Bøger udgivet af Edizioni Accademiche Italiane

In wartime, cities suffer from damage and destruction as is the case in Syria where the war started in 2011 and continues to date. Many historical sites suffered untold damage leaving world class heritage in ruins needing urgent repairs to preserve it for humanity. Unfortunately, although many sites can be restored, there are those sites which have reached a level of damage that is nearly impossible to be repaired.Cultural heritage represents the identity of a society and one doesn¿t exist without the another. Today, proposals have started to appear for post-war reconstruction but there is a risk of losing the authenticity of cultural heritage. Therefore, there is a need to understand the meaning of cultural heritage and to collect sufficient information about each site before extending such proposals. Moreover, we need to understand what should be preserved. Is it the authenticity? The symbols? or identity? Over time, destruction visited many cities for various reasons including wars, floods or other natural causes.The question that pauses itself, however, is what should be restored to its original glory and what opportunity does such destruction bring for change to take place.

Oswaldo is involved with the field since childhood. The interest for the buffaloes begins when he observes in 2004 in his own farm the difference in weight gain between cattle and buffalo. He attended different international buffalo conferences and thus began with the idea of deepening knowledge in the quality of bufalo meat. Discover the benefits of this species and the benefits it brings to the health of people has been the stimulus to create this work.

Year by year, service robotics is becoming an attractive field and a cutting-edge research topic, and it has been able to attract the attention of several international research groups. In such a scenario, the European project ARCAS (FP7-ICT- 287617), under which this thesis has been partially developed, intends to propose new solutions about cooperative aerial manipulation. Moreover, many other research projects aim at the design of robotic solutions able to work in the so called ¿human friendly¿ applications, where humans and robots can safely share a common space. This is for example the case of the ERC project RoDyMan, concerning the dynamic manipulation of deformable objects, in which also a contribution has been provided during my PhD program. In other context, like alpine scenarios, the SHERPA project is trying to develop a robotic team composed of ground and aerial robots for searching and rescue missions.

The economic effects and the desirability of copyleft licenses still remain unclear. Copyleft relies upon social norms and the effects of consumer perceived value of computer operating system and mobile phones. Thus, ICT firms are left with decisions of trade-off between profiting from their invention through Intellectual property right and diffusion of the technology without barriers in becoming the dominant design, to attain user critical mass. This study aims to investigate using an empirical approach, the effect of the interaction between consumer perceived value and network effect on customer purchase decision of computer operating system and mobile phones, to formulate and discuss market policies to ICT firms in their decisions of adopting copyright or copyleft licenses.

According to the World Health Organization, cancer is among the second leading death cause globally, and cancer treatment is a challenge in the field of medicinal chemistry. The DNA cleavage activity of a metallonuclease is related to its capability to generate toxic reactive oxygen species (ROS) in a reductive environment. In this scenario, 1,4,7,10-tetraazacyclododecane is a fully exploited ligand, thanks to the good stability constants towards many metal centres. Exploiting Cu(II) as metal core, the heteroatom substitution together with a coupling of this macrocyclic ligand with the DNA targeting function anthraquinone were already performed, in order to improve the efficacy. The aim of the present book was to synthesise new ligands for Cu(II) metallonucleases, where the ligand itself could be redox active, in order to enhance the ROS concentration and consequently the catalytic activity of the nuclease. Moreover, the ligands under study were functionalised by an anthraquinone moiety, and these compounds were tested towards DNA intercalation, alone and after incubation with Cu(II) salt.

The discovery of gravitational waves is undoubtedly an important con¿rmation of general relativity. Because gravity describes our universe at large scales, it is possible to use this new experimental tool to test general properties of the universe. Among the various possible measures we mention, for example, the presence of the cosmological constant. Our purpose is to solve the Einstein equations in the Lorentz gauge in order to clarify from a theoretical point of view the interaction between the cosmological constant and the gravitational wave solution.

Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is a mosquito-transmitted alphavirus and belongs to the Togaviridae family (Schuffenecker et al., 2006). It causes chikungunya fever (CHIK fever), a febrile illness associated with severe arthralgia and rash (Adebajo, 1996; Deller and Russell,1967; Ligon, 2006; McGill, 1995). The alphaviruses consist of 30 species of arthropod-borne viruses, which are further subgrouped into seven serocomplexes based on serological data (Porterfield, 1980; Strauss and Strauss, 1994; Van Regenmortel et al., 2000). CHIKV belongs to the Semliki Forest virus antigenic complex that also contains the O¿Nyong Nyong, Mayaro, and Ross River viruses. Chikungunya is a Makonde word (Bantu language) meaning ¿The one which bends up¿ referring to the posture of the affected patient acquired due to excruciating pain in the joints (Robinson, 1955).

In this whitepaper we will discuss Healthcare Issues Emerging Countries are facing and what initiatives are in place to solve them. We will analyze micro finance and micro insurance models and particularly, as a healthcare company, we will focus on what could be our contribution within this big challenge. Over the past decade, micro finance and micro insurance have made great progress and gained recognition for the advantages they can have for BoP markets as well as among the bank and insurance sector for their capacity to penetrate a previously unaccessible Country. As Prahalad and Hammond stated in their article, we assist at the exploration of new markets and the introduction of new strategies as well as new products. Moreover, a regulatory framework has started to grow in many countries with regards to micro insurance and in order to develop innovations, putting the customer at the first place. The initial phase of this progress and the difficulty of it, makes complex to get a complete picture of what is currently happening worldwide. What are best practices? Where is micro finance growing? And micro insurance? Why? Which challenges do they have to face?

Most robot applications require rigidity. Serial robots may achieve this by using high-quality rotary joints that permit movement in one axis but are rigid against movement outside this. Any joint permitting movement must also have this movement under deliberate control by an actuator. Parallel robots take an alternate approach. Each chain is usually short, simple and can thus be rigid against unwanted movement (compared to the serial arm). Inertia forces exist wherever parts having mass are accelerated. The forces are important internally because the parts themselves must be designed to perform satisfactorily under all combinations of inertia and service loads. They are also important externally because the resulting external or shaking force becomes a disturbing force on the supporting frame and associated parts This book show a balancing procedure of an existing robot CaPaMan 2bis and offers a new design of it using a rapid prototyping technology.

Breeding bees ( beekeeping and meliponiculture ), classified as an enthemo forestry activity, is one of the most succesful practices in the rural areas, and with the most wide potential in order to produce alternatives incomes for small holder farmers. Kenya is the country of origin of most of bee species, so it might play a role as first actor in order to spread among African continent the awareness about the essential role of bees, and others pollinators also, as guardians and key actors of the preservation and improving the environment.

Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is defined as the progressive reduction of kidney function that occurs as a result of primary or secondary kidney diseases. CKD is characterized by several extra-renal complications. The cardiovascular complications are the most feared because they are the most common cause of mortality and morbidity in patients with endstage renal disease (ESRD) undergoing either hemodialysis (HD) or peritoneal dialysis (PD). Indeed, atherosclerosis, endothelial dysfunction, extraosseous calcification (coronary artery calcifications, vascular and cardiac valves calcification) and left ventricular hypertrophy are the commonest factors responsible for fatal and not fatal cardiovascular events in ESRD patients (2-5). The presence of extra-osseous calcification reflects the severity of atherosclerotic vascular disease and predicts cardiovascular events in uremic patients. The clinical relevance of extra-osseous calcification is highlighted by the fact that guidelines have included their research as essential for the diagnosis of disorders of mineral metabolism in the CKD (part of the so-called syndrome "CHRONIC KIDNEY DISEASEMINERAL AND BONE DISEASE¿).

The italian schools require starting from the last years of the colleges or high schools (both technical that professional institutes) that one of the main matter can be delivered in the english language trough a clear methodology that is called CLIL. This skills is also required for the last three years of the linguistic Lyceum. In the first part of the text, there are also described the old and the new key competences that alumni need to have in the prevision of a new Europe, dated 28th of May 2018. Considering actually that the learning objects, now more than before, need to be delivered in a foreign language, we report analitically the description of a whole unit in english for educational purpose to be used by chemistry teachers on the basys of the CLIL rules.

In recent decades a general revaluation of dialects has occurred, both in the academic environment and outside. Especially at local and regional level, dialects are considered as part of the cultural heritage of the region. Real dialectal literature exists and this fact raises the issue of how dialect can be expressed in writing, since it is not codified, contrary to standard Italian language. The aim of this book is that of suggesting a common spelling of Veneto dialects, taking into consideration the suggestions made previously by other authors.

