1359 research outputs found
Sort by
Nota su Πέτρος. Esarca d’Africa in Sardegna?
Get PDFSotto l’esarcato d’Africa, la Sardegna entrò nella sfera amministrativa di Bisanzio. La penuria di fonti non
consente un’esatta definizione della prosopografia dei personaggi ri-conducibili all’amministrazione locale
e provinciale di questi territori. Tra i pochi documenti scritti, vi sono due sigilli riferibili a un Πέτρος, ἀπὸ ὑπάτων, πατρίκιος καὶ δούξ e un omonimo στρατηγὸς Νoυμηδίας τῆς Ἀφρικῆς. L’attribuzione di uno
di questi personaggi alla Sardegna può essere rivista alla luce degli studi prosopografici sul personaggio
in questione, in particolare sulla scorta delle pubblicazioni di V. Laurent, N. Duval e P. A. Février. Si
propone dunque un’attribuzione del manufatto all’area africana, più coerente con il cursus del personaggio
e si avanza, contestualmente, una proposta di datazione contenuta entro un arco cronologico abbastanza
ristretto (633/634-637 d.C.). - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Under the African exarchate, Sardinia was included in the administrative area of Byzantium. The lack of sources implies difficulties to define the prosopography of people that managed this region. Concerning written sources, there are two seals: one is referred to a Πέτρος, ἀπὸ ὑπάτων, πατρίκιος καὶ δούξ, the other mentions an homonymous στρατηγὸς Νoυμηδίας τῆς Ἀφρικῆς. The Sardinian provenance of those objects could be reconsidered through the prosopography, in particular comparing V. Laurent, N. Duval and P.A. Février studies. It is argued that the provenance of this object is African, as the cursus of Πέτρος suggests. Consequently, the chronological definition of the object could be limited to a period from 633/634 to 637 A.D
Modificazioni nella funzionalità , nell'espressione dei recettori GABAA extrasinaptici e nella plasticità sinaptica nell'ippocampo di ratto durante la gravidanza e dopo il parto.
Get PDFPregnancy is associated with changes in mood and anxiety level as well as with marked hormonal fluctuations. Increases in the brain
concentrations of neuroactive steroids during pregnancy in rats are accompanied by changes in expression of subunits of the GABA type A receptor (GABAA-R) in the brain. Granule cells of the dentate gyrus (DGGCs) exhibit two components of inhibitory GABAergic transmission: a phasic component mediated by synapticGABAA-Rs, and a tonic component mediated by extrasynapticGABAA-Rs. Recordings of GABAergic currents were obtained from hippocampal slices prepared from rats in estrus, at pregnancy day 15 (P15) or P19, or at 2 d after delivery. Exogenous GABA or 3_,5_-THP induced an increase in tonic current in DGGCs that was significantly greater at P19 than in estrus. Neither tonic nor phasic currents were affected by pregnancy in CA1 pyramidal cells. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed
a marked increase in the abundance of the _ subunit of the GABAA-R and a concomitant decrease in that of the _2 subunit in the hippocampus at P19. Expression of the_4 subunit did not change during pregnancy but was increased 2 d after delivery. Treatment of rats from P12 to P18 with the 5_-reductase inhibitor finasteride prevented the changes in tonic current and in _ and _2 subunit expression normally apparent at P19. These data suggest that the number of extrasynaptic GABAA-Rs is increased in DGGCs during late pregnancy as a consequence of the associated marked fluctuations in the brain levels of neuroactive steroids
Electronic devices and systems for monitoring of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases
Get PDFDiabetes is a serious chronic disease which causes a high rate of morbidity and mortality all
over the world. In 2007, more than 246 million people suffered from diabetes worldwide
and unfortunately the incidence of diabetes is increasing at alarming rates. The number of
people with diabetes is expected to double within the next 25 years due to a combination of
population ageing, unhealthy diets, obesity and sedentary lifestyles. It can lead to blindness,
heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, amputations and nerve damage. In women, diabetes
can cause problems during pregnancy and make it more likely for the baby to be born with
birth defects. Moreover, statistical analysis shows that 75% of diabetic patients die
prematurely of cardiovascular disease (CVD). The absolute risk of cardiovascular disease in
patients with type 1 (insulin-dependent) diabetes is lower than that in patients with type 2
(non-insulin-dependent) diabetes, in part because of their younger age and the lower
prevalence of CVD risk factors, and in part because of the different pathophysiology of the
two diseases. Unfortunately, about 9 out of 10 people with diabetes have type 2 diabetes.
