La Casa del Combattente: pittura murale e scultura monumentale per l'italianità di Trieste

La Casa del Combattente (The House of Fighter) was designed by Umberto Nordio and opened in 1934. It is a very important building in order to achieve Trieste’s Italianism after the First World War. Not only does it become a stylistic model to follow to complete the Oberdan exedra, which partly overlooks, but it keeps inside decorations of great significance for the city, such as sculptor Attilio Selva’s monument to Oberdan and painter Carlo Sbisà’s frescoes, carried out between 1934 and 1935. All these works share the search of Italianism, which was a decisive theme during the Fascist period, all the more so in a “redeemed” city

Criteria of geographic relevance

In the last few years, remarkable advances in mobile computing, telecommunication services, and positioning systems have radically changed the way we seek for geographic information. Smart-phones, mobile internet, and vast amounts of geographic data are becoming available to an ever-growing number of users. This ne

Propagating torsion in the Einstein frame

The Einstein-Cartan-Saa theory of torsion modifies the spacetime volume element so that it is compatible with the connection. The condition of connection compatibility gives constraints on torsion, which are also necessary for the consistence of torsion, minimal coupling, and electromagnetic gauge invariance. To solve the problem of positivity of energy associated with the torsionic scalar, we reformulate this theory in the Einstein conformal frame. In the presence of the electromagnetic field, we obtain the Hojman-Rosenbaum-Ryan-Shepley theory of propagating torsion with a different factor in the torsionic kinetic term.Comment: 10 pages; published versio

Understanding leprosy reactions and the impact on the lives of people affected: An exploration in two leprosy endemic countries.

BACKGROUND: Leprosy reactions, Type-1 and erythema nodosum leprosum, are immune-mediated complications of leprosy, which play a significant role in the morbidity associated with the disease. A considerable amount of literature has been published on the impact of leprosy in general but few studies focus specifically on leprosy reactions. This study aimed to investigate the impact of leprosy reactions on physical, psychological, and social aspects of the lives of people affected by analysing their life experiences and perspectives about leprosy reactions. METHODS/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: This qualitative study involved people affected by leprosy reactions and their family members in two leprosy endemic countries. The data were collected through 66 interviews and 9 focus group discussions (4-6 participants each) in Surabaya, Indonesia, and Purulia, India. Content analysis and conversational analysis were performed. This study found that both types of leprosy reactions were perceived as an unpredictable and painful condition. Leprosy reactions restricted physical activities of the participants, such as going to bathroom, sleeping, eating, and cooking. In the interviews, the respondents expressed a range of emotions and feelings including confusion, sadness, anxiety, and anger. Some recounted that they felt stigmatized and lost opportunities to socialise and earn money. Differences between the two settings were identified. The majority of Indonesian participants preferred to stay at home, and some concealed the diagnosis of leprosy, while most of the Indian respondents continued working up to the time of hospitalization. CONCLUSION: Leprosy reactions are a distressing complication of leprosy and adversely affect the lives of those affected. Individuals reported physical discomfort, distress, anxiety, stigma, and financial hardship and these negative impacts in the physical, psychological, and social spheres reinforced each other. These findings provide important information about a need for early detection and sustained commitment to follow-up care for people with a history of leprosy reactions. More research on new drugs for reactional episodes, tools to measure knowledge, attitude, and practice, and costing study on leprosy reactions treatment are needed. We recommend the development and testing of holistic strategies to improve the management of leprosy reactions

Torsion induces Gravity

In this work the Poincare-Chern Simons and Anti de Sitter Chern Simons gravities are studied. For both a solution that can be casted as a black hole with manifest torsion is found. Those solutions resemble Schwarzschild and Schwarzschild-AdS solutions respectively.Comment: 4 pages, RevTe

Nonsingular, big-bounce cosmology from spinor-torsion coupling

The Einstein-Cartan-Sciama-Kibble theory of gravity removes the constraint of general relativity that the affine connection be symmetric by regarding its antisymmetric part, the torsion tensor, as a dynamical variable. The minimal coupling between the torsion tensor and Dirac spinors generates a spin-spin interaction which is significant in fermionic matter at extremely high densities. We show that such an interaction averts the unphysical big-bang singularity, replacing it with a cusp-like bounce at a finite minimum scale factor, before which the Universe was contracting. This scenario also explains why the present Universe at largest scales appears spatially flat, homogeneous and isotropic.Comment: 7 pages; published versio

Some Aspects of Rotational and Magnetic Energies for a Hierarchy of Celestial Objects

Celestial objects, from earth like planets to clusters of galaxies, possess angular momentum and magnetic fields. Here we compare the rotational and magnetic energies of a whole range of these celestial objects together with their gravitational self energies and find a number of interesting relationships. The celestial objects, due to their magnetic fields, also posses magnetic moments. The ratio of magnetic moments of these objects with the nuclear magnetic moments also exhibits interesting trends. We also compare their gyromagnetic ratio which appears to fall in a very narrow range for the entire hierarchy of objects. Here we try to understand the physical aspects implied by these observations and the origin of these properties in such a wide range of celestial objects, spanning some twenty orders in mass, magnetic field and other parameters.Comment: 12 pages, 37 equation