This publication is the result of an experimental study carried out on Italian EFL learners at CEF B1 level. The idea for the study has mainly arisen from the author¿s interest in the acquisition of lexis, as well as the experience as a foreign language learner, teacher, teacher educator and materials writer. This has led to the identification of a research gap in the field of L2 compound acquisition. The various representations and classifications of compounds and ¿compositional constructions¿, the relevant terminological issues and classification criteria found in the available literature have been very useful starting points for further reflection. Compounds are interesting constructions in linguistics because they are often placed on a continuum, at the interfaces between syntax, lexis and morphology. Compounds seem to appear quite early in the L1 but it is not clear where they can be placed ¿ if at all ¿ within an L2 acquisitional sequence continuum. The study has reviewed the available literature and investigated the extent to which form-focused activities can enhance the acquisition of subordinate and attributive-appositive compound nouns in Italian learners of L2 English.

The paper presents the preliminary results of a study performed at the MGMVLab / S.Ilario Solar Station of the University of Genoa on the use of a virtual model to evaluate dynamic phenomena and pointing accuracy perturbations induced by external excitations (due e.g. to wind or traffic) on the mirrors orienting mechanism in solar energy power plants. This clearly involves the balance between the structural flexibility of the mechanism due to cost reduction exigencies and the accuracy required for a proper operation. Obviously also the supporting structure influence must be considered; the present paper refers mainly to the pointing linkage.

Rhythm is generally said to play an important role in human behaviour as it is connected to numerous human activities, such as breathing, walking, dancing, playing, and so no. When referring to rhythm, we usually associate it to auditive phenomena, but this is not always the case: for instance, as reported by Eriksson (1991), repeated visual patterns can also be described as rhythmical. However, in spite of the pervasiveness of rhythm and the apparent straightforwardness of its concept, it is not at all easy to define it. In its simplest form, rhythm could perhaps be described as a regular succession of events. This definition accounts for the rhythmicity of some human activities mentioned above, such as breathing and walking, and for heartbeat and repeated visual patterns. But it does not fully explain what is meant by rhythm in activities such as dancing and playing.

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) belongs to the nightshade family Solanaceae. The extremely diverse and large Solanaceae family is believed to consist of 96 genera and over 2800 species distributed in three subfamilies, Solanoideae (to which Solanum belongs), Cestroideae, and Solanineae (Knapp et al., 2004). Solanaceae is one of the most economically important families of angiosperms and contains many of the commonly cultivated plants, including potato, tomato, pepper, eggplant, petunia, and tobacco. This family is the most variable of all crop species in terms of agricultural utility, the 3rd economically most important crop family, exceeded only by grasses and legumes, and the most valuable in terms of vegetable crops (van der Hoeven et al., 2002).

In recent years, many efforts have been made and many studies have been put forward regarding economic development and the reduction of poverty. The effort to ensure economic development and the alleviation of poverty is mainly focused in the underdeveloped and developing economies. Microcredit and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the two main alternative strategies, which can create employment and micro-loan opportunities in many low-income countries. This study aims at capturing and/or discussing the extent to which these two alternative strategies have contributed to the reduction of poverty through the provision of micro-loans, and the creation of employment opportunities, thereby fostering economic development. Moreover, more than 80 percent of enterprises in the world are SMEs. These enterprises accounts for almost 60 percent of the private sector employment and make a large contribution to innovation and support regional development. Most importantly, the SME sector create self-employment for individuals, thereby helping them to be self-innovative.

In developed countries agriculture, especially that of the specialized suitable areas, produces goods mainly for the global market and the food industry, so that only 20% of the production is traded locally, as opposed to what happens worldwide where this percentage rises to 80% (EU Committee of the Regions 2011). Starting in the '90s with the Agenda 2000, pillar of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) multiple functions have been attributed to agriculture, which have an effect mainly in the areas where the farms are located. So, today it is widely accepted that agriculture can be an instrument of control and enhancement of the landscape, conservation of plant and animal biodiversity, protection and transfer of traditional production techniques. In addition, through agritourisms, direct sales and didactic activities the farm has established a contact between the production and the territory by constructing small (or sometimes large) exchange circuits on a local scale. Although now the spread of these activities is broad and known to most customers, remains a source of content and as previously mentioned, the agricultural production is mostly designed for global markets.

