Elsa Morante e il cinema: "L’isola di Arturo" di Damiano Damiani

Although its intensity and duration, the relation between Elsa Morante and the cinema is less studied by the critics, perhaps because of the scarceness of information. But the discovery of many new documents in these years permitted to know the plots written (but not realized9 by the Author from 1933 till 1952 (there are three different plots: Il diavolo, Miss Italia and Verranno a te sull’aure). It is also possible to have a clear idea of the collaboration with some directors like: Alberto Lattuada, Luchino Visconti, Franco Zeffirelli, Pier Paolo Pasolini. A close analysis of the cinematographic version of the novel L’Isola di Arturo, directed by Damiano Damiani in 1962, permits to determine that the dissatisfaction which Morante expressed in many circumstances derives from a lack of dialogue between her and the director damiano Damiani.Pure se intenso e continuato nel tempo, il rapporto tra Elsa Morante e il cinema è sempre rimasto un argomento poco sondato dalla critica, forse anche per la scarsità di informazioni al riguardo. Negli ultimi anni, tuttavia, molti nuovi documenti sono stati reperiti, e tali scoperte hanno reso possibile conoscere i soggetti cinematografici da lei scritti (ma mai realizzati) tra il 1939 e il 1952 (sono tre: Il diavolo, Miss Italia e Verranno a te sull’aure...), nonché farsi un’idea concreta delle sue varie collaborazioni con registi come Alberto Lattuada, Luchino Visconti, Franco Zeffirelli, Pier Paolo Pasolini. Differentemente, un’analisi attenta della trasposizione cinematografica de L’isola di Arturo, diretta da Damiano Damiani nel 1962, mostra come l’esibita insoddisfazione della scrittrice, espressa in più occasioni, nasca per l’appunto da un’assenza di dialogo tra i due artisti

Synthesis, structure and properties of novel Cu(II)-based metal-organic frameworks

Porous crystalline materials are known to be useful for a number of applications, including sensing, 1 drug delivery, 2 solid state catalysis3 and controlled absorption and release of liquids, gases and small molecules in solution. 4,5 Within this general definition, a class of materials that has seen its importance grow exponentially in the past two decades has been that of the Metal-Organic Frameworks, or MOFs. These materials have shown a lot of potential, especially in devices aimed at sequestering greenhouse gases (such as CO2 and CH4) from the atmosphere, 6 as well as in fuel tanks for hydrogen-powered cars. 7 The characteristics that allow MOFs to be used for such purposes are their high internal surface area to volume ratio, their relatively high thermal stability and the possibility to fine-tune their structure to optimize a given MOF for a given application. 8 Another feature of some MOFs, especially those built with semiflexible organic linkers9 between metallic nodes, is that they can change their conformation and therefore their pore size and internal surface area, in response to an external stimulus. 2,10 This behavior is especially interesting for systems which can be engineered to absorb and then release small molecules in a controlled manner. 11,12 This last property is one that I set out to exploit in my thesis work, starting from Cu(II) molecular complexes previously synthesized in the University of Cape Town (UCT) laboratories and varying experimental conditions in order to get MOFs of similar systems. Thus, this work will mainly describe the several novel crystal structures I obtained during my research. Each chapter will also discuss the basic spectroscopic and thermal properties of the material explored therein. Of these crystals, two are novel Cu(II)-based coordination polymers, which were named 1-MBUCT and 2-MBUCT, with seldom-seen coordination characteristics and other interesting features, including solvent-filled cavities within their crystal structure, which makes them promising candidates to be fully considered MOFs. After exploring the synthesis and structure of the materials, this work will mainly focus on determining whether the cavities inside 1-MBUCT and 2-MBUCT are accessible to other guests, without disrupting the overall morphology of the material. This was done through solvent exchange experiments, which were inconclusive but nonetheless suggested that these materials did indeed retain their shape, while allowing guest molecules inside their pores, thus being worthy of being described as MOFs. 6 All other structures are byproducts obtained during various attempts to optimize the synthesis of these MOFs, and are often examples of unusual compound classes in their own right. The first of these compounds is a Cu-based [12]crown-6 cyclical compound in which two monomethyl sulfide anions for every copper ion act as bridging ligands within the ring-like structure of the molecule, while the second is a discrete molecular complex formed by two 2,6- pyridinedicarboxylic acid molecules chelating a Cu(II) ion. The main point of interest of the last byproduct, instead, is not its structure, but rather the fact that all the carboxylic acid groups of the 3,5-pyridinedicarboxylic acid molecules included in the complex were subject to an esterification reaction. Such a reaction was unexpected, as the components of this system did not correspond to those found in any reported esterification reaction performed on 3,5-pyridinedicarboxylic acid

