51 research outputs found
Compliance mechanisms under selected multilateral environmental agreements, (Co-author Ulrich Beyerlin)
No full textThe Figure of the Limit: Metalepsis
No full textIn 1972, Gérard Genette introduced in narratology the figure of metalepsis, that is «any intrusion by the extradiegetic narrator or narratee into the diegetic universe (or by diegetic characters into a metadiegetic universe, etc.), or the inverse». In other words, metalepsis is a transgression of narrative levels, a perturbation of hierarchy that raises the question of the porosity of boundaries between diegetic and metadiegetic, author and reader, fact and fiction.
In my presentation, I will show how this phenomenon is ubiquitous nowadays, and how it is settled both in highbrow and lowbrow cultural representations across various media.
Furthermore, I wish I can discuss the role of metalepsis in poetics: in my opinion, it is possible to relate this device with the history of the novel. In XVIII and XIX centuries authorial narrators made extensive use of rhetoric metalepsis for humoristic purposes (such as playing with the story-time and the discourse-time) or to exhibit their authority (through the manipulation of different threads of the narration). With Naturalism and Modernism metalepsis disappeared, according to the poetic of impersonality: authors stopped being intrusive and eclipsed behind their characters. The golden era of the figure came in the temper of Postmodernism, where ontological metalepsis flourished and the public got used to author and reader literary entering the fiction or characters exiting from it and chitchatting with their creators
Andrea e gli argentieri Memingher in Sicilia
No full textAndrea Memingher è una tra le più enigmatiche figure di argentieri attivi a Palermo nella seconda metà del XVII secolo. Si può ritenere che la famiglia avesse origini nordiche e che, dopo un passaggio a Napoli, si stabilisse definitivamente a Palermo, inserendosi nella maestranza degli orafi e argentieri della città, probabilmente grazie ad un matrimonio con una figlia o una sorella o una vedova di un membro palermitano della maestranza. La presenza di Paolo Memingher nel capoluogo siciliano è attestata già nel 1660, due anni prima della data di inizio della sua attività, protrattasi fino al 1678. Il più importante esponente della famiglia fu Andrea, figlio di Paolo, il quale dovette la sua fama, al di là dell’abilità e dell’origine straniera, anche al suo status di padre gesuita. Il saggio studia la figura dell’artista, attivo dal 1670 al 1738, anno di morte, autore di un consistente corpus di opere giunto fino a noi, e dei congiunti che operarono nel medesimo contesto.Andrea Memingher is one of the most enigmatic figures of silversmiths active in Palermo in the second half of the seventeenth century. It can be assumed that the family had Nordic origins and that, after a passage to Naples, it settled permanently in Palermo, entering the mastery of the goldsmiths and silversmiths of the city, probably thanks to a marriage with a daughter or a sister or a widow of a Palermitan member of the mastery. The presence of Paolo Memingher in the Sicilian capital is attested as early as 1660, two years before the start of his activity, which lasted until 1678. The most important exponent of the family was Andrea, son of Paolo, who owed his fame, beyond the ability and foreign origin, even to his status as a Jesuit father. The essay studies the figure of the artist, active since 1670 to 1738, the year of his death, author of a substantial body of works that has come to us, and of the relatives who worked in the same context
A robotized environmental sensor array for gravitational wave observatory sites
No full textA movable array of environmental sensors is intended for the feed-forward cancellation of the Newtonian noise generated by atmospheric density fluctuations and seismic displacements at the Virgo gravitational wave detector site, with the prospect of being used at the sites of future 3rd generation detectors. Each robot unit is equipped with a seismic sensor - optionally also a microphone and a magnetometer - for low-noise and low-frequency observations. The robots need to move autonomously in the experimental areas indoors, avoiding obstacles to reach the assigned positions where they start the data acquisition process. Then, the data will be transferred wirelessly to the control software that elaborates them and imparts to all robots the command to move to new optimal positions. Essential requirements of the system are accuracy in positioning and timing. The project is described highlighting the technical choices and their implementation
Analysis methods for gravitational wave from binary neutron star coalescences: investigation on the post-merger phase
No full textThe coalescence of binary neutron stars (BNS) is amongst the most promising sources for advanced gravitational wave (GW) detectors. The forthcoming addition of the advanced Virgo interferometer to the LIGO detector network will greatly improve the estimation of GW characteristics and therefore the capabilities to test features in the GW signal emitted by the coalescence of a NS binary. Such an observation can constrain the equation
of state of these stars in at least two ways: by investigating smaller effects on top of the signal from the inspiral phase due to the tidal deformability of the components and by characterizing the emission from the possible highly excited NS remnant after the merger. Both methods promise to probe matter up to yet unknown and unexplored supranuclear densities, provided that the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at which the single GW is detected is sufficiently high or that the results from more detections can be combined together. Depending on mass and Equation of State (EoS) of the NS progenitors,
the final fate of the merger can produce either a prompt collapse to black hole (BH) or a massive NS remnant. In the latter case, the merger remnant could be a short-lived, hypermassive NS (HMNS) collapsing to a BH within a few tens of ms after merger, or a long-lived NS, which in turn can be either supramassive (SMNS), i.e. collapsing to a BH on much longer timescales of order of seconds, or even a stable NS. These remnants will be highly excited, showing transient nonaxisymmetric deformations and quadrupolar oscillations, which are expected to emit GWs peaked in the frequency range around 2-3 kHz. The observation of these Post Merger (PM) fingerprints, would allow to constrain the EoS and at the same time to estimate combinations of stellar parameters, such as
mass and radius of the two objects.
