81,956 research outputs found
The ethics of thinking in Heidegger, Bruno & Spinoza
No full textThe aim of the present work is to face Heidegger’s claim that philosophy has ended.
Facing this claim for us has not taken the form of creating a new method or positing a
new question but that of a search for anomalies in what Heidegger decrees as
finished, which is philosophy as metaphysics. In his historical confrontation with the
history of thought Heidegger seems to have left out, dismissed or forgotten those
authors who do not fit into his definition of metaphysics. We have chosen Giordano
Bruno and Baruch Spinoza, metaphysical thinkers who have undertaken a
philosophical practice that does not intend to demolish subjectivity but actually
begins without any need for it. The birth of the subject as grounding reality finds its
affirmation with Descartes and inaugurates modernity that, according to Heidegger,
exhausts philosophy and leads it into the arms of modern science and technology.
Bruno and Spinoza respectively precede and follow the birth of modernity and of
modern science, which they look at with an eye that is not that of the modern subject.
Following their different approaches to philosophy, we shall also explore their
relation to Renaissance Humanism, dismissed by Heidegger as a historical reiteration
of the Roman world, perceived as a perversion of the Greek origin of thought. We
shall show how hasty such a dismissal is. Our goal is to show not merely that
Heidegger is wrong but that if Western thinking contains the seeds of its own end, it
also contains the ones of a different understanding of the Western world and its
achievements. The three authors will engage on the grounds of ontology, gnosiology
and ethics and yet we have defined the whole enterprise of this work as an ethics
overall. An ethics of thinking is a practice of thought that wishes to envisage the
possibility for Western man of inhabiting his own world by understanding himself
not as an isolated subject and master of nature but as the place where the unity and
multiplicity of nature come to be thought at the same time
Johannes Christes & Giovanni Garbugino, Lucilius. Satiren. Lateinisch und deutsch. Eingeleitet, űbersetzt und erlautert von J. C. und G. G. Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2015
No full textRochette Bruno. Johannes Christes & Giovanni Garbugino, Lucilius. Satiren. Lateinisch und deutsch. Eingeleitet, űbersetzt und erlautert von J. C. und G. G. Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2015. In: L'antiquité classique, Tome 85, 2016. pp. 301-303
Improved method for discriminating agricultural crops using geostatistics and remote sensing RID G-9191-2011
No full textReliable land cover mapping of agricultural areas require high resolution remote sensing and robust classification techniques. In this paper, we propose the integration of spectral information with spatial information using the traditional statistical supervised classifier "Maximum Likelihood" and a geostatistical tool, "Indicator Kriging" algorithm, for the development of land cover maps by supervised classification from remotely sensed data at medium and high spatial resolution. The proposed method showed better results in classes' discrimination with smoother resulting maps than the ones produced using only spectral information. Two different satellites imagery were analyzed: a Landsat TM5 image at medium spatial resolution acquired during 2006 and an Ikonos II image at higher spatial resolution acquired during 2008. The better performance of the "combined" approach compared to the traditional Maximum Likelihood technique was confirmed by confusion matrix. The overall accuracy increases from 76.16% to 85.96% for LandsatTM image and from 71.56% to 80.25% for the IKONOS image. (C) 2011 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). [DOI:10.1117/1.3601437
Inhibition of leukaemia cell proliferation by folic acid-polylysine-mediated introduction of c-myb antisense oligodeoxynucleotides into HL-60 cells.
No full textThe inhibitory effect of c-myb antisense oligodeoxynucleotides (ODNs) conjugated to folic acid (FA) on HL-60 cell proliferation was examined. Folic acid was covalently linked to a polylysine chain and purified by gel chromatography. Sterile FA-polylysine was complexed with c-myb sense and antisense. Exposure of HL-60 cells to the FA-polylysine-c-myb antisense ODN complex resulted in a down-regulation of c-myb expression and a greater inhibition of proliferation than that obtained using free ODNs. Moreover, FA-polylysine conjugate alone or complexed to c-myb sense ODN was not toxic to cells. The antigenic properties and uptake of the vitamin were not affected by the polylysine chain. These data suggest that this strategy is potentially useful for the selective delivery of anti-oncogene-targeted ODNs into cancer cell
Inhibition of proliferation by c-myb antisense oligodeoxynucleotides in colon adenocarcinoma cell lines that express c-myb.
