Introduction

“Zoosemiotics” was introduced in 1963 by Thomas Albert Sebeok, initially as a compromise between ethological and semiotic research. In the beginning, Sebeok was convinced that “zoosemiotics” had to be used mostly as an umbrella term, uniting different scholarly approaches to animal communication). In the light of its most recent developments, a synthetic definition of zoosemiotics can be today that of the study of semiosis within and across animal species

Investigating the role of Word Embeddings in sentiment analysis

During decades, Natural language processing (NLP) expanded its range of tasks, from document classification to automatic text summarization, sentiment analysis, text mining, machine translation, automatic question answering and others. In 2018, T. Young described NLP as a theory-motivated range of computational techniques for the automatic analysis and representation of human language. Outside and before AI, human language has been studied by specialists from various disciplines: linguistics, philosophy, logic, psychology. The aim of this work is to build a neural network to perform a sentiment analysis on Italian reviews from the chatbot customer service. Sentiment analysis is a data mining process which identifies and extracts subjective information from text. It could help to understand the social sentiment of clients, respect a business product or service. It could be a simple classification task that analyses a sentence and tells whether the underlying sentiment is positive or negative. The potentiality of deep learning techniques made this simple classification task evolve, creating new, more complex sentiment analysis, e.g. Intent Analysis and Contextual Semantic Search

Cinema and popular music, a multifold relationship. The cases ofEnnio Morricone and David Lynch

The aim of this article is to discuss the complexity of the relationship between popular music and cinema. Since its very birth, cinema has established a solid collaboration with music. When films had no sound, music (back then played live) had the crucial role of creating moods, underlining specific sequences, and in general making speech not too missed. When sound appeared, musicals became immediately a dominant genre (and a rich source for business: cinema halls themselves, but also music-sheets and recordings). Shortly after, the subtle art of film music developed, granting — to film and music histories alike — some of the finest composers of the whole 20th century (Bernard Hermann, Nino Rota, John Williams, Ennio Morricone...), or allowing great composers and musicians in their own right, to deliver some of their best works in form of soundtrack (Miles Davis” Lift to the Scaffold or Duke Ellington’s Anatomy of a Murder, just to focus on jazz only). Whether film music must be considered a form of ’serious“ or ’popular' music is still source of debate, and definitely not in the scopes of the present essay. Instead, the point I wish to make here is that, regardless of its nature, the interaction between cinema and popular music is made of literally dozens of possible combinations, making this relationship one of the most interesting among the many existing within an art, cinema, which makes of multimediality and multimodality its primary strength (let alone identity: up to the point that a good portion of the early years of film studies were spent in deciding whether, after all, cinema could be considered an art of its own, or simply a combination of pre-existing arts). The analysis will proceed in a rather linear manner, by simply taking two case-studies: Ennio Morricone, a most celebrated film composer, and David Lynch, a cult-director who has established a strong bond with popular music in his cinematography. Perhaps unexpectedly, the case of Morricone will be only in part employed to discuss his scores for the likes of Leone or Pasolini: more attention will bedevoted to his not-so-well known (at least outside Italy) activity as pop songwriter and arranger. When it comes to Lynch, instead, the analysis will try to cover more or less all his interests in popular music, including his long-lasting professional collaboration (and personal friendship) with composer Angelo Badalamenti

Tra crimine e nostalgia: note sulla rappresentazione musicale e audiovisiva di Marsiglia

Browsing through films and TV series located in Marseille, we notice how this city is often provided with recurrent topoi : the charming and nostalgic frontier/harbour city where an (often multi-ethnic) community of gangsters, sailors, adventurers and prostitutes comes and goes and engages in usually illegal activities. Based on a sample of ca. 120 audiovisual texts, this article aims at emphasizing the consistency of significations conveyed by both visual and musical representations of the city of Marseille. As a case-study, the focus shall be the film Borsalino, possibly the perfect synthesis of the above-mentioned topoi both on a visual-narrative and a musical level

Audiovisuality and the city of Marseille, France: creativity, communication, representation

