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Thin‐Layer Drying Kinetics and Bioactive Compound Retention in Saccharina latissima: Implications for Scalable Seaweed Processing
No full textDrying is a critical preprocessing step for stabilizing seaweed biomass and shaping its functional quality for food, nutraceutical,and biorefinery applications. This study evaluated the drying behavior of Saccharina latissima under oven drying (OD), airdrying (AD), and freeze drying (FD) by combining thin-layer kinetic modeling and the analyses of phytochemical compositionand antioxidant activity. The three methods exhibited distinct drying behaviors where OD showed rapid moisture removal,reflected by the highest drying constant and effective diffusivity, driven by high vapor pressure gradients and strong internaldiffusion. AD proceeded slowly under low-temperature, low-convection conditions, exhibited by its slow kinetics and lowestdiffusivity. FD followed a two-stage pattern characterized by fast sublimation during primary drying and slower desorption ofbound water during secondary drying. These behaviors were reflected in model performance, with the Lewis model bestdescribing OD, the Page model for AD, and the logarithmic model for FD. These differences corresponded to distinctcompositional outcomes, wherein OD yielded the highest total polyphenol and flavonoid contents and antioxidant capacity,while FD preserved moderated levels and AD yielded the lowest. This study establishes process–structure–functionrelationships linking drying mechanisms with bioactive compound recovery in S. latissima, providing a framework for selectingand optimizing drying strategies in seaweed processing
Underground landscapes. Subterranean imaginaries through Environmental Humanities
No full textQuesta tesi riconcettualizza il paesaggio volgendo lo sguardo verso il sottosuolo. Mettendo in discussione il paradigma superficie-centrico del pensiero paesaggistico, riconosce il sotterraneo, spesso trascurato, come territorio percepibile, affettivo ed ecologicamente dinamico. Avvalendosi di una metodologia post-disciplinare che intreccia analisi letteraria, storia dell’arte e scienze umane ambientali, il progetto indaga il modo in cui gli spazi sotterranei sono stati immaginati, percepiti e materialmente trasformati. Dalle geomorfologie infernali di Dante, alla sensibilità mineraria di Novalis e alle geologie speculative di Jules Verne, fino alle grotte sacre e alle zone di sacrificio, il lavoro ricostruisce un denso archivio culturale di viaggi catabatici. Attraverso le lenti del materialismo femminista e della transcorporeità, la tesi riconosce la materia sotterranea come agente co-costitutivo nella costruzione delle narrative e come corpi che scavano (Caving Bodies). Il risultato è una teoria ampliata del paesaggio che accoglie lo spazio il sottosuolosepolto come zona stratificata e vitale di intrecci materiali, temporali e simbolici. In ultima analisi, questo lavoro propone un’etica della discesa, auspicando modalità di relazione più attente e immaginative con i terreni nascosti sotto i nostri piedi.This thesis reconceptualizes landscape by turning toward the subterranean. Challenging the surface-centric legacy of landscape thinking, it establishes the often overlooked underground as a perceptible, affective, and ecologically dynamic terrain. Drawing on a post-disciplinary methodology that bridges literary analysis, art, and environmental humanities, the project interrogates how underground spaces have been imagined, sensed, and materially transformed. From Dante’s infernal geomorphologies, Novalis’ mining sensibility and Jules Verne’s speculative geologies to sacred caves and sacrifice zones, the work traces a dense cultural archive of katabatic journeys, including one with Parisian cataphiles. Through the lens of material feminism and transcorporeality, it foregrounds the agency of subterranean matter as co-constitutive actors in shaping narrative and caving bodies. The result is an expanded framework for landscape that embraces the underground as a layered and vital zone of entanglement. This work ultimately advocates for an ethics of descent, calling for more attentive and imaginative engagements with the hidden grounds beneath our feet
The Role of the Economic Evaluation for an Effective Management of Cultural Heritage Assets. Case Study of a Historical Building in Arezzo (Italy)
No full textCultural heritage preservation in Italy has evolved beyond traditional conservation, emerging as a strategic approach to sustainable urban development. Historic buildings are currently considered as dynamic spaces that serve multiple societal functions, integrating social, economic, and environmental objectives aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Adaptive reuse represents the primary strategy for transforming abandoned structures, enabling communities to preserve historical identity while generating new economic opportunities. This approach recognizes cultural heritage as a multi-faceted resource capable of creating jobs, revitalizing urban landscapes, and supporting community well-being. This study provides a critical examination of the appropriate evaluation approaches to be implemented for the valorization of cultural heritage assets, offering a global blueprint for transforming historical properties into living, economically viable spaces that honor historical significance while meeting contemporary societal needs
Invisible Leaders, Visible Gaps: Social Representations and Gender Disparities in Italy’s Third Sector
No full textLe disuguaglianze di genere si identificano come una delle sfide sociali più complesse, influenzando strutture formali, politiche pubbliche, norme culturali e sistemi simbolici. Il Terzo Settore italiano—composto da organizzazioni impegnate nell'inclusione e nella giustizia sociale—offre un terreno unico: nonostante la missione dichiarata di promuovere equità, permangono significative asimmetrie di genere, soprattutto nell’accesso alla leadership.
