Setup of Modulated Temperature FTIR technique to investigate thermal transitions of polymers

Nell'attività di ricerca dottorale è stata sviluppata una nuova tecnica d’indagine spettroscopica (Modulated Temperature Infrared Spectroscopy, MTFTIR) ed applicata allo studio delle transizioni termiche di polimeri. La tecnica permette lo studio delle variazioni conformazionali e strutturali delle singole macromolecole coinvolte nelle transizioni di fase dei materiali, differenziando inoltre transizioni all’equilibrio termodinamico da stati transienti di non-equilibrio. Ad una prima fase di messa a punto dell’apparato sperimentale e delle metodiche sono susseguiti studi su tre polimeri, il polipropilene isotattico, il polietilentereftalato ed il poli(L-lattide). I risultati MTFTIR, accoppiati ad analisi calorimetriche, hanno evidenziato dei comportamenti peculiari delle catene polimeriche nelle fasi vetrose, liquide e cristalline dei materiali, non indagabili o difficilmente distinguibili mediante altre tecniche sperimentali

Alastair Service, The Architects of London and Their Buildings from 1066 to the Present Day

Book review by Roch-Josef di Lisio. Service, Alastair. The architects of London and their buildings from 1066 to the present day. London: Architectural Press; New York: Architectural Book Pub., 1979

The Greek Achievement: The Birth of Classicism

This realization and enunciation of physical, mathematical, and philosophic principles is the very essence of the classical form. The exactitude of philosophic reasoning and the precision of mathematics, both of which embody the nature of proportion, coupled with the divine gift (divine because indefinable) of the aesthetic experience constitute the Classical form of the Greek art and architecture of that supreme moment in the history of the Greek achievement, the fifth century B.C. Exactitude, precision, proportion, and aestheticism are key concepts, key words in the understanding of the principle of classicism. That the classical form has prevailed throughout the long course of Western civilization testifies to its deep-rooted appeal not only visually and emotionally but also to its philosophic and mathematical truth, precision, and brilliance: those pristine Greek qualities that permeate the very substance and spirit of the classical form in all its manifestations. The Greek achievement — the classical achievement — was and is the achievement of Western man and remains the quintessential achievement of Western culture. This article is based on a lecture delivered at the The Greeks Institute, a series of lectures presented to secondary school teachers in the Bridgeport Public Schools during the spring of 1989. Co-sponsored by the Connecticut Humanities Council, Sacred Heart University, and the Bridgeport Public Schools, the purpose of the institute has been to provide teachers with an interdisciplinary exploration of classical Greece for the purposes of professional enrichment and curriculum development

Thematic Maps for Land-Use Planning and Policy Decisions in the Calaggio Stream Catchment Area

Abstract Please click here to download the map associated with this article. Thematic maps of elevation, slope angle, lithology, soil slips and landslides, land-use and stream erosional effects are presented for the description of the geoenvironmental features of the Calaggio Stream catchment area. The Calaggio basin is 314 km2 and is located in the Campanian Apennines (Southern Italy) between the Campania and Puglia regions. The maps were produced within a Geographical Information System (GIS) based on a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) derived from cartographic digitization. The maps presented report the main territorial features of the studied area, which will be used for landuse management and mapping of: landslides and susceptibility to water runoff erosion, desertification vulnerability, landscape conservation, Physical Environmental and Territorial Unit determinations (PET Unit sensu Amatucci et al., 2005), etc. In this paper we show, as a final product of various GIS environment operations, the PET U..

Digital Methods to Study (and Reduce) the Impact of Disinformation

Social media have democratized communication but have led to the explosion of the so-called "fake news" phenomenon. This problem has visible implications on global security, both political (e.g.the QANON case) and health ( anti-Covid vaccination and No-Vax fake news). Models that detect the problem in real time and on large amounts of data are needed. Digital methods and text classification procedures are able to do this through predictive approaches to identify a suspect message or author. This paper aims to apply a supervised model to the study of fake news on the Twittersphere to highlight its potential and preliminary limitations. The case study is the infodemic generated on social media during the first phase of the COVID-19 emergency. The application of the supervised model involved the use of a training and testing dataset. The different preliminary steps to build the training dataset are also shown, highlighting, with a critical approach, the challenges of working with supervised algorithms. Two aspects emerge. The first is that it is important to block the sources of bad information, before the information itself. The second is that algorithms could be sources of bias. Social media companies need to be very careful about relying on automated classificatio

Platformization hate. Patterns and algorithmic bias of verbal violence on social media

The paper presented is an analysis of the Hate Speech of tweets during the implementation of the EU's Digital Covid Certificate policy. The work starts from the assumption that Hate Speech is an often "submerged" phenomenon because it also includes some forms recognized as "incivility." Therefore, there are two research questions: the first asks what are the new categories of "hate" that emerge in the EU Digital Covid Certificate policy debate, while the second questions the methodological implications on the use of algorithms in detecting the phenomenon. The results we arrived at are, from a substantive point of view, of good interest because they show us how it is possible to witness a new kind of online hatred. However, the disagreements we encountered in constructing an unambiguous definition of HS for the supervised algorithm leave open many questions. Among them is the fact that the differences between HS, incivility, and even freedom of expression can be very small. In the context of large social platforms, where the criteria of the algorithm are not always explicit and are also the policies of the platform, this could be a proble

MicroRNA expression in B-cell lymphomas

Tesis doctoral inédita, leída en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Biología Molecular. Fecha de lectura: 04-06-201