Le prospettive di tutela delle minoranze linguistiche in Italia: il ruolo delle Regioni ordinarie

L'articolo approfondisce il tema della tutela delle minoranze linguistiche in Italia, concentrandosi sulla condizione delle minoranze c.d. "debolmente protette" delle Regioni ad autonomia ordinaria. A tal fine, lo studio si sofferma sulla tutela accordata alle comunità alloglotte dopo la riforma del Titolo V della Costituzione, esaminando le scelte compiute dai nuovi Statuti ed i problemi connessi al riparto delle competenze legislative tra Stato e Regioni

Mortar and surface dating with Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL): Innovative techniques for the age determination of buildings

In this work the results of a dating study on bricks and mortars using both Thermoluminescence (TL) and Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) are shown. The samples came from the outside walls of the Certosa di Pavia, located in northern Italy and independently dated (XVII-XVIII century). TL dating, applied to bricks using the fine grain technique, allowed to determine the time of manufacture of the bricks (XII century), that resulted therefore re-used. To circumvent this problem the application of two innovative dating techniques, OSL surface dating and mortar dating, was attempted. The first was applied to the light-shielded surfaces of bricks and allowed to successfully determine the edification of the wall (XVII century). Mortar dating gave instead severe age overestimation: the results obtained on coarse grain quartz with the SAR technique both on multi-grains aliquots and with single-grain analyses were highly dispersed indicating an incomplete bleaching of the quartz grains. The shine-down curves were in fact characterized by the absence of the so-called fast component, as confirmed by Linear Modulated OSL technique

Two dimensional QCD is a one dimensional Kazakov-Migdal model

We calculate the partition functions of QCD in two dimensions on a cylinder and on a torus in the gauge $\partial_{0} A_{0} = 0$ by integrating explicitly over the non zero modes of the Fourier expansion in the periodic time variable. The result is a one dimensional Kazakov-Migdal matrix model with eigenvalues on a circle rather than on a line. We prove that our result coincides with the standard expansion in representations of the gauge group. This involves a non trivial modular transformation from an expansion in exponentials of $g^2$ to one in exponentials of $1/g^2$. Finally we argue that the states of the $U(N)$ or $SU(N)$ partition function can be interpreted as a gas of N free fermions, and the grand canonical partition function of such ensemble is given explicitly as an infinite product.Comment: DFTT 15/93, 17 pages, Latex (Besides minor changes and comments added we note that for U(N) odd and even N have to be treated separately

Sulla illegittimit\ue0 costituzionale dei decreti-legge \u201ctaglia-leggi\u201d

Sommario: 1. I decreti-legge \u201ctaglia-leggi\u201d nel procedimento di semplificazione della legislazione vigente. 2. Sulla asserita necessit\ue0 ed urgenza di una abrogazione espressa. 3. Sulla necessit\ue0 del provvedimento e del provvedere con l\u2019abrogazione differita. 4. Sulla straordinariet\ue0 come fondamento del potere normativo primario del Governo. 5. Sulle interferenze tra decreto-legge e delega legislativa. 6. Infine, alcune considerazioni di merito: una semplificazione\u2026 un po\u2019 troppo complicata

A theoretical model of neuronal population coding of stimuli with both continuous and discrete dimensions

In a recent study the initial rise of the mutual information between the firing rates of N neurons and a set of p discrete stimuli has been analytically evaluated, under the assumption that neurons fire independently of one another to each stimulus and that each conditional distribution of firing rates is gaussian. Yet real stimuli or behavioural correlates are high-dimensional, with both discrete and continuously varying features.Moreover, the gaussian approximation implies negative firing rates, which is biologically implausible. Here, we generalize the analysis to the case where the stimulus or behavioural correlate has both a discrete and a continuous dimension. In the case of large noise we evaluate the mutual information up to the quadratic approximation as a function of population size. Then we consider a more realistic distribution of firing rates, truncated at zero, and we prove that the resulting correction, with respect to the gaussian firing rates, can be expressed simply as a renormalization of the noise parameter. Finally, we demonstrate the effect of averaging the distribution across the discrete dimension, evaluating the mutual information only with respect to the continuously varying correlate.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figure

Minorities in the Post-Soviet Space Thirty Years After the Dissolution of the USSR

When the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, the Russian Federation and the newly independent republics of the Baltics, the Caucasus and Central Asia engaged in redefining their national identity in a challenging regional and global context. The stances and policies towards the minorities living in these countries became part of the striving towards national independence and identity formation. Despite vastly different post-Soviet nation-building trajectories, the development and implementation of state policies towards minorities had similar relevance and importance across the region. Thirty years after the end of the USSR what is the situation of minorities and minority issues in the countries that emerged from that multi-ethnic state? How have the former republics – including Russia dealt with their minorities and minority affairs? To what protection and rights are minority communities entitled to? Studies of the dissolution of the USSR and of nation-building in the independent post-Soviet states have flourished over the past decades. However, despite the relevance of the theme, there is a dearth of specialist publications which address the many issues related to minority communities in the post-Soviet space. This volume attempts to fill this gap by providing a collection of essays covering some of the most relevant aspects of the contemporary status and situation of minorities in the area

Lab and Field Tests of a Low-Cost 3-Component Seismometer for Shallow Passive Seismic Applications

We performed laboratory tests and field surveys to evaluate the performance of a low-cost 3-component seismometer, consisting of three passive electromagnetic spring-mass sensors, whose 4.5 Hz natural frequency is extended down to 0.5 Hz thanks to hyper damping. Both lab and field datasets show that the −3 dB band of the seismometer ranges approximately from 0.7 to 39 Hz, in agreement with the nominal specifications. Median magnitude frequency response curves obtained from processing field data indicate that lower corner of the −3 dB band could be extended down to 0.55 Hz and the nominal sensitivity may be overestimated. Lab results confirm the non-linear behavior of the passive spring-mass sensor expected for high-level input signals (a few to tens of mm/s) and field data confirm relative timing accuracy is ±10 ms (1 sample). We found that absolute timing of data collected with USB GPS antennas can be affected by lag as large as +0.5 s. By testing two identical units, we noticed that there could be differences around 0.5 dB (i.e., about 6%) between the components of the same unit as well as between the same component of the two units. Considering shallow passive seismic applications and mainly focusing on unstable slope monitoring, our findings show that the tested seismometer is able to identify resonance frequencies of unstable rock pillars and to generate interferograms that can be processed to estimate subsurface velocity variations