Questa tesi analizza come il genere sia rappresentato e negoziato nel Terzo Settore, utilizzando la Teoria delle Rappresentazioni Sociali (Moscovici, 1984). La ricerca, condotta tra il 2023 e il 2025 nell’ambito del programma FQTS (Formazione Quadri Terzo Settore), integra forum partecipativi e interviste qualitative con leader e dirigenti di organizzazioni. I risultati evidenziano un quadro dualistico: persistono stereotipi e vincoli strutturali, ma emergono prospettive trasformative, soprattutto tra donne e partecipanti più giovani, orientate all’intersezionalità e a pratiche organizzative innovative.
Il contributo innovativo della tesi è lo sviluppo di Piani per l’Uguaglianza di Genere (GEP) adattati al Terzo Settore, strumenti che colmano lacune normative e pratiche e allineano le strutture organizzative alle missioni dichiarate di giustizia e inclusione. La ricerca dimostra che l’uguaglianza di genere non è solo una questione di equità interna, ma una condizione essenziale per la democrazia, la legittimità e la credibilità della vita sociale ed organizzativa.Gender inequalities are recognized as one of the most complex social challenges, influencing formal structures, public policies, cultural norms, and symbolic systems of value. The Italian Third Sector—comprising organizations committed to inclusion and social justice—offers a distinctive field of study: despite their declared mission to promote equity, significant gender asymmetries persist, particularly in access to leadership positions.
This thesis examines how gender is represented and negotiated within the Third Sector, employing Social Representations Theory (Moscovici, 1984) as its analytical framework. The research, conducted between 2023 and 2025 within the FQTS (Third Sector Leadership Training) program, integrates participatory forums and in-depth interviews with organizational leaders and executives. The findings reveal a dualistic landscape: while stereotypes and structural constraints persist, transformative perspectives also emerge, especially among women and younger participants, oriented toward intersectionality and innovative organizational practices.
The thesis’s innovative contribution lies in the development of Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) tailored to Third Sector organizations. These tools address both normative and practical gaps, aligning organizational structures with their declared missions of justice and inclusion. The study demonstrates that gender equality is not only a matter of internal fairness, but also an essential condition for democracy, legitimacy and the credibility of social and organizational life
State financial support for religion in Italy. The impact of laws negotiated with religious denominations on public spending
No full textThe essay analyses the evolution of public financing of religious denominations in Italye,
from the patrimonial structure of “ecclesiastical benefices” (benefici ecclesiastici) to the new
discipline of the financial support of the clergy in Italy introduced by Law No. 222 of 1985.
Particular attention will be devoted to the analysis of the funding mechanisms provided by the laws
negotiated with religious denominations, starting with the controversial instrument of the eight per
thousand. In addition, the article highlights how over time the State’s stipulation of Concordats with
Catholic Church and agreements (Intese) with non-Catholic denominations has become a
discriminating factor in access to funding, and, therefore, in the overall legal status of religious
denominations, with a blatant violation of the principle of equality in freedom provided for in
paragraph 1 of Article 8 of the Italian Constitution. In conclusion, through the analysis of the critical
issues of the system of public financing of religious denominations, the contribution focuses on the
excessive impact it has on Italian public spending, suggesting some achievable options for
establishing a system capable of guaranteeing uniform criteria for public financing, without
distinguishing between religious denomination
From forecasting to reasoning: context-aware and safe modeling of human motion and behavior
No full textUnderstanding, modeling, and controlling human motion and behavior are fundamental to the development of intelligent systems capable of interacting naturally and safely with people. From virtual and augmented reality to robotics, healthcare, and creative applications, the ability to predict, synthesize, and interpret how humans move, act, and respond to their surroundings enables adaptive and responsible human-machine collaboration.
Human behavior, however, reflects not only physical motion but also intent, attention, and social context, demanding models that unify geometry, dynamics, and semantics.
