Successful Social Movements and Political Outcomes: A Case Study of the Women\u27s Movement in Italy: 1943-48

This thesis examines the definition of civil society, social movements and success and then analyzes these variables through a historical case study. It looks at the role of two women’s groups in Italy from 1943-48 as they worked to achieve three political goals (women’s suffrage, greater representation in politics, and the new constitution). The thesis will look at whether the variables necessary to social movement success were present in the movement in helping Italian women in the movement who mobilized and organized to achieve their said goals and objectives. It will conclude with remarks as to the lessons learned from the study of civil society and social movements and why these are important to the establishment of political and democratic goals and objectives. The conclusion will also discuss how social movements, civil society and women are inevitably linked and the impact of active Italian women in this movement on Italian history

Two electrodeposition strategies for the morphology-controlled synthesis of cobalt nanostructures

In this contribution, two different strategies are discussed to synthesize cobalt nanostructures: direct cobalt electrodeposition on a planar aluminum electrode and cobalt electrodeposition into nanoporous alumina templates generated by aluminum anodization (template electrodeposition). In the direct electrodeposition of cobalt on aluminum, cobalt nanoparticles are formed during the early stage of electrodeposition, which causes the depletion of cobalt ions near the electrode. Water reduction then takes place catalyzed by electrodeposited cobalt nanoparticles, which increases the pH near the electrode and can induce cobalt hydroxide precipitation. By varying the electrode potential and the cobalt ion concentration, the interplay between electrochemical growth of cobalt and water reduction could be controlled to induce transition from cobalt hexagonal nano-platelets to nanostructured films composed of cobalt nanoparticles and cobalt hydroxide nano-flakes. Cobalt nanowires can be synthesized by electrodeposition into nanoporous alumina templates generated by aluminum anodization. This approach typically involves the application of alumina templates produced by a two-step anodization procedure: the alumina nanoporous layer generated by a first anodization is dissolved in a chromic acid solution while a very ordered alumina nanoporous layer is produced by a second anodization stage. In accordance with previous studies, this procedure is fundamental to achieve uniform filling of the nanopores in the subsequent electrodeposition stage. In the present study, uniform filling of the nanoporous alumina generated by one-step anodization could be achieved by the electrodeposition of cobalt nanowires. This result was made possible by the application of a novel pulsed electrodeposition strategy

A computational model for real-time calculation of electric field due to transcranial magnetic stimulation in clinics

The aim of this paper is to propose an approach for an accurate and fast (real-time) computation of the electric field induced inside the whole brain volume during a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) procedure. The numerical solution implements the admittance method for a discretized realistic brain model derived from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Results are in a good agreement with those obtained using commercial codes and require much less computational time. An integration of the developed codewith neuronavigation toolswill permit real-time evaluation of the stimulated brain regions during the TMSdelivery, thus improving the efficacy of clinical applications

A MWE Acquisition and Lexicon Builder Web Service

This paper describes the development of a web-service tool for the automatic extraction of Multi-word expressions lexicons, which has been integrated in a distributed platform for the automatic creation of linguistic resources. The main purpose of the work described is thus to provide a (computationally "light") tool that produces a full lexical resource: multi-word terms/items with relevant and useful attached information that can be used for more complex processing tasks and applications (e.g. parsing, MT, IE, query expansion, etc.). The output of our tool is a MW lexicon formatted and encoded in XML according to the Lexical Mark-up Framework. The tool is already functional and available as a service. Evaluation experiments show that the tool precision is of about 80%

Palermo, metropolitan mainstreams with a twist

Palermo, administrative capital of Sicily, with its metropolitan region, hosts around one million people. A city with long history which has been, for long periods, one of the richest cities in Europe. At the end of the first millennium, during the Arab domination, Palermo was described as the most beautiful and happy city in the world. An history of multifaceted dominations the one following the other. In XXth century, the worst days had come. After the the world wars, Palermo was one of the cities in Italy which couldn’t - or wouldn’t - step out of post-war era. The city grew, but who decided how wasn’t the public interest: from the country the Mafiosi had come, willing to take their place in the city. And it was them, with the complicity of the leading political class, to draw the city to come. Remember Vito Ciancimino, member of Democrazia Cristiana, major in the seventies, the one who signed - in just one night - for the demolition of numbers of liberty villas, to be substituted by condominiums. Another paradigmatic story regards the airport, built during the 50s. The technicians had suggested to build it on the east of the metropolitan area, but mysterious powers moved it to the other side, shifting the growth of the city to lands bought at low prices by the Mafia. Who paid the bill? In 1972, when technological aids for flight were not developed, the Alitalia 112 flight collided with Montagna Longa, a mountain near the airport. 115 victims of the Mafia, not even acknowledged as that. And the city? The historical centre, one of the biggest and richest in Europe, remained abandoned, restructuring being less profitable than building new neighbourhoods. In the 90s, with the first left-wing administrations of its history, the city had its ‘spring’. In consequence of 1992 Mafia slaughters, the city reacted, a new season had begun. Buildings destroyed since second world war started to be restructured, the focus moved to the historical centre, a detailed plan was designed, local development was launched with partial results. With the new millennium the spring has shifted to a new autumn. A new administration, right-wing sided, promoted the building - more often the design - of infrastructures and flag projects. But suddenly something happened. A major known just for his wild nights - made of alcohols and young ladies -, dozens of scandals - for instance those regarding the management of waste -, fiscal crisis, a second mandate coming from debated elections - pre-empted ballotpapers were found, judicial enquiries are questioning the validity of the process - have undermined the credibility of the administration. Thus, everything seems blocked, the city is stuck, mainstream pressures are slowed by a viscous atmosphere. What has not stopped is private led neighbourhoods upgrading. Palermo’s metropolitan mainstream are going on, but ancient drifts deviate them. Everything reveals backsides, contradiction is normality. Resistance appears where you may not imagine. We’ve tried to show it in the map, where some stories are strangely mixed, some narratives pertaining to different categories than usual. Palermo, Southern Europe, Metropolitan Mainstream with a twis

