131,436 research outputs found
The genus Bolbelasmus in the western and southern regions of the Mediterranean Basin (Coleoptera: Geotrupidae: Bolboceratinae)
No full textThe Bolbelasmus Boucomont, 1911 species of the western and southern
regions of the Mediterranean Basin (Northern Africa, Iberian Peninsula and
France) are revised. The following three new species are described: Bolbelasmus
brancoi Hillert & Král sp. nov. and Bolbelasmus howdeni Hillert & Král sp. nov.,
both from Spain and Gibraltar, and Bolbelasmus nikolajevi Hillert, Arnone, Král &
Massa sp. nov. from Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. Bolbelasmus vaulogeri (Abeille de
Perrin, 1898) stat. restit. is removed from synonymy with B. bocchus (Erichson,
1841) and reinstated as a separate species. Bolbelasmus romanorum Arnone &
Massa, 2010 is considered a junior subjective synonym of B. vaulogeri. Lectotypes
for Bolboceras bocchus Erichson, 1841 and Bolboceras vaulogeri Abeille
de Perrin, 1898 are designated. Relevant diagnostic characters (head, pronotum,
elytron, external male genitalia) are illustrated. Identifi cation keys for both males
and females, and an annotated list of the Western Palaearctic representatives of the
genus Bolbelasmus are presented. Finally, fi rst records are given for B. gallicus
(Mulsant, 1842) from Corsica and the Midi-Pyrénées region of France, B. keithi
Miessen & Trichas, 2011 from the Greek island of Rhodes, and B. unicornis
(Schrank von Paula, 1789) from the Tuscany province of Italy
Resist Coating of Cylindrical Samples for 3-D Lithography
No full textA quantitative investigation of a dipping technique for depositing a thin layer of resist on circularly symmetrical objects is presented. The results obtained are valuable for preparing three-dimensional (3-D) surfaces suited for spatial microlithographic processes in the 1 to 10 μm linewidth range. © 1995, MCB UP Limite
Derivation of critical rainfall thresholds for landslide in Sicily
No full textRainfall is the primary trigger of shallow landslides that can cause fatalities, damage to properties and economic
losses in many areas of the world. For this reason, determining the rainfall amount/intensity responsible for
landslide occurrence is important, and may contribute to mitigate the related risk and save lives. Efforts have
been made in different countries to investigate triggering conditions in order to define landslide-triggering rainfall
thresholds. The rainfall thresholds are generally described by a functional relationship of power in terms of
cumulated or intensity event rainfall-duration, whose parameters are estimated empirically from the analysis of
historical rainfall events that triggered landslides.
The aim of this paper is the derivation of critical rainfall thresholds for landslide occurrence in Sicily, southern
Italy, by focusing particularly on the role of the antecedent wet conditions. The creation of the appropriate
landslide-rainfall database likely represents one of main efforts in this type of analysis. For this work, historical
landslide events occurred in Sicily from 1919 to 2001 were selected from the archive of the Sistema Informativo
sulle Catastrofi Idrogeologiche, developed under the project Aree Vulnerabili Italiane. The corresponding
triggering precipitations were screened from the raingauges network in Sicily, maintained by the Osservatorio
delle Acque - Agenzia Regionale per i Rifiuti e le Acque. In particular, a detailed analysis was carried out to
identify and reconstruct the hourly rainfall events that caused the selected landslides.
A bootstrapping statistical technique has been used to determine the uncertainties associated with the threshold
parameters. The rainfall thresholds at different exceedance probability levels, from 1% to 10%, were defined in
terms of cumulated event rainfall, E, and rainfall duration, D. The role of rainfall prior to the damaging events
was taken into account by including in the analysis the rainfall fallen 6, 15 and 30 days before each landslide. The
antecedent rainfall turned out to be particularly important in triggering landslides. The rainfall thresholds obtained
for the Sicily were compared with the regional curves proposed by various authors confirming a good agreement
with these
Influence of temperature on extreme rainfall intensity in Sicily (Italy)
No full textSome climate model experiments suggest an intensification of short-duration extreme precipitation in many parts of the world associated with a warming climate. This behavior could have a physical motivation due to the fact that warmer air has the potential to hold more atmospheric moisture and, then, to provide more water to rainfall events. The theoretical basis of the relationship that links air temperature and atmospheric humidity is provided by the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, according to which, if the relative humidity remains constant, then atmospheric humidity will increase with temperature at a rate (often referred to as CC-rate) in the order of 6-7% °C-1, following the saturation vapour pressure curve as a function of temperature. The study of the relationship between extreme rainfall events and surface temperature could be of capital importance for evaluating the effects of global warming on future precipitation, since it may have important impacts on society with relevant fallouts on several aspects (e.g. flooding, risk protection, etc.).
