696 research outputs found
An analytical demonstration of coupling schemes between magnetohydrodynamic codes and eddy current codes
No full textIn order to model a magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instability that strongly couples to external conducting structures (walls and/or coils) in a fusion device, it is often necessary to combine a MHD code solving for the plasma response, with an eddy current code computing the fields and currents of conductors. We present a rigorous proof of the coupling schemes between these two types of codes. One of the coupling schemes has been introduced and implemented in the CARMA code {[}R. Albanese, Y. Q. Liu, A. Portone, G. Rubinacci, and F. Villone, IEEE Trans. Magn. 44, 1654 (2008); A. Portone, F. Villone, Y. Q. Liu, R. Albanese, and G. Rubinacci, Plasma Phys. Controlled Fusion 50, 085004 (2008)] that couples the MHD code MARS-F {[}Y. Q. Liu, A. Bondeson, C. M. Fransson, B. Lennartson, and C. Breitholtz, Phys. Plasmas 7, 3681 (2000)] and the eddy current code CARIDDI {[}R. Albanese and G. Rubinacci, Adv. Imaging Electron Phys. 102, 1 (1998)]. While the coupling schemes are described for a general toroidal geometry, we give the analytical proof for a cylindrical plasma
Il ruolo del genere nel lavoro con gli uomini autori di violenza: Affetti e rappresentazioni dei professionisti della salute
No full textIl lavoro di contrasto alla violenza maschile contro le donne ha recentemente spostato il proprio focus dalla donna vittima di violenza all’uomo maltrattante. Questo cambio di paradigma ha portato all’implementazione di programmi di trattamento rivolti agli autori di violenza e all’impegno di professionisti uomini nel contrasto alla violenza. Il presente studio ha l’obiettivo di esplorare gli affetti e le rappresentazioni di 7 professionisti della salute (3 uomini e 4 donne) che si occupano di trattare uomini autori di violenza, con un focus specifico sul genere di appartenenza. L’analisi semiotica quali-quantitativa applicata alle interviste semi-strutturate analizzate tramite il software T-LAB ha consentito di individuare la presenza di 5 cluster: 1) Riconoscimento delle emozioni; 2) Posizionamento di genere; 3) Competenze lavorative; 4) Percezione del rapporto tra i generi; e 5) Rapporto con il lavoro. I risultati sembrano confermare che il genere di appartenenza degli operatori giochi un ruolo fondamentale nell’esperienza lavorativa con gli uomini maltrattanti
Tra manoscritti e libri della biblioteca di Elsa Morante: genesi e significati del Mondo salvato dai ragazzini
No full textThis thesis work stems from the intention to highlight one of Elsa Morante's least studied works: Il mondo salvato dai ragazzini (The World Saved by Kids). Published by Einaudi in 1968, it is probably the Roman writer’s most heterogeneous, multiform, and complex to interpret book. A first reason for the difficult collocation of this text lies in the impossibility of ascribing it to conventional categorisations of literary genre: it alternates between verse, prose, theatrical drama, visual poetry experiments, and non-semiotic codes of writing (staves, drawings) that make systematisation complex. A second reason can be traced back to the painful existential and writing phase Morante went through during the years of elaboration of the work, due to the problematic nature of her experiences: the death of her mother Imma Poggibonsi and lover Bill Morrow, a loss that marks the entire book, the controversial relationship with the hallucinogenic substances, alternately seen as a source of creativity and an impossible escape from a painful reality. Added to this is the traumatic clash with History and all the monstrous and sinister obscenities of the 20th century (the war, the Shoah, the consequences of autocratic capitalism) that, up to that point, seemed to be only the background of her narrative production. Moreover, it is necessary to consider the connection of The World saved by Kids, published in 1968, with the events of those years, so strong that Goffredo Fofi said that it is «the highest document of 1968 and its surroundings» (FOFI: 1969, 225) But although the references to the youth protest are quite explicit, the 1968 utopia becomes in Morante's work the embodiment of a more general revolutionary aspiration. The choral revolt of the Kids, the book’s protagonists and recipients, is indeed a meta-historical reality: a rebellion against social constraints, technocratic regimes, authoritarian thinking, ideological superstructures, and conceptual constraints that deprive young people, and poets, of their most authentic voice.
