7. A Matter of Method: British Aristotelianism and the New Science. Essay Review

Essay Review of Steffen Ducheyne, The Main Business of Natural Philosophy: Isaac Newton’s Natural-Philosophical Methodology, Dordrecht: Springer, 2012, p. XXV+354 (ISBN 9789400721258, € 259); Marco Sgarbi, The Aristotelian Tradition and the Rise of British Empiricism: Logic and Epistemology in British Isles (1570-1689), Dordrecht: Springer, 2013, XII + 260 pp. (ISBN 9789400749504, € 209).

La présidentielle vue d’Italie:les réactions de la société et du système politique

La présidentielle vue d’Italie : les réactions de la société et du système politique Au moins deux perspectives différentes sont nécessaires pour se faire une idée de la manière dont l’élection présidentielle française peut être lue depuis l’Italie. Il y a d’abord l’attention que la société dans son ensemble porte à ce qui se passe en France dans des domaines comme l’immigration, la performance économique et l’évolution de l’État social, qui touchent les deux pays de façon analogue. Il y a ensuite l’intérêt que les autorités italiennes vouent aux événements français quant à leurs conséquences possibles sur les rapports bilatéraux et sur les grands équilibres européens.Note publiée sur le site du Cevipof "Elections 2012" In "Le recueil des notes du Cevipof - Vues d'ailleurs

Living arrangements in Sub-Saharan Africa between ethnicity and modernization

In Sub-Saharan Africa the phenomenology of living arrangements is of great interest owing to the extraordinary diversification and complexity of the traditional family patterns. In particular, the predominance of the enlarged family over the biological family is a feature that traditionally distinguishes the conception and the organization of the Sub-Saharan African family. It is a debatable question whether this feature is everlasting or it evolves with the deep economic and social changes occurring in Sub-Saharan African countries. We aim to analyse the living arrangements in several Sub-Saharan countries and in their main ethnic groups, attempting to enlighten the interaction between “modernization” and cultural heritage in shaping family patterns. A temporal perspective has been adopted, as well as the ethnic and rural/urban differentials. The analyses consider ten countries in different geographical areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, where at least two waves of Demographic and Health Surveys were carried out between 1990 and 2013. To detail the analyses, we also consider the most representative ethnic groups for each country (in all 38 ethnic groups). After recalling the theoretical background and present preliminary descriptive findings, the classical procedure of factor analysis is used with the principal components method, followed by an hierarchical classification analysis. Our results show that it is not possible to propose general models for the great traditional geographical areas in Africa. The trends and the rural-urban differentials are not exhaustively explained by modernization factors. The results are in line with the literature outcomes that supported the process of growing variability of living arrangements and the increase of new family models, rather than the existence of a convergence process on a single nuclear family pattern. Ethnic background is confirmed as a valid interpretative key, necessary to understand the cultural substrate in which the evolutive factors brought by globalization act

Systematic Investigation on the Structure-Property Relationship in Isotactic Polypropylene Films Processed via Cast Film Extrusion

The effect of cast film extrusion processing conditions, such as the chill-roll temperature, temperature of the melt, and line speed, on the structure of different isotactic polypropylene homo- and random copolymers has been investigated by means of Small- and Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS and WAXS) and correlated to stiffness and haze. Stiffness and transparency have been found to be strongly dependent on the temperature of the chill-roll. Interestingly, line speed has been found to affect the total crystallinity when the chill-roll temperature is increased, while an overall minor effect of the melt temperature was found for all cast films. The polymer characteristics, defined by the catalyst nature and comonomer content, affect the final material performance, with the single-site catalyzed grades performing better in both mechanics and optics. Haze levels were found to correlate with the mesophase content rather than to α-crystallinity and to be dependent on the domain size for all grades. The remarkably low haze levels reached by the single-site grade with higher isotacticity can arise from high nucleation rate and orientational effects, which ultimately yield smaller and smoother scattering domains

Changing trend of caries from 1989 to 2004 among 12-year old Sardinian children

Background. During the past decades, the prevalence of caries disease in the population of Western industrialized countries has decreased markedly. In children also, a reduction of dental caries experience has been reported by many authors. The aim of this paper was to evaluate the trend of dental caries prevalence in 12-year-old children living in the city of Sassari, (Italy), by five cross-sectional studies conducted in 1989, 1992, 1995, 1998 and 2004. Methods. In all cohorts, dental caries (DMFT and SiC Index according to WHO indications), was measured. For each variable measured (DMFT and sub-indices, SiC Index), differences in proportions among the five cohorts during the fifteen years were tested using χ2-square test. Results. The mean DMFT index decreased from 4.3 ± 3.1 in 1989 to 0.8 ± 1.5 in 2004. The prevalence of untreated caries (DT) had a notable decrease between 1992 and 1995, increased slightly between 1995 and 1998 and had the greatest decrease in 2004. The number of filled teeth remains low. The percentage of caries-free children increased from 10% to 64%, whereas the percentage of untreated caries changed from 44% in 1989 to 62% in 2004. SiC Index decreased from 7.8 in 1989 to 3.9 in 2004. Conclusion. On the basis of the results of DMFT and SiC Index, caries experience has been reduced. The vigilance and the promotion of a higher standard of personal oral hygiene and dental check-ups are necessary to obtain an improvement of oral status in the future adult population and to reach the new WHO global goals

Revisiting the Mechanism of the Meso-to-α Transition of Isotactic Polypropylene and Ethylene-Propylene Random Copolymers

In this work, we have conducted in situ simultaneous small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering and Raman spectroscopy experiments to investigate the fundamental differences in the mechanism of the mesomorphic to α phase transition of the isotactic polypropylene homopolymer and the random ethylene-propylene copolymer. Via quantitative analysis of the results coming from the three techniques, we found that in the homopolymer, chain interlock and chain extension occur during the transition. However, these processes are not necessary for the transition to occur. Indeed, the presence of randomly distributed ethylene co-units hinders the chain interlock process in the early stages of the phase transition (T > 60 °C) and suppresses the chain elongation process at the later stages (T > 90 °C). Consequently, the mesomorphic to α-phase transition in the random copolymer occurs with inclusion of the ethylene co-units inside the crystal lattice, causing increased lateral interchain distance and larger crystalline sizes. Our results show how differences exist in the way solid phase transitions occur at the molecular scale when co-monomers are included into the macromolecular chains, leading to a better understanding of the thermal behavior of semi-crystalline polymers