Impact of hyporheic zones on nutrient dynamics

Riverine sediments play a fundamental role within the fluvial system, since they represent potential removal zones of stream-borne pollutants and, in particular, nutrients derived by anthropogenic activities. The region of sediments where the exchange and mixing of surface and subsurface waters occurs is the hyporheic zone. This region is also a place of intense biogeochemical activity, influencing both the flora and the fauna living in the fluvial environment. In the last decades several works were focused either on the water exchanges or the biochemical reactions in the hyporheic zone but just few considered the interactions of both hydraulic and biochemical processes. In this thesis the reactive transport of oxygen and the most common water-borne nutrients (i.e., dissolved organic carbon, nitrate and ammonium) in a duned streambed is investigated. In particular, a numerical model is employed to simulate the flow field, the biogeochemical reactions and the solute spatial distribution in the hyporheic zone. Sensitivity analyses are also performed to study the influence of different hydrological and chemical properties of the system on the net solute fluxes across the streambed. Finally, the effect of sediment heterogeneity on substance reaction rates and, specifically, on nitrate source/sink role played by the sediments is also analyzed for a rippled streambe

On visual representations of Lie algebras: the type Al between the old and the new

nuloThis paper is about some graph isomorphisms between the Auslander-Reiten quivers of the path algebras of quivers with underlying Dynkin diagrams of type Al, and the weight diagrams or the weight graphs relative to some basic (adjoint) representations of a semi-simple complex Lie algebra associated to the same Dynkin diagrams. The crucial point is that, in the attempt to establish the above relationships, we constructed the oriented weight diagrams and the oriented weight graphs with respect to particular orientations on the Dynkin diagrams of type A1. Our main goal is to furnish another applications of weight theory and visual representations

Le rôle de l'ingénieur agronome dans la situation politique de l'agriculture vénézuélienne : 1936-1948

L'article montre les origines d'une nouvelle profession, celle des ingénieurs agronomes au Vénézuéla entre la mort de J.V. GOMEZ et la dictature de 1948. Marquée par la modernisation, l'agronomie sera l'un des acteurs de la transformation rapide du pays. Elle bénéficiera de conditions satisfaisantes mais ne s'interrogera pas sur le sens des transformations en cours ni sur le caractère tropical de son agriculture. Discipline avant tout au service de l'Etat, l'agronomie sera aussi un moyen privilégié pour l'accès à un statut social reconnu, un moyen d'ascension sociale qui se fera au détriment des aspects techniques. La réforme agraire enfin polarisera l'attention sur les aspects plus politiques, brûlants, il est vrai, dans cette période mouvementée de l'histoire du pays. (Résumé d'auteur

A diversity-aware computational framework for systems biology

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen

Structure-aware combinatorial group testing: a new method for pandemic screening

Combinatorial group testing (CGT) is used to identify defective items from a set of items by grouping them together and performing a small number of tests on the groups. Recently, group testing has been used to design efficient COVID-19 testing, so that resources are saved while still identifying all infected individuals. Due to test waiting times, a focus is given to non-adaptive CGT, where groups are designed a priori and all tests can be done in parallel. The design of the groups can be done using Cover-Free Families (CFFs). The main assumption behind CFFs is that a small number $d$ of positives are randomly spread across a population of $n$ individuals. However, for infectious diseases, it is reasonable to assume that infections show up in clusters of individuals with high contact (children in the same classroom within a school, households within a neighbourhood, students taking the same courses within a university, people seating close to each other in a stadium). The general structure of these communities can be modeled using hypergraphs, where vertices are items to be tested and edges represent clusters containing high contacts. We consider hypergraphs with non-overlapping edges and overlapping edges (first two examples and last two examples, respectively). We give constructions of what we call structure-aware CFF, which uses the structure of the underlying hypergraph. We revisit old CFF constructions, boosting the number of defectives they can identify by taking the hypergraph structure into account. We also provide new constructions based on hypergraph parameters