Chapter Storie di strutture: note intorno a una lettera di Violante a Tabacco

What are the limits of a history of structures? Can we aspire to a total or global history? In a letter to Giovanni Tabacco from 1980, discovered by Gian Maria Varanini, Cinzio Violante expressed his dissatisfactions as a historian, in a period in which he renewed his methodological ideas, with new research and broad summary visions. The problems of Violante and Tabacco are still relevant nowadays, while their dialogue is the sign of a generation united by a way of being historians that became the intellectual and moral commitment of entire existences

Im Herzen des Mittelmeers: Das mittelalterliche Sizilien zwischen regionaler Dimension und mediterranen Systemen

Il saggio analizza la posizione della Sicilia di età bizantina e islamica e poi bassomedievale nei sistemi di scambio a lunga e media distanza che si avvicendarono nel Mediterraneo, e la loro interazione con le strutture e le trasformazioni dell'economia regionale

Enrico VII, Dante e Pisa: a 700 anni dalla morte dell'imperatore e dalla Monarchia (1313-2013)

Atti del Convegno internazionale "Enrico VII, Dante e Pisa a 700 anni dalla morte dell'imperatore e dalla Monarchia (1313-2013) (Pisa-San Miniato, 24-26 ottobre 2013

ULTRASONOGRAFIA TRANSRETAL PARA DETERMINAÇÃO DE GESTAÇÃO PRECOCE EM BORREGAS DA RAÇA SARDA

Serial transrectal ultrasound examinations were performed to determine the earliest day at which pregnancy could be detected after mating, as well as to determine the practicability of the method at normal flock management conditions without previous fasting and water restriction. Transrectal ultrasound was carried out daily from day 12th to 25th and once on day 35th after breeding in Sarda breed yearling ewe lambs. The feasibility of the method was evaluated in terms of necessity or not to remove rectal feces during examinations, adequacy to perform examination due to rectal conditions (gases, edema, etc.), adequacy to visualize uterine and ovarian structures and to make accurate pregnancy diagnosis based on uterine findings. The experiment showed that transrectal ultrasound examinations can be suitably used for early pregnancy diagnosis in yearling ewe lambs, without the necessity of previous fasting, lifting the abdomen up and restraining the animals in recumbent position. The transrectal ultrasound method showed to be practicable during daily management of the flock, in terms of animal feeding, watering and staff availability.Exames ultrasonográficos transretais em série foram realizados para determinar o primeiro dia no qual a gestação poderia ser diagnosticada após acasalamento e para determinar a praticidade do uso do método, em condições normais de manejo dos animais sem prévio jejum e restrição de água. A ultrasonografia transretal foi feita diariamente desde o 12º até o 25º dias e uma vez no 35º dia após acasalamento, em borregas de um ano de idade da raça sarda. Os parâmetros utilizados para verificar a praticidade do método foram a necessidade ou não de remover as fezes do reto durante os exames, a possibilidade de fazer o exame devido às condições retais (gases, edema, etc.), a possibilidade de visualizar estruturas uterinas e ovarianas, e a possibilidade de fazer acurado diagnóstico de gestação com base em achados uterinos. O experimento mostrou que  o exame ultrasonográfico transretal  pode ser usado com sucesso no diagnóstico precoce da gestação em borregas de 1 ano de idade, sem a necessidade de prévio jejum alimentar, sem  elevação do abdômen durante o exame e sem a necessidade de manter as borregas em decúbito dorsal. Verificou-se que o método é prático e pode ser utilizado  durante o manejo diário do rebanho, em termos de alimentação e de disponibilidade de pessoal auxiliar

Anterior prostatic tumours are difficult to diagnose without MRI

It is often uncertain whether a repeat biopsy is necessary in patients with at least one previous negative prostate biopsy but persistent suspicion of prostate cancer. Here we present the use of multi-parametric magnetic resonance imaging (mp-MRI) to successfully detect and localize a prostate cancer and we suggest that MRI can be useful in optimising repeat biopsy procedures of the prostate in patients with clinically significant carcinoma

Correcting Exoplanet Transmission Spectra for Stellar Activity with an Optimised Retrieval Framework

The chromatic contamination that arises from photospheric heterogeneities e.g. spots and faculae on the host star presents a significant noise source for exoplanet transmission spectra. If this contamination is not corrected for, it can introduce substantial bias in our analysis of the planetary atmosphere. We utilise two stellar models of differing complexity, StARPA and ASteRA, to explore the biases introduced by stellar contamination in retrieval under differing degrees of stellar activity. We use the retrieval framework TauREx3 and a grid of 27 synthetic, spot-contaminated transmission spectra to investigate potential biases and to determine how complex our stellar models must be in order to accurately extract the planetary parameters from transmission spectra. The input observation is generated using the more complex model (StARPA), in which the spot latitude is an additional, fixable parameter. This observation is then fed into a combined stellar-planetary retrieval which contains a simplified stellar model (ASteRA). Our results confirm that the inclusion of stellar activity parameters in retrieval minimises bias under all activity regimes considered. ASteRA performs very well under low to moderate activity conditions, retrieving the planetary parameters with a high degree of accuracy. For the most active cases, characterised by larger, higher temperature contrast spots, some minor residual bias remains due to ASteRA neglecting the interplay between the spot and the limb darkening effect. As a result of this, we find larger errors in retrieved planetary parameters for central spots (0 degrees) and those found close to the limb (60 degrees) than those at intermediate latitudes (30 degrees).Comment: 34 pages, 20 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Carbon-dots conductometric sensor for high performance gas sensing

In this paper the first example of using C-dots (CDs) as sensing nanomaterial for monitoring low concentrations of NO2 in ambient air is reported. In the logic to support a green circular economy, CDs were prepared from a natural low cost precursor consisting in olive solid waste (OSW) by a simple pyrolysis process combined with chemical oxidation. Characterization data showed the formation of spherical CDs with dimensions in the narrow size range from 0.5 to 5 nm and charged with functional groups (COO- (carboxylate), C-O-C (epoxide) and C-OH (hydroxyl) imprinting excellent water colloidal dispersion. The nanomaterial was used to fabricate and test a conductometric gas sensor (CDs-sensor) that was found to exhibit excellent performances in terms of high and selective response to sub-ppm concentration of NO2 at low temperature (150 °C), low limit of detection (LOD) of 50 ppb, good reproducibility and stability over use and aging. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example reported in the literature of CDs high performances gas sensing material. Results here presented pave the way for a new class of a carbon nanomaterial for gas sensing to be applied in the field of environmental monitoring

DCE-MRI and DWI Integration for Breast Lesions Assessment and Heterogeneity Quantification

In order to better predict and follow treatment responses in cancer patients, there is growing interest in noninvasively characterizing tumor heterogeneity based on MR images possessing different contrast and quantitative information. This requires mechanisms for integrating such data and reducing the data dimensionality to levels amenable to interpretation by human readers. Here we propose a two-step pipeline for integrating diffusion and perfusion MRI that we demonstrate in the quantification of breast lesion heterogeneity. First, the images acquired with the two modalities are aligned using an intermodal registration. Dissimilarity-based clustering is then performed exploiting the information coming from both modalities. To this end an ad hoc distance metric is developed and tested for tuning the weighting for the two modalities. The distributions of the diffusion parameter values in subregions identified by the algorithm are extracted and compared through nonparametric testing for posterior evaluation of the tissue heterogeneity. Results show that the joint exploitation of the information brought by DCE and DWI leads to consistent results accounting for both perfusion and microstructural information yielding a greater refinement of the segmentation than the separate processing of the two modalities, consistent with that drawn manually by a radiologist with access to the same data