A European View on Ruins in Naples and Messina during the 17th and 18th Centuries

An analysis of iconography and a critical reading of sources allow to add new observations on the representation of cities in territories affected by the 1783 earthquake. The contribution aims to illustrate a slow cultural mutation and the symbolic, figurative meanings of this phenomenon. The philosophy of catastrophe puts the then prevailing optimism of reason into crisis and destroys the conviction that the present may be the best of all possible worlds. The Kingdom of Naples was one of the protagonists of that dynamism that pushed men to explore unusual territories along the Grand Tour route with the intent of acquiring new scientific tools of analysis. Southern Italy is a unique case in Europe due to the number of earthquakes during the modern age. In particular, the capital city, Naples, and Sicily were hit several times by earthquakes of varying intensity over a period from 1688 to 1783; that century was a fundamental passage in the history of earthquakes

LA CITTÀ PALINSESTO/I. Tracce, sguardi e narrazioni sulla complessità dei contesti urbani storici: Memorie, storie, immagini

[Italiano]: Oggetto di questo volume è l’articolato patrimonio di tracce, di immagini, di narrazioni che costruiscono lacittà contemporanea. Parliamo di realtà urbane che vanno rilette e raccontate per parti, per strati, a ritroso, in maniera tale da poter sbrogliare quell’intricata matassa di sovrapposizioni che si sono succedute nel corso del tempo. Sono tracce molto spesso ancora in situ, talvolta nascoste, qualche volta modificate, ma anche distratte, frammentate, malcelate e nascoste ./[English]:The subject of this bookis the complex heritage of traces, images and narratives that build the contemporary city. We are talking about urban realities that must be reread and recounted in parts, by layers, backwards, in such a way asto be able to unravel that intricate skein of overlaps that have occurred over time. They are traces very often still in situ, sometimes hidden, sometimes modified, but also distracted, fragmented, poorly concealed and hidden

Interazioni tra città, spazi monumentali e creatività: un imprevisto reportage su Napoli

In Italia il paesaggio e il patrimonio artistico diventano il palcoscenico ideale della narrazione visiva quando, a metà Novecento, la fotografia di moda li include negli scatti per enfatizzare i valori dell’ancora timida creatività manifatturiera nazionale. Anche Napoli entra nel caleidoscopio delle visioni nate da quest’approccio narrativo coi lavori curati dall’editoria di settore e con gli sguardi dei fotoreporter locali, nei cui reportage si rintraccia un’interazione tra spazi urbani e modelle senz’altro imprevista, che documenta una ricercata, e forse riuscita, tensione verso la modernità.In Italy the landscape and the artistic heritage become the ideal setting of the visual narration in the mid-1900s, when the fashion photography includes them in its shots to emphasize the values of the still shy sartorial creativity. Even Naples enters the kaleidoscope of visions born from this narrative approach with works curated by fashion publishing and with the looks of local photojournalists; in their reports there is an interaction between urban spaces and models that is certainly unexpected, documenting a successful tension towards modernity

La Città Altra:Storia e immagine della diversità urbana: luoghi e paesaggi dei privilegi e del benessere, dell’isolamento, del disagio, della multiculturalità

This volume proposes a rich corpus of papers about the ‘Other City’, a subject only few times dealt with, but worthy of all our attention: it imposes itself on the scene of international modern and contemporary historiography for its undeniable topicality. Throughout history, the city has always had to deal with social ‘otherness’, i.e. with class privileges and, consequently, with discrimination and marginalization of minorities, of the less well-off, of foreigners, in short, with the differences in status, culture, religion. So that the urban fabric has ended up structuring itself also in function of those inequalities, as well as of the strategic places for the exercise of power, of the political, military or social control, of the spaces for imprisonment, for the sanitary isolation or for the ‘temporary’ remedy to the catastrophes. From the first portraits of cities, made and diffused at the beginning of the fifteenth century for political exaltation purposes or for religious propaganda and for devotional purposes, which often, through increasingly refined graphic techniques, distort or even deny the true urban image, we reach, at the dawn of contemporary history, the new meaning given by scientific topography and new methods of representation; these latter aimed at revealing the structure and the urban landscape in their objectivity, often unexpected for who had known the city through the filter of ‘regime’ iconography. The representation of the urban image still shows the contradictions of a community that sometimes includes and even exalts the diversities, other times rejects them, showing the unease of a difficult integration