I would never have been able to conduct my researches and write the present PhD thesis without the guidance, help and support of all the people I share my days with. I would like to express my deepest and sincere gratitude to my advisor, Prof. Stefania Galdiero, for her guidance, care, motivation, enthusiasm and for providing me with an excellent scientific knowledge that allowed me to perform a working experience in an extraordinary atmosphere. I would like to thank my colleagues and friends, Dr. Annarita Falanga and Dr. Marco Cantisani, for the continuous support, guidance, encouragement, patience, great suggestions, immense knowledge; particularly, I will never forget their scientific and moral support that guided me during these years and helped me to develop my background.

Cooperative behaviour is a phenomenon well known in animal behaviour models and employed for the resolution of optimization problems in di¿erent ¿elds. Plant cooperative behaviour can also öer a source of inspiration. Communication between di¿erent plants for cooperative purposes is a well-known phenomenon in biology, and is known as allelopathy. In this phenomenon, chemical signals are exchanged among plants of the same species to optimize resource exploitation both at the leaf and at the root level. However, communication among roots of the same plant has not yet been proven. In this book, the existence of signals between roots of the same plant is hypothesized with cooperation purposes and their e¿ects are investigated on both root architecture and plant energy balance.

Several prominent public corporations have recently embraced a noteworthy (and newsworthy) type of transaction known as a ¿tax inversion.¿ In a typical inversion, a US multinational corporation (MNC) merges with an operating foreign company. The entity that ultimately emerges from this transactional cocoon is invariably incorporated abroad, yet typically remains listed in domestic securities markets (under the erstwhile US issuer¿s name). When structured to satisfy applicable tax requirements, corporate inversions permit domestic MNCs eventually to replace US tax treatment with foreign tax treatment of their extraterritorial earnings ¿ almost always at far lower effective rates (sometimes even zero). Most regulators and politicians have reacted to the inversion invasion with alarm and indignation, no doubt fearing that the trend is but a harbinger of an immense offshore exodus by US multinationals.

Technological progress has been enabling companies to add disparate features to their products. This research investigates the effect of adding more features on consumers¿ evaluation of the product, by examining in particular the role of the congruity of the features added with the base product as a variable the moderates the effect of increasing the number of features. Grounding on schema-congruity theory, I propose that the cognitive elaboration associated with the product congruity of the features added explains consumers¿ evaluation as the number of new features increases. In particular, it is shown that consumers perceive a benefit from increasing the number of features only when these features are congruent with the product.

The aim of this work is to develop a dynamic model of stochastic network formation, where the nodes can connect both at random and through a preferential attachment of ¿friends of friends.¿ In order to obtain mean field approximations we study the behaviour of the average degree and the clustering coefficient in a stationary state; we make use of the generating function method, among others. Through simulations, we demonstrate that depending on the calibration of parameters we obtain three different network structures: empty network, a giant component with few isolated nodes and a sparse network formed by different components. We mainly focus our analysis on the giant component which presents at least some of the key empirical regularities shared by socially generated networks. At the end of this work, we discuss the meaning of introduction of utility functions and their implications on stability and efficiency.

In the attempt to provide a better understanding of the environmental impacts of this sector, it was evaluated with a life cycle approach the environmental performance associated with the distribution of water in PET bottles in the Horeca sector of the Lombardy region. The results suggest that the life cycle of the PET bottle and the transportation from the bottling plant to the local distributor are the major ¿hot spot¿ for all the analyzed impact categories. For having a better environmental performance in the analyzed system it is thus recommended to: replace virgin PET granulate by recycled PET in the bottle (up to 50% by weight), upgrade the full fleet of trucks used in the transportation, and have a local market distribution (within 300 km). The second part of this study was focused on the comparison between the use of one-way PET bottles and refillable glass bottles. According to obtained results, the refilling system based on glass can represent a valid alternative only when characterized by short distances separating bottling facilities and local distribution. A further recommendation is also to assure that glass bottles are used at least 25 times before disposal.