Different approaches have been proposed for the study at different locations of the scaling relationship between extreme rainfall intensity and surface temperature. In some cases, it has been observed a rate consistent with the thermodynamic Clausius-Clapeyron relation (CC-rate). Nevertheless, in many cases, the existence of scaling rate between temperature and extreme precipitation has been demonstrated with significantly different values with respect to the theoretical CC-rate, being in some cases sensibly higher (super-CC) and in other relevantly lower (sub-CC). In this work, an analysis of the scaling relationship between sub-daily extreme rainfall and surface temperature in a semi-arid region (Sicily, Italy) is carried out, also investigating the role of different factors, such as the duration of maximum rainfall depths for fixed duration (i.e. 10, 30 and 60 minutes), the type of adopted regression models (exponential regression, two-segments piecewise regression and LOESS - Locally-weighted scatterplot smoothing - regression), and the climate seasonality (unique season for the entire hydrological year; dry season from April to September and wet season for the remaining part of the year). The original dataset is constituted by hourly temperature and 10-minutes rainfall data collected from 2003 to 2015 by the regional agency SIAS (Servizio Informativo Agrometeorologico Siciliano) through 107 weather stations spread over the region. The results demonstrate that in Sicily the scaling rates are generally lower than the CC-rate; however, the observed tendency towards sub-CC rates is smoothed by the consideration of shorter duration for rainfall maximum depths (higher rates for 10-minutes durations) and under wetter periods (higher rates considering only wet season values), demonstrating how such factors play a fundamental role
Analysis of high-resolution rain records in FVG, northeastern Italy
No full textThe Friuli Venezia Giulia (FVG) region, northeastern Italy, records the heaviest precipitation annual totals of the country. The region counts on a dense ground-station network constituted by 2 main rain-gauges networks, whose sampling frequency has been progressively increased from 60 up to 1min step. In this work, we propose a comprehensive analysis of the available dataset of continuous series at high temporal resolution (i.e. 60, 30, 5 and 1min) to verify whether trends in very short rainfalls are underway. We adopt the quantile regression (QR) method which allows to detect changes in the tails of the rainfall distributions and to screen the whole rainfall time series. At this aim, we first introduce a method to check and correct the continuous series by removing the suspicious outliers, based on references values. Significant increasing trends at 5% of significant level have been detected on some of the analysed stations. Copyright
Maladera insanabilis (Brenske, 1894), specie invasiva nella regione mediterranea e sua distribuzione in Libia (Coleoptera Scarabaeidae Sericini).