This thesis advances the computational modeling of human motion and behavior through a sequence of works that progressively broaden the scope of understanding and control. It begins with STAG, which introduces a staged contact-aware approach for scene-conditioned motion forecasting, followed by SEE-ME, the first socially conditioned egocentric motion estimation model that integrates cues from both the environment and other people. These works collectively establish the importance of context in predicting and reconstructing human behavior.
Building on this foundation, 2Body formalizes collaborative forecasting between two interacting humans, identifying the architectural and representational principles that transfer from single-person to multi-person motion prediction.
The next part of the thesis shifts focus from modeling to control, addressing the safety and ethical dimensions of generative AI. ``Human Motion Unlearning'' proposes a latent-code replacement method to selectively forget harmful motion patterns in text-to-motion diffusion models, while ``Video Unlearning via Low-Rank Refusal Vector'' extends this paradigm to video diffusion models, neutralizing unsafe generative concepts without retraining or data access. Together, these works define the first framework for targeted unlearning in spatio-temporal generative models.
The final part explores egocentric understanding and anomaly detection. PREGO introduces the first online open-set framework for detecting procedural mistakes from egocentric videos, combining visual recognition with symbolic reasoning to anticipate and identify behavioral deviations in real time. Its successor, TI-PREGO, incorporates Chain-of-Thought to enhance anticipation and reasoning over human procedures, bridging perception and cognition in egocentric understanding.
Across these seven works, the thesis establishes a coherent progression in human motion understanding from forecasting to generation, from interaction to unlearning, and from observation to reasoning. Collectively, these contributions articulate a unified vision of context-aware, socially grounded, and ethically aligned human motion modeling, paving the way for intelligent systems that anticipate, adapt, and act responsibly within human environments
ALBERI MONUMENTALI TUTELA PAESAGGISTICA, RISCHIO E ITER AUTORIZZATIVO
No full textIl contributo analizza la tutela degli alberi monumentali quale ambito di integrazione tra diritto ambientale, scienza arboricolturale e attività di polizia forestale. Dopo un inquadramento costituzionale e normativo, l’articolo esamina la disciplina speciale introdotta dalla Legge n. 10/2013, le metodologie di valutazione del rischio arboreo e l’iter autorizzativo per l’abbattimento, evidenziandone le principali criticità applicative. Particolare attenzione è dedicata al ruolo operativo dei Carabinieri Forestali quali garanti della legalità ambientale e paesaggistica. L’analisi evidenzia come l’abbattimento debba costituire una soluzione residuale, da adottare solo a seguito di un’istruttoria rafforzata e multidisciplinare
Atomic‐scale epitaxy for tailoring crystalline GeSbTe alloys into bidimensional phases
No full textIn this study, we establish an accurate growth diagram—describing the phase, composition, and atomic stacking of Ge-Sb-Te alloys (GST)—that can be used as a prediction tool for thin film deposition. This framework for epitaxy at the atomic scale allows for designing tailored crystalline GST phases with precise atomic layer stacking configurations. By leveraging insights into phase stability, we optimize growth conditions to achieve high-quality, bidimensional GST structures of different compositions (Ge2Sb2Te5, Ge3Sb2Te6, and Ge1Sb2Te4) and phases (ordered-cubic and trigonal). Moreover, we examine the influence of structural anisotropies and interface effects on the low-temperature magneto-transport properties. The orientational ordering of the vacancy layers and their evolution into van der Waals gaps alters the electrical conduction dramatically, plausibly also in the presence of the topological surface states and their coupling with the bulk states. In addition, we examine the reversible transition between two stable resistance states in a memory cell for the GST precisely tailored by the growth using Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE). Its textured structure favors low power consumption, making it a promising candidate for phase-change memory technology
Rethinking Modernism in Stanley Cavell’s The World Viewed
No full textThe chapter reexamines the role of modernism in Stanley Cavell’s The World Viewed. Beginning from Cavell’s early reflections, it reconstructs how cinema’s automatisms, mythological structure, and demand for acknowledgment mirror the modernist experience of displacement and estrangement. The discussion then situates these claims within Cavell’s broader philosophical trajectory, tracing the gradual absorption of modernism into romanticism and Emersonian moral perfectionism. A central strand of the chapter develops the literary dimension of this problematic, placing Wittgenstein in dialogue with modernist writers such as Nabokov and Gombrowicz. Through this comparison, the chapter clarifies the distinctiveness of modernism and its relation to world-creation, finitude, and the pathos of the modern subject
Non-volatile specialized metabolites from Cupressus torulosa adult leaves
No full textThe first phytochemical analysis on the total non-volatile specialized metabolites of Cupressus torulosa identified nine compounds. Three of these are newly reported in the organs of this species whereas five of these are newly reported in the species as widely demonstrated by the chemophenetic evaluation