Synthesis of Modified Amino Acids and Insertion in Peptides and Mimetics. Structural Aspects and Impact on Biological Activity.

I studied the effects exerted by the modifications on structures and biological activities of the compounds so obtained. I prepared peptide analogues containing unusual amino acids such as halogenated, alkylated (S)- or (R)-tryptophans, useful for the synthesis of mimetics of the endogenous opioid peptide endomorphin-1, or 2-oxo-1,3-oxazolidine-4-carboxylic acids, utilized as pseudo-prolines having a clear all-trans configuration of the preceding peptide bond. The latter gave access to a series of constrained peptidomimetics with potential interest in medicinal chemistry and in the field of the foldamers. In particular, I have dedicated much efforts to the preparation of cyclopentapeptides containing D-configured, alfa-, or beta-aminoacids, and also of cyclotetrapeptides including the retro-inverso modification. The conformational analyses confirmed that these cyclic compounds can be utilized as rigid scaffolds mimicking gamma- or beta-turns, allowing to generate new molecular and 3D diversity. Much work has been dedicated to the structural analysis in solution and in the receptor-bound state, fundamental for giving a rationale to the experimentally determined bioactivity, as well as for predicting the activity of virtual compounds (in silico pre-screen). The conformational analyses in solution has been done mostly by NMR (2D gCosy, Roesy, VT, molecular dynamics, etc.). A special section is dedicated to the prediction of plausible poses of the ligands when bound to the receptors by Molecular Docking. This computational method proved to be a powerful tool for the investigation of ligand-receptor interactions, and for the design of selective agonists and antagonists. Another practical use of cyclic peptidomimetics was the synthesis and biological evaluation of cyclic analogues of endomorphin-1 lacking in a protonable amino group. The studies revealed that a inverse type II beta-turn on D-Trp-Phe constituted the bioactive conformation.

Homological and Hodge-theoretic aspects of matroids and polymatroids

In the first part of this thesis, we study the action of the automorphism group of a matroid on the homology space of the co-independent complex. This representation turns out to be isomorphic, up to tensoring with the sign representation, with that on the homology space associated with the lattice of flats. In the case of the cographic matroid of the complete graph, this result has application in algebraic geometry: indeed De Cataldo, Heinloth and Migliorini use this outcome to study the Hitchin fibration. In the second part, on the other hand, we use ideas from algebraic geometry to prove a purely combinatorial result. We construct a Leray model for a discrete polymatroid with arbitrary building set and we prove a generalized Goresky-MacPherson formula. The first row of the model is the Chow ring of the polymatroid; we prove Poincaré duality, Hard-Lefschetz theorem and Hodge-Riemann relations for the Chow ring.

Internet of healthcare (law): privacy and data protection aspects in an internet of everything

The purpose of this research study is to discuss privacy and data protection-related regulatory and compliance challenges posed by digital transformation in healthcare in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The public health crisis accelerated the development of patient-centred remote/hybrid healthcare delivery models that make increased use of telehealth services and related digital solutions. The large-scale uptake of IoT-enabled medical devices and wellness applications, and the offering of healthcare services via healthcare platforms (online doctor marketplaces) have catalysed these developments. However, the use of new enabling technologies (IoT, AI) and the platformisation of healthcare pose complex challenges to the protection of patient’s privacy and personal data. This happens at a time when the EU is drawing up a new regulatory landscape for the use of data and digital technologies. Against this background, the study presents an interdisciplinary (normative and technology-oriented) critical assessment on how the new regulatory framework may affect privacy and data protection requirements regarding the deployment and use of Internet of Health Things (hardware) devices and interconnected software (AI systems). The study also assesses key privacy and data protection challenges that affect healthcare platforms (online doctor marketplaces) in their offering of video API-enabled teleconsultation services and their (anticipated) integration into the European Health Data Space. The overall conclusion of the study is that regulatory deficiencies may create integrity risks for the protection of privacy and personal data in telehealth due to uncertainties about the proper interplay, legal effects and effectiveness of (existing and proposed) EU legislation. The proliferation of normative measures may increase compliance costs, hinder innovation and ultimately, deprive European patients from state-of-the-art digital health technologies, which is paradoxically, the opposite of what the EU plans to achieve.

Equine and human mutual welfare: a whole subject? Critical aspects and possible strategies in equine-assisted activities and therapies

