La catabasi di Anfiarao: Saggio di commento a stat. Theb. Viii 1-217

2008 - 2009Il dott. Francesco di Paola Di Capua, al termine delle attività di formazione e di ricerca, servendosi dell’edizione critica di Klotz A., “Publi Papini Stati Thebais, Leipzig 1908 (riveduta e corretta da Th. C. Klinnert nel 1973), ma tenendo conto anche dell’edizione curata da Hill D.E. “Publi Papini Stati Thebaidos Libri XII”, Leiden 1983, ha approntato un saggio di commento relativo ai primi 207 versi del libro VIII della Tebaide di Stazio. L’analisi di tali versi riguarda la catabasi di Anfiarao. Il lavoro di ricerca è stato così articolato: introduzione, traduzione del testo latino, commento. La traduzione, condotta sul testo criticamente rivisitato, tenta da un lato di rendere in italiano la pregnanza delle scelte linguistiche dell’autore, dall’altro di svolgere, in forma lineare e agevole, le strutture sintattiche cercando di far rivivere, per quanto possibile, lo stile poetico staziano. Nell’introduzione, a brevi cenni alla vita e alle opere dell’autore, e ad una concisa messa a punto della tradizione manoscritta del testo staziano, segue, dapprima, un’analisi generale dell’opera e, successivamente, un’analisi più particolareggiata della porzione di testo presa in esame. All'interno dell’introduzione, particolare attenzione è stata rivolta al piano linguisticostilistico e a quello letterario del testo, mentre osservazioni di carattere filologico e storico sono state quasi interamente riservate alle note di commento. L’attenzione del dott. Di Capua è stata poi rivolta al particolare uso dei modelli e/o ai rapporti con essi di imitatio ed aemulatio. Gli elementi di carattere filosofico all’interno del testo sono molto labili, sebbene si propenda per ritenere questi fugaci accenni come retaggio di una tradizione letteraria e non come spie di ideologie e/o dottrine filosofiche. Oltre a soffermarsi sul personaggio di Anfiarao l’analisi ha evidenziato l’importanza del dio Plutone; il dio appare personaggio di forte spessore psicologico, poiché, sebbene venga raffigurato quale emblema ed incarnazione del male, è portavoce di un animo lacerato nel quale albergano sentimenti contrastanti. Emerge altresì il suo ruolo quale alter ego di Giove nell’assecondare il volere e l’ineluttabilità del Fatum. Si è messa, infine, in particolare evidenza l’invocazione di Tisifone da parte del dio dell’Ade, che appare simmetrica rispetto a quella formulata da Edipo nel libro I; pertanto si è rimarcato come l’attuazione del nefas avvenga attraverso un consenso di rapporti fra umano e divino (Edipo e Giove/Plutone), fra mondo terreno, celeste e sotterraneo. Il libro VIII si pone pertanto come libro centrale nell’impianto del poema, in quanto portatore di una nuova esplosione del furor (dopo quella del libro I) nel prosieguo della narrazione. [a cura dell'autore]VIII n.s

Exploiting the Nutrient Potential of Anaerobically Digested Sewage Sludge: A Review

The world is currently witnessing a rapid increase in sewage sludge (SS) production, due to the increased demand for wastewater treatment. Therefore, SS management is crucial for the economic and environmental sustainability of wastewater treatment plants. The recovery of nutrients from SS has been identified as a fundamental step to enable the transition from a linear to a circular economy, turning SS into an economic and sustainable source of materials. SS is often treated via anaerobic digestion, to pursue energy recovery via biogas generation. Anaerobically digested sewage sludge (ADS) is a valuable source of organic matter and nutrients, and significant advances have been made in recent years in methods and technologies for nutrient recovery from ADS. The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive overview, describing the advantages and drawbacks of the available and emerging technologies for recovery of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) from ADS. This work critically reviews the established and novel technologies, which are classified by their ability to recover a specific nutrient (ammonia stripping) or to allow the simultaneous recovery of multiple elements (struvite precipitation, ion exchange, membrane technologies, and thermal treatments). This study compares the described technologies in terms of nutrient recovery efficiency, capital, and operational costs, as well as their feasibility for full-scale application, revealing the current state of the art and future perspectives on this topic

Radiation Damage in Polyethylene Naphthalate Thin-Film Scintillators.

This paper describes the scintillation features and the radiation damage in polyethylene naphthalate 100 µm-thick scintillators irradiated with an 11 MeV proton beam and with a 1 MeV electron beam at doses up to 15 and 85 Mrad, respectively. The scintillator emission spectrum, optical transmission, light yield loss, and scintillation pulse decay times were investigated before and after the irradiation. A deep blue emission spectrum peaked at 422 nm, and fast and slow scintillation decay time constants of the order of 1-2 ns and 25-30 nm, respectively, were measured. After irradiation, transmittance showed a loss of transparency for wavelengths between 380 and 420 nm, and a light yield reduction of ~40% was measured at the maximum dose of 85 Mrad

Hysteresis Modeling in Iron-Dominated Magnets Based on a Multi-Layered Narx Neural Network Approach

