response to rainfalls are briefly described. Thanks to the effective cooperation with the local technicians and the project partners, the final achievements of AD-VITAM could furnish a real support to a better protection of both the natural and the urbanized environments, allowing site-specific warnings and a better hydro-geological risk management capacity

Oscillation of water table due to rainfall: an experience of modeling in GIS

A physically-based Integrated Hydrological-Geotechnical model (IHG) able to assess the rainfallinduced landslide susceptibility was developed, refined and applied in GIS environment along the past years (Passalacqua, 2002; Federici et al., 2014; Bovolenta et al., 2016), showing its reliability. It is a useful instrument to landslide susceptibility evaluations and land-use planning over wide areas. The present paper focuses on the modeling of water table oscillation due to rainfall, comparing different hydrological models