Harmonia, Melos and Rhytmos. Aristotle on Musical Education

In this paper, I reconstruct the reasons why Aristotle thinks that musical education is important for moral education. Musical education teaches us to enjoy appropriately and to recognize perceptually fine melodies and rhythms. Fine melodies and rhythms are similar to the kind of movements fine actions consist in and fine characters display. By teaching us to enjoy and recognise fine melodies and rhythms, musical education can train us to recognize and to take pleasure in fine actions and characters. Thus, musical education can, up to a point, lead us toward the actions and character dispositions a virtuous life requires

Stress level effect on mobility of dry granular flows of angular rock fragments

AbstractGranular flows of angular rock fragments such as rock avalanches and dense pyroclastic flows are simulated numerically by means of the discrete element method. Since large-scale flows generate stresses that are larger than those generated by small-scale flows, the purpose of these simulations is to understand the effect that the stress level has on flow mobility. The results show that granular flows that slide en mass have a flow mobility that is not influenced by the stress level. On the contrary, the stress level governs flow mobility when granular flow dynamics is affected by clast agitation and collisions. This second case occurs on a relatively rougher subsurface where an increase of the stress level causes an increase of flow mobility. The results show also that as the stress level increases, the effect that an increase of flow volume has on flow mobility switches sign from causing a decrease of mobility at low stress level to causing an increase of mobility at high stress level. This latter volume effect corresponds to the famous Heim's mobility increase with the increase of the volume of large rock avalanches detected so far only in the field and for this reason considered inexplicable without resorting to extraordinary mechanisms. Granular flow dynamics is described in terms of dimensionless scaling parameters in three different granular flow regimes. This paper illustrates for each regime the functional relationship of flow mobility with stress level, flow volume, grain size, channel width, and basal friction

Mobility of pyroclastic flows and rock avalanches: a functional relationship of scaling parameters

Flows of angular rock fragments are released down a concave upward chute in the laboratory to study their mobility which is measured considering the travel distance of the centre of mass of the granular masses. The prediction of flow mobility is necessary, in volcanic and mountain regions, to assess natural hazards caused by pyroclastic flows and rock avalanches. The longitudinal profile of our chute is similar to that of the flanks of Mayon volcano in the Philippines. Our flows are dry and they have different masses (30 and 60 g) and different grain size ranges (0.5-1, 1-2 and 2-3 mm). The values of all the other variables that can affect the travel distance are held constant. Flow mobility is measured as the reciprocal of the apparent coefficient of friction that is equal to the ratio of the vertical drop of the centre of mass to its horizontal distance of travel. Our dimensional analysis generates a functional relationship between the apparent coefficient of friction and a scaling parameter that contains grain size and flow volume

Multi-Criteria Optimal Planning for Energy Policies in CLP

In the policy making process a number of disparate and diverse issues such as economic development, environmental aspects, as well as the social acceptance of the policy, need to be considered. A single person might not have all the required expertises, and decision support systems featuring optimization components can help to assess policies. Leveraging on previous work on Strategic Environmental Assessment, we developed a fully-fledged system that is able to provide optimal plans with respect to a given objective, to perform multi-objective optimization and provide sets of Pareto optimal plans, and to visually compare them. Each plan is environmentally assessed and its footprint is evaluated. The heart of the system is an application developed in a popular Constraint Logic Programming system on the Reals sort. It has been equipped with a web service module that can be queried through standard interfaces, and an intuitive graphic user interface.Comment: Accepted at ICLP2014 Conference as Technical Communication, due to appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP

Aristotle on Attention

I argue that a study of the Nicomachean Ethics and of the Parva Naturalia shows that Aristotle had a notion of attention. This notion captures the common aspects of apparently different phenomena like perceiving something vividly, being distracted by a loud sound or by a musical piece, focusing on a geometrical problem. For Aristotle, these phenomena involve a specific selectivity that is the outcome of the competition between different cognitive stimuli. This selectivity is attention. I argue that Aristotle studied the common aspects of the physiological processes at the basis of attention and its connection with pleasure. His notion can explain perceptual attention and intellectual attention as voluntary or involuntary phenomena. In addition, it sheds light on how attention and enjoyment can enhance our cognitive activities