General aim of the study is equine welfare, particularly concerning different husbandry methodic and inter-specific relational factors. Specific aim is the evaluation of possible mutual (to humans and to equines) benefits and the analysis of critical factors/strength points, of human-horse relationship within Therapeutic Riding context (TR). The peculiarities of human-horse relationship (compared to the bond with “Pet”) are analyzed, concerning their socio-anthropological, psychological, psycho-dynamic distinctive characteristics. 8 European representative therapeutic riding centers (TRC) were therefore selected (on the basis of their different animals’ husbandry criteria, and of the different rehabilitative methodologies adopted). TRC were investigated through 2 different questionnaires, specifically settled to access objective/subjective animal welfare parameters; the quality of human-horse relationship; technicians’ emotional experienced. 3 Centers were further selected, and behavioral (145 hours of behavioral recording) and physiological parameters (heart rate and heart rate variability) were evaluated, aimed to access equine welfare and horses’ adaptive responses/coping (towards general environment and towards TR job). Moreover a specific “handling-task” was ideated and experimented, aimed to measure the quality of TR technicians-horses relationship. We did therefore evaluate both the individual horses’ responses and the possible differences among Centers. Data collected highlight the lack of univocal standardized methodic, concerning the general animals’ management and the specific methodologies (aimed to improve animal welfare and to empower TR efficacy). Some positive and some critical aspects were detected concerning TR personnel-horse relationship. Another experimental approach did evaluate the efficacy (concerning the mutual benefits’ empowerment) of an “ethologically-fitted” TR intervention, aimed to educate children to and through the relationship with horses. Our data evidenced that the improvement of human horse relationship, through structured educational programs for TR personnel might have important consequences both to human and equine welfare.

Luminescent Systems for Genomics and Proteomics

The present PhD project was focused on the development of new tools and methods for luminescence-based techniques. In particular, the ultimate goal was to present substantial improvements to the currently available technologies for both research and diagnostic in the fields of biology, proteomics and genomics. Different aspects and problems were investigated, requiring different strategies and approaches. The whole work was thus divided into separate chapters, each based on the study of one specific aspect of luminescence: Chemiluminescence, Fluorescence and Electrochemiluminescence. CHAPTER 1, Chemiluminescence The work on luminol-enhancer solution lead to a new luminol solution formulation with 1 order of magnitude lower detection limit for HRP. This technology was patented with Cyanagen brand and is now sold worldwide for Western Blot and ELISA applications. CHAPTER 2, Fluorescescence The work on dyed-doped silica nanoparticles is marking a new milestone in the development of nanotechnologies for biological applications. While the project is still in progress, preliminary studies on model structures are leading to very promising results. The improved brightness of these nano-sized objects, their simple synthesis and handling, their low toxicity will soon turn them, we strongly believe, into a new generation of fluorescent labels for many applications. CHAPTER 3, Electrochemiluminescence The work on electrochemiluminescence produced interesting results that can potentially turn into great improvements from an analytical point of view. Ru(bpy)3 derivatives were employed both for on-chip microarray (Chapter 3.1) and for microscopic imaging applications (Chapter 3.2). The development of these new techniques is still under investigation, but the obtained results confirm the possibility to achieve the final goal. Furthermore the development of new ECL-active species (Chapter 3.3, 3.4, 3.5) and their use in these applications can significantly improve overall performances, thus helping to spread ECL as powerful analytical tool for routinary techniques. To conclude, the results obtained are of strong value to largely increase the sensitivity of luminescence techniques, thus fulfilling the expectation we had at the beginning of this research work.

Indagine sulla nozione di fatto urbano ne L'architettura della città di Aldo Rossi

Questa tesi di dottorato di ricerca ha come oggetto la nozione di fatto urbano elaborata e presentata da Aldo Rossi nel libro L’architettura della città edito nel 1966. Ne L’architettura della città sono molteplici le definizioni e le forme con cui è enunciata la nozione di fatto urbano. Nel corso della tesi si è indagato come la costruzione nel tempo di questo concetto è stata preceduta da diversi studi giovanili intrapresi dal 1953, poi riorganizzati e sintetizzati a partire dal 1963 in un quaderno manoscritto dal titolo “Manuale di urbanistica”, in diversi appunti e in due quaderni manoscritti. Il lavoro di ricerca ha ricostruito la formulazione della nozione di fatto urbano attraverso gli scritti di Rossi. In questa direzione la rilevazione della partecipazione di Rossi a dibattiti, seminari, riviste, corsi universitari o ricerche accademiche è apparsa di fondamentale importanza, per comprendere la complessità di un lavoro non riconducibile a dei concetti disciplinari, ma alla formazione di una teoria trasmissibile. Il tentativo di comprendere e spiegare la nozione di fatto urbano ha condotto ad esaminare l’accezione con cui Rossi compone L’architettura della città, che egli stesso assimila ad un trattato. L’analisi ha identificato come la composizione del libro non è direttamente riferibile ad un uso classico della stesura editoriale del trattato, la quale ha tra i riferimenti più noti nel passato la promozione di una pratica corretta come nel caso vitruviano o un’impalcatura instauratrice di una nuova categoria come nel caso dell’Alberti. La mancanza di un sistema globale e prescrittivo a differenza dei due libri fondativi e il rimando non immediato alla stesura di un trattato classico è evidente ne L’architettura della città. Tuttavia la possibilità di condurre la ricerca su una serie di documenti inediti ha permesso di rilevare come negli scritti a partire dal 1953, sia maturata una trattazione delle questioni centrali alla nozione di fatto urbano ricca di intuizioni, che aspirano ad un’autonomia, sintetizzate, seppure in modo non sistematico, nella stesura del celebre libro. Si è così cercato di mettere in luce la precisazione nel tempo della nozione di fatto urbano e della sua elaborazione nei molteplici scritti antecedenti la pubblicazione de L’architettura della città, precisando come Rossi, pur costruendo su basi teoriche la nozione di fatto urbano, ne