Il santuario extraurbano di Hera a Samos. Forme e spazi del culto tra devozione privata ed economia pubblica

The Heraion of Samos is characterized by the simultaneous presence of several temples, whose role and function is not always easily identifiable. Available archaeological, epigraphic and literary evidence suggests that some of them actually served as authentic cult edifices, connected with worship practices related to the deities attested in the area, such as Hera or Aphrodite. Nevertheless, the analysis of some significant inscriptions reveals the primary importance of economic activities taking place in the sacred space, indicating that the role played by at least one of the temples was indeed deeply focused on the financial deposits’ management and thereby shading some light on the debated problem concerning the constructions’ interpretation

Protecting the archaeological heritage from structural risks: some significant cases

In the present paper the “Three R” Strategy for archaeological consolidation is described, referring to some well-known historical examples and then to some significant cases on UNESCO sites performed by the author. The problem of conserving the constructive info of ancient structures along centuries is summarized, together with a set of recurrent structural problems. Three case studies of sites are explained, two located in Arabic Peninsula (Dhofar district, Sumhuram– Al Balid), one in Jordan (Petra district – Shawbak). The replacement of walls (with or without mortar joints) is performed, together with the strategy to assess a respectful, recognizable and reversible consolidation technique

Preschoolers and Mind Body Health

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Horizontally restrained rocking blocks: evaluation of the role of boundary conditions with static and dynamic approaches

The paper deals with the behavior of restrained rocking blocks under seismic actions. Structural or non-structural masonry or r.c. elements, such as building façades or pre-cast panels subjected to out-of-plane modes, may be assimilated to rocking blocks restrained by horizontal springs. Horizontal restraints can represent flexible floors or steel anchorages or any anti-seismic device designed to impede overturning probability. Their effect could improve, in most cases, the dynamic response of blocks in terms of reduction of rotation amplitude. Nevertheless, this effectiveness could vanish or, surprisingly, affect the response in negative way, resulting in overturning when low values of stiffness or one-sided motion in particular conditions are assumed. Two cases of horizontal restraints are analyzed: (1) concentrated restraint as single spring and (2) smeared restraint as spring bed with constant or linearly variable stiffness. The single stabilizing or destabilizing terms of the formulation are here analyzed and commented, providing practical evaluations to obtain enhancement of response in static and dynamic perspective. A numerical example of a masonry façade with non-linear boundary conditions has been provided highlighting how the choice of stiffness values affects the oscillatory motion and rebound effects. Finally, unit stiffness for masonry/concrete walls and retrofitting techniques, such as steel tie-rods, has been calculated

Le tecnologie dell'informazione e della comunicazione nelle piccole imprese dei settori maturi

La diffusione delle tecnologie dell'informazione e della comunicazione ha determinato profondi cambiamenti nelle economie industrializzate sintetizzati nel concetto di New economy. Le determinanti dell'adozione e gli effetti di queste tecnologie sono stati ampiamente studiati per quanto riguarda le grandi imprese ma assai meno per le piccole. Il lavoro si propone di fornire evidenza empirica sulla diffusione e sulle modalità e i livelli d'uso nelle piccole imprese italiane dei settori maturi. Dall'analisi emerge che le tecnologie più semplici e di minor costo fanno ormai parte della dotazione di quasi tutte le piccole imprese indipendentemente dalla dimensione ma stentano ancora a diffondersi quelle più complesse e le modalità d'uso high end. L'analisi econometrica mostra che la diffusione è influenzata oltreché dalla dimensione anche dai livelli di istruzione della forza lavoro, dalla pressione competitiva dei mercati e dall'inserimento in reti di relazioni con altre imprese

Low cost seismic constructions: design and dissemination in developing socio-economic areas

The paper describes a procedure for establishing and disseminating a sustainable technique for the construction of low-cost seismic structures, by using reinforced bamboo elements. The procedure is illustrated via the example of a small public building, suitable for use as a primary school or health centre. Furthermore, on the basis of sociolinguistic investigations, we propose a multi-pronged strategy for disseminating specific technical knowledge, involving different means of communication, and including various types of linguistic acts, that are appropriate to the various socio-economic segments identified in the local population

Saperi locali, innovazione tecnologica e sviluppo economico: indagine su un campione di imprese sarde

L'analisi empirica dello sviluppo locale ha fornito un notevole contributo alla comprensione dei meccanismi sottostanti alle dinamiche dei sistemi economici locali. L'oggetto di tale analisi sono stati prevalentemente sistemi locali di successo come i distretti industriali. Minore attenzione hanno invece ricevuto le aree in cui, nonostante la presenza diffusa di un know how ricco e sofisticato, non si è ancora innescato alcun meccanismo di sviluppo endogeno. Il lavoro analizza il caso di un campione di imprese sarde appartenenti a settori fortemente radicati nei saperi tradizionali, esaminando in particolare il comportamento innovativo e le sue determinanti. La limitata crescita delle imprese è attribuita ad alcune caratteristiche peculiari di queste produzioni che agiscono come fattori inibenti dell'innovazione e dell'ampliamento dei mercati. In particolare la scelta di perseguire una strategia di nicchia sul mercato locale è incentivata dal vantaggio competitivo di cui queste imprese godono sul mercato locale, grazie alla capacità di soddisfare specifiche esigenze dei consumatori locali. Inoltre la scarsa propensione a innovare è influenzata dal fatto che in questi settori non sempre l'innovazione accresce la competitività dell'impresa

Seismic reinforcement of a R.C. school structure with strength irregularities throughout external bracing walls

The effect of irregularities due to the non-uniform distribution of material properties on structural elements of a significant real case is here investigated. Mechanical tests performed on a typical Italian reinforced concrete (r.c.) school building built in the 1960s showed irregularity in the distribution of compression strength in columns, even though the construction is featured by substantially symmetric distribution of the frames. Extreme scenarios in the distribution of irregularities in compression strength of concrete columns are analyzed, with the hypothesis of rigid or deformable slabs. The seismic analysis showed the influence of the response due to the irregular distributions of concrete strength. A proposal of equivalent "material eccentricity" is shown to account for the mentioned irregularity. Furthermore, the practical solution of reinforcement to mitigate the effects of irregularities is also described. It consists of couple of external r.c. walls stiffened by r.c. buttresses added to the building, connected by transverse slabs. An extensive reduction of material eccentricity is achieved, together with a relevant improvement in seismic capacity

Practical assessment of Biba integrity for TCG-enabled platforms

Checking the integrity of an application is necessary to determine if the latter will behave as expected. The method defined by the Trusted Computing Group consists in evaluating the fingerprints of the platform hardware and software components required for the proper functioning of the application to be assessed. However, this only ensures that a process was working correctly at load-time but not for its whole life-cycle. Policy-Reduced Integrity Measurement Architecture (PRIMA) addresses this problem by enforcing a security policy that denies information flows from potentially malicious processes to an application target of the evaluation and its dependencies (requirement introduced by CW-Lite, an evolution of the Biba integrity model). Given the difficulty of deploying PRIMA (as platform administrators have to tune their security policies to satisfy the CW-Lite requirements) we propose in this paper Enhanced IMA, an extended version of the Integrity Measurement Architecture (IMA) that, unlike PRIMA, works almost out of the box and just reports information flows instead of enforcing them. In addition, we introduce a model to evaluate the information reported by Enhanced IMA with existing technique