Jean de La Fontaine, Favole (Libri I-VI)

«La plus part des fables d’Ésope ont plusieurs sens et intelligences: ceux qui les mythologisent, en choisissent quelque visage, qui cadre bien à la fable: mais pour la plupart, ce n’est que le premier visage et superficiel: il y en a d’autres plus vifs, plus essentiels et internes, auxquels ils n’ont sceu penetrer». Così Montaigne (Essais, II, 10), che certo ha presenti, oltre agli incunaboli del genere, Esopo e Fedro, anche le riscritture favolistiche rinascimentali, come La moral filosofia..

Waiting time phenomena forced by critical boundary conditions in classical diffusion problems

This paper revisits some very classical initial-boundary value problems for parabolic equations, providing simple examples in which the occurrence of flux discontinuities at the boundary when the unknown function reaches some critical value may give rise to a waiting time phenomenon. A physical interpretation could be a modification of the surface of the considered body taking place at the mentioned critical value, affecting the way the body interacts with the surroundings. The waiting time, whose length (finite or infinite) is a priori unknown allows the system to evolve gradually through the critical state. Some numerical simulations are also presented

La parola silenzio

Questo lavoro indaga la figura del silenzio, come si sviluppa in alcuni poemi di Paul Celan. In particolare, analizza l’argumentum e silentio, un’inferenza vera basata sul tacere o sulla mancanza di risposta. In questo silenzio è in gioco la morte della lingua. La lingua tedesca, che è la lingua materna del poeta. Violentata dai nazionalsocialisti e annientata nei forni crematori. La domanda riguarda come sia possibile continuare a scrivere poesia in questa lingua, e come la poesia possa sostenere ancora il mandato etico che le impone di sottrarsi a quella violenza e all’imbarbarimento. Non solo, ma anche come sia possibile, attraverso la poesia stessa, riappropriarsi di quella lingua come lingua materna. A tale proposito, Celan propone un erschwiegene Wort, una parola che sia vinta, conquistata, strappata al silenzio dell’annientamento, e allo stesso tempo una parola silenziata: la parola silenzio. Una parola detta in silenzio che riconduca il più vicino possibile alle spoglie di quella lingua; tanto vicina da mostrarne l’unicità, da rivelarne le pause e le scansioni che la definiscono in proprio rispetto ad ogni altra. In tal senso, si potrebbe affermare che ogni lingua è materna nel modo in cui trova ritmo e misura rispetto a quanto non può dire. Al silenzio in cui tace (e muore) e su cui si articola, parla ed è messa in funzione. La lingua compie un’azione. Nella poesia di Celan è indicata dal termine Spruch. Gesto, come propongo di tradurre: attività e sospensione allo stesso tempo. Il gesto dà corso all’azione e la lascia in sospeso, non la conclude. Solo così può mostrare che la lingua c’è ed è materna. E che, in fine, le parole di questa non sono che ‘puri gesti’ – Unworten, come li chiama Celan. Testimoni veridici di qualcosa che c’è perché non c’è più.My work analyzes the figure of silence and the way it develops in some of Paul Celan’s poems. More in details, it examines the argumentum e silentio, a real inference based on withholding or lacking an answer. In this silence the death of the German language, Celan’s own language, is at stake. It was violated by the Nazis and slaughtered in the crematoriums. The question is how can it be possible to keep on writing poetry in this language and how poetry can still retain the ethical power which would force to avoid that violence, that barbarization. And furthermore, how can that language possibly reclaim itself as his mother tongue. In this regard, Celan proposes an «erschwiegene Wort», a word which is defeated, conquered, torn from the silence of destruction and, at the same time, a silenced word: the word silence. A word said in silence which could lead closer to the remains of that language, so close to reveal its pauses, its articulations, its own uniqueness. Accordingly, we could state that each language is motherly when it finds its rhythm and its measure around something it cannot pronounce. The language takes action. In Celan’s poetry this action is suggested by the word «Spruch» which I suggested to be translated through a linguistic gesture: it is action and its suspension at the same time. This is the only way to demonstrate that the language is at stake and it is motherly. And, in the end, its words are nothing but ‘pure gestures’ - Unworten, as Celan defines them: true witness of something that is there because it is no longer there

Sharing Cultural Heritage: the Clavius on the Web Project

In the last few years the amount of manuscripts digitized and made available on the Web has been constantly increasing. However, there is still a considarable lack of results concerning both the explicitation of their content and the tools developed to make it available. The objective of the Clavius on the Web project is to develop a Web platform exposing a selection of Christophorus Clavius letters along with three different levels of analysis: linguistic, lexical and semantic. The multilayered annotation of the corpus involves a XML-TEI encoding followed by a tokenization step where each token is univocally identified through a CTS urn notation and then associated to a part-of-speech and a lemma. The text is lexically and semantically annotated on the basis of a lexicon and a domain ontology, the former structuring the most relevant terms occurring in the text and the latter representing the domain entities of interest (e.g. people, places, etc.). Moreover, each entity is connected to linked and non linked resources, including DBpedia and VIAF. Finally, the results of the three layers of analysis are gathered and shown through interactive visualization and storytelling techniques. A demo version of the integrated architecture was developed

Nodulation competitiveness and diversification of symbiosis genes in common beans from the American centers of domestication

Phaseolus vulgaris (common bean), having a proposed Mexican origin within the Americas, comprises three centers of diversification: Mesoamerica, the southern Andes, and the Amotape-Huancabamba Depression in Peru-Ecuador. Rhizobium etli is the predominant rhizobium found symbiotically associated with beans in the Americasalthough closely related Rhizobium phylotypes have also been detected. To investigate if symbiosis between bean varieties and rhizobia evolved affinity, firstly nodulation competitiveness was studied after inoculation with a mixture of sympatric and allopatric rhizobial strains isolated from the respective geographical regions. Rhizobia strains harboring nodC types α and γ , which were found predominant in Mexico and Ecuador, were comparable in nodule occupancy at 50% of each in beans from the Mesoamerican and Andean gene pools, but it is one of those two nodC types which clearly predominated in Ecuadorian-Peruvian beans as well as in Andean beans nodC type γ predominated the sympatric nodC type δ. The results indicated that those beans from Ecuador-Peru and Andean region, respectively exhibited no affinity for nodulation by the sympatric rhizobial lineages that were found to be predominant in bean nodules formed in those respective areas. Unlike the strains isolated from Ecuador, Rhizobium etli isolated from Mexico as well from the southern Andes was highly competitive for nodulation in beans from Ecuador-Peru, and quite similarly competitive in Mesoamerican and Andean beans. Finally, five gene products associated with symbiosis were examined to analyze variations that could be correlated with nodulation competitiveness. A small GTPase RabA2, transcriptional factors NIN and ASTRAY, and nodulation factor receptors NFR1 and NFR5- indicated high conservation but NIN, NFR1 and NFR5 of beans representative of the Ecuador-Peru genetic pool clustered separated from the Mesoamerican and Andean showing diversification and possible different interaction. These results indicated that both host and bacterial genetics are important for mutual affinity, and that symbiosis is another trait of legumes that could be sensitive to evolutionary influences and local adaptation.Fil: Aguilar, Orlando Mario. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular; ArgentinaFil: Collavino, Mónica Mariana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste. Instituto de Botánica del Nordeste. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias. Instituto de Botánica del Nordeste; ArgentinaFil: Mancini Villagra, Ulises Maximiliano. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular; Argentin