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Assessing Alpine Galliforms (Aves: Galliformes) vulnerability: modelling population trends and threats.
No full textThis research focused on the evaluation of Italian population trends and conservation threats of three Alpine Galliforms of conservation interest, Black grouse (Lyrurus tetrix), Alpine Rock ptarmigan (Lagopus muta helvetica) and Alpine Rock partridge (Alectoris graeca saxatilis). I performed a first-ever assessment of a medium term trend of the three species, exploiting all available data on annual counts and game bags, both as individual proxies and in an integrated fashion. According to the results, the current IUCN conservation statuses of the Italian populations seem appropriate. The integration of counts and bags helped improving estimates precision and reducing bias. Subsequently, I showed that intensive land abandonment has detrimental effects on Black grouse habitat suitability. The comparison of past and present land cover revealed a massive habitat suitability loss in Central Alps from the early 1980s, chiefly in the outer Alps and in wood pastures. Finally, I showed that marginal Rock ptarmigan populations living may display lower ecological plasticity in the use of habitat with respect to core populations and may not be able to adapt its behaviour to compensate for an increase in temperatures in the future. The project highlighted the need for a national survey scheme to plan robust conservation strategies and recommended the implementation of habitat management measures to directly or indirectly contrast the negative effects of global change
Enhancing data privacy and security in Internet of Things through decentralized models and services
No full textexploits a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) blockchain, in order to perform collaborative and dynamic botnet detection by collecting and auditing IoT devices’ network traffic flows as blockchain transactions. Secondly, we take the challenge to decentralize IoT, and design a hybrid blockchain architecture for IoT, by proposing Hybrid-IoT. In Hybrid-IoT, subgroups of IoT devices form PoW blockchains, referred to as PoW sub-blockchains. Connection among the PoW sub-blockchains employs a BFT inter-connector framework. We focus on the PoW sub-blockchains formation, guided by a set of guidelines based on a set of dimensions, metrics and bounds
Spectral analysis and fast methods for structured matrix sequences and PDE discretizations.
No full textWhen simulating phenomena in physics, engineering, or applied sciences, often one has to deal with functional equations that do not admit an analytical solution. Describing these real situations is, however, possible, resorting to one of its numerical approximations and treating the resulting mathematical representation. This thesis is placed in this context: Indeed the purpose is that of furnishing several useful tools to deal with some computational problems, stemming from discretization techniques. In most of the cases the numerical methods we analyse are the classical Qp Lagrangian FEM and the more recent Galerkin B-spline Isogeometric Analysis (IgA) approximation and Staggered Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) methods. As our model PDE, we consider classical second-order elliptic differential equations and the Incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. In all these situations the resulting matrix sequences {An}n possess a structure, namely they belong to the class of Toeplitz matrix sequences or to the more general class of Generalized Locally Toeplitz (GLT) matrix sequences, in the most general block k-level case. Consequently, the spectral analysis of the coefficient matrices plays a crucial role for an efficient and fast resolution. Indeed the convergence properties of iterative methods proposed, like multigrid or preconditioned Krylov techniques, are strictly related to the notion of symbol of the coefficient matrix sequence. In our setting the symbol is a function which asymptotically provides a reasonable approximation of the eigenvalues [singular values] of An by its evaluations of an uniform grid on its domain. These reasons, and many others, make the research of more and more efficient eigensolvers relevant and topical. In this direction, the second goal of this thesis is to provide new tools for computing the spectrum of preconditioned banded symmetric Toeplitz matrices, Toeplitz-like matrices, n-1K[p]n , nM[p]n , n-2L[p]n , coming from the B-spline IgA approximation of –u” = u, plus its multivariate counterpart for -u = u, and block and preconditioned block banded symmetric Toeplitz matrices. For all the above cases we propose new algorithms based on the classical concept of symbol, but with an innovative view on the errors of the approximation of eigenvalues by the uniform sampling of the symbol. The algorithms devised are special interpolation-extrapolation procedures performed with a high level of accuracy and only at the cost of computing of the eigenvalues of a moderate number of small sized matrices
Privacy preference mechanisms in Personal Data Storage (PDS).
