Tra Macedoni e Persiani: Ermia di Atarneo

Starting from a passage of Demosthenes’ Fourth Philippic, the essay examines the career of Hermias of Atarneus, in particular the controversial issue of his relationship with Philip II of Macedonia. In this regard, an attempt is made to reject the claim that the arrival of Aristotle at Hermias was desired by Philip to secure a bridgehead for the expedition to Asia, whereas there is no reason to believe that this expedition had already been planned in the first half of the Forties. In fact, it is reasonable to think that the relationship with Hermias, which probably began after Aristotle’s arrival at the Macedonian court in 343, was of no particular importance to Philip

Growth performance, carcass traits and meat quality of growing pigs on different feeding regimes slaughtered at 145\u2009kg BW

This study investigated the effects of feeding regime on growth performance, carcass traits and meat quality of pigs slaughtered at around 145 kg BW. A total of 96 barrows housed in eight pens were allotted to three groups in each pen. One group was fed ad libitum (AL) and the others were fed according to two quasi AL feeding regimes adjusting feed allowances with increasing BW. At slaughterhouse, the weights of the main lean and fat cuts were recorded, and a sample of longissimus lumborum (LL) was taken for physical and chemical analyses. Average daily gain (ADG) approached 940 g d1, and gain to feed ratio (G:F) was close to 0.38. Compared with the AL-feeding regime, the feed restriction reduced the pigs\u2019 ADG (3.5%), feed intake (7.4%) and carcass weight (3%) (p<0.01), but improved their G:F (\ufe4%, p<0.01). Feeding regime did not affect meat quality traits and exerted only minor effects on the weight of primal cuts and on the fatty acid composition of the intramuscular fat of the LL. However, AL-fed pigs tended to yield heavier fat cuts and showed a greater proportion of saturated fatty acid in the LL when compared to restricted feed barrows. In conclusion, moderate restriction in the feeding of medium\u2013heavy pigs seems advisable, as it improves feed efficiency and could cut feed costs compared with the AL-feeding regime without affecting carcass and meat characteristics

Partial Covering Interpretation of the X-Ray Spectrum of the NLS1 1H 0707-495

The X-ray spectrum of 1H 0707-495 obtained with XMM-Newton showing a deep flux drop at ~7 keV (Boller et al. 2002) is studied based on the partial covering concept. The previously inferred extreme iron overabundance can be reduced down to ~3x solar if the hard component gradually steepens at high energies. The spectral shape supports that 1H 0707-495 is an AGN analogue of the galactic black-hole binaries in the soft state. Interpreting the soft excess as the emission from an optically-thick disk, the minimum black hole mass M is estimated to be 2 x 10^6 solar masses from the intrinsic luminosity corrected for partial covering. Based on the slim disk model, the observed disk temperature implies that the luminosity is close to the Eddington limit. The rapid and large flux variations with little change in the spectral shape can also be explained, if not all, as due to changes in the partial covering fraction. Partial covering may account for the large variability characteristics of NLS1.Comment: Accepted for publication in PASJ (2004). 9 page

Three-way Decomposition of Weighted Log-odds Ratio for Customer Satisfaction Analysis

In literature several methods have been proposed for the service quality assessment. A large number of models have been proposed to evaluate Service Quality (Servqual, Normed Quality, Servperf etc.). Starting from the SERVPERF paradigm, in this paper we propose to use Odds Ratio analysis to evaluate Customer Satisfaction. In particular the data has been collected in three-way contingency tables in which the crossed variables are perception evaluations, importance evaluations and dimensions. For each slice we computed the Odds Ratio. Thus a weighted version of log-Odds Ratio Analysis for three-way is proposed and analyzed by the Parafac/Candecomp algorithm. A case study on Patient Satisfaction (PS) survey that was carried out at a Neapolitan government hospital is presented in the last part of the paper in order to show the proposed methods