Giusnaturalismo e discussione politica nella Toscana della prima metà del Settecento. Neutralità, indipendenza e governo giusto da Sutter a Buondelmonti (1703-1755).

La ricerca intende indagare le forme di recezione del moderno diritto di natura da parte del ceto culturale e di governo del Granducato toscano nella prima metà del Settecento. Il percorso parte dall’identificazione delle opere, effettivamente circolanti, dei maggiori giusnaturalisti, quali Barbeyrac, Burlamaqui, Bynkershoek, Grozio, Hobbes, Leibniz, Locke, Pufendorf, Thomasius e Wolff, e dei lettori toscani, per giungere all’individuazione dei temi oggetto della discussione politica. A seguito di una prima ricognizione è emerso che: 1) il giusnaturalismo era presente sia nella cultura dei professori dell’Università di Pisa, sia nello strumentario politico dei membri del ceto dirigente; 2) il momento in cui la presenza del moderno diritto di natura diviene più evidente è quando i due lettori si incontrano per necessità. Queste sono le ragioni per le quali la ricerca è stata indirizzata verso una storia della recezione – né di tipo puramente filologico, né di tipo filosofico – volta ad illustrare quelle specifiche congiunture in cui è possibile riscontrare concretamente una forma di recezione, ossia una recezione con funzione politica. Nel capitolo I, lo studio delle edizioni ha confermato che il giusnaturalismo divenne popolare negli ambienti intellettuali toscani solo nella prima metà del Settecento, e che le traduzioni di Sorbière, Coste e Mazel, assieme a quelle di Barbeyrac, ebbero un ruolo decisivo nella diffusione delle opere giusnaturalistiche: il giusnaturalismo divenne toscano, dunque, non prima di essere divenuto europeo. Nei capitoli II, III e IV, lo studio dei testi di alcuni giuristi ed esponenti del ceto dirigente, quali Niccolò Antinori, Giuseppe Averani, Francesco Frosini e Giuseppe Maria Buondelmonti ha mostrato l’esistenza di un processo di selezione delle dottrine giusnaturalistiche: 1) bilanciato in vista della circolazione europea dei diversi scritti toscani; 2) orientato politicamente ora per affrontare le questioni successorie, ora per disegnare una aggiornata immagine degli assetti politici ed istituzionali e della società civile, ora per suggerire la scelta della neutralità e un ruolo specifico dei paesi neutrali nelle relazioni internazionali. L’esame delle diverse scritture dei membri del ceto dirigente ha mostrato la consapevolezza di questo ceto della prescrittività del sistema internazionale di potenza e un utilizzo della dottrina groziana in materia di relazioni internazionali finalizzato a promuovere e accreditare il piccolo stato del Granducato presso la società politica internazionale. L’uso di Grozio e dei suoi commentatori è apparso essere stato volto a difendere il principio che i rapporti tra stati si debbano fondare sulla fides reciproca, sull’eguaglianza del loro statuto giuridico internazionale, e, più in generale, a sostenere che l’Europa degli stati perennemente belligeranti avrebbe dovuto comunque attenersi a regole giuridiche universali. In appendice si offrono: I) la trascrizione delle memorie di parte granducale esaminate; II) la trascrizione di una selezione di carteggi diplomatici e confidenziali di Bonifacio Visconti, Carlo Borromeo Arese, Zanobi Maria Bartolini Salimbeni, Neri Corsini e Coriolano Montemagni; III) uno specimen del censimento delle edizioni sei-settecentesche delle maggiori opere di Grozio, quali Mare liberum, De jure belli ac pacis, De veritate religionis christianae, Respublica Hollandie, et Urbes, presenti nelle biblioteche toscane. This research inquiries into forms of reception of modern natural law theory by the Tuscan ruling class during the first half of the Eighteenth century. It identifies the major works of authors such as Barbeyrac, Burlamaqui, Bynkershoek, Grotius, Hobbes, Leibniz, Locke, Pufendorf, Thomasius and Wolff, circulating at that time and their Tuscan readers, and the subjects of the political debate. A first phase of research revealed that: 1) natural law theory was present among the professors of the University of Pisa, and in the political culture of the ruling class; 2) natural law theory emerged more clearly when the two type of readers come together in moments of political necessity. These results supported further research neither purely philological, nor philosophical into this reception history, to enlighten the specific circumstances in which a concrete form of reception was ongoing, that is a reception with a political function. In chapter I, the study of the editions confirmed that natural law theory become popular among Tuscan intellectuals only by the first half of the Eighteenth century. And it also showed that the translations by Sorbière, Coste and Mazel, together with the ones by Barbeyrac, had a decisive role in the process of reception of natural law theory’s works: natural law theory become Tuscan, after it had become European. In chapters II, III, and IV, close reading of the works of some jurists and members of the ruling class, such as Niccolò Antinori, Giuseppe Averani, Francesco Frosini and Giuseppe Maria Buondelmonti revealed that a process of selecting natural law theories was under way: 1) balanced as a result of the expected European circulation of these Tuscan works; 2) politically oriented to deal with questions of succession, to draw an up-to-date picture of political-institutional order and of civil society, or to advocate the neutrality option and a specific role for neutral nations in international relations. The examination of these dissertations showed the awareness of the international system’s prescriptiveness held by the Tuscan ruling class, and the special use of the Grotius’s doctrine relating international relations finalized to promote and gain credit to the small state of the Grand Duchy within international political society. The use of Grotius’s teachings and of his annotators seemed to have been focused to defend the principle by which the relations between states should be founded on mutual trust, on the equality of international juridical statue, and, in general, that European states, always waging war, should follow universal juridical rules. In the Appendix there can be found: I) many transcriptions of the memorials taken into account by this research; II) a selection of diplomatic and confidential correspondences of Bonifacio Visconti, Carlo Borromeo Arese, Zanobi Maria Bartolini Salimbeni, Neri Corsini and Coriolano Montemagni; III) a sample of the census of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth editions of Grotius’s major works, such as Mare liberum, De jure belli ac pacis, De veritate religionis christianae, Respublica Hollandie, et Urbes, held by Tuscan libraries