With these motivations, my PhD thesis addressed the development of a new data analysis tool in order to investigate the GW signal emitted during the PM phase following a NS coalescence. The analysis procedure is developed inside the framework of the Coherent Wave Burst (cWB) pipeline which is employed by LIGO and Virgo collaboration to search for burst signals, i.e. it makes minimal assumption on the GW morphology and provides a robust coverage of generic GW transients
La Vita S. Rosaliae di van Dyck nella Biblioteca della Fondazione Sicilia
No full textThe essay examines the Vita S. Rosaliae, a very rare collection of engravings taken from drawings by Antoon van Dyck, identified by the author and Maria Concetta Di Natale in the Sicily Foundation Library during preparatory research for the realisation of the exhibition 'The Ecstasies of Saint Rosalie - Antoon van Dyck, Pietro Novelli, Mattia Preti, Luca Giordano'
Experimental Investigations of Heat Transport Dynamics in a 1d Porous Medium Column
No full textAbstractThe present study involves the experimental investigation of heat transport due to the forced convective flow through a thermally isolated porous medium column.The experiments regard the observation of thermal breakthrough curves obtained through a hot flow injection in correspondence of two thermocouples positioned along a thermally isolated column of porous medium. The experiment has been carried out for three flow rates in order to investigate the critical issues regarding heat transport phenomena such as the relationship between the thermal dispersion with the flow velocity and the validity of the local thermal equilibrium assumption between the fluid and solid phase
Una scrittura della memoria. Le prose e i versi di Maria Attanasio
No full textMaria Attanasio (born in 1943) is an author of novels, stories, poetic collections, essays
and a photographic book illustrated by the shots of Giuseppe Leone, a refined iconotesto
whose subtitle reveals a clear Sciascian inspiration: Il divino e il meraviglioso. Feste religiose in Sicilia. The work of Attanasio, who published with Sellerio short novels such as Correva l’anno 1698 e nella città avvenne il fatto memorabile, Di Concetta e le sue donne and Il falsario di Caltagirone, is in some ways close to the formula of the Sciascian “cronachette”, which the writer has renamed “little chronicles” (“piccole cronache”). In her novels and in her verses the problems of memory, of archives, of documents and therefore of re-writing are central
Lymphoepithelioma-like carcinoma of the ovary
No full textOnly one case of lymphoepithelioma-like carcinoma of the ovary has been reported so far. A new case is herein illustrated in a 69-year-old woman: an ovarian mass adherent to urinary bladder dome with peritoneal carcinomatosis. Histologically, undifferentiated carcinomatous areas were intermingled with abundant lymphoid tissue. Epstein-Barr virus has not been detected either in neoplastic or in lymphoid cells. © The Author(s) 2011
Emerging Evidence and Treatment Perspectives from Randomized Clinical Trials in Systemic Sclerosis: Focus on Interstitial Lung Disease
No full textSystemic sclerosis (SSc) is a complex rare autoimmune disease with heterogeneous clinical manifestations. Currently, interstitial lung disease (ILD) and cardiac involvement (including pulmonary arterial hypertension) are recognized as the leading causes of SSc-associated mortality. New molecular targets have been discovered and phase II and phase III clinical trials published in the last 5 years on SSc-ILD will be discussed in this review. Details on the study design; the drug tested and its dose; the inclusion and exclusion criteria of the study; the concomitant immunosuppression; the outcomes and the duration of the study were reviewed. The two most common drugs used for the treatment of SSc-ILD are cyclophosphamide and mycophenolate mofetil, both supported by randomized controlled trials. Additional drugs, such as nintedanib and tocilizumab, have been approved to slow pulmonary function decline in SSc-ILD. In this review, we discuss the therapeutic alternatives for SSc management, offering the option to customize the design of future studies to stratify SSc patients and provide a patient-specific treatment according to the new emerging pathogenic features of SSc-ILD
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