Chapter One describes the writer's personal and cultural journey in the years between 1964 and 1967, period of writing The World Saved by Kids, as reflected in various notations in the autograph papers that appear to be fundamental for the identification of a terminus post quem and ante quem within which to place the writing of the work. Through the analysis of the book’s main structural and formal features (internal subdivisions and overall architecture), the fundamental role that verse production plays in the literary and existential horizon of an author mostly known for her novels emerges. The second part of this chapter acts as a bridge to the next one: here, in fact, the discussion on the manuscripts and typescripts of The Word Saved by Kids is introduced through an analysis of Morante's writing practice: from the incessant labor limae that touches single words as well as entire sections of text to the structured planning of the arrangement of the archive material that appears almost already designed, in the author's intention, for readers' consultation.
In Chapter Two, an attempt is made to reconstruct the genetic-evolutionary path of the work through the consultation of autograph material conserved at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma in the Vittorio Emanuele 1622 and Archivi Raccolte e Carteggi 52 I 4.3 funds. Following the examination of the papers and the subsequent full transcription of the text contained therein, the main macroscopic changes to the entire work were identified (titles; subdivision into sections and subsections; deletion of entire parts). However, due to the dense layering of corrections in the papers, it was decided in the course of the work to include in the thesis all macro-textual considerations related to the book as a whole, but to restrict the philological analysis to a single section, The Chemical Comedy, which in turn comprises two lyric poems, a play and a long verse story divided into eleven compositions. This choice was motivated both by the central structural position of The Chemical Comedy, the junction point between the opening poem Farewell and the Folk Songs that close the volume, and by the complexity of its genesis. Indeed, it is the part of the book that has undergone, in the transition from the first draft to the final one, passing through numerous intermediate drafts, the greatest number of remakes, revisions and even aesthetic and substantial distortions. To follow the diachronic evolution of the text and to functionalise the philological discourse to a critical investigation of the book, it was therefore preferred to give a transcription of the verses, as transmitted by the papers in the most relevant editorial phases, and not to include a philological apparatus that would have hindered the readability of the study. However, to account for the frenetic movement of variants and to avoid transcribing uninteresting lessons because they are adiaphora or synonymous, the most notable microscopic variants have been selected in terms of stylistic or content changes and in relation to the communicative strategies adopted.
A second line of research has made it possible to combine the study of the antecedent with a timely survey of literary, philosophical and artistic suggestions inspired by ancient or contemporary works. Important, in this sense, are the paratextual sections that sometimes contain quotations, translations and references to the texts of other authors; however, the consultation of the volumes of the writer's personal library, today kept in the Fondo Morante of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Rome, has been fundamental. The numerous books are underlined, annotated, and often consumed by passionate and voracious reading; Morante's annotations therefore allow us to reflect on the intertextuality of a work that arises from a «dense weaving of references, borrowings, echoes and literary quotations». When identifying Morante's main cultural coordinates, however, the dynamic and multifaceted link that the author establishes with tradition has not been overlooked. Chapter Three traces, from the books in the library, an itinerary among the main models of the work, either textually displayed or only alluded to. The first authors referred to are the poets of the American beat counterculture, first and foremost Allen Ginsberg, who in those years inspired Morante in terms of experience, thematic choices, and language. There follows a section devoted to Greek tragedies and to some of the numerous readaptations and reinterpretations of classical myth in contemporary theatre, from Brecht to the Living Theatre: Morante recovers, combines, and rewrites them in the play at the centre of the book, The Evening at Colonus.