For these reasons, cardiopathes and diabetic patients need to be frequently monitored and
in some cases they could easily perform at home the requested physiological measurements
(i.e. glycemia, heart rate, blood pressure, body weight, and so on) sending the measured
data to the care staff in the hospital. Several researches have been presented over the last
years to address these issues by means of digital communication systems. The largest part of
such works uses a PC or complex hardware/software systems for this purpose. Beyond the
cost of such systems, it should be noted that they can be quite accessible by relatively young
people but the same does not hold for elderly patients more accustomed to traditional
equipments for personal entertainment such as TV sets.
Wearable devices can permit continuous cardiovascular monitoring both in clinical settings
and at home. Benefits may be realized in the diagnosis and treatment of a number of major
15
diseases. In conjunction with appropriate alarm algorithms, they can increase surveillance
capabilities for CVD catastrophe for high-risk subjects. Moreover, they could play an
important role in the wireless surveillance of people during hazardous operations (military,
fire-fighting, etc.) or during sport activities.
For patients with chronic cardiovascular disease, such as heart failure, home monitoring
employing wearable device and tele-home care systems may detect exacerbations in very
early stages or at dangerous levels that necessitate an emergency room visit and an
immediate hospital admission.
Taking into account mains principles for the design of good wearable devices and friendly
tele-home care systems, such as safety, compactness, motion and other disturbance
rejection, data storage and transmission, low power consumption, no direct doctor
supervision, it is imperative that these systems are easy to use and comfortable to wear for
long periods of time.
The aim of this work is to develop an easy to use tele-home care system for diabetes and
cardiovascular monitoring, well exploitable even by elderly people, which are the main
target of a telemedicine system, and wearable devices for long term measuring of some
parameters related to sleep apnoea, heart attack, atrial fibrillation and deep vein
thrombosis. Since set-top boxes for Digital Video Broadcast Terrestrial (DVB-T) are in simple computers
with their Operating System, a Java Virtual Machine, a modem for the uplink connection and
a set of standard ports for the interfacing with external devices, elderly, diabetics and
cardiopathes could easily send their self-made exam to the care staff placed elsewhere.
The wearable devices developed are based on the well known photopletysmographic
method which uses a led source/detector pair applied on the skin in order to obtain a
biomedical signal related to the volume and percentage of oxygen in blood. Such devices
investigate the possibility to obtain more information to those usually obtained by this
technique (heart rate and percentage of oxygen saturation) in order to discover new
algorithms for the continuous and remote or in ambulatory monitoring and screening of
sleep apnoea, heart attack, atrial fibrillation and deep vein thrombosis
Obsidian Economy in the Rio Saboccu Open-Air Early Neolithic Site (Sardinia, Italy)
Get PDFIntegrated provenance/typo-technologic/chaînes opératoires studies on obsidians from Early Neolithic (EN) assemblages
are still quite exceptional in the western Mediterranean region. The Rio Saboccu S1-S2 EN dwelling structures (Central-western
Sardinia) 14C dated to the last three centuries of the VIth millennium BC provided us with an opportunity to apply such an approach.
A comprehensive provenance study of its 1.114 obsidian artefacts was realized through a combined visual/instrumental approach.
Elemental compositions were determined mostly by ion beam analysis (PIXE) and by electron microprobe (SEM-EDS).
The S1-S2 structures are situated inside the so-called supply zone of the Monte Arci volcanic complex. A technological analysis of
the implements revealed a non-opportunistic behaviour in relation to obsidian procurement among the four (SA, SB1, SB2, SC)
Monte Arci types locally available in various contexts (from primary to secondary sources). A comparison with other Sardinian EN
sites suggests that the human groups settled near the Monte Arci sources might have acted as a ‘filter’ in the first stages of the
diffusion of obsidians in Sardinia and possibly elsewhere in the northern Tyrrhenian area
Domesticità e addomesticamento. La costruzione della sfera domestica nella vita quotidiana.
Get PDFThis paper explores the concept of domestication as constituted by material and
symbolic practices defining space as a domestic sphere. On the basis of this premises,
we will highlight the specificities of this process from two different but interrelated
points of observation, i.e. domestic and urban space. Both these spatial-temporal
contexts are domesticated by those everyday practices producing ontological security
while transforming space and its objects to their own ends. In this way they modify its
significance and contextually redesign the public- private boundaries
A landscape approach for detecting and assessing changes in areas prone to desertification by means of remote sensing and GIS
Get PDFLand degradation and desertification processes represent a serious problem in many Italian regions, as in the north-western part of Sardinia (Nurra region) where urbanization overgrazing and fires have induced environmental degradation and rapid land-use change, thus altering entire landscapes. In semi-arid and arid environments, in particular, where fragile ecosystems are dominant, land cover and landscape change often reflects the most significant impact on the environment due to human activity.