A full-fledged neural network modeling, based on a Multi-layered Nonlinear Autoregressive Exogenous Neural Network (NARX) architecture, is proposed for quasi-static and dynamic hysteresis loops, one of the most challenging topics for computational magnetism. This modeling approach overcomes drawbacks in attaining better than percent-level accuracy of classical and recent approaches for accelerator magnets, that combine hybridization of standard hysteretic models and neural network architectures. By means of an incremental procedure, different Deep Neural Network Architectures are selected, fine-tuned and tested in order to predict magnetic hysteresis in the context of electromagnets. Tests and results show that the proposed NARX architecture best fits the measured magnetic field behavior of a reference quadrupole at CERN. In particular, the proposed modeling framework leads to a percent error below 0.02% for the magnetic field prediction, thus outperforming state of the art approaches and paving a very promising way for future real time applications

Microaerobic Digestion of Low-Biodegradable Sewage Sludge: Effect of Air Dosing in Batch Reactors

The adoption of prolonged solid retention times during the biological treatment of urban wastewaters is a well-known strategy to reduce sewage sludge production. However, it also results in the production of a biological sludge with low percentages of biodegradable organic matter, also characterized by high humification degrees, which may hamper the anaerobic digestion treatment aimed at sludge stabilization. To accelerate the hydrolytic stage, the application of microaerobic conditions during the anaerobic digestion of low-biodegradable sewage sludge was investigated in this study. In particular, six bio-methanation tests of a real sewage sludge were carried out, introducing air in the bioreactors with doses ranging between 0 and 16.83 L air/kg VSin d, in order to evaluate the air dosage that optimizes the biomethane production and organic matter degradation. Notably, the lower air loading rates investigated in this study, such as 0.68 and 1.37 L air/kg VSin d, led to an increase in methane production of up to 19%, due to a higher degradation of total lipids and proteins. In addition, these microaerobic conditions also resulted in a decrease in the sludge humification degree and in lower volatile fatty acid accumulation

Electron donors for autotrophic denitrification

Autotrophic denitrification (AuDen) is an efficient, convenient and eco-friendly biological process for the treatment of nitrate-contaminated organic-deficient waters. AuDen can be applied as a unique process or complement the conventional denitrification with organics, reducing the risk of organic carbon breakthrough in the effluent and formation of undesirable byproducts downstream (e.g. trihalomethanes). A wide range of inorganic compounds can act as electron donors for AuDen. The most used electron donors include hydrogen gas and reduced sulfur compounds, i.e. elemental sulfur, sulfide and thiosulfate. Recently, the denitrification potential of certain contaminants (such as sulfite, thiocyanate, arsenite and manganese) and inorganic wastes (such as biogenic elemental sulfur from biogas upgrading) has been revealed and attracted interest for developing technologies that combine nitrate removal with water detoxification. This paper critically reviews the state of the art of the most used electron donors for AuDen and highlights recent advances on the application of novel inorganic compounds, reactor configurations and microorganisms to support denitrification. Criteria and guidelines for the selection of a suitable electron donor are provided

Total and Partial Fragmentation Cross-Section of 500 MeV/nucleon Carbon Ions on Different Target Materials

By using an experimental setup based on thin and thick double-sided microstrip silicon detectors, it has been possible to identify the fragmentation products due to the interaction of very high energy primary ions on different targets. Here we report total and partial cross-sections measured at GSI (Gesellschaft fur Schwerionenforschung), Darmstadt, for 500 MeV/n energy $^{12}C$ beam incident on water (in flasks), polyethylene, lucite, silicon carbide, graphite, aluminium, copper, iron, tin, tantalum and lead targets. The results are compared to the predictions of GEANT4 (v4.9.4) and FLUKA (v11.2) Monte Carlo simulation programs.Comment: 10pages, 13figures, 4table

Characterization of the Radiation-Induced Damage in a PEN (Polyethylene Naphthalate) Scintillation Detector

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Assessment of blood perfusion quality in laparoscopic colorectal surgery by means of Machine Learning

An innovative algorithm to automatically assess blood perfusion quality of the intestinal sector in laparoscopic colorectal surgery is proposed. Traditionally, the uniformity of the brightness in indocyanine green-based fluorescence consists only in a qualitative, empirical evaluation, which heavily relies on the surgeon's subjective assessment. As such, this leads to assessments that are strongly experience-dependent. To overcome this limitation, the proposed algorithm assesses the level and uniformity of indocyanine green used during laparoscopic surgery. The algorithm adopts a Feed Forward Neural Network receiving as input a feature vector based on the histogram of the green band of the input image. It is used to (i) acquire information related to perfusion during laparoscopic colorectal surgery, and (ii) support the surgeon in assessing objectively the outcome of the procedure. In particular, the algorithm provides an output that classifies the perfusion as adequate or inadequate. The algorithm was validated on videos captured during surgical procedures carried out at the University Hospital Federico II in Naples, Italy. The obtained results show a classification accuracy equal to [Formula: see text], with a repeatability of [Formula: see text]. Finally, the real-time operation of the proposed algorithm was tested by analyzing the video streaming captured directly from an endoscope available in the OR