La Città Altra: Storia e immagine della diversità urbana: luoghi e paesaggi dei privilegi e del benessere, dell’isolamento, del disagio, della multiculturalità

[English]: This volume proposes a rich corpus of papers about the ‘Other City’, a subject only few times dealt with, but worthy of all our attention: it imposes itself on the scene of international modern and contemporary historiography for its undeniable topicality. Throughout history, the city has always had to deal with social ‘otherness’, i.e. with class privileges and, consequently, with discrimination and marginalization of minorities, of the less well-off, of foreigners, in short, with the differences in status, culture, religion. So that the urban fabric has ended up structuring itself also in function of those inequalities, as well as of the strategic places for the exercise of power, of the political, military or social control, of the spaces for imprisonment, for the sanitary isolation or for the ‘temporary’ remedy to the catastrophes. From the first portraits of cities, made and diffused at the beginning of the fifteenth century for political exaltation purposes or for religious propaganda and for devotional purposes, which often, through increasingly refined graphic techniques, distort or even deny the true urban image, we reach, at the dawn of contemporary history, the new meaning given by scientific topography and new methods of representation; these latter aimed at revealing the structure and the urban landscape in their objectivity, often unexpected for who had known the city through the filter of ‘regime’ iconography. The representation of the urban image still shows the contradictions of a community that sometimes includes and even exalts the diversities, other times rejects them, showing the unease of a difficult integration / [Italiano]: Questo volume propone un ricco corpus di contributi sulla ‘Città Altra’, un tema sinora poco battuto ma degno di tutta la nostra attenzione, che s’impone sulla scena della storiografia internazionale, moderna e contemporanea, per la sua innegabile attualità. Nel corso della storia, la città ha dovuto sempre fare i conti con le ‘alterità’ sociali, ossia con i privilegi di classe e, conseguentemente, con la discriminazione e l’emarginazione delle minoranze, dei meno abbienti, degli stranieri, insomma con le diversità di status, di cultura, di religione. Sicché il tessuto urbano ha finito per strutturarsi anche in funzione di quelle diseguaglianze, oltre che dei luoghi strategici per l’esercizio del potere, del controllo politico, militare o sociale, degli spazi per la reclusione, per l’isolamento sanitario o per il rimedio ‘temporaneo’ alle catastrofi. Dai primi ritratti di città elaborati e diffusi sul principio del Quattrocento per fini di esaltazione politica o per la propaganda religiosa e per scopi devozionali, che spesso, attraverso tecniche grafiche sempre più raffinate, falsano o addirittura negano la vera immagine urbana, si giunge, all’alba della storia contemporanea, al nuovo significato dato dalla topografia scientifica e dai nuovi metodi di rappresentazione, atti a svelare la struttura e il paesaggio urbano nella loro oggettività, spesso cruda e inaspettata per quanti, prima di allora, avessero conosciuto la città attraverso il filtro dell’iconografia ‘di regime’. La rappresentazione dell’immagine urbana mostra ancora oggi le contraddizioni di una comunità che a volte include, e persino esalta, le diversità, altre volte le respinge, tradendo il malessere di una difficile integrazione

Delli Aspetti de Paesi. Vecchi e nuovi Media per l’Immagine del Paesaggio: Rappresentazione, memoria, conservazione - Tomo II

[English]:Starting from one of the most significant chapters of Leonardo's Libro di Pittura, we hwant to focus on the media - namely on the narrative, descriptive and graphics methodologies together with the techniques adopting during the modern and contemporary age as 'diffusers' of the landscape image - and on the deriving potential models for the enhancement of the historical landscape heritage./ [Italiano]: Partendo dal titolo di uno dei capitoli più significativi del Libro di Pittura di Leonardo, si vuole porre l'attenzione sui media, ossia sulle metodologie e sulle tecniche narrative, descrittive e grafiche adottate, nella storia moderna e contemporanea, quali 'diffusori' dell'immagine del paesaggio, e sui potenziali modelli che ne derivano ai fini della valorizzazione del patrimonio storico paesaggistico

Numerical modelling of a piezo roof harvesting system: the right component selection

