1,721,139 research outputs found
Landscapes of Central Italy through Science, Poetry and Music. A perspective for educating to the planet sustainability.
No full textBorn from a desire to promote the Italian landscape by integrating its physical aesthetic with its cultural and artistic
heritage, we develop a story about the landscape told in popular science, and supported by visual stimulations,
poetry and ancient music. Our work proceeds through two different routes. The first route analyzes the landscape
from the scientific point of view trying to understand how it evolves and responds in response to changes in
independent variables. The second path examines the landscape from a perspective more closely related to the
visual and emotional impact that a place evokes, its history, its cultural significance, and perception of its fragility.
The latter is perhaps a more complex path, more intimate, which develop fully only through the intersection of
different forms of language, linked to specific arts.
Three different disciplines focused on the same site, the combination of which results in an emotional experience
where the encounter between different languages becomes an expression of the place. Among the many
amazing landscapes of Italy, we focus on three known sites from the hystorical region of Montefeltro, in central
Italy: "The flatiron of Petrano Mount", "The Stones of Montefeltro", "The sea-cliff of San Bartolo".
Since a few years we have created a team of five researchers-artists, called “TerreRare” (Rare Earth Elements),
whose mission is the desire to promote the gorgeous Italian landscape. Olivia Nesci, geomorphologist, begins
this story analyzing the processes and the "forces" that have created and modified the landscape over time. Laura
Valentini, a geologist and a musician, through the musical language, try to reproduce the emotional impact of the
site, by searching for a piece of ancient music, composed for harpsichord. The choice of the musical instrument
and the historical period is not accidental: the harpsichord has a punchy and gritty tone that clearly expresses the
"strength" of the landscape early music aptly suited to represent natural forms whose history began millions of
years ago. Lorenzo Carnevali, artist from Urbino, is the poet that has expressly dedicated verses to these places,
in an effort to grab that balance which summarizes the History and Nature. The poems are performed by Maxx
Brizigotti, eclectic actor and director, deeply linked to his territory. Music and verses are the soundtrack of videos
made by Stefano Baiocchi that, by using beautiful images of these places, creatively interprets the science, art
and history. Our purpose is to educate to a new perception of the place, starting from its beauty and arriving to a
knowledge of its problems and weakness
Environmental regulation, multinational companies and international competitiveness
No full textConcerns have been expressed that in a global market place with mobile capital, national governments will have incentives to set weak environmental policies (“environmental dumping”) to protect the international competitiveness of their domestic firms, that these incentives are particularly strong in industries where plants may be relatively footloose, so that governments are concerned to prevent “capital flight”, and that footloose plants are particularly associated with multinational firms. It is then often suggested that appropriate policy responses would be to seek to harmonise environmental regulations or impose minimum standards for environmental regulations. In this paper we set out these concerns in terms of a number of more precisely made claims and then review recent developments in economic analysis (including some of our own work) and empirical evidence to show that the claims cannot be generally sustained and that the suggested policies may be harmful. However, devising more appropriate policies is by no means straightforward
Environmental liability and the capital structure of firms
No full textA number of countries have recently introduced legislation which holds polluters liable for the costs of cleaning up environmental damage they have caused. While in principle this gives polluters appropriate incentives to reduce the risk of environmental damage, these incentives are weakened if polluters enjoy limited liability and can avoid paying large damages through bankruptcy. A solution which has been suggested is to extend liability also to lenders such as banks. This in turn leads to fears that holding banks liable for environmental risks could substantially reduce the use of bank debt by firms. In this paper we analyse both theoretically and empirically the impact of different environmental liability regimes on the capital structure of firms, and in particular how much bank debt they will use. We use US industry-level data to estimate a reduced-form model of bank borrowing by polluters. We show that the introduction of environmental liability only on firms caused bank borrowing to increase, but when liability was extended to banks, borrowings returned to a level only slightly higher than with no liability. Our findings suggest that extending environmental liability to banks does not have drastic consequences for bank lending to firms
Essays on environmental policy, plant location and financial liability
No full textSIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN034374 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo
THREE KNOWN MARCHEAN GEOMORPHOSITES PRESENTED USING GEOMORPHOLOGY, POETRY AND ANCIENT MUSIC. A NEW PERSPECTIVE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE AREA.
Full text linkBorn from a desire to promote the Marche landscape by integrating its physical aesthetic with its cultural and artistic heritage, we develop a story about the landscape told in popular science, and supported by visual stimulations, poetry and music. Our work proceeds through two different routes. The first route analyzes the landscape from the scientific point of view trying to understand how it evolves in response to climatic, tectonic and anthropogenic changes. The second path examines the landscape from a perspective more closely related to the visual and emotional impact that a place evokes, its history, its cultural significance, and perception of its fragility. The latter is perhaps a more complex path, more intimate, which develop fully only through the intersection of different forms of language, linked to specific arts.
Three different disciplines focused on the same site, the combination of which results in an emotional experience where the encounter between different languages becomes an expression of the forms of relief. Among the many sites of the Marches of interest, we focus on three known geomorphosites: "The natural arch of Fondarca", "The Stones of Montefeltro", "The cliff of San Bartolo". Lorenzo Carnevali, artist from Urbino, is the poet that has expressly dedicated verses to these places. Laura Valentini, a geologist and a musician, try to reproduce the emotional impact of the site, by searching for a piece of ancient music, composed for harpsichord. The choice of the musical instrument and the historical period is not accidental: the harpsichord has a punchy and gritty tone that clearly expresses the "strength" of the landscape; early music aptly suited to represent natural forms whose history began millions of years ago
Chrysotile within calcite veins from Northern Apennines
Full text linkIn the Northern Apennines several olistoliths made up of serpentinites, calpionelle limestones and ophiolitic breccias
have been recognized within the Porcellara Complex, Monte Cassio Unit. These olistoliths are frequently crossed by a
dense network of centimeter to decimeter veins generally filled by carbonate minerals (e.g. La Costa, Berceto, PR).
Morphological and compositional data (SEM-EDS and XRPD) have revealed that these carbonate minerals consist
mainly of well-formed, white to milky calcite crystals, strictly associated with chrysotile. This mineral is found as white
thin fibers (< 1 micron), grew up in intimate association with calcite crystals. These fibers may be very rare and
randomly scattered within the crystals of calcite, or can be grouped into bundles of millimeter to centimeter size. At
times, the chrysotile can get to completely fill the vein. Chrysotile fibers are well-formed and euhedral at all scales from
hand specimen to electron microscope images. In some cases, individual fibers of chrysotile are not visible in hand
specimen or under the petrographic microscope; however, SEM images show the characteristic elongate crystal
morphology. The fibers are also characteristically curved at the millimeter scale.
It is important to note that the fibers of chrysotile appear, frequently, as a physical extension of calcite crystals, without
any evident morphological discontinuity in the transition from a massive (calcite) to a fibrous (chrysotile) appearence.
The results of detailed SEM-EDS elemental analyses carried out in various segments of the contact areas between
calcite and chrysotile crystals seem to show a gradual transition in chemical composition from pure calcite to pure
chrysotile phases, passing through various intermediate arrangements
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Note Illustrative della Carta Geologica d’Italia alla scala 1:50.000, Foglio n. 355 – Ronciglione
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