“Regulatory Daubert”: A Proposal to Enhance Judicial Review of Agency Science by Incorporating Daubert Principles into Administrative Law

In Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc, the US Supreme Court empowered federal judges to reject irrelevant or unreliable scientific evidence. Daubert provides a suitable framework for reviewing the quality of agency science and the soundness of agency decisions consistent with the standards established for review of agency rulemakings under the Administrative Procedure Act

Krichever Maps, Faa' di Bruno Polynomials, and Cohomology in KP Theory

We study the geometrical meaning of the Faa' di Bruno polynomials in the context of KP theory. They provide a basis in a subspace W of the universal Grassmannian associated to the KP hierarchy. When W comes from geometrical data via the Krichever map, the Faa' di Bruno recursion relation turns out to be the cocycle condition for (the Welters hypercohomology group describing) the deformations of the dynamical line bundle on the spectral curve together with the meromorphic sections which give rise to the Krichever map. Starting from this, one sees that the whole KP hierarchy has a similar cohomological meaning.Comment: 16 pages, LaTex using amssymb.sty. To be published in Lett. Math. Phy

“Regulatory Daubert”: A Proposal to Enhance Judicial Review of Agency Science by Incorporating Daubert Principles into Administrative Law

In Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc, the US Supreme Court empowered federal judges to reject irrelevant or unreliable scientific evidence. Daubert provides a suitable framework for reviewing the quality of agency science and the soundness of agency decisions consistent with the standards established for review of agency rulemakings under the Administrative Procedure Act

“Che paura avete voi?" : collocations of it. paura in Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron

This paper presents an analysis of the collocations of it. paura (fear) in Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron. The main goal of the research was to find out how this emotion is conceptualized in Boccaccio’s masterpiece, which is considered a milestone of Italian literature. Following the theory of conceptual metaphors and linguistic research on emotions, as well as a qualitative approach to collocation, it is shown that paura in the Decameron is depicted as an independent and powerful entity that rules the subject experiencing it

Gli ordini architettonici nell'opera di Bramante

Viene esaminato l'impiego dell'ordine dorico nel Tempietto di San Pietro in Montorio, con attenzione all'analisi dei modelli antichi studiati da Bramante

The effect of the displacement damage on the Charge Collection Efficiency in Silicon Drift Detectors for the LOFT satellite

The technology of Silicon Drift Detectors (SDDs) has been selected for the two instruments aboard the Large Observatory For X-ray Timing (LOFT) space mission. LOFT underwent a three year long assessment phase as candidate for the M3 launch opportunity within the "Cosmic Vision 2015 -- 2025" long-term science plan of the European Space Agency. During the LOFT assessment phase, we studied the displacement damage produced in the SDDs by the protons trapped in the Earth's magnetosphere. In a previous paper we discussed the effects of the Non Ionising Energy Losses from protons on the SDD leakage current. In this paper we report the measurement of the variation of Charge Collection Efficiency produced by displacement damage caused by protons and the comparison with the expected damage in orbit.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication by Journal of Instrumentatio

Objectivity in newsmaking: an argumentative perspective

Objectivity is a key concept in journalism studies, yet a controversial one. Scholars (e.g., Clayman and Heritage 2002; Hallin and Mancini 2004; Schudson 1978; 2001) disagree on what it precisely implies (distinguishing facts from opinions? Reporting only true facts? Being balanced in presenting positions?) and on how strictly journalists should stick to it. I claim that adopting an argumentative perspective enables to see how journalists deal with objectivity in everyday work. In fact, the objectivity requirement plays the role of endoxical premise in argumentative reasoning that takes place during newsroom decision-making. In the present paper, this is shown by analyzing argumentative discussions in two television newsrooms of the Swiss public service broadcaster (SRG SSR). The case studies shed light on what objectivity means for these two newsrooms, as well as on how the goal of being objective intermingles with that of telling a story. Methodologically, argumentation is reconstructed employing Pragma-Dialectics (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004), while endoxical premises and inferential patterns supporting standpoints are traced out applying the Argumentum Model of Topics (Rigotti and Greco Morasso 2009, 2010, in preparation). The examples are taken from a corpus collected during the Swiss National Science Foundation project “Idée suisse” (NFP 56, 2005-2008)

Castel Sant'Angelo. Fortezza e residenza pontificia

L'articolo descrive i primi risultati della ricerca su Castel Sant'Angelo: lo studio della loggia voluta da Giulio II e progettata da Giuliano da Sangallo, con attenzione alla ricostruzione del progetto originario e alla storia della costruzione e delle successive modifiche

The editorial meeting discussion as an argumentative activity type

A still uninvestigated argumentative reasoning hides behind news texts, in the discussions surrounding the writing process. I try to fill this gap by reconstructing how newsroom decision-making functions from a combined argumentative and discourse analytical perspective. In order to do so, I analyze the editorial meeting discussion about a potential news item and its production as an argumentative activity type, using a French- and German-language corpus collected at the Swiss public broadcast service