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Curare gli anziani: pratiche di cura in tensione tra processi assistenziali e di medicalizzazione
No full textL’intento dello studio proposto è quello di indagare le trasformazioni che stanno attraversando il mondo della cura a fronte dei mutamenti di carattere demografico, sociale e tecnologico e dei complessi processi di medicalizzazione che riguardano l’intera società contemporanea e, in modo particolare, le dinamiche di invecchiamento degli individui. La vecchiaia rappresenta oggi una situazione assolutamente nuova nel panorama della cura, principalmente a causa dell’aumento esponenziale – oltre che di “anziani attivi” – di “grandi anziani”, spesso polipatologici, non autosufficienti e quindi fortemente bisognosi di cura e assistenza. Le domande che fanno da sfondo alla ricerca interrogano le modalità con le quali processi di medicalizzazione e di biomedicalizzazione stiano modificando le pratiche di cura rivolte ad anziani, focalizzandosi su come si riarticoli la relazione tra caring e curing – cioè tra la parte socio-assistenziale e quella sanitaria della cura – e su come queste trasformazioni incidano sull’organizzazione della cura nel suo insieme, sulle diverse traiettorie professionali e sulle relazioni tra i molteplici attori che vivono la scena della cura.
L’analisi si situa all’interno di un terreno interdisciplinare dove si incontrano la sociologia della salute, la branca della sociologia delle professioni che si occupa del mondo socio-sanitario e la gerontologia sociale. La cura viene studiata con riferimento al paradigma dell’attività situata e al dibattito multidisciplinare dei practice-based studies, che permettono di leggerla come un campo di pratiche – unità di analisi della ricerca – che si costruiscono in situazione. La metodologia utilizzata è la Case Study Research e la selezione dei casi studio è avvenuta seguendo la logica del theoretical sampling: il primo caso studio è una Residenza Sanitario Assistenziale e il secondo una casa di riposo e protetta; entrambi i casi sono situati in Regione Emilia Romagna. Il lavoro di ricerca sul campo ha visto lo svolgersi di un’etnografia delle pratiche di care e di cure, che si è basata su un’osservazione partecipante della vita organizzativa e sull’utilizzo di altre tecniche di indagine quali le interviste esplorative, lo shadowing e le interviste sul campo.
I risultati della ricerca – la cui premessa è l’emergere dal campo del concetto di ben-essere come principio che regola l’organizzazione e oggetto comune a tutte le pratiche di cura – sono sintetizzati in 6 processi significativi che articolano il fare cura nelle strutture osservate, individuati analizzando le risorse alla base della performance della pratica del fare cura – ovvero l’infrastruttura tecnologica e prescrittiva, la conoscenza sensibile e le pratiche discorsive – e del lavoro attraverso cui si mantiene un orientamento comune verso il ben-essere. Tali processi sono: negoziare in situazione tempi e ruoli professionali; attivare canali prescrittivi non gerarchici; mobilitare l’azione congiunta di soggetti umani e oggetti tecnologici; sviluppare una “visione interprofessionale” attraverso il corpo; curare con le parole; mantenere un orientamento comune verso il benessere.
L’ultima parte dell’analisi empirica si è focalizzata sulla pratica dell’alimentazione, che è stata identificata come pratica che “àncora” le altre pratiche di cura in quanto pioniera di un “fare” complesso ed eterogeneo che abita l’intero mondo della cura e trascina con sé le trasformazioni di altre pratiche. L’alimentazione è stata utilizzata per introdurre e affrontare una tendenza riscontrata in numerose altre pratiche di cura e che si esprime in due logiche emergenti dal campo che sembrano fare da sfondo anche a tutte le altre pratiche di cura: la logica della prevenzione del rischio e la logica della medicina difensiva e del “non scegliere” in situazione.
Le conclusioni del lavoro ruotano attorno a due riflessioni sulle pratiche di cura. In primo luogo, l’analisi dei 6 processi sopra citati fa emergere una forma di integrazione socio-sanitaria che si realizza nel corso dell’azione – ovvero prima del suo recepimento istituzionale – in cui si vede una continua rinegoziazione in situazione dei ruoli e dei confini professionali istituzionalizzati e una riconfigurazione della relazione tra la care e la cure. In secondo luogo, la proposta che emerge dall'analisi è che per preservare e stimolare un’integrazione socio-sanitaria virtuosa, sia necessario “curare la cura”, mettendo al centro delle organizzazioni di cura l’assunzione del rischio e la gestione responsabile del processo decisionale ad esso connesso
"La battaglia interiore. Prova di commento alla Psychomachia di Prudenzio"
No full textThis PhD thesis is a verse commentary to the first four episodes of Aurelius Prudentius Clemens’ Psychomachia, one of the works of this Latin poet of the late antiquity which have not yet received a detailed scientific commentary. The dissertation is written in Italian, it includes a translation of the text in free verses and an analysis of the first 309 verses, which provide an overview of the themes and literary peculiarities of the whole work. The preface introduces the work and its uniqueness as the first allegorical epic poem of the western literature, it explains the research methods which have been used and it sums up the results of the study.