A Weakly Pareto Compliant Quality Indicator

In multi-objective optimization problems, the optimization target is to obtain a set of non-dominated solutions. Comparing solution sets is crucial in evaluating the performances of different optimization algorithms. The use of performance indicators is common in comparing those sets and, subsequently, optimization algorithms. A good solution set must be close to the Pareto-optimal front, well-distributed, maximally extended and fully filled. Therefore, an effective performance indicator must encompass these features as a whole and must be Pareto dominance compliant. Unfortunately, some of the known indicators often fail to properly reflect the quality of a solution set or cost a lot to compute. This paper demonstrates that the Degree of Approximation (DOA) quality indicator, is a weakly Pareto compliant unary indicator that gives a good estimation of the match between the approximated front and the Pareto-optimal front. Moreover, DOA computation is easy and fast

Factors affecting hesitancy to mrna and viral vector COVID-19 vaccines among college students in Italy

Vaccine hesitancy (VH) may be significant in jeopardizing efforts to mass containment of COVID-19. A cross-sectional survey was carried out on a sample of 2667 Italian college students, before the COVID-19 vaccines became available for this age group (from 7 May to 31 May 2021). An online survey was created to obtain information about socio-demographic, health-related, and psychological factors linked to mRNA and viral vector COVID-19 vaccines. Statistically significant higher VH (30.4%) and vaccine resistance (12.2%) rates were found for viral vector than mRNA COVID-19 vaccines (7.2% and 1.0%, respectively; p < 0.001). Factors related to viral vector VH were partially different from those related to mRNA VH. Students with greater endorsement on conspiracy statements and negative attitudes toward the vaccine had higher odds of being vaccine-hesitant or-resistant. Students who had received a previous COVID-19 test and who scored higher on the agreeableness personality dimension had lower odds to be vaccine-hesitant or-resistant. The willingness to choose the vaccine was related to the viral vector but not to the mRNA VH. Taking into consideration the factors involved in vaccine hesitancy/resistance in college students could represent a key public health strategy to increase vaccine coverage and reduce viral spreading

Complementing Hi-C information for 3D chromatin reconstruction by ChromStruct

A multiscale method proposed elsewhere for reconstructing plausible 3D configurations of the chromatin in cell nuclei is recalled, based on the integration of contact data from Hi-C experiments and additional information coming from ChIP-seq, RNA-seq and ChIA-PET experiments. Provided that the additional data come from independent experiments, this kind of approach is supposed to leverage them to complement possibly noisy, biased or missing Hi-C records. When the different data sources are mutually concurrent, the resulting solutions are corroborated; otherwise, their validity would be weakened. Here, a problem of reliability arises, entailing an appropriate choice of the relative weights to be assigned to the different informational contributions. A series of experiments is presented that help to quantify the advantages and the limitations offered by this strategy. Whereas the advantages in accuracy are not always significant, the case of missing Hi-C data demonstrates the effectiveness of additional information in reconstructing the highly packed segments of the structure

