Colloquy with Gianfranco Bettetini in Milan: reality and values at the heart of audiovisual semiotics and my reflections on the media

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A reduced model for Darcy’s problem in networks of fractures

Subsurface flows are influenced by the presence of faults and large fractures which act as preferential paths or barriers for the flow. In literature models were proposed to handle fractures in a porous medium as objects of codimension 1. In this work we consider the case of a network of intersecting fractures, with the aim of deriving physically consistent and effective interface conditions to impose at the intersection between fractures. This new model accounts for the angle between fractures at the intersections and allows for jumps of pressure across intersections. This fact permits to describe the flow when fractures are characterized by different properties more accurately with respect to other models that impose pressure continuity. The main mathematical properties of the model, derived in the two-dimensional setting, are analyzed. As concerns the numerical discretization we allow the grids of the fractures to be independent, thus in general non-matching at the intersection, by means of the extended finite element method (XFEM). This increases the flexibility of the method in the case of complex geometries characterized by a high number of fractures

The “History” of Desmosines: Forty Years of Debate on the Hypothesis That These Two Unnatural Amino Acids May Be Potential Biomarkers of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Desmosine and isodesmosine (collectively known as desmosines), two unnatural amino acids unique to mature elastin in humans, have been widely discussed as being potential biomarkers of disorders, which involve connective tissue and whose clinical manifestations result in elastin degradation. In particular, experimental data accumulated over the last 40 years have demonstrated that patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) excrete higher amounts of urinary desmosines than healthy controls. Based on this evidence, it has been speculated by several authors that these cross-links may be potential biomarkers of COPD with clinical significance. Nevertheless, a strict correlation between the amount of these amino acids and the severity of the disease still has to be demonstrated. For this reason, the debate on the opportunity to consider desmosines as biomarkers of COPD is still open, and the development of sophisticated methods aimed at obtaining very precise measurement of their concentration is still considered technically challenging. The aim of this chapter is to trace the history of this debate through the presentation and discussion of a large number of articles dealing with the detection and quantification of desmosines in different biological fluids, from early years until the present

Sustainable Co-Design with Older People: The case of a Public Restorative Garden in Milan (Italy)

The demographic aging and the evolution of lifestyles require new strategies to promote the well-being and active aging of elderly. Active aging depends on many factors: some of these are related to objective data such as physical environment, others are personal elements; it is important to improve environmental physical factors to encourage personal attitudes to the green spaces in use. To design a small sustainable restorative green space in Milan, Italy, restorative garden design criteria are summarized in the first section of the paper and both social and environmental sustainability are considered. The methodology section describes the co-design process and how it was applied to include dierent older user groups in the design of the area. In the results section authors apply a taxonomy based on the four properties of restorative settings according to the Attention Restoration Theory by Kaplan (compatibility, being away, extent, fascination): this provides a unified system to classify users\u2019 expectations and to describe the final project. The proposed co-design process combines social and environmental sustainability, as it provides designers an insight about the user\u2019s experience in nature. Such information can be fruitfully integrated with professional competences about comfort aspects and environmental protection in order to improve the whole design project

Utilizzo di dati telerilevati nella mappatura e nel monitoraggio dei fenomeni franosi e nell’analisi della suscettibilità da frana

The recent advances in the optical satellites capabilities (e.g. high spatial resolution, stereoscopy), the development of new robust techniques based on the interferometric analysis of radar images, such as the Permanent Scatterers (PS) and the possibility of integrating these data within a Geographical Information System (GIS) have dramatically increased the potential of remote sensing for landslide investigations. The Arno river basin (Italy), with a spatial extension of about 9131 km2, has been chosen a as test area for the presence of a relevant number of mass movements (27270 landslides have been mapped by the institutional authorities by the end of 2004) and for its significance concerning the Italian Apennine territory. The aim of the research was to integrate the inventory maps produced through traditional methods with the information derived from the Permanent Scatterers standard interferometric analysis. The spatial significance of the PS point measures (about 600000 PS for the whole Arno river basin), also in terms of geological and geomorphological interpretation, was inferred with the help of optical satellite images and aerial-photos. This approach allowed the mapping of new unstable areas or the modification of boundaries and state of activity of existing landslides. The standard PS analysis was also employed for the validation of a statistically-based susceptibility map of the Arno river basin, through the analysis of predicted susceptibility over the areas identified as new landslides by the PS analysis. An advanced PS analysis, capable of detecting the time evolution of single important mass movements, was also applied over 4 test sites. The results for the Chianciano landslide are in particular presented. The integration of the advanced analysis with on siteal monitoring confirmed the inactivity of the principal landslide body but it revealed the presence of two possible minor movements

Suburban waterfront with ecological and recreational function: planning based on network analysis

Urban fringe areas have multiple land uses and are places where sections of waterway, together with fragmented areas of natural vegetation, are often found passing through urban areas, transportation routes and gradually expanding rural areas. These overlapping functions are often the cause of an extremely disorderly landscape devoid of guiding connotative elements. In this context, the waterfront can be a guiding element for the redevelopment of the fringe areas between cities and the countryside. The purpose of this paper is the definition of a methodology for planning a suburban waterfront with an ecological function and bicycle paths for recreational use. The evaluation phases for resources and planning, conducted with tools for network analysis, have identified potential corridors based on current land uses and have addressed the issue of bicycle paths on an inter-municipal scale. The methodology is proposed for regional level planning and the validation of the method was achieved through its application to the stretch of the Lambro River between Monza Park and the city of Milan in the North of Italy

Survival and divergence in a small group: The extraordinary genomic history of the endangered Apennine brown bear stragglers

About 100 km east of Rome, in the central Apennine Mountains, a critically endangered population of ∼50 brown bears live in complete isolation. Mating outside this population is prevented by several 100 km of bear-free territories. We exploited this natural experiment to better understand the gene and genomic consequences of surviving at extremely small population size. We found that brown bear populations in Europe lost connectivity since Neolithic times, when farming communities expanded and forest burning was used for land clearance. In central Italy, this resulted in a 40-fold population decline. The overall genomic impact of this decline included the complete loss of variation in the mitochondrial genome and along long stretches of the nuclear genome. Several private and deleterious amino acid changes were fixed by random drift; predicted effects include energy deficit, muscle weakness, anomalies in cranial and skeletal development, and reduced aggressiveness. Despite this extreme loss of diversity, Apennine bear genomes show nonrandom peaks of high variation, possibly maintained by balancing selection, at genomic regions significantly enriched for genes associated with immune and olfactory systems. Challenging the paradigm of increased extinction risk in small populations, we suggest that random fixation of deleterious alleles (i) can be an important driver of divergence in isolation, (ii) can be tolerated when balancing selection prevents random loss of variation at important genes, and (iii) is followed by or results directly in favorable behavioral changes