Can Practical Wisdom Mitigate the Negative Effects of Rule-following and Hyper-codification?

This article sets out to explain how practical wisdom, supported by rationality, can play a fundamental role in management and combat the main problems of rule-following and hyper-codification. The systematic use of Big Data, collected via the ever-increasing adoption of technology, has generated a large increase in the degree of standardisation of company procedures concerning not only physical and technical issues but above all decision-making. Applied to the solution of repetitive, easily codified problems, standardisation increases the level of efficiency, but when used for the resolution of complex problems it may partially, or even completely, preclude the pursuance of the common good. This may occur through the setting of rules which are not capable of fully describing reality, and their inappropriate use, which may lead, through their unthinking application, to a lack of morality, and even to the side-lining of earnings opportunities. We believe that practical wisdom is able to interact with necessary, unavoidable codification systems and rules to provide the right interface with circumstances, becoming a part of the decision-making process in its own right and not just a viewing lens for use retrospectively to verify whether the outcomes of decisions taken have been effective in pursuing the common good

Linear circuit models for on-chip quantum electrodynamics

We present equivalent circuits that model the interaction of microwave resonators and quantum systems. The circuit models are derived from a general interaction Hamiltonian. Quantitative agreement between the simulated resonator transmission frequency, qubit Lamb shift and experimental data will be shown. We demonstrate that simple circuit models, using only linear passive elements, can be very useful in understanding systems where a small quantum system is coupled to a classical microwave apparatus

Strontium Isotope MC-ICP-MS Analysis of Hair Strands from Human Mummies: Transhumance Pastoralism of Early-Modern Individuals between Northern and Central Italy

Mammal hair is formed by a scleroprotein, namely keratin, composed by some major elements (C, N, H, O, S), but including also trace elements such as Sr, Pb, Fe, K, Na and Ca. The latter are fixed through diet and exposure to exogenous sources, mainly water and air. Given that the average human scalp hair growth is ~1 cm/month, timeresolved hair sampling yields information about a specific period, reflecting the elemental and isotopic composition of the diet and environment at that time. The 87Sr/86Sr ratio of mammal tissues is generally directly correlated to the local bioavailable strontium, providing the chance to reconstruct the individual movements in a given time interval. In this work, we developed our protocol to analyse low-Sr concentration mammal hairs for their 87Sr/86Sr ratio by Neptune MC-ICP-MS. We tested the method on a modern individual who traveled cyclically between Italy and Brazil. Hair strands were sampled with a time resolution of 1 to 2 months, yielding time resolved isotopic variations from the highest radiogenic ratios of the São Paulo area to the lower ones of Modena waters. Thus, the Sr analysis of hair has been applied to human mummies (Roccapelago, Modena, 16th-18th cent.). Hair strands were cut in several sub-samples with different length (time-resolution) in relation to the amount of available material. The best achieved time-resolution was of 3 months in a 12-cm-long strand. These samples revealed cyclical human movements from Roccapelago to the high radiogenic area of the Tuscan Magmatic Province. Historical documents attest a high frequency of human seasonal travels to Tuscany, up to the Grosseto area, likely linked to the exploitation of transhumance pastoralism

Melt-Rock Interaction at Mantle Conditions: Evidences from Finero Gabbroic Dykes

The Finero Phlogopite-Peridotite (FPP) is a worldwide famous mantle massif recrystallized through several events of melt migrations. These events have enriched the FPP in hydrous phases and crustal components and have been commonly interpreted as related to a subduction/post orogenic geodynamic setting. The last of these metasomatic events has produced composite sapphirine-bearing gabbroic dykes, interpreted as the result of the interaction of channelized migrating melts with the host rock in a two-steps intrusion process. In the first step, the melt reacted with the FPP rocks and evolved by fractional crystallization of amphibole cumulates. In the second step, the evolved melt reacted with the first cumulates producing magmatic sapphirine and segregating plagioclase-rich bands containing abundant apatites at the nucleus of the dike. New data suggest, however, a more complex evolution. New O and in situ Sr isotopes on minerals suggest that the gabbroic dykes have evolved from melt(s) that progressively were contaminated by the interaction with the FPP rocks during its fractionation. The δ18O increases from 5.81‰ in orthopyroxenes at the dykes border to ~6.90‰ in cumulitic amphiboles and 8.60‰ in plagioclases. The 87Sr/86Sr values for plagioclase and coexisting apatite show isotopic disequilibrium between the two phases (plagioclases at 0.70474 ± 0.00033, n=23, and apatites at 0.70369 ± 0.00025, n=6). These isotopic variations could be explained with an AFC-like process between mantle-derived melt(s) and a crustal-enriched host (the FPP). In situ Sr isotope analyses were performed at the CIGS laboratory of the Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia using a Thermo Fisher Scientific Neptune™ coupled to a 213 nm Nd:YAG laser ablation system (New Wave Research™). During the analytical sessions a new in house plagioclase reference material for Rb-Sr systematic, named BC84, has been successfully tested and used

Suspected limited mobility of a Middle Pleistocene woman from Southern Italy: strontium isotopes of a human deciduous tooth