The method of the commentary tries to take into account the complexity of the object and the multiplicity of the secondary sources. Each chapter deals with one episode (altogether five, from the Praefatio to the fourth fight). It starts with an overview of the episode and divides it into meaningful units, then it determines the meaning of the single words or word groups, and it records a highly refined net of quotations or allusions both from the pagan and the christian literature. Further research on literary motives, ways of thinking or aspects of the author’s historical context is often necessary. Based on the above the commentary is to provide an interpretation of the allegorical system confronted with the previous research, whose statements are accepted, completed or confuted.
The analysis of the poem as a continuum focuses on certain aspects which had been left aside up till now, and it calls into question some seemingly consolidated interpretations to propose new ones. This happens at the small level of understanding of the text unities as well as at the big level of the meaning of an episode or of certain phenomena, which pervade the whole work
Production and Characterization of Micro-Tubular Solid Oxide Fuel Cells
No full textIn the present work, micro-tubular solid oxide fuel cells μt-SOFCs) constituted by NiO/YSZ anode with an embedded current collector, YSZ as electrolyte, YSZ/LSM as functional cathode layer and pure LSM as cathode current collector layer were fabricated by dip-coating technique. The fuel cell was designed according to the anode-supported configuration with a metallic coil introduced within the anode during the cell fabrication. The production of the devices through wet colloidal process required the optimization of suspensions employed for the dip-coating. Then, investigation on rheological properties for the anode and electrolyte water-base slurries was carried out with particular emphasis to the solid loading and the concentration of slurry additives as well as temperature. In addition, thermal analyses elucidated the response of anode, electrolyte and cathode layers during drying, binder burn-out and sintering processes. The thermal behaviour of
pyrolisable materials and oxidation of the metal components used as current collector was performed using conditions identical to cell fabrication like temperatures as high as 1400°C in oxidative atmosphere. After sintering, the
complete μt-SOFCs with embedded current collector were produced with outer diameter as low as 1.0 mm and length of 30 mm with an effective active cathode length of 20 mm resulting in an active area of 0.63 cm2. The cell performance was analyzed by V-j plots in the temperature range of 700-800°C where the effect of the cell diameter and current collector characteristics on power density was pointed out. The efficiency of current collector was examined by comparing coils with different configurations (turns per unit length) as well as nature of the metal. The cell performance was demonstrated to be related to the current collector configuration. In particular, as twice the turns per unit length are as double the current density is, thus making the power density 4-fold. An additional improvement of the cell performance was found for the palladium current collector where the power density was increased by a factor more than 4 in comparison with the cell made with nickel collector due to the higher catalytic activity of palladium for electrochemical reactions. On the basis of these findings, a further development of μt-SOFCs with embedded collector was suggested with an alternative design of palladium current collector for which an estimate of power density of micro-tubular cell provided values higher than 0.7 W/cm2 at temperature of 800°C
Optimal-Control-Based Adas for Driver Warning and Autonomous Intervention Using Manoeuvre Jerks for Risk Assessment
No full textIn this research work, two ADAS have been proposed, both based on optimal control and manoeuvre jerks as parameters for threat assessment. The first is named “Codriver”, and is a system for driver warning. The second is a sort of completion of the first, since it is designed for autonomous vehicle intervention if the driver does not react to the warnings. The Codriver has been developed by the Mechatronics Group of the University of Trento, which the author is part of, in the framework of the European Project “interactIVe”, to warn the driver for all-around threats safety. It has been then implemented on a real vehicle of Centro Ricerche Fiat, which has been widely tested at the end of the project. On the other hand, for the second system only the main components have been developed by the author during a research period at the University of Tokyo, Japan, and its application is restricted to autonomous obstacle avoidance. In particular, a motion planning algorithm has been used together with a control loop de- signed to execute the planned trajectories.