Aristotle on the Affective Powers of Colour and Pictures

Aristotle’s works on natural science show that he was aware of the affective powers of colour. At De an. 421a13, for example, he writes that hard-eyed animals can only discriminate between frightening and non-frightening colours. In the Nicomachean Ethics, furthermore, colours are the source of pleasures and delight. These pleasures, unlike the pleasures of touch and taste, neither corrupt us nor make us wiser. Aristotle’s views on the affective powers of colours raise a question about the limits he seems to place on the affective powers of pictures at De an. 427b15-24, where he implies that pictures do not affect us immediately. In this paper, I look at the contrast between the affective powers of colour and the affective powers of pictures. I argue that colours can give rise to pleasure and pain in themselves and generate emotions incidentally. Similarly, pictures can please us or affect us in themselves and incidentally. In light of this account, I suggest that on a plausible reading of De an. 427b15-24, the affective powers of pictures as mimetic objects are not immediate because they require an intervening cause in order to be effective. The representations of pictures and statues affect us either with the mediation of deception or with the mediation of interpretation

Aristotle on the Affective Powers of Colours and Pictures

Aristotle’s works on natural science show that he was aware of the affective powers of colour. At De an. 421a13, for example, he writes that hard-eyed animals can only discriminate between frightening and non-frightening colours. In the Nicomachean Ethics, furthermore, colours are the source of pleasures and delight. These pleasures, unlike the pleasures of touch and taste, neither corrupt us nor make us wiser. Aristotle’s views on the affective powers of colours raise a question about the limits he seems to place on the affective powers of pictures at De an. 427b15-24, where he implies that pictures do not affect us immediately. In this paper, I examine the contrast between the affective powers of colour and the affective powers of pictures. I argue that colours can give rise to pleasure and pain in themselves and generate emotions incidentally. Similarly, pictures can please us or affect us in themselves and incidentally. In light of this account, I suggest that, on a plausible reading of De an. 427b15-24, the affective powers of pictures as mimetic objects are not immediate because they require an intervening cause in order to be effective. The representations of pictures and statues affect us either with the mediation of deception or with the mediation of interpretation

Analysis of thermal losses for CSP applications

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

Grain size and flow volume effects on granular flow mobility in numerical simulations: 3-D discrete element modeling of flows of angular rock fragments.

The results of three-dimensional discrete element modeling (DEM) presented in this paper confirm the grain size and flow volume effects on granular flow mobility that were observed in laboratory experiments where batches of granular material traveled down a curved chute. Our numerical simulations are able to predict the correct relative mobility of the granular flows because they take into account particle interactions and, thus, the energy dissipated by the flows. The results illustrated here are obtained without prior fine tuning of the parameter values to get the desired output. The grain size and flow volume effects can be expressed by a linear relationship between scaling parameters where the finer the grain size or the smaller the flow volume, the more mobile the centre of mass of the granular flows. The numerical simulations reveal also the effect of the initial compaction of the granular masses before release. The larger the initial compaction, the more mobile the centre of mass of the granular flows. Both grain size effect and compaction effect are explained by different particle agitations per unit of flow mass that cause different energy dissipations per unit of travel distance. The volume effect is explained by the backward accretion of the deposits that occurs wherever there is a change of slope (either gradual or abrupt). Our results are relevant for the understanding of the travel and deposition mechanisms of geophysical flows such as rock avalanches and pyroclastic flows

Low-frequency internal friction in clamped-free thin wires

We present a series of internal friction measurements for the normal modes of circular fibres made of different materials, that can suspend the test masses of an interferometric gravity wave detector. For metallic wires, the frequency independent loss angle ranges between 10 y3 and 10 y4 . The losses in fused silica are two orders of magnitude lower than those in metals