140 research outputs found
Earth Jurisprudence and the Myth of Gaia
No full textThis essay argues that Earth Jurisprudence is fundamentally based on a fable that has the sacredness of a story of origin: the myth of Gaia
Earth Jurisprudence and the Myth of Gaia
No full textThis essay argues that Earth Jurisprudence is fundamentally based on a fable that has the sacredness of a story of origin: the myth of Gaia
Sensing Interpolation Strategies for a Mobile Crowdsensing Platform
No full textMobile Crowd Sensing (MCS) allows an efficient collection of heterogeneous data over large areas, leveraging on the cooperation of MCS subscribers that offer services on their smartphones to this purpose. However, the coverage that a MCS platform can provide for a given area depends on the availability of subscribers and on their mobility in that area. To guarantee a better coverage, a MCS platform may employ a combination of static and mobile sensors and interpolation strategies that may provide meaningful data for all the area under observation. We discuss how two mechanisms (mixing static and mobile sensors and interpolation) can be combined together by using the large-scale mobility datasets of ParticipAct and the Weather Underground dataset
Serum Levels of Tryptase Suggest That Mast Cells Might Have an Antiinflammatory Role in Rheumatoid Arthritis: Comment on the Article by Rivellese et al
No full textOur data on circulating levels of tryptase, a systemicmarker of mast cell activation, are consistent with the synoviallevelfindings reported by Rivellese et al. Our results providefurther evidence that mast cells might exert antiinflammatoryaction in RA
Ground States for NLS on Graphs: A Subtle Interplay of Metric and Topology
No full textWe review some recent results on the minimization of the energy associated to the
nonlinear Schrödinger Equation on non-compact graphs. Starting from seminal results given
by the author together with C. Cacciapuoti, D. Finco, and D. Noja for the star graphs, we
illustrate the achiements attained for general graphs and the related methods, developed
in collaboration with E. Serra and P. Tilli. We emphasize ideas and examples rather than
computations or proofs
Circulating Dickkopf-1 and sclerostin in patients with Paget's disease of bone
No full textPaget disease of bone is a chronic metabolic bone disorder characterized by increased bone resorption and new bone formation. The aim of this study is defining the role of inhibitors of canonical Wnt/b-catenin signaling pathway in patients with Paget disease of bone. Scarce and contrasting results have been reported in literature. We studied 40 patients (15 females and 25 males) with radiological and scintigraphic evidence of Paget disease of bone and 40 healthy subjects matched by age and sex. N-propeptide of type I collagen, C-terminal telopeptide of type I collagen, sclerostin, and Dickkopf-related protein 1 (DKK1) were evaluated by blood samples in our laboratory. As expected, mean serum levels of bone turnover markers (N-propeptide of type I collagen and C-terminal telopeptide of type I collagen) were significantly higher in the Paget disease of bone group compared with the control group. No difference was observed between groups in Dickkopf-1 and sclerostin. Dickkopf-1 and sclerostin were never correlated with each other or with bone turnover markers. Sclerostin was positively correlated with age. In conclusion, our results suggest that the regulators of the Wnt-β catenin pathway are not altered in patients with Paget disease of bone. The positive correlation we found between sclerostin and age in Paget disease of bone patients indicates that in comparative studies, sclerostin serum levels must be adjusted for age
Culture, Language and Environmental Rights: The Anthropocentrism of English
No full textThrough the methodological perspective of ecolinguistics, this paper criticizes the unecological and anthropocentric features of English in order to reveal the manipulation forces at work within language and to create awareness of the relationship between language and the environment. Through examples from United Nations documents, the author underlines how the unecological ideologies entrenched in the structures of the English language influence cultural and legal approaches to environmental rights, which are always seen from a human rights perspective rather than from a “nature rights” perspective
What’s in a click? A social semiotic framework for the multimodal analysis of website interactivity
No full textThis article presents a social semiotic framework for the multimodal analysis of website interactivity. Distinguishing it from interaction, it defines interactivity as the affordance of a text of being acted (up)on, thus including hypertextuality. The author introduces the notion of ‘interactive sites/signs’ as the loci of interactivity in digital texts; these have a two-fold nature and a two-dimensional functioning. In their two-fold nature, they are both places enabling actions producing effects and forms endowed with meanings. Notwithstanding the non-direct correspondence between forms, actions and effects (which makes any specific association between the three significant within a webpage design), and in spite of their many possible forms (encompassing still and dynamic images, shapes and writing), a small range of actions can activate them (click/click+type/hover), producing a restricted set of textual effects (access/provide/transfer text). In their two-dimensional functioning, interactive sites/signs function both syntagmatically, on the page where they are displayed, in their relation with other co-occurring elements, and paradigmatically, opening to optional text realizations, hence in their relation with these. The framework adapts Halliday’s three metafunctions to the analysis of the two-fold nature and two-dimensional functioning of interactive sites/signs. It provides a fine-grained account of the interactive meaning potentials of digital texts, distinguishing between a text’s aesthetics of interactivity – as visually communicated before it is activated, performed and experienced – and its functionality, in the configuration of interactive possibilities offered by a page. Designed to complement the extant practices of text analysis of webpages, the framework can be used comparatively, as exemplified in its application to the analysis of two blog pages, and can provide a more refined assessment of the interactive meaning potential of a webpage than traditional methodologies such as content analysis
The Pedagogical Value of Young-Adult Speculative Fiction: Teaching Environmental Justice through Julie Bertagna’s Exodus
No full textThe environmental crisis is one of the most pressing societal concerns today. Speculative fiction frequently questions current political, legal and cultural attitudes by portraying future scenarios in which some ecological disaster has changed the world order. Scottish children’s author Julie Bertagna has given her contribution to these speculations on the consequences of letting current trends in environmental behaviour continue unchallenged with her young-adult novel Exodus (2002), part of a trilogy continued in 2007 with Zenith and completed in 2011 with Aurora. This paper explores the pedagogical value of young-adult speculative fiction and examines Bertagna’s survival narrative as a questioning of environmental justice, in the light of contemporary theories on young-adult fiction, ecocriticism and human rights
Women's Reproductive Rights: a literary perspective
No full textThis paper examines the development of the concept of women’s reproductive
rights in human rights treaties and conventions since the 1948 Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, revealing how traditional human rights formulations
are often male-centered and lack a gender-sensitive approach. Since feminist
speculative fiction has anticipated many of the reproductive rights issues that we
are facing today, the author claims that literary texts such as Ursula Le Guin’s The
Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976),
Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), P. D. James’s The Children of Men
(1992) and Sarah Hall’s The Carhullan Army (2007) can enlighten contemporary
debates on reproductive rights and contribute to the development of a universal
ethics of human rights that takes into account the specificity of women’s rights
- …