No full textIn this thesis, we study frameworks for managing user's privacy when disclosing personal data with third parties from Personal Data Storage (PDS). PDS is a secure digital space which allows individuals to collect, store, and give access to third parties. So, PDS has inaugurated a substantial change to the way people can store and control their personal data, by moving from a service-centric to a user-centric model. Up to now, most of the research on PDS has focused on how to enforce user privacy preferences and how to secure data stored into the PDS. In contrast, this thesis aims at designing a Privacy-aware Personal Data Storage (P-PDS), that is, a PDS able to automatically take privacy-aware decisions on third parties access requests in accordance with user preferences. This thesis first demonstrates that semi-supervised learning can be successfully exploited to make a PDS able to automatically decide whether an access request has to be authorized or not. Furthermore, we have revised our first contribution by defining strategies able to obtain good accuracy without requiring too much effort from the user in the training phase. At this aim, we exploit active learning with semi-supervised approach so as to improve the quality of the labeled training dataset. This ables to improve the performance of learning models to predict user privacy preferences correctly.
Moreover, in the second part of the thesis we study how user's contextual information play a vital role in term of taking decision of whether to share personal data with third parties. As such, consider that a service provider may provide a request for entertainment service to PDS owner during his/her office hours. In such case, PDS owner may deny this service as he/she is in office. That implies individual would like to accept/deny access requests by considering his/her contextual information. Prior studies on PDS have not considered user's contextual information so far. Moreover, prior research has shown that user privacy preferences may vary based on his/her contextual information. To address this issue, this thesis also focuses to implement a contextual privacy-aware framework for PDS (CP-PDS) which exploits contextual information to build a learning classifier that can predict user privacy preferences under various contextual scenarios. We run several experiments on a realistic dataset and exploiting groups of evaluators. The obtained results show the effectiveness of the proposed approaches
La gestione dell’attività estrattiva nel Veneto del Settecento come problema storiografico. Il viaggio mineralogico e il progetto minerario di Marco Carburi.
No full textQuesto lavoro è nato nell’interesse per un problema storiografico da tempo individuato, ma solo parzialmente affrontato nel contesto italiano, che riguarda lo studio delle tecniche nella storia delle attività estrattive in età moderna. In particolare, sono stati inizialmente individuati quali oggetti della ricerca, all’interno di un caso di studio significativo ma sostanzialmente inesplorato, gli aspetti legati alla tecnica di escavazione di pietra ornamentale nell’ambito del Veneto del Settecento. A tal proposito si è dato avvio alla ricerca di fonti primarie presso l’Archivio di Stato di Venezia, dove è stato consultato il Fondo Deputati delle Miniere, un ricco ed articolato complesso archivistico che comprende le carte prodotte e ricevute nell’arco temporale 1488-1799, dall’organo chiamato ad amministrare, presso la Repubblica Serenissima, il settore dell’escavazione di cave e miniere.
In considerazione dell’ampia presenza di cave rilevate nel territorio del Veneto nord-orientale, il lavoro di ricerca è poi proseguito presso l’Archivio di Stato di Verona presso cui, vista l’assenza di fondi specifici sul settore oggetto di indagine è stata effettuata una ricognizione del materiale presente elle cartelle Delegazione provinciale, Prefettura e Antico Archivio del Comune.
Gli esiti delle ricerche presso i due archivi veneti hanno portato ai risultati ipotizzati e quindi al possibile emergere di nuove fonti in grado di consentire un’analisi e una ricostruzione storica approfondita delle attività estrattive in cava: considerato tuttavia l’accumulo di una ingente quantità di materiale inedito, di cui si darà conto in seguito e in particolare nel secondo capitolo, si è giunti alla possibilità di ricalibrare su nuove linee di indagine il progetto di ricerca, che si è incentrato di conseguenza sullo studio di diverse figure professionali impiegate in miniera.
E’ stata individuata la figura del sovrintendente di miniera, di cui si è proceduto ad individuare, interpretare e ricostruire responsabilità e competenze. Nel medesimo ambito lavorativo è quindi emersa una figura professionale che solo occasionalmente prestò la sua opera e il suo sapere alla gestione del sito estrattivo, ma che si inserì contestualmente, sia pure in modo controverso, nella pratica del viaggio mineralogico e minerario di istruzione che coinvolse soprattutto a partire dalla seconda metà del Settecento diversi studiosi europei, tra cui alcuni italiani. Si tratta del chimico Marco Carburi (1730-1808), docente presso l’Università di Padova, chiamato dalla Repubblica Serenissima a visitare le miniere di Agordo nel Bellunese e a stendere una relazione particolareggiata su diversi aspetti utili all’aumento della produttività e a un conseguente incremento della rendita non solo attraverso modifiche tecniche, ma anche attraverso espedienti economico finanziari.