Abstract The present work focuses on a first study for a piezoelectric harvesting system, finalized to the obtaining of electrical energy from the kinetic energy of rainy precipitation, a renewable energy source not really considered until now. The system, after the realization, can be collocated on the roof of an house, configuring a "Piezo Roof Harvesting System". After presenting a state of art of the harvesting systems from environmental energy, linked to vibrations, using piezoelectric structures, and of piezoelectric harvesting systems functioning with rain, the authors propose an analysis of the fundamental features of rainy precipitations for the definition of the harvesting system. Then, four key patterns for the realization of a piezoelectric energy harvesting system are discussed and analysed, arriving to the choice of a cantilever beam scheme, in which the piezoelectric material works in 31 mode. An electro-mechanical model for the simulation of performance of the unit for the energetic conversion, composed of three blocks, is proposed. The model is used for a simulation campaign to perform the final choice of the more suitable piezoelectric unit, available on the market, which will be adopted for the realization of the "Piezo Roof Harvesting System"

Predicting human cardiac QT alterations and pro-arrhythmic effects of compounds with a 3D beating heart-on-chip platform

Determining the potential cardiotoxicity and pro-arrhythmic effects of drug candidates remains one of the most relevant issues in the drug development pipeline. New methods enabling to perform more representative pre-clinical in vitro studies by exploiting induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CM) are under investigation to increase the translational power of the outcomes. Here we present a pharmacological campaign conducted to evaluate the drug-induced QT alterations and arrhythmic events on uHeart, a 3D miniaturized in-vitro model of human myocardium encompassing iPSC-CM and dermal fibroblasts embedded in fibrin. uHeart was mechanically trained resulting in synchronously beating cardiac microtissues in one week, characterized by a clear field potential (FP) signal that was recorded by means of an integrated electrical system. A drug screening protocol compliant with the new International Council for Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH) guidelines was established and uHeart was employed for testing the effect of 11 compounds acting on single or multiple cardiac ion channels and well-known to elicit QT prolongation or arrhythmic events in clinics. The alterations of uHeart's electrophysiological parameters such as the beating period, the FP duration, the FP amplitude and the detection of arrhythmic events prior and after drug administration at incremental doses were effectively analyzed through a custom developed algorithm. Results demonstrated the ability of uHeart to successfully anticipate clinical outcome and to predict the QT prolongation with a sensitivity of 83.3%, a specificity of 100% and an accuracy of 91.6%. Cardiotoxic concentrations of drugs were notably detected in the range of the clinical highest blood drug concentration (Cmax), qualifying uHeart as a fit-to-purpose pre-clinical tool for cardiotoxicity studies

Wnt signalling modulates transcribed-ultraconserved regions in hepatobiliary cancers

Objective Transcribed-ultraconserved regions (T-UCR) are long non-coding RNAs which are conserved across species and are involved in carcinogenesis. We studied T-UCRs downstream of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway in liver cancer. Design Hypomorphic Apc mice (Apcfl/fl) and thiocetamide (TAA)-treated rats developed Wnt/β-catenin dependent hepatocarcinoma (HCC) and cholangiocarcinoma (CCA), respectively. T-UCR expression was assessed by microarray, real-time PCR and in situ hybridisation. Results Overexpression of the T-UCR uc.158− could differentiate Wnt/β-catenin dependent HCC from normal liver and from β-catenin negative diethylnitrosamine (DEN)-induced HCC. uc.158− was overexpressed in human HepG2 versus Huh7 cells in line with activation of the Wnt pathway. In vitro modulation of β-catenin altered uc.158− expression in human malignant hepatocytes. uc.158− expression was increased in CTNNB1-mutated human HCCs compared with non-mutated human HCCs, and in human HCC with nuclear localisation of β-catenin. uc.158− was increased in TAA rat CCA and reduced after treatment with Wnt/β-catenin inhibitors. uc.158− expression was negative in human normal liver and biliary epithelia, while it was increased in human CCA in two different cohorts. Locked nucleic acid-mediated inhibition of uc.158− reduced anchorage cell growth, 3D-spheroid formation and spheroid-based cell migration, and increased apoptosis in HepG2 and SW1 cells. miR-193b was predicted to have binding sites within the uc.158− sequence. Modulation of uc.158− changed miR-193b expression in human malignant hepatocytes. Co-transfection of uc.158− inhibitor and anti-miR-193b rescued the effect of uc.158− inhibition on cell viability. Conclusions We showed that uc.158− is activated by the Wnt pathway in liver cancers and drives their growth. Thus, it may represent a promising target for the development of novel therapeutics