7,717 research outputs found
Micro-geophysics to assess the integrity of some statues in the Museo Egizio of Turin, Italy
On request of the Soprintendenza in charge of the Museo Egizio of Turin, a quite large number of tests have been performed on four statues of the museum to assess their integrity both for practical (moving the statue) and archaeological purposes. Ultrasonic tomography and georadar have been used with fine results on sub-decimeter scale. In this paper we present the main results on the statues of the Pharaons Ramses II (Fig.1 left) and Tuthmosis I. (Fig.2 left). Both the statues belong to the collection set up by Bernardino Drovetti, Console Generale of France in Egypt in the early XIX century. Ramses II statue was restored in the first half of the XIX century. Few documents can be found on these restoration works: very likely the statue arrived broken to Turin and was reassembled with cement mortar (Hartleben, 1909) No news can be found neither on the type of mortar nor on the quantity of mortar actually used. The statue of Ramses was probably found at Tebe in 1818. It is made by basanite exploited from a quarry in Uadi Hammamat. The basanite is a basaltic extrusive rock also known as Lydian stone or lydite. It was almost exclusively reserved to the crafting of statues of pharaons or divinities. In many parts of the statue the mortar (as dark as the stone) is clearly visible (Fig.1 right). The statue of Tutmosis I was found by J.J. Rifaud , a Drovetti 's agent, in 1818 in Tebe, very likely in the Karnak temple. The king sits on a throne with many scripts on both the sides of the seat. The statue is made by a dark diorite with some light pink plagioclase crystals sizing few centimeters. Its conservation seems fairly goo
The intensity of competition after patent expiry in pharmaceuticals. A cross-country analysis
This paper shows that the relationships between the dynamics of drug priees, patent expiry, and competition by multisource
drugs vary significantly across countries. A clear distinction seems to emerge. On the one side, systems that rely on market
based competition (particularly the US) promote a clear distinction between firms that act as innovators and firms that act as
imitators after patent expiry. Original products enjoy premium prices under patent protection, and face fierce price competition
after patent expiry. On the contrary, systems that rely on administered prices (particularly France and Italy) nurture strategies of
pre-emptive brand proliferation and horizontal differentiation by imitative brand name products, well before patent expiry. Our
work confirms that that systems that rely on administered prices have tended to stifle price competition, to protect less efficient
companies, and to encourage strategies of incremental innovation and imitation
Dust and Nebular Emission in Star Forming Galaxies
Star forming galaxies exhibit a variety of physical conditions, from
quiescent normal spirals to the most powerful dusty starbursts. In order to
study these complex systems, we need a suitable tool to analyze the information
coming from observations at all wavelengths. We present a new
spectro-photometric model which considers in a consistent way starlight as
reprocessed by gas and dust. We discuss preliminary results to interpret some
observed properties of VLIRGs.Comment: 8 pages, to be published in "The link between stars and cosmology",
26-30 March, 2001, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, by Kluwer, eds. M. Chavez, A.
Bressan, A. Buzzoni, and D. Mayy
Oii-web: An interactive online programming contest training system
In this paper we report our experience, related to the online training for the
Italian and International Olympiads in Informatics. We developed an interactive online
system, based on CMS, the grading system used in several major programming contests
including the International Olympiads in Informatics (IOI), and used it in three distinct
context: training students for the Italian Olympiads in Informatics (OII), training teachers
in order to be able to assist students for the OII, and training the Italian team for the
IOI. The system, that is freely available, proved to be a game changer for the whole italian
olympiads in informatics ecosystem: in one year, we almost doubled the participation to
OII, from 13k to 21k secondary school students.