The essential core of this chapter is then the discussion of Morante's connection with Simone Weil's philosophy on the dual level of religious mysticism and ideological commitment. Beginning with the dense annotations found in the philosopher's books kept in Morante's library, Weil's thought is tackled from the perspective of an organic relationship with The World Saved by Kids, a work that turns out to be entirely built on the oscillation between the two Weilian poles of grâce and pesanteur. While the influence exerted by the French philosopher's meditations on Morante is undoubted, it is more interesting to highlight the profound convergences on the issues addressed by Weil. The last part of the chapter deals with the essay The End of the World: Cultural Apocalypse and Transcendence by the anthropologist Ernesto de Martino, a text that Morante possesses and comments on as evidenced by the reading marks in her edition. De Martino's considerations make it possible to identify a distinction between the representation of the cultural apocalypse in The World Saved by Kids and the psychopathological apocalypse in the latest novel Aracoeli; at the same time, they offer an interpretative key to discover new and dialoguing meanings in the interaction between the two works.
The Fourth Chapter takes up the results that emerged from the previous chapters and finalises them into an analysis of the book from the perspective of trauma studies. The aim is to propose a re-reading of the work as a narration in verse of individual and collective traumatic experiences, investigating the narrative devices and expressive choices made by the author to verbalise them. In this sense, the parts of the text that were not included in the final draft, the books read by the author, and the link with her models also help to shed light on the ellipses of a past and present that are traumatic on both a personal and historical level.
A two-part Appendix concludes the thesis. The first, which responds to the aim of reorganising and arranging the autograph papers in sequential order, contains an accurate description of the manuscript and typescript corpus: factual characteristics of the folios, collation, binding, presence of notes in the notebook plates, attachments. The second is intended to provide a schematic review of some of the books Morante frequented during the years of writing The Word Saved by Kids with a precise indication of the presence of any apostilles, reading marks and dedications. This work of cataloguing, of certain help to the critical discourse developed in the thesis, could also be preliminary to future studies that, based on the author's personal library, would contribute to a deeper knowledge of her human and cultural journey
Static Surface Mode Expansion for the Electromagnetic Scattering from Penetrable Objects
No full textWe introduce longitudinal and transverse static surface modes and use them to solve the scattering problem from penetrable objects with arbitrary shapes. The longitudinal static modes are the eigenmodes, with zero surface-curl, of the electrostatic integral operator that determines the tangential component of the electric field, as a function of the surface charge density. The transverse static modes are the eigenmodes, with zero surface-divergence, of the magnetostatic integral operator that determines the tangential component of the vector potential, as a function of the surface current density. These static modes are solely determined by the object's shape, thus, the same static basis can be used regardless of the operating frequency or material properties. We expand the unknown surface currents of the Poggio-Miller-Chang-Harrington-Wu-Tsai (PMCHWT) equation in terms of the static modes and solve it using Galerkin-projections. The static modes expansion allows for the regularization of the integral operators and also leads to a significant reduction in the number of unknowns compared to a discretization based on sub-domain basis functions. As a consequence, the CPU-time required for the numerical solution of the scattering problem from arrays of identical particles is significantly reduced by employing an expansion in terms of static modes of the isolated particle. © 1963-2012 IEEE
Fast methods for shape reconstruction in Electrical Resistance Tomography
No full textElectrical Resistance Tomography (ERT) is a body of methods and techniques aimed to reconstruct the spatial distribution of the conductivity of a material starting from the knowledge of boundary measurements such as, for instance, the Neumann-to-Dirichlet map. This inverse problem is ill-posed and nonlinear and, therefore, its solution require a considerable computational effort. In this paper we present a comparison between three fast non-iterative reconstruction methods for locating inclusions in an otherwise homogeneous material (for both 2D and 3D geometries). These methods, potentially, are candidate for real-time applications. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
A Differential Formulation based on a Perturbative Approach to Solve the ECT Inverse Problems