Both systems exploit Optimal Control (OC) for motion planning: the Codriver uses OC to plan real-time ma- noeuvres with humanlike criteria, so that they can be compared to what the driver is doing in order to infer his/her intentions, and warn him if these are not safe; the second system uses OC instead to plan emergency manoeuvres, i.e. neglecting driver actuation limitations and pushing the vehicle towards its physical limits. The initial longitudinal and lateral jerks of the planned manoeuvres are used by both the systems as parameters for risk assessment. Manoeuvre jerks are proportional to pedal and steering wheel velocities, and their initial values thus describe the entity of the correction needed by the driver to achieve a given goal. Since human drivers plan and act with minimum jerk criteria, and are jerk-limited, more and more severe manoeuvres at a given point are not reachable anymore by a human driver, since they require too high initial jerks: initial jerks can be thus considered proportional to the risk level of current situation. For this reason, when the manoeuvres to handle current scenario require jerks beyond a given threshold, the Codriver outputs a warning. This threshold must be lower than driver limits, so that he/she will be able to react to the warning and still have the chance to perform a safe manoeuvre. When the required jerks exceed drivers’ actuation limits, the risk level raises to an upper step, where driver warning would be not effective and autonomous vehicle intervention should be enabled.
In obstacle avoidance scenarios, it was demonstrated during driving simulator tests that manoeuvre jerks are more robust parameters for risk assessment than for example time headways, since they are less affected by driver’s age and gender
Geometry of moduli spaces of higher spin curves
No full textABSTRACT: Roughly speaking, the moduli space of higher spin curves parametrizes equivalence classes of pairs (C, L) where C is a smooth genus g algebraic curve and L is a line bundle on it whose r-th tensor power is isomorphic to the canonical bundle of the curve. The aim of the talk is to discuss important geometrical properties of these spaces under different points of view: one possible compactification together with the description of the rational Picard group, their birational geometry in some low genus cases and their relation with some special locus inside the classical moduli spaces of curves
Die deutsche Stammzelldebatte: Eine exemplarische Untersuchung bioethischer Normenkonflikte in der politischen Kommunikation der Gegenwart
No full textBioethische Fragestellungen spielen sowohl national als auch international eine über Fachkreise hinausreichende bedeutende Rolle in der öffentlichen Diskussion. Dies gilt nicht zuletzt für die Problematik der embryonalen Stammzellforschung. Im Rahmen dieser bioethischen Debatte müssen hochrangige verfassungsrechtliche Normen wie der Schutz der Menschenwürde, der Forschungsfreiheit sowie das Recht auf Leben und auf körperliche Unversehrtheit miteinander in Einklang gebracht werden. Die vorliegende Studie untersucht den politischen Kommunikationsprozess über die Stammzellproblematik, wie er sich zwischen den unterschiedlichen gesellschaftlichen Gruppen in Deutschland seit der Jahrtausendwende entwickelt hat. Einbezogen werden dabei die spezifischen historischen und ideengeschichtlichen Voraussetzungen der deutschen Debatte sowie die Differenzen zu vergleichbaren Diskussionen in Italien, Großbritannien, den USA und Israel
How does Task Sharing Influence Individual's Performance? An Investigation with Interference Paradigms
No full textIn this thesis I investigated whether and to what extent performing a task with another person may change individual cognitive performance. Interference paradigms are particularly suitable for addressing this issue. The rationale behind the use of these paradigms is that most of them can be split in two complementary or independent tasks assigned to two different individuals. By comparing task performance when participants act in the joint context and when they perform the task individually, important information may be derived about whether the co-actorâs task is represented and how this representation influences oneâs own performance.
Following this approach, I adopted the joint version of two different and well-known paradigms: the picture-word interference paradigm (Study 1: Experiments 1, 2, 3) and the Simon task (Study 2: Experiments 4, 5, 6). Both paradigms allow understanding how people can deal with the task irrelevant information when the accomplishment of the task is achieved in a joint (and cooperative) context.
The results of both studies provided converging evidence showing that, regardless of the paradigm used, task sharing determines the disappearance of the interference effect produced by the task irrelevant information (Study 1) or by the (incidental) spatial representation of an alternative response (Study 2). The disappearance of the interference effects, however, occurred only when the co-actor was thought to work on different or complementary stimuli but not when s/he was in charge of the same stimuli as the participant.