No full textSteady-state mRNA levels of the protooncogene c-myb were measured by Northern blot analysis in the human colon carcinoma cell lines LoVo, the doxorubicin-resistant derivative LoVo/Dx, Colo 205, and HT 29. Overexpression of c-myb mRNA was detected in the Colo 205 cell line, probably because of gene amplification, while in human HT 29 cells c-myb was not expressed at a detectable level. Comparison between LoVo and LoVo/Dx cell lines showed that c-myb mRNA levels were much higher in the doxorubicin-resistant derivative than in the parental line. c-myb antisense oligodeoxynucleotides inhibited cell proliferation only in the cell lines with detectable mRNA c-myb (LoVo, LoVo/DX, and Colo 205). The dose of antisense exerting inhibitory effect was related to the levels of c-myb mRNA expression. Inhibition of c-myb expression in antisense-treated LoVo/DX cells was demonstrated by the reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction technique. LoVo/Dx cells were induced to differentiate by treatment with dimethylformamide to determine whether down-regulation of c-myb expression would accompany the process of differentiation. During the treatment with dimethylformamide the expression of c-myb decreased in parallel with the reduction of cell growth, while terminal differentiation of these cells was associated with changes in the expression of carcinoembryonic antigen and laminin receptor genes. Our findings demonstrate that the expression of c-myb is important for the proliferation of colon carcinoma cell lines and suggest that the role of this protooncogene is not restricted to cells of hematopoietic origin but is more general than previously thought
Evolution of the G+C content frontier in the rat cytomegalovirus genome
No full textWithin the 230138 bp of the rat cytomegalovirus (RCMV) genome, the G+C content changes abruptly at position 142644, constituting a G+C content frontier. To the left of this point, overall G+C content is 69.2%, and to the right it is only 47.6%. A region of extremely low G+C content (33.8%) is found in the 5 kb immediately to the right of the frontier, in which there are no predicted coding sequences. To the right of position 147501, the G+C content rises and predicted coding sequences reappear. However, these genes are much shorter (average 848bp, 50% G+C) than those in the left two-thirds of the genome (average 1462bp, 70% G+C). Whole genome alignment of several viruses indicates that the initial ultra-low G+C region appeared in the common ancestor of the genera Cytomegalovirus and Muromegalovirus, and that the lowering of G+C in the right third has been a subsequent process in the lineage leading to RCMV. The left two-thirds of RCMV has stop codon occurrences at 67.5% of their expected level, based on a modified Markov chain model of stop codon distribution, and the corresponding figure for the right third is 78%. Therefore, despite heavy mutation pressure, selective constraint has operated in the right third of the RCMV genome to maintain a degree of gene length unusual for such low G+C sequences
Affidabilità dei pilastri di roccia tenera in cave sotterranee
No full textLe rocce tenere sono, in genere, estratte in cave a cielo aperto. Specie nel passato, però, quando la roccia si
rinveniva a profondità di un decina di metri e la copertura era costituita da materiale diverso, come ad
esempio l’argilla, la coltivazione in sotterraneo poteva risultare conveniente se confrontata con l’alternativa di
uno scavo a fossa previa eliminazione del materiale di copertura. In tal modo, si assicurava altresì la
continuazione dell’utilizzo della superficie del terreno in maniera pressoché indisturbata. Esempi di
coltivazioni di questo genere sono piuttosto diffusi. Esse utilizzano la tecnica di estrarre il materiale lasciando
dei pilastri di dimensioni opportune a sostegno della volta. Molte di queste coltivazioni sono attualmente
abbandonate e spesso si riscontrano dei veri e propri collassi dei pilastri che, data la profondità non eccessiva
della zona soggetta a coltivazione danno luogo a dei veri e propri fenomeni di rapida subsidenza della
superficie del suolo. Tale circostanza si è verificata in Puglia più volte ed in particolare a Canosa, Mottola e
Cutrofiano. In tali casi l’analisi di stabilità dei singoli pilastri viene generalmente svolta considerando come
azione, il carico verticale, indotto dai terreni sovrastanti la volta, relativo ad un’area di influenza per il singolo
pilastro opportunamente determinata per via geometrica, mentre la resistenza è valutata conoscendo la
resistenza a compressione semplice di provini della roccia e considerando le caratteristiche geometriche dei
pilastri. Numerose sono le relazioni in tal senso disponibili in letteratura che, nel presente lavoro, vengono
presentate. Sulla base di quanto precedentemente detto, viene esaminato in dettaglio il caso della cava di
Mottola. La roccia in questione può essere classificata come calcarenite, localmente calcirudite, di colore da
bianco a giallino. Tali rocce sono biospariti a struttura prevalentemente grainstone e secondariamente
packstone-grainstone. I grani bioclastici carbonatici derivano dalla frammentazione sia di macro sia di
microfossili; secondariamente si riscontra la presenza di grani di quarzo, feldspati, ossidi di ferro e glauconite.
Dal punto di vista fisico-meccanico tale roccia può essere classificata come “roccia tenera”. La cava
sotterranea di Mottola, in analogia con altre cave sotterranee presenti in vari paesi ed attualmente utilizzate
anche per scopi turistici, è organizzata a camere e pilastri dei quali sono state accuratamente misurate le
dimensioni ed accertate le forme che solitamente non sono regolari. Conseguentemente è stato possibile, sulla
base di un’analisi statistica svolta sulla base dei dati geometrici e meccanici (per questi ultimi comprendendo
anche dati di letteratura), effettuare una stima dell’affidabilità della stabilità dell’insieme dei pilastri in cava,
in relazione alla probabilità di collasso degli stess
New insights on the size distribution of Italian firms by geographical area
No full textAbstract
Using a large industrial panel, we show that the size distribution of Italian manufacturing firms can be well approximated by a two-parameter generalized Pareto distribution (GPD); the fitting is particularly good for medium-large companies.
This evidence seems to hold using different proxies of size: number of employees, revenues, fixed assets, total costs and debts. The choice of different measures of size is justified by the desire of presenting robust results, but also by the idea that one single optimal measure of size probably does not exist, and it is thus better to combine different points of view. We believe that such an approach represents a clear novelty of our work.
The presence of a GPD in the size distribution of Italian firms suggests interesting implications of industrial economics, as discussed in the paper. In more details, we find that, for the entire time window considered, the parameter of the GDP is persistently in the interval [0.5, 1], indicating fat tails - consistently with the so-called Pareto law of industrial dynamics, but also pointing out a certain stability in the shape of the size distribution of Italian firms.
For what concerns growth rates, the Laplace distribution provides a good fit, ruling out Gibrat’s law of proportionate effects from the patterns of growth of Italian companies. In the paper we discuss the economic implications of such a finding
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