“L’arte dell’osservazione”. La “Kriegsfibel” di Brecht e le sue traduzioni italiane: prospettiva, intermedialità, didattica

This paper aims to place an interpretation on some aspects of the Brechtian Kriegsfibel, as rendered in the two most important Italian editions of the text. The Kriegsfibel is a collection of “photo-epigrams” realized by Brecht during his exile and then published in 1955. In this work the topic of Second World War is discussed in the dialectic between photography and poetry. On the one hand, this operation aims to deconstruct the epistemological status of photography as Apparat able to reproduce the reality tout court; on the other, it questions the perception of reality in its historical, geographic and social aspects. In this way, the topicality of war photography is projected, through the epigram, in millennial History and, at the same time, the narrative of History activates in the reader the creation of meaning and, therefore, the concrete action in the present. In the light of this analysis, a study of Kriegsfibel’s Italian translations is proposed, i.e. the Abicí della guerra by Fertonani (1972), more literal and classical, and the one by Solmi (1975), freer and more actualising. The focus of discussion is on the second translation, which was proposed as an accompanying booklet for an audio-visual didactical experiment to take place in schools. This is a significant operation because it vivifies the didactic element and develops the performative character of Brechtian investigation, latent in the textual (and therefore visual) dimension of the original edition.This paper aims to place an interpretation on some aspects of the Brechtian Kriegsfibel, as rendered in the two most important Italian editions of the text. The Kriegsfibel is a collection of “photo-epigrams” realized by Brecht during his exile and then published in 1955. In this work the topic of Second World War is discussed in the dialectic between photography and poetry. On the one hand, this operation aims to deconstruct the epistemological status of photography as Apparat able to reproduce the reality tout court; on the other, it questions the perception of reality in its historical, geographic and social aspects. In this way, the topicality of war photography is projected, through the epigram, in millennial History and, at the same time, the narrative of History activates in the reader the creation of meaning and, therefore, the concrete action in the present. In the light of this analysis, a study of Kriegsfibel’s Italian translations is proposed, i.e. the Abicí della guerra by Fertonani (1972), more literal and classical, and the one by Solmi (1975), freer and more actualising. The focus of discussion is on the second translation, which was proposed as an accompanying booklet for an audio-visual didactical experiment to take place in schools. This is a significant operation because it vivifies the didactic element and develops the performative character of Brechtian investigation, latent in the textual (and therefore visual) dimension of the original edition

Contributo alla conoscenza dei boschi a Quercus ilex della Sicilia

In quest° lavoro vengono esaminati i boschi a Quercus ilex presenti in Sicilia.Oltre alle associazioni in precedenza già osservate per questo territorio, viene segnalata per la prima volta la presenza dell'Ostrio-Quercetum ilicis e inoltre sono descritte alcune nuove subassociazioni relative al Querco-Teucrietum siculi e all'Aceri obtusati-Ostryetum carpintfoliae. Ciascuna associazione viene esaminata sotto il profilo syntassonomico, ecologico e sindinamico.In this paper the Quercus ilex woods occurring in Sicily were examined. Apart from the associations previosly observed in this territory, the presence of Ostryo-Quercetum ilicis is reported for the first time; besides some new subassociations of the Querco-Teucrietum siculi and of the Aceri obtusati-Ostryetum curpinifoliae are described. Syntaxonomic, ecological and syndynamic considerations are given for every association

Una collaborazione tra museo, enti di ricerca e scuola: l'epigrafia digitale e l'alternanza scuola lavoro