Nel primo capitolo viene presentato un inquadramento storiografico che prende in considerazione le differenti fonti disponibili su cave, miniere e terre coloranti nella Serenissima durante il Settecento: a tal proposito è infatti importante evidenziare quanto sia profondamente differente la nature del materiale disponibile, da un lato per le cave di pietra e dall’altro per quelle di miniera.
Nel secondo capitolo viene evidenziato, sotto il punto di vista di un duplice problema, lo studio storico delle cave: in particolare si considerano gli aspetti desumibili per ciò che riguarda, da un lato, la tecnica e dall’altro, la contribuzione fiscale derivante dall’estrazione lapìdea. Un analogo percorso di ricerca viene dedicato alla coltivazione delle miniere, per quanto concerne in particolare gli aspetti amministrativi e il ruolo delle tecniche: nello specifico viene utilizzata una tipologia di fonte primaria finora scarsamente utilizzata e costituita dalle relazioni dei tecnici.
Le relazioni prese in considerazione sono in particolare quelle datate tra il 1710 3 il 1745, a firma di Iseppo Zanchi, nonché alcune carte inserite nel Fondo Scritture del Magistrato sopra le Miniere.
Attraverso le relazioni dio Iseppo Zanchi viene ricostruita una breve storia della famiglia di questo tecnico, che per molti anni fu impiegato presso le pubbliche miniere di Agordo. Il caso degli Zanchi si rivela estremamente interessante poiché evidenzia l’attività di diverse generazioni di questa famiglia presso le miniere dell’Agordino: sono state contate almeno cinque generazioni e sarà quindi proposta una prima ricostruzione dell’albero genealogico e delle diverse competenze professionali dei vari membri impiegati nelle attività di miniera in Agordo.
Il terzo capitolo è dedicato ad inquadrare la figura del professore di chimica sperimentale dell’ateneo di Padova Marco Carburi, il quale, oltre alla coltivazione delle miniere di rame nella valle d’Agordo in provincia di Belluno, coltivò nel corso della sua lunga carriera universitaria molteplici interessi di studio. Una volta terminate le sue visite agli stabilimenti di Agordo e dopo aver compiuto un viaggio nelle regioni minerarie del Nord Europa, Carburi propose alla Serenissima alcune misure da adottare anche in Veneto per migliorare le tecniche estrattive di miniera e riorganizzare la produttività dell’azienda statale: questi suggerimenti sono contenuti in un manoscritto finora inedito che è stato analizzato, trascritto integralmente e dotato di un apparato critico.
Il capitolo finale della tesi è dedicato all’approfondimento del ruolo che l’impresa estrattiva di miniera ha avuto nell’ambito del Settecento veneto, soprattutto nell’ottica di una possibile appartenenza dell’eredità culturale e materiale delle tecniche e delle conoscenze minerarie storiche all’ambito dei beni comuni contemporanei. In particolare, le conoscenze tecniche sono considerate nei loro molteplici aspetti: gestione, competenza, responsabilità e diffusione.
Negli allegati sono proposte le trascrizioni e le edizioni critiche di alcune fonti inedite, opportunamente selezionate
Discovering mithocondrial alterations in Parkinson's disease: the role of mitophagy impairment.
No full textParkinson's disease (PD) is one of the most prevalent neurodegenerative disorders, characterized by the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the Substantia nigra pars compacta. Although the cause of PD is currently unknown, strong evidences indicate that a complex interplay between several factors including genetic susceptibility, environmental factors, abnormal protein handling and oxidative stress could be involved. Many of the molecular pathways implicated in PD etiology converge on mitochondria, resulting in their dysfunction, which could impact on neuronal survival.
Given the importance of mitochondrial dysfunctions in PD, we decided to investigate the missed removal of damaged mitochondria due to mitophagy impairment as the possible trigger of pathogenesis. To this purpose, we characterized specific mitochondrial alterations in Substantia nigra specimens from PD patients, comparing them to what observed by inducing mitochondrial impairment in human neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cells using dopamine or MPP+.
Since mitophagy impairment seems to play a central role in the development of this pathology, the second part of this thesis focused on mitochondrial alterations that occur in skin fibroblasts obtained from PARK2-mutated patients. As a result, we found that mutations in the PARK2 gene do not cause any significant morphological alterations in the mitochondrial network shape. Moreover, the proteomics analysis revealed an impairment of proteins involved in several mitochondrial functions.