The Wicked City (director Peter Mak, 1992), House on the Waterfront (director Edmond T. Gréville, 1955), The French Connection (director William Friedkin, 1971), the obvious Borsalino (director Jacques Deray, 1970)… up to the recent Netflix series Marseille (creator Dan Franck, 2016–2018): when browsing the titles of the most important audiovisual representations of Marseille, one immediately notices how this city seems to (be made to) communicate a few recurrent topoi: the frontier city, site of mostly illegal activities and inhabited by a multi-ethnic (or rather stateless) community of gangsters, sailors, adventurers and prostitutes – ingredients often mixed with an abundant amount of charm and nostalgic fascination. Mostly informed by the theories and methodologies of film studies, musicology, creativity studies and communication studies, the present article aims to emphasize the consistence of significations conveyed by both visual and musical sources. As a case-study, the article shall focus on Borsalino, possibly – at the same time – the most famous film placed in Marseille and the most famous soundtrack (by jazz composer Claude Bolling) – both, it is argued, perfect syntheses of the above-mentioned topoi. Santrauka Marselis minimas filmuose Pavojingas miestas (režisierius Peteris Makas, 1992), Namas ant jūros kranto (režisierius Edmond’as T. Gréville’s, 1955), Prancūziškas ryšys (režisierius Williamas Friedkinas, 1971) ir, žinoma, Borsalino (režisierius Jacques’as Deray, 1970). Iki šiol rodomas Netflixo serialas (kūrėjas Danas Franckas, 2016–2018). Naršant internete ir ieškant pačių svarbiausių Marselio audiovizualinių reprezentacijų pavadinimų, krinta į akis tai, kad šis miestas komunikuoja kai kuriuos pasikartojančius topoi: pasienio miestas, pačios nelegaliausios veiklos, banditų, jūreivių, nuotykių ieškotojų ir prostitučių daugiaetnės bendruomenės apgyventa vieta. Jos gyventojams dažnai būdingas didelis žavesys ir patrauklumas. Šiame straipsnyje, remiantis kino studijų, muzikologijos, kūrybiškumo studijų ir komunikacijos studijų teorijomis bei metodologijomis, siekiama pabrėžti reikšmių įvairovę, kurią perteikia tiek vizualiniai, tiek muzikiniai šaltiniai. Kaip atvejo tyrime, straipsnyje susitelkiama į Borsalino, kuris yra bene pats garsiausias filmas, nufilmuotas Marselyje. Tai filmas su žymiu garso takeliu (kurį sukūrė džiazo kompozitorius Claude’as Bollingas). Abiem atvejais tobulai, kaip teigiama, sujungiami pirmiau minėti topoi. Reikšminiai žodžiai: audiovizualinė komunikacija, Borsalino, Marselis, muzikologija, filmo muzika, kino studijos, semiotika

Narrare

Susanna Trossero: La danza degli stormi.Dario Martinelli: Lettera sull’alterità.Rossella Tempesta: Cotidie

Transcriptome changes induced by Arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis in leaves of durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) promote higher salt tolerance

The salinity of soil is a relevant environmental problem around the world, with climate change raising its relevance, particularly in arid and semiarid areas. Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (AMF) positively affect plant growth and health by mitigating biotic and abiotic stresses, including salt stress. The mechanisms through which these benefits manifest are, however, still unclear. This work aimed to identify key genes involved in the response to salt stress induced by AMF using RNA-Seq analysis on durum wheat (Triticum turgidum L. subsp. durum Desf. Husn.). Five hundred sixty-three differentially expressed genes (DEGs), many of which involved in pathways related to plant stress responses, were identified. The expression of genes involved in trehalose metabolism, RNA processing, vesicle trafficking, cell wall organization, and signal transduction was significantly enhanced by the AMF symbiosis. A downregulation of genes involved in both enzymatic and non-enzymatic oxidative stress responses as well as amino acids, lipids, and carbohydrates metabolisms was also detected, suggesting a lower oxidative stress condition in the AMF inoculated plants. Interestingly, many transcription factor families, including WRKY, NAC, and MYB, already known for their key role in plant abiotic stress response, were found differentially expressed between treatments. This study provides valuable insights on AMF-induced gene expression modulation and the beneficial effects of plant-AMF interaction in durum wheat under salt stress