In the present research, we tested the concepts of a landscape approach in areas prone to desertification, where this kind of investigation has not experimented on up until now. Up to now landscape ecology has been rarely combined with the issue of desertification, in particular in the Mediterranean region.
By means of remote sensing, Geographical Information System and the software FRAGSTAT, three Landsat MSS and TM images, covering the period between 1972 and 2000, werw classified and a stepwise indicator approach was adopted in order to detect the location, the direction, the magnitude of the changes and the spatio-temporal dynamic of landascape in a area prone to desertification.
Relevant processes affecting the study area were therefore identified, as in the municipalities of Stintino and Porto Torres, where forest fragmentation, expansion of agricolture and urban sprawl can be considered among the main degradation factors and causes of the sensitivity to desertification.
The results of the study that actually achieved monitoring of land cover and landscape change over time, have made an important step towards warning the authorities of the circumstances of the past and current landscape changes and their consequences
Three Essays on Regional Economic Modelling
Get PDFEssay 1: Constructing a Social Accounting Matrix for Sardinia.
Recently, the Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) has been resurrected as a policy analysis tool and, in the last decade, attention has been paid to SAM multipliers, as well as to the use of the SAM as a benchmark for computable general equilibrium models. This paper construct a SAM for the regional economy of sardinia that can be used for policy evaluation and impact analysis. A mixture of approaches is used from simple compilation and decomposition metheds to procedures for matrix estimations and matrix balancing.
Essay 2: R&D Investment and External Knowledge Spillovers: an investigation of the impact of R&D subsidy on a recipient region in a computable general equilibrium model.
In this paper we present a computable general equilibrium model for the region of Sardinia (Italy) with the purpose of evaluating the capacity of R&D policies to affect the long run rate of growth. The model incorporates induced technical change (ITC) obtained through knowledge accumulation, and external knowledge spillowers. It runs out that the cost of R&D policies may change according to the wage setting prevailing in the region. Furthermore, the capacity of such a policy to generate knowledge spillowers from international and interregional trade is quite modest. Ideed, the capacity of the regional system to internalize the innovations embedded in the importde goods is partially offset by increase in internal efficiency that lowers the spillower intensity through a reduction in the share of imports.
Essays 3: An applied regional intertemporal general equilibrium model: does the forward looking model fit the usual regional closures?
We present a stylized regional intertemporal forward-looking model able to take into account regional economic features, an area that is not well developed in the literature. The main difference from standard applications is the role of savings and its implication for the balance of payments. Though maintaining dynamic forward-looking behaviour for agents, the rate of private saving will be exogenously determined, and so no neoclassical financial adjustment is needed. Also, we focus on the similarities and the differences between myopic and forward looking models, highlighting divergences between the main adjustment equations and the resulting simulation outcomes
Catalogo de la flora exotica de la isla de Cerdeña (Italia)
Get PDFThis paper provides a checklist of exotic flora on the island of Sardinia (Italy) with a total of 482 taxa which represent 18% of the flora of the island; 29 taxa are new to the island and 9 of them for Italy. Most of these taxa (289, which represent 62% of the total) are neophytes and 173 (38%) are archeophytes, while new events are all related to neophytes. Among all neophytes, 44% are naturalized, 39% casual and 17% invasive. The archeophytes include a 55% of naturalized taxa, 44% casual and 1% invasive. The category of invasive accounts 11% of the total alien flora. The analysis of the checklist confirms phanerophytes as the most represented biological form (40%), with the American origin prevalent among all species (30%). Further analysis have been conducted in order to verify the impact on different ecosystems and the most vulnerable habitats to the phenomena of neocolonization are agricultural (32%) and sinanthropic (28%), followed by wetlands (11%) and coastal (10%)
Measures of quality of life among university students
Get PDFThis article outlines findings from a survey addressed to measure the quality of life of university students in Cagliari. It focuses on issues related to the process of building up of a synthetic indicator of students’ quality of life from responses to a set of subjective indicators all measured on ordered scale. The aim has been pursued by adopting the modeling approach of the Item Response Models which enable us to simultaneously summarize student’s multiple responses in a metrical measure of the latent trait and to assess the properties of each indicator in terms of the location of its parameters on the latent trait and its capability to discriminate across students. A comparison analysis with other classical scaling procedures to summarize multiple indicators in a single statement
has been carried out with the main aim to assess the potential of the Item Response Models approach in terms of capability to detect pattern of responses which signal a different intensity of the latent trait