The system is developed basing on the Contest Management System (CMS, http://cms-
dev.github.io/), so it is highly available to extensions supporting, for instance, the pro-
duction of feedback on problems solutions submitted by trainees. The system is also freely
available, with the idea of allowing for support to alternative necessities and developmen
Tax systems and tax reforms in south and East Asia: Overview of the tax systems and main policy tax issues
The paper discusses the main aspects of taxation in South and East Asia. Particolar attention is given to the main issues which emerge from the tax systems of China, India, Japan, Malysia, South Korea and ThailandTax Systems Tax Reforms South East Asia
Tax Systems and tax reforms in Latin America, Part I : country studies, Colombia
This paper is a part of a wider research concerning taxation in the main world economic areas, carried on at the Department of Public economic on the University of Pvia, Italy, directed by L. Bernardi and P. Profeta, under the supervision of Vito Tanzi. The paper illustrates and discusses the Colombian tax ssystems with respect to its structure, developments and reforms until the last chenges of 2007, December.Tax Systems Tax Reforms Colombia
Tax Systems and Tax Reforms in South and East Asia: Overview of Tax Systems and main policy issues
South and East Asia are a particularly fast developing world economic areas, and are becoming increasingly more economically integrated. These countries, however, are not homogenous, and are lacking in any supra - national Authority. The total fiscal pressure of South and East Asian countries looks somewhat low when compared to that of countries with a similar per-capita income, pertaining to other economic world areas. However, a smooth Wagner law is confirmed by the data so that fiscal pressure is destined somewhat to increase as growth continues. With regards to similar experiences of developing and transition countries, indirect taxes prevail over direct ones. Low tax wedges on labor improve efficiency, by inducing both the supply and demand of labor. The heavy burden on consumption lessens equity and increases welfare losses. Any further uniform analysis of South and East Asian countriesâ tax policy issues would be however quite fruitless. It is far better to consider tax policies issues which rise inside the whole area separately to those more specific to each cluster made up by similar countries. Intra-regional economic integration poses severe challenges to the tax structure in the Asian area. Three tax policy issues seem most problematic: the building of intra-countriesâ agreements on reducing trade tariffs; the sequential revenue consequences of reduction in foreign trade taxes; the increasing tax competition for FDI. Intra-countries clustersâ tax policy issues differ from each other. In Japan and in S. Korea different choices have been made regarding the comprehensiveness of the PITâs basis, whose burden as a consequence ends up being more fairly distributed in S. Korea. The two countries are facing the common problem of an ageing population and consequentially, social contributions, and eventually VAT are being raised. Malaysiaâs direct taxes look higher than Thailandâs, but this is only because of the taxation of oil companies. Thailand has adopted VAT, while Malaysia has not changed its traditional sales tax. Both the countries are engaged in the recovery of revenue by improving tax administration. Both in China and in India income tax is small and poorly redistributing. Also, India has just moved from a schedular to a comprehensive tax basis. VAT is well established in China, while it is just arriving in India, as a consequence of a long waited but challenging reform, especially regarding the tax relationships among levels of government. Taxing power is now more centralized in China, but this needs to be corrected in order to avoid a lack of accountability on the part of the provinces.Tax Systems; Tax Reforms; South and East Asia
Chemical evolution in a model for the joint formation of quasars and spheroids
Direct and indirect pieces of observational evidence point to a strong
connection between high-redshift quasars and their host galaxies. In the
framework of a model where the shining of the quasar is the episode that stops
the formation of the galactic spheroid inside a virialized halo, it has been
proven possible to explain the submillimetre source counts together with their
related statistics and the local luminosity function of spheroidal galaxies.
The time delay between the virialization and the quasar manifestation required
to fit the counts is short and incresing with decresing the host galaxy mass.
In this paper we compute the detailed chemical evolution of gas and stars
inside virialized haloes in the framework of the same model, taking into
account the combined effects of cooling and stellar feedback. Under the
assumption of negligible angular momentum, we are able to reproduce the main
observed chemical properties of local ellipticals. In particular, by using the
same duration of the bursts which are required in order to fit the
submillimetre source counts, we recover the observed increase of the Mg/Fe
ratio with galactic mass. Since for the most massive objects the assumed
duration of the burst is Tburst < 0.6 Gyr, we end up with a picture for
elliptical galaxy formation in which massive spheroids complete their assembly
at early times, thus resembling a monolithic collapse, whereas smaller galaxies
are allowed for a more prolonged star formation, thus allowing for a more
complicated evolutionary history.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
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