No full textLa relazione tra imprenditorialità, innovazione e crescita economica: un confronto tra le macroregioni italiane
No full textThe Relationship between Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Economic Growth: a Comparison between Italian Macro-Regions. This work is part of the scientific debate on the relationship between innovation and economic growth. In this paper the study of this quite complex and bidirectional relationship has been enhanced by a third factor that is entrepreneurship as a driving force for the development of local economies. Entrepreneurship can play a key role, especially for the regions of Southern Italy marked by significant delays in development than the regions of Central/North. The paper try to launch a reflection on the role of the University in the creation of entrepreneurship through two special innovation ecosystems science and technology parks and research spin-offs. These two analyzes will be preceded by a review of the literature to focus on the concept of entrepreneurship and what are the key factors that influence its genesis and later development. The descriptive analysis will allow you to capture the similarities but above all the differences of the "physical or real" and not "virtual" scientific and technological parks investigating some of their characteristics (focusing on only one sector-field or greater sector diversification, the strengths and weaknesses, the “vocational/endogenous” or “political/exogenous” genesis, the relationship with successfully high-tech districts localized in the same territory, the size of the hosted firms). The empirical analysis (estimation of a “fixed effects” panel) verifies if the research spin-off may have a significant economic impact on the reduction of development gap compared to the objectives / targets set by the Europe 2020 that penalize the South than in the Centre/Northern Italy. In particular the objective placed under observation concerns the R&D activities. As reflected by the indicators related to this objective the South Italy is characterized by a lower competitive ability even in an international context. The results will also be enriched by some final suggestions of policies for the development of successful entrepreneurship
Potential implications of climate change and urbanization on watershed hydrology
No full textThis paper proposes a modeling framework able to analyze the alterations in watershed hydrology induced by two recurrent drivers for hydrological changes: climate change and urbanization. The procedure is based on the coupling of a stochastic weather generator with a land use change model for the generation of some hypothetical scenarios. The generated scenarios are successively used to force a physically-based and spatial distributed hydrological model to reconstruct the basin response under different conditions. Several potential climate alterations are simulated by imposing negative and positive variations in the mean annual precipitation and a simultaneous temperature increase. Urbanization is conceptualized by an increase in the impervious fraction of the basin. The procedure is applied to a large basin and a much smaller sub-basin; the results show how climate and land use changes may interact and affect the fundamental hydrological dynamics and how the processes governing basin hydrological response may change with spatial scale
Le scelte strategiche e operative delle banche locali nelle regioni dei distretti tecnologici italiani
No full textCon questo lavoro si intende verificare se si sono manifestati dei cambiamenti associati alla crisi finanziaria globale nelle scelte operative, strategiche e attinenti la natura dell’offerta della particolare categoria di intermediario finanziario rappresentata dalle banche locali.
Si cercherà di verificare se quest’ultima tipologia di intermediario, sfruttando i propri punti di forza connessi alla vocazione territoriale delle scelte strategiche incentrate sulla filosofia del relationship lending che pone come valore di riferimento il cliente e di conseguenza alla disponibilità di un portafoglio informativo sulle esigenze del cliente molto più ampio sia stata grado di offrire alla clientela corporate servizi finanziari avanzati quali ad esempio il private equity e il venture capital (generalmente accomunati sotto la dicitura “finanza per l’innovazione”).
In caso di risposta positiva le banche locali sarebbero state in grado di abbandonare l’identità di operatori specializzati nell’attività di intermediazione creditizia tradizionale (sostanzialmente monobusiness) e orientarsi maggiormente verso la fisionomia di intermediari finanziari diversificati nei comparti dell’intermediazione mobiliare.
In caso di risposta negativa si cercherà di mettere a fuoco le principali criticità di matrice culturale ed organizzativa che tali banche dovrebbero superare per poter acquisire un certo vantaggio competitivo anche nei comparti finanziari dell’investment banking e del merchant banking.
Il primo passo di questa analisi consisterà nel riportare una breve rassegna della letteratura sia italiana che estera che aiuterà a comprendere meglio che cosa si deve intendere quando si parla di distretti tecnologici e quando si usa l’espressione “finanza per l’innovazione” ed in particolare “merchant banking” e “private equity”.
Dopo questa breve rassegna il secondo passo consisterà nell’analizzare l’evoluzione del comparto finanziario del private equity in Italia nel periodo 2006-2008 descrivendo principalmente aspetti relativi alla domanda di tali operazioni finanziarie riguardanti le motivazioni sottostanti che spiegano la necessità di un’impresa di rivolgersi ad un investitore esterno, le scelte di localizzazione geografica delle imprese che si sono avvicinate a questo comparto finanziario ossia le loro caratteristiche territoriali, settoriali, dimensionali e reddituali.
Il terzo passo consisterà in un’analisi comparata tra le banche locali operative nelle quattro regioni leader del mercato del private equity (Lombardia, Piemonte, Emilia-Romagna e Veneto) mediante il calcolo di indicatori di bilancio afferenti i principali profili gestionali di tali banche (struttura, solvibilità, rischiosità dei crediti, redditività, efficienza da razionalizzazione dei costi e produttività del personale).
Il quarto passo consisterà in una analisi econometrica di tipo panel su un campione di banche locali che operano nelle regioni italiane che ospitano i distretti tecnologici
- …