We present the Sr isotopic composition of enamel of the most ancient deciduous tooth ever discovered in Italy to assess human mobility in Middle Pleistocene. Reconstructing ancient mobility is crucial for understanding human strategy at exploiting temporally and spatially patchy resources, with most studies focusing on indirect evidences, ultimately affecting our interpretation on hominin territoriality and energetic costs invested by hominin groups. Here, we use the high spatial resolution and micro-destructivity options offered by the Laser Ablation Multi-Collector Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry technique, to determine the (87)Sr/ (86)Sr intra-tooth variability of a human deciduous incisor from the Middle Pleistocene layers of the Isernia La Pineta site (Italy). We compared these data with the Sr isotopic signature of local micro-mammals, the broadest home-range of the macro-mammals and with modern plant samples. Our study reveals that while macro-mammals have possibly migrated through the landscape for up to 50\u2009km, the pregnant woman from Isernia was probably local, given that the isotopic ratio of the enamel falls within the local range and is comparable with the signature of the local plants in a radius of 10\u2009km. This is the first case study of Sr isotopic composition determination in such ancient deciduous tooth

Constraining the fluid source of Miocene seep carbonates using radiogenic Sr isotopes (Corella outcrop, northern Apennines, Italy)

Analisi isotopiche e biostratigrafiche su corpi carbonatici metanoderivati dell'Appennino settentrional

Machine learning-based Sr isoscape of southern Sardinia: A tool for bio-geographic studies at the Phoenician-Punic site of Nora

Since prehistoric times, the island of Sardinia—in the western Mediterranean—has played a leading role in the dynamics of human population and mobility, in the circulation of raw materials and artefacts, idioms and customs, of technologies and ideas that have enriched the biological, linguistic and cultural heritage of local groups. For the Phoenician and Punic periods (from the 9th to the 3rd centuries BCE), the ancient site of Nora—in southern Sardinia—represents an emblematic case in the study of migratory phenomena that occurred on the Island from the Iron Age until the Roman conquest. Despite the importance of exploring (and characterising) such movements from a wider bio-cultural perspective, the application of bio-geochemical tools for geographical provenance to the ancient skeletal populations of Sardinia is yet scarce. The present work is the first step towards filling this gap with the development of the first isoscape of southern Sardinia using new bioavailable Sr isotope data and a machine-learning approach. From a geolithological point of view, Sardinia is rather heterogeneous and requires detailed studies to correctly assess the distribution of the isotopic signature of bioavailable Sr. The random forest model employed here to construct the Sr isoscape uses several external environmental and geological variables. The most important predictors are related to age and bedrock type, with additional input from local soil properties. A 10-fold cross-validation gives a mean square error of 0.0008 and an R-squared of 0.81, so the model correctly predicts the 87Sr/86Sr ratio of unknown areas. By using a Bayesian provenance assignment workflow, we tested the isoscape here produced to determine the geographic origin and the mobility of archaeological and modern fauna collected from the Phoenician-Punic site of Nora and the surrounding Pula Plain. Our results indicate that archaeological sheep and goats (87Sr/86Sr < 0.7090) are compatible with areas close to Nora and Pula Plain, in agreement with archaeological evidence of pastoralism in those areas. Modern wild and domesticated fauna (87Sr/86Sr > 0.7090) show compatibility with several natural and anthropogenic locations in southern Sardinia, as expected based on modern species distribution data. Finally, we discuss the large Sr isotopic variability of the Nora baseline, where human mobility studies of human cremated and inhumed individuals are currently underway

Unbalanced sex-ratio in the Neolithic individuals from the Escoural Cave (Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal) revealed by peptide analysis

The sex profile estimation of pre-historic communities is often complicated by the commingled and scattered nature of skeletal assemblages. Demographic profiles are usually lacking and provide very truncated representations of these populations but proteomic analysis of sex-specific amelogenin peptides in tooth enamel brings new promise to these studies. The main objective was to obtain the sex profile of the human assemblage recovered from the Neolithic cave-necropolis of Escoural (Montemor-o-Novo, southern Portugal) through liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. The secondary objective was to analyse sex-specific linear enamel hypoplasias (LEH), and to test the reliability of canine odontometric sex estimation. Sex estimation through peptide analysis was carried out in 36 left permanent canines which were macroscopically examined for the presence of LEH. The canine buccolingual diameter was used for odontometric sex estimation. The obtained sex ratio (0.5:1, M:F) is biased to female individuals, probably due to cultural factors since the natural sex ratio of the human population falls between 0.95:1 and 1.02:1 (M:F). A high frequency of LEH was observed, but with no significant sexual differences (p = 0.554). The mean LEH age of onset occurred at 3 years of age, with no significant differences between the sexes (p = 0.116), and was possibly related to the weaning process. Odontometric sex estimation revealed a correct classification of 80%, with a high number of males mistakenly attributed to females. This study is one of the largest samples subjected to peptide analysis, and thus demonstrates its usefulness on the research of commingled and scattered skeletal assemblages