Color segmentation and neural networks for automatic graphic relief of the state of conservation of artworks

none5noThis paper proposes a semi-automated methodology based on a sequence of analysis processes performed on multispectral images of artworks and aimed at the extraction of vector maps regarding their state of conservation. The graphic relief of the artwork represents the main instrument of communication and synthesis of information and data acquired on cultural heritage during restoration. Despite the widespread use of informatics tools, currently, these operations are still extremely subjective and require high execution times and costs. In some cases, manual execution is particularly complicated and almost impossible to carry out. The methodology proposed here allows supervised, partial automation of these procedures avoids approximations and drastically reduces the work times, as it makes a vector drawing by extracting the areas directly from the raster images. We propose a procedure for color segmentation based on principal/independent component analysis (PCA/ICA) and SOM neural networks and, as a case study, present the results obtained on a set of multispectral reproductions of a painting on canvas.openAnnamaria Amura, Anna Tonazzini, Emanuele Salerno, Stefano Pagnotta, Vincenzo PalleschiAmura, Annamaria; Tonazzini, Anna; Salerno, Emanuele; Pagnotta, Stefano; Palleschi, Vincenz

Climate change and water abstraction impacts on the long-term variability of water levels in Lake Bracciano (Central Italy): A Random Forest approach

Abstract Study Region Lake Bracciano has been historically used as a strategic water reservoir for the city of Rome (Italy) since ancient times. However, following the severe water crisis of 2017, water abstraction has been completely stopped. Study Focus The relative impact of the various drivers of change (climatological and management) on fluctuations in lake water level is not yet clear. To quantify this impact, we applied the Random Forest (RF) machine learning approach, taking advantage of a century of observations. New Hydrological Insights for the Region Since the late 1990s the monthly variation in lake water levels has doubled, as has variation in monthly abstraction. Increased variation in annual cumulated precipitation and a rise in mean air temperature have also been observed. The RF machine learning approach made it possible to confirm the marginal role of temperature, the increasing role of abstraction during the last two decades (from 24 % to 39 %), and the key role played by the increased precipitation variability. These results highlight the notable prediction and inference capabilities of RF in a complex and partially unknown hydrological context. We conclude by discussing the limits of this approach, which are mainly associated with its capacity to generates scenarios compared to physical based models

Adaptive Langevin Sampler for Separation of t-Distribution Modelled Astrophysical Maps

We propose to model the image differentials of astrophysical source maps by Student's t-distribution and to use them in the Bayesian source separation method as priors. We introduce an efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling scheme to unmix the astrophysical sources and describe the derivation details. In this scheme, we use the Langevin stochastic equation for transitions, which enables parallel drawing of random samples from the posterior, and reduces the computation time significantly (by two orders of magnitude). In addition, Student's t-distribution parameters are updated throughout the iterations. The results on astrophysical source separation are assessed with two performance criteria defined in the pixel and the frequency domains.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure

Percutaneous Left Atrial Appendage Occlusion: An Emerging Option in Patients with Atrial Fibrillation at High Risk of Bleeding

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a common cardiac arrhythmia with an estimated prevalence of 1% in the general population. It is associated with an increased risk of ischemic stroke, silent cerebral ischemia, and cognitive impairment. Due to the blood flow stasis and morphology, thrombus formation occurs mainly in the left atrial appendage (LAA), particularly in the setting of nonvalvular AF (NVAF). Previous studies have shown that >90% of emboli related to NVAF originate from the LAA, thus prevention of systemic cardioembolism is indicated. According to the current guidelines, anticoagulant therapy with direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) or vitamin K antagonists (VKAs), represents the standard of care in AF patients, in order to prevent ischemic stroke and peripheral embolization. Although these drugs are widely used and DOACs have shown, compared to VKAs, non-inferiority for stroke prevention with significantly fewer bleeding complications, some issues remain a matter of debate, including contraindications, side effects, and adherence. An increasing number of patients, indeed, because of high bleeding risk or after experiencing life-threatening bleedings, must take anticoagulants with extreme caution if not contraindicated. While surgical closure or exclusion of LAA has been historically used in patients with AF with contradictory results, in the recent years, a novel procedure has emerged to prevent the cardioembolic stroke in these patients: The percutaneous left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO). Different devices have been developed in recent years, though not all of them are approved in Europe and some are still under clinical investigation. Currently available devices have shown a significant decrease in bleeding risk while maintaining efficacy in preventing thromboembolism. The procedure can be performed percutaneously through the femoral vein access, under general anesthesia. A transseptal puncture is required to access left atrium and is guided by transesophageal echocardiography (TEE). Evidence from the current literature indicates that percutaneous LAAO represents a safe alternative for those patients with contraindications for long-term oral anticoagulation. This review summarizes scientific evidences regarding LAAO for stroke prevention including clinical indications and an adequate patient selection

Recovery of archaeological wall paintings using novel multispectral imaging approaches

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