Overall, this project contributes to a complete definition of the PARK2-related molecular signature, that will be crucial for providing new insights into disease mechanisms and identifying new therapeutic targets for this pathology
L'immagine della ragione in Piero Martinetti. Un programma di ricerca filosofica: tra metafisica e scienza, tra esperienza e coscienza
No full textThe privileged view of this work deals with the philosophy-science nexus in Martinetti (very little or not at all investigated by the critics), according to the Wundtian metaphysical-idealistic conscientialism, fundamental theoretical matrix of his thought. Piero Martinetti, the only Italian philosopher who refused the oath to fascism in 1931, is one of the most original Italian thinkers of the first half of the twentieth century, with a European profile. From the focus on the theory of knowledge which originally re-elaborates the idealistic-religious perspective with Kantian basis, the study shows an unusual crossing of the Canavese philosopher’s work beyond the usual historiographical topos (of reductively meant religious idealism and spiritualism), through Wundt's and also Mach's points of view. The four sections of the research (dedicated to the historical-philosophical frame of Martinetti’s thought and examination of two important writings: the Introduction to Metaphysics and the unfinished Metaphysics) contribute to delineate the image of a new trans-intra disciplinary research program, aimed at keeping allied the plural forms of knowledge of human reason, focusing on “marginal” details and favouring the systemic view of today's “challenge of complexity”. So reason and faith, knowledge and will, metaphysics and science can be combined for the shared world commitment and for the common good, respecting the interdisciplinary slant of the Doctoral Course in Law and Humanities
The understanding of depression in the light of C.G. Jung's work.
No full textThe aim of this research is to reconstruct C. G. Jung’s psychological understanding of depression,in other words, to give an account of the meaning of depressive phenomena for the development of human consciousness. Through this, we aspire to make a triple contribution:
1) Although there are some post-Jungian studies that address the subject of depression (E. Harding, 1981; V. W. Odajnyk, 1983; W. Steinberg, 1989, among others) there is still a lack of research aiming to clarify and to critically reconstruct in detail the Jungian understanding of depression through a carefully study of his work, and with special attention to its sources.
2) As we will try to show, this reconstruction contributes to the human sciences, particularly health sciences, and especially regarding the possibility of conceiving a potentially transforming and meaningful dimension of depressive phenomena along the development of human consciousness, without neglecting its pathological and adaptive dimension. This becomes particularly valuable in the context of the increasing over-medicalization and ‘diagnostic inflation’ of depression that many scholars of the health sciences have evidenced in the last years (A. Horwitz and J. Wakefield, 2007; A. Frances, 2013; P. Pignarre, 2001).
3) Within certain limits we will try to show that the Jungian understanding of depression as a potentially transforming experience recovers psychologically a leitmotiv that traverses, through a variety of symbols and forms, a big part of Western history. This thread of meaning reveals itself particularly in the symbolism regarding Saturn in the Greco-Roman tradition, in the notion of ‘the dark night of the soul’ in Christian mysticism, and in the alchemical nigredo
Considerazioni bioetiche applicate alla medicina dei disastri. Studio osservazionale inerente la conoscenza e la percezione riguardo i dilemmi etici da parte di studenti partecipanti a corsi post-laurea di medicina dei disastri.
No full textDisasters, like earthquakes, epidemics and wide and complex emergencies raise many ethical issues for the people involved, who include responders, health specialists, educators and policy-makers. A disaster is defined by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction as a “serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources”. A Disaster is a result of interactions between hazards and manifold community elements, with differing vulnerability and capacity to cope with such situations. The disaster dynamics depict the various phases like a circle: disaster preparedness, response, rehabilitation, reconstruction, development, disaster prevention, mitigation. The requirements of the community for patient care and for research and surveillance vary case by case and are influenced by how risks are managed before, during and after events and by the type and magnitude of the consequences of emergencies when they occur.
Disaster Medicine is concerned with the comprehensive response management and application of various health disciplines, from military and emergency to public health medicines, dealing with human-made and natural catastrophes by the “disaster pillars” of prevention, planning response recovery and mitigation. Such events often result in a large number of victims, who have undergone both physical and mental insults, that temporarily disrupts the ability of the local health response system invalidating the ordinariness socio-economic and public health of the affected resulting in an imbalance between the relief response and the resources immediately available in the area. In these scenarios rescuers have to cope with an imbalance between the relief response and the resources, operate with different standards and specific recommendations out of the ordinary clinical practice.