These findings will be accounted for by taking into consideration both the specific peculiarities of each paradigm exploited and the strategic processes of division of labor that can be established between two co-acting individuals
RF plasma synthesis and characterization of thin films for transparent conductors
No full textOxide-based transparent conductors constitute a novel class of materials, which finds applications in many technological fields such as photovoltaics and organic light emitting devices. They can be employed in the new generation solar cells as transparent charge collectors. The transparent and conductive oxide mostly used nowadays is indium tin oxide (ITO), however due to the high cost and scarcity of indium, other materials are under research and development as potential substitutes. Many candidates are currently under study, mainly doped-ZnO, doped-CdO, doped-SnO2, doped-TiO2.
The work undertaken in this thesis is a study of the doping processes of thin films of TiO2 and ZnO, two cheap, chemically stable and non-toxic materials. Two main objectives were pursued in this work: (i) the optimization of the film deposition and doping conditions for a potential replacement of ITO and (ii) the understanding of the factors dominating the doping process as well as its limitations. The approach was to explore three doping methods of the films: intrinsic doping, extrinsic doping and, with the aim to combine the benefits of both, intrinsic-extrinsic co-doping. Since the structural defects (such as oxygen vacancies) are at the basis of the intrinsic doping, a control of their formation was searched through the variation of the growth process conditions of the ZnO and TiO2 films. Niobium was selected for the extrinsic doping of the TiO2 films.
The films were grown by RF plasma sputtering in different atmospheres (Argon, Ar-O2 and Ar-H2 gas mixtures) and under different plasma power conditions and substrate temperature, onto silicon and quartz substrate. The Nb-containing films were obtained by co-sputtering of either a single composite TiO2 -Nb target or two distinct niobium and TiO2 targets.
Many characterization techniques were applied to define the film structural, electronic, electrical and optical properties obtained upon doping. For chemical analysis, X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) was used. The structure and morphology of the films were analyzed by X-ray Diffraction (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The chemical species present in various plasmas used in deposition process were investigated by Optical Emission Spectroscopy (OES). Further, the defect structure and properties of the obtained films were studied by Positron Annihilation Spectroscopy. Analysis by this technique shed more light on the nature of the vacancies/open volume and on the effect of the latter on the electrical and structural properties of the films. A study based on a joint use of XPS and optical measurements allowed to define the electronic properties of the films (valence band edge, Fermi level position, work function, ionization potential and electron affinity).
Structural analysis results revealed the formation of both anatase and rutile nanocrystalline phases for intrinsic and extrinsic doping of TiO2, while with the co-doping method only anatase phase was obtained, a phase known to be favorable for Nb incorporation in TiO2 lattice.
The intrinsic doping of TiO2 films showed high transparency in the visible range, but resulted in still high resistivity values (101-103 xcm). The latter could be lowered by using Ar-H2 gas mixtures during film deposition. The same trend was observed in the case of intrinsically-doped ZnO films, an increase in the electrical conductivity was observed when the concentration of defects was increased.
The lowest resistivity was achieved with niobium doping of TiO2, 5x10-3 xcm, with an optical absorption coefficient in the visible range of ~1x104 cm-1, however the combination of the internal defects and Nb, in co-doping, did not improve the conductivity. Nonetheless, it was found that co-doping method strongly modified the electronic properties of the TiO2 films, allowing a control of the work function, an important parameter for transparent electrodes.
Low cost transparent conductive oxides were obtained when niobium was successfully incorporated in TiO2 lattice. By optimization of the deposition process of the films (dopant concentration, RF power, atmosphere, and annealing temperature) the electronic, electrical and optical properties of doped- TiO2 films can be improved. The obtained results can contribute to the development of transparent electrodes and charge collectors by RF sputtering, a suitable technique for coating on large area substrates
Knowledge and Artifact Representation in the Scientific Lifecycle
No full textThis thesis introduces SKOs (Scientific Knowledge Object) a specification for capturing the knowledge and artifacts that are produced by the scientific research processes. Aiming to address the current existing limitations of scientific production this specification is focused on reducing the work overhead of scientific creation, being composable and reusable, allow continuous evolution and facilitate collaboration and discovery among researchers. To do so it introduces four layers that capture different aspects of the scientific knowledge: content, meaning, ordering and visualization
Classifying semisimple orbits of theta-groups
Get PDFI consider the problem of classifying the semisimple orbits of a theta-group. For this purpose, once a preliminary presentation of the theoretical subjects where my problem arises from, I first give an algorithm to compute a Cartan subspace; subsequently I describe how to compute the little Weyl group