Popular songs, social struggles and conflictual identities in Mestre-Marghera (1970s-1980s)

Through the analysis of popular song the chapter examines some of the ways in which local radical identities have been transformed as a result of changes in radical cultural practices in Mestre-Marghera, the industrial district in the mainland of Venice

Common vocabularies for collective intelligence - work in progress

Web based applications and tools offer a great potential to increase the efficiency of information flow and communication among different agents during emergencies. Among the different factors, technical and non technical, that hinder the integration of an information model in emergency management sector, is a lack of a common, shared vocabulary. This paper furthers previous work in the area of ontology development, and presents a summary and overview of the goal, process and methodology to construct a shared set of metadata that can be used to map existing vocabulary. This paper is a work in progress report

Digital technologies for virtual recomposition : the case study of Serpotta stuccoes

The matter that lies beneath the smooth and shining surface of stuccoes of the Serpotta family, who used to work in Sicily from 1670 to 1730, has been thoroughly studied in previous papers, disclosing the deep, even if empirical, knowledge of materials science that guided the artists in creating their master- works. In this work the attention is focused on the solid perspective and on the scenographic sculpture by Giacomo Serpotta, who is acknowledged as the leading exponent of the School. The study deals with some particular works of the artist, the so-called "teatrini" (Toy Theater), made by him for the San Lorenzo Oratory in Palermo. On the basis of archive documents and previous analogical photogrammetric plotting, integrated with digital solutions and methodologies of computer- based technologies, the study investigates and interprets the geometric-formal genesis of the examined works of art, until the prototyping of the whole scenic apparatus.peer-reviewe

Risk analysis in the surrounding areas of one-runway airports: A methodology to preliminary calculus of PSZs dimensions

The risk analysis of aeronautical accidents has been faced in several countries in order to plan the territory around airports. In the past, many accidents have had serious consequences in the surrounding of airports. To protect the dwellers in these zones, Sapienza University of Rome has studied a risk assessment model of air crash accident during take-off or landing. In force of an agreement with the National Aviation Authority, the major Italian airports have been analyzed. These studies have highlighted the opportunity to know the influence on the territory of the variation of the traffic volume. This knowledge can be particularly useful for forecasting the impact on the territory in a preliminary phase of the master planning activity of the airport. The influence of the traffic volume and the types of aircraft on the sizes of safety areas around airports has been studied with a computer program developed by the authors. As a result of this first analysis, a simplified approach to study the extension of the Public Safety Zones around an airport is presented. This method calculates the area and the main dimensions of PSZs for a number of representative cases of one-runway airports with more than 30000 operations per year. In Europe, there are a large number of one-runway airports and they have similar operational and traffic conditions. Therefore, the results here presented can be applied for a preliminary study to all the one-runway airports, having the same level of traffic of the airports considered in this paper

Fractional differential equations solved by using Mellin transform

In this paper, the solution of the multi-order differential equations, by using Mellin Transform, is proposed. It is shown that the problem related to the shift of the real part of the argument of the transformed function, arising when the Mellin integral operates on the fractional derivatives, may be overcame. Then, the solution may be found for any fractional differential equation involving multi-order fractional derivatives (or integrals). The solution is found in the Mellin domain, by solving a linear set of algebraic equations, whose inverse transform gives the solution of the fractional differential equation at hands.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figure

Fractional Spectral Moments for Digital Simulation of Multivariate Wind Velocity Fields

In this paper, a method for the digital simulation of wind velocity fields by Fractional Spectral Moment function is proposed. It is shown that by constructing a digital filter whose coefficients are the fractional spectral moments, it is possible to simulate samples of the target process as superposition of Riesz fractional derivatives of a Gaussian white noise processes. The key of this simulation technique is the generalized Taylor expansion proposed by the authors. The method is extended to multivariate processes and practical issues on the implementation of the method are reported.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure

Intergenerational family ties and the diffusion of cohabitation in Italy

Cohabitation has been spreading in the population during the last thirty years, and this is one of the most striking aspects of wider social changes that have taken place throughout the industrialized world. However, this change did not take place uniformly across Europe. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the current debate around the compatibility of cohabitation experiences with the Italian cultural context. Using an individual-level diffusion approach we obtain results that are consistent with the crucial role that family ties play in the choice of cohabitation in place of (or before) marriage.cohabitation, diffusion, family ties, first union, Italy

Lobbying for Education in a Two-sector Model

In a two-period model, firms specialized in two different sectors lobby to induce the government to subsidize the type of education complementary to their production. Lobbying is endogenous. We show that, if lobbying is not costly, both sectors will lobby in equilibrium and education policy will induce the same skill composition that would be chosen by the social planner. However, if lobbying is costly, only one sector finds it profitable to offer monetary contribution and direct resources towards the type of education required by its production. Which sector will engage in lobbying depends on relative size, productivity and price in the two sectors.

The impact of health behaviors and life quality on gender differences in mortality

Since gender-specific mortality differences are known a great deal of research has been conducted on this subject. The resulting hypotheses for explaining male excess mortality can be sub-divided into two basic categories: the biological approach (focusing on biological and genetic factors) and the non-biological approach (focusing on behavioral and environmental factors). It has been proven impossible to explain the observed trends in mortality differences between women and men by relying solely on one of the two groups of theories. Recent studies indicate that the majority of the female survival advantage can be attributed to gender behaviors while the impact of biological factors seems to be limited to 1-2 years in life expectancy at birth. The main goal of this paper is to analyze the impact of gender-specific health behaviors and gender differences in life quality using micro level data for Western Germany.Germany, life styles, mortality, sex differentials