This paper presents a rich collaborative exchange between diverse institutions and professions engaged in research, conservation and education, brought together in the context of the Italian school-work exchange programme and with the aim of digitising, studying, and giving access to the epigraphic collection of the Museo Civico Castello Ursino of the city of Catania. The Museum is home to an important set of ancient inscribed texts on stone, with its origins in two local 18th-century antiquarian collections. A number of inscriptions were already on display following older criteria of museum exhibition; but most of the collection is held in storage. Therefore, one of the objectives of the collaboration is to make the rich epigraphic collection of the museum that is not on display accessible to the general public and academic researchers alike. The initial work of the three-year project concerned the digitisation of the catalogue records, as well as the graphic and photographic documentation of the inscriptions; during the second year, an exhibition was mounted in the Castello Ursino to present a selection of inscriptions from Catania. These inscriptions were the focus of an initial round of conservation work and were added to the digital catalogue together with supporting documentation. The inscriptions are encoded in accordance with international standards and controlled vocabularies (in EpiDoc TEI-XML, using Pleiades for geographical locations, and the controlled vocabularies of the EAGLE project for epigraphic types, materials and supports), with the aim of facilitating the creation of Linked Open Data. The exhibition includes two videos and a digital multimedia terminal to enable access to a wider range of materials as well as 3D imaging. The third year will be devoted to finalising both digitisation and documentation, and to more extensive result dissemination via the World Wide Web

An Innovative, Open, Interoperable Citizen Engagement Cloud Platform for Smart Government and Users' Interaction

This paper introduces an open, interoperable, and cloud-computing-based citizen engagement platform for the management of administrative processes of public administrations, which also increases the engagement of citizens. The citizen engagement platform is the outcome of a 3-year Italian national project called PRISMA (Interoperable cloud platforms for smart government). The aim of the project is to constitute a new model of digital ecosystem that can support and enable new methods of interaction among public administrations, citizens, companies, and other stakeholders surrounding cities. The platform has been defined by the media as a flexible (enable the addition of any kind of application or service) and open (enable access to open services) Italian "cloud" that allows public administrations to access to a vast knowledge base represented as linked open data to be reused by a stakeholder community with the aim of developing new applications ("Cloud Apps") tailored to the specific needs of citizens. The platform has been used by Catania and Syracuse municipalities, two of the main cities of southern Italy, located in the Sicilian region. The fully adoption of the platform is rapidly spreading around the whole region (local developers have already used available application programming interfaces (APIs) to create additional services for citizens and administrations) to such an extent that other provinces of Sicily and Italy in general expressed their interest for its usage. The platform is available online and, as mentioned above, is open source and provides APIs for full exploitation.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figures, journal pape

An Explainable AI System for Automated COVID-19 Assessment and Lesion Categorization from CT-scans

COVID-19 infection caused by SARS-CoV-2 pathogen is a catastrophic pandemic outbreak all over the world with exponential increasing of confirmed cases and, unfortunately, deaths. In this work we propose an AI-powered pipeline, based on the deep-learning paradigm, for automated COVID-19 detection and lesion categorization from CT scans. We first propose a new segmentation module aimed at identifying automatically lung parenchyma and lobes. Next, we combined such segmentation network with classification networks for COVID-19 identification and lesion categorization. We compare the obtained classification results with those obtained by three expert radiologists on a dataset consisting of 162 CT scans. Results showed a sensitivity of 90\% and a specificity of 93.5% for COVID-19 detection, outperforming those yielded by the expert radiologists, and an average lesion categorization accuracy of over 84%. Results also show that a significant role is played by prior lung and lobe segmentation that allowed us to enhance performance by over 20 percent points. The interpretation of the trained AI models, moreover, reveals that the most significant areas for supporting the decision on COVID-19 identification are consistent with the lesions clinically associated to the virus, i.e., crazy paving, consolidation and ground glass. This means that the artificial models are able to discriminate a positive patient from a negative one (both controls and patients with interstitial pneumonia tested negative to COVID) by evaluating the presence of those lesions into CT scans. Finally, the AI models are integrated into a user-friendly GUI to support AI explainability for radiologists, which is publicly available at http://perceivelab.com/covid-ai

Cx26 partial loss causes accelerated presbycusis by redox imbalance and dysregulation of Nfr2 pathway.