No full textWe describe a 3D numerical procedure for the reconstruction of conductivity profiles, a classic nonlinear inverse problem. The related direct field problem is discretized using a finite elements differential formulation in terms of magnetic vector potential and electric scalar potential. Adopting shape functions based on edge-elements, the vector potential is gauged using a tree-cotree decomposition of the finite element mesh. The nonlinear inverse problem is approximated by expanding, up to the second order, the nonlinear operator mapping the conductivity into the magnetic field at the probes location. The solution is obtained by minimizing an error functional related to the distance between measurements and their numerical approximation. The geometrical properties of this error functional are reviewed, showing how the presence of local minima can be controlled. From the numerical point of view, this perturbative approach enlarges the range of validity of the classic linear Born approximation, since the quadratic term takes into account, at least partially, the effects due to the reaction field. Several examples highlight the main features of the method. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved
Macroscopic electrodynamic modelling of superconductors
No full textIn this paper we review the main aspects of a fast magneto-quasi-stationary integral numerical formulation that can be efficiently extended to include the modelling of superconductors in fully 3D geometries. The macroscopic constitutive law of superconductors is taken into account by means of a variational approach leading to an unconstrained minimization problem. Some illustrative examples are presented to show the main features of the proposed numerical approach. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Microarray analysis of 1,25(OH)(2) D(3) regulated gene expression in human primary osteoblasts
No full textThough extensive studies have been conducted, questions regarding the molecular effectors and pathways underlying the regulatory role of 1,25(OH) 2D 3 in human osteoblasts other than cell differentiation and matrix protein production remain unanswered. This study aims to identify genes and pathways that are modulated by 1,25(OH) 2D 3 treatment in human osteoblasts. Primary osteoblast cultures obtained from human bone tissue samples were treated with 1,25(OH) 2D 3 (10 -7 M) for 24 h and their transcritptomes were profiled by microarray analysis using the Affymetrix GeneChip®. Statistical analysis was conducted to identify genes whose expression is significantly modulated following 1,25(OH) 2D 3 treatment. One hundred and fifty-eight genes were found to be differentially expressed. Of these, 136 were upregulated, indicating clear transcriptional activation by 1,25(OH) 2D 3. Biostatistical evaluation of microarray data by Ingenuity Pathways Analysis (IPA) revealed a relevant modulation of genes involved in vitamin D metabolism (CYP24), immune functions (CD14), neurotransmitter transporters (SLC1A1, SLC22A3), and coagulation [thrombomodulin (THBD), tissue plasminogen activator (PLAT), endothelial protein C receptor (PROCR), thrombin receptor (F2R)]. We identified a restricted number of highly regulated genes and confirmed their differential expression by real-time quantitative PCR (RT qPCR). The present genome-wide microarray analysis on 1,25(OH) 2D 3-treated human osteoblasts reveals an interplay of critical regulatory and metabolic pathways and supports the hypothesis that 1,25(OH) 2D 3 can modulate the coagulation process through osteoblasts, activates osteoclastogenesis through inflammation signaling, modulates the effects of monoamines by affecting their reuptake
Can psychiatric trainees have a role in the improvement of training? The first 20 years of European Federation of Psychiatric Trainees
No full textAims. The European Federation of Psychiatric Trainees (EFPT), founded in London in 1992, is an independent international federation of psychiatric trainees' national associations. The EFPT is engaged in several actions in order to pursue its general aims to promote high standards of quality of psychiatric training and promote the collaboration and networking between European psychiatric trainees. Methods. Member associations constitute the general assembly that meets annually during the European Forum of Psychiatric Trainees. During the Forum, working groups are created and the activities for the next year are planned. Results. Regular activities of the EFPT include the production of statements expressing the standpoint of trainees on educational issues, the conduction of research projects, the creation of new national trainees' associations, the facilitation of networking among European psychiatric trainees and the organization an annual meeting (EFPT Forum). The last EFPT Forum has been organized in Sorrento (Italy) on May 2012. Psychiatric trainees from 37 European countries have registered to this event. Discussion. EFPT activities constitute a opportunity for psychiatric trainees to directly participate in the improvement of their psychiatric training and to establish a network with European colleagues that will contribute to their professonal development
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