Ti/TiO2/Cu2O electrodes for photocatalytic applications: synthesis and characterization

Energy from renewables (solar, photovoltaic, geothermal), is a major challenge for researchers' efforts in reason of the intermittent nature of these energy sources. Systems like photoelectrochemical (PEC) cells are promising devices that allow the direct conversion of solar energy into electric power and/or chemical fuels. The direct conversion of solar energy in fuels can be achieved using photocatalysts, based on semiconductors like TiO2. In this work TiO2 nanotubes were achieved through “one-step” anodization of titanium, a low cost and accurate method which allowed to control dimensions and morphology of the nanostructured Ti/TiO2 electrodes. Central limit for TiO2 photoconversion efficiency is its wide bandgap (i.e. a3.2eV), which limits light absorption to the ultraviolet region (3-5% of the solar radiation). Composite Cu2O/TiO2 systems have attracted much attention: Cu2O is a promising semiconductor material (bandgap 2.0-2.6eV), suitable to absorb visible light. Traditionally, Cu2O deposition techniques include the impregnation of TiO2 with a copper salt and subsequent calcination, but offers little control on sizes, shape and deposit's composition. In this work we developed an electrodeposition method in order to control Cu2O morphology and sizes in the composed Ti/TiO2/Cu2O electrodes

Electrochemical pretreatments of carbon paper and their effect on the electrodeposition of metallic nanostructures

Gas diffusion electrodes (GDEs) represent a fundamental element for the development of gaseous electrochemical cells like water electrolysis reactors and fuel cells. Various technologies and materials are employed in order to obtain a conductive, stable and gas permeable structure. Among them, carbon-based structures such as carbon paper are widely used: their composition allows the diffusion of gaseous reagents and products and simultaneously does not permit the flooding of the gas-diffusion structure by aqueous electrolytes. However, the hydrophobicity of this material may represent a drawback to water-based electrode synthesis like galvanic deposition, and various chemical or thermal pretreatments were developed in the last decades. A new kind of pre-treatment based on electrical oxidation of the carbon paper surface is here described and evaluated. The electro-oxidative method allows a rapid and localized pre-treatment of the carbon paper, avoiding the use of highly reactive chemicals or long thermal treatments, reducing treatment wastes, time loss and electrical consumption. Surface wettability of the carbon paper before and after pretreatment was compared by contact angle analysis. Pre-treated and virgin carbon paper were subsequently electroplated from a copper deposition bath and deposition morphologies were compared, in order to establish the effect of the pre-treatment. Electroplated supports were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) in order to analyze both micro and nanomorphology of the metallic structure

TiO2nanotubes in lithium-ion batteries

In this contribution we report on electrochemical approaches in TiO2 based electrodes synthesis. TiO2 nanotubes (NTs) were synthesized following a facile anodization of titanium sheets. Optimizing the experimental conditions two electrodes with NTs lengths of ∼10 μm (Long) and ∼2 μm (Short), were obtained. At the end of the anodization the amorphous TiO2 (a-TiO2) was thermally treated to promote the conversion in the anatase crystal phase (c-TiO2). Both the Long and Short NTs electrodes were tested for their applications as anodes in lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). A preliminary comparison was performed to evaluate the role of a-TiO2 and c-TiO2 phases. Here, Short a-TiO2 NTs exhibited a fast storage rate respect to Short c-TiO2. Comparing the NTs length, Long a-TiO2 electrodes exhibited the highest specific capacity, close to the theoretical value. Furthermore, all the electrodes tested showed an excellent capacity retention proceeding with Discharge/Charge cycles

In-cell NMR reveals potential precursor of toxic species from SOD1 fALS mutants

Mutations in the superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) gene are related to familial cases of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (fALS). Here we exploit in-cell NMR to characterize the protein folding and maturation of a series of fALS-linked SOD1 mutants in human cells and to obtain insight into their behaviour in the cellular context, at the molecular level. The effect of various mutations on SOD1 maturation are investigated by changing the availability of metal ions in the cells, and by coexpressing the copper chaperone for SOD1, hCCS. We observe for most of the mutants the occurrence of an unstructured SOD1 species, unable to bind zinc. This species may be a common precursor of potentially toxic oligomeric species, that are associated with fALS. Coexpression of hCCS in the presence of copper restores the correct maturation of the SOD1 mutants and prevents the formation of the unstructured species, confirming that hCCS also acts as a molecular chaperone

Osservazioni sul nevo sebaceo di Jadassohn

Scopo del lavoro è illustrare la clinica, l'istologia e l'innovativa terapia ricostruttiva mediante skin expander del nevo di Jadassoh