Mutations in GJB2, the gene that encodes connexin 26 (Cx26), are the most common cause of sensorineural hearing impairment. The truncating variant 35delG, which determines a complete loss of Cx26 protein function, is the prevalent GJB2 mutation in several populations. Here, we generated and analyzed Gjb2+/- mice as a model of heterozygous human carriers of 35delG. Compared to control mice, auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) and distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) worsened over time more rapidly in Gjb2+/- mice, indicating they were affected by accelerated age-related hearing loss (ARHL), or presbycusis. We linked causally the auditory phenotype of Gjb2+/- mice to apoptosis and oxidative damage in the cochlear duct, reduced release of glutathione from connexin hemichannels, decreased nutrient delivery to the sensory epithelium via cochlear gap junctions and deregulated expression of genes that are under transcriptional control of the nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2), a pivotal regulator of tolerance to redox stress. Moreover, a statistically significant genome-wide association with two genes (PRKCE and TGFB1) related to the Nrf2 pathway (p-value < 4\u202f 7 10-2) was detected in a very large cohort of 4091 individuals, originating from Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia, with hearing phenotype (including 1076 presbycusis patients and 1290 healthy matched controls). We conclude that (i) elements of the Nrf2 pathway are essential for hearing maintenance and (ii) their dysfunction may play an important role in the etiopathogenesis of human presbycusis

Checklist of gypsophilous vascular flora in Italy

Our understanding of the richness and uniqueness of the flora growing on gypsum substrates in Italy has grown significantly since the 19th century and, even today, new plant species are still being discovered. However, the plants and plant communities, growing on gypsum substrates in Italy, are still a relatively unknown subject. The main aim of this paper was to elaborate a checklist of the Italian gypsophilous flora, to increase knowledge about this peculiar flora and for which conservation efforts need to be addressed. Through a structured group communication process of experts (application of the Delphi technique), a remarkable number of experienced Italian botanists have joined together to select focal plant species linked to gypsum substrates. From the results obtained, 31 plant species behave as absolute or preferent taxa (gypsophytes and gypsoclines) and form the ‘core’ Italian gypsophilous flora. The most abundant life forms were chamaephytes and hemicryptophytes, belonging to Poaceae and Brassicaceae; as for chorotypes, the most represented are Mediterranean and narrow endemics. By improving on previously available information about the flora with a clear preference for gypsum in Italy, this undertaking represents an important contribution to the knowledge of a habitat which is today considered a priority for conservation

Cx26 partial loss causes accelerated presbycusis by redox imbalance and dysregulation of Nfr2 pathway

Mutations in GJB2, the gene that encodes connexin 26 (Cx26), are the most common cause of sensorineural hearing impairment. The truncating variant 35delG, which determines a complete loss of Cx26 protein function, is the prevalent GJB2 mutation in several populations. Here, we generated and analyzed Gjb2+/- mice as a model of heterozygous human carriers of 35delG. Compared to control mice, auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) and distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) worsened over time more rapidly in Gjb2+/- mice, indicating they were affected by accelerated age-related hearing loss (ARHL), or presbycusis. We linked causally the auditory phenotype of Gjb2+/- mice to apoptosis and oxidative damage in the cochlear duct, reduced release of glutathione from connexin hemichannels, decreased nutrient delivery to the sensory epithelium via cochlear gap junctions and deregulated expression of genes that are under transcriptional control of the nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2), a pivotal regulator of tolerance to redox stress. Moreover, a statistically significant genome-wide association with two genes (PRKCE and TGFB1) related to the Nrf2 pathway (p-value < 4\u202f 7 10-2) was detected in a very large cohort of 4091 individuals, originating from Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia, with hearing phenotype (including 1076 presbycusis patients and 1290 healthy matched controls). We conclude that (i) elements of the Nrf2 pathway are essential for hearing maintenance and (ii) their dysfunction may play an important role in the etiopathogenesis of human presbycusis

Notulae to the Italian native vascular flora: 8

In this contribution, new data concerning the distribution of native vascular flora in Italy are presented. It includes new records, confirmations, exclusions, and status changes to the Italian administrative regions for taxa in the genera Ajuga, Chamaemelum, Clematis, Convolvulus, Cytisus, Deschampsia, Eleocharis, Epipactis, Euphorbia, Groenlandia, Hedera, Hieracium, Hydrocharis, Jacobaea, Juncus, Klasea, Lagurus, Leersia, Linum, Nerium, Onopordum, Persicaria, Phlomis, Polypogon, Potamogeton, Securigera, Sedum, Soleirolia, Stachys, Umbilicus, Valerianella, and Vinca. Nomenclatural and distribution updates, published elsewhere, and corrigenda are provided as Suppl. material 1