The wide range of potential types of disasters is also reflected in the field of bioethics that underlie the decisions of planners and those involved in a disaster. The lack of time and the complexity of the operational performance of disaster operations require an ethical reflection process to enable the health operators to take advantage of clear behavioral recommendations to recalibrate on spot their ethical decisions because medical professionals have to face with uncommon and dramatic ethical dilemmas.
In the last decades the scientific community began to wonder about the issues posed by this recent branch of medicine through an embryonic production of both clinical and organizational recommendations for bioethical debates applied to research, training and management of such topics. Triage, Allocation of resources, vulnerability of those involved, risks and benefits of participation in research, informed consent, training represent only some of this thematic. Health professional preparedness is one of the imperative key element of disaster response focused on clinical and organizational conducts. Worldwide training programs in disaster medicine are usually structured to create emergency preparedness core competencies in this matter. But if we focus on bioethics declined to this discipline, create ethical competencies in the field of disaster medicine represent one of the new challenges.
The ability to analyze the boundaries between public health practice, including surveillance, and research and their ethical implications in emergencies, to define adequate processes for ethics review or to define ethically relevant criteria for standards of care in emergency response and the expertise to discuss the professional duties of health care workers during clinical performances, public health surveillance, research and management in disasters and complex humanitarian emergencies, as reported by the WHO “Ethics in epidemics, emergencies and disasters: research, surveillance and patient care” training manual, represent the core competences sum of relief workers, researchers and ethical consultants involved in each phases of disaster events.
According to the third world conference on disaster risk reduction recommendations is fundamental to promote and enhance the training capacities to cope disasters and create resilience. If clinical and managerial educational topics in disaster medicine are strongly depicted, this discipline still reveals a complexity of concerns about several ethical topics. Most of the latest international core curriculum education proposals in disaster medicine embody ethics competency. The purposes of the present pilot study, co-realized by the Center for Clinical Ethics of the University of Insubria (Italy) were to investigate the interest and cognition on ethical issues by a cohort of health operators, mostly medical doctors, attending two disaster medicine international programs delivered by the Research Center in Emergency and Disaster Medicine (CRIMEDIM) of the University of Eastern Piedmont (Italy). An anonymous questionnaire was proposed to the students attending the European Master Degree in Disaster Medicine and the Humanitarian Medic Program in three academic sessions (2015-2017). 128 questionnaires were received. The interest about ethical issues is robust for the 96% of the respondents. As assumed disasters ethical dilemmas are perceived dissimilar to the ordinary medicine practice (χ2 0,916, p=0,011). About the importance of sixteen main topics proposed, like disaster triage, allocation of resources, informed consent, palliative care for non-salvageables or disaster research the range of acceptance was demonstrated (χ2 0,984, p=0,031). A significant portion of attendees consider useful the contribution of an ethical consultant to draft a mass casualty protocol (84%) or in case of debriefing (81%), less into operational phases (59%). The results have depicted a strong involvement in disaster ethics by the participants and various learning needs too that educators has to take in account to frame ethical contents into disaster medical educational programs
Relationships among parasites, physiological stress and personality in the interactions between invasive alien and native species
No full textThe thesis explored the interactions between Invasive Alien Species (IAS) and native species in the light of potential effects of parasitic infections, physiological stress and personality on individual fitness (reproductive success/investment).
In particular, this study investigated the interspecific competition between the North American invasive Eastern grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) and the native Eurasian red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris), describing techniques and methods that successively have been applied to evaluate the relationships between personality, stress and parasite load.
Chapter 1 reported the validation of a method to measure physiological stress in Eurasian red squirrel; Chapter 2 showed the application of this method to evaluate physiological stress in the native species in co-occurrence with Eastern grey squirrels.
Chapter 3 presented estimates of personality of individual squirrels using indirect indices and their validation through correlation with direct personality measurements from arena tests. Chapter 4 examined the methods previously identified to explore the relationship between personality and parasite infections in Eastern grey squirrels.
Reproductive success/investment could be influenced by the cumulative effect of factors analysed above. Chapter 5 presented the application of a staining technique of uterine scars count to estimate fecundity in invasive squirrel populations. Finally, Chapter 6 examined the relationships between parasite load, physiological stress, reproductive success and/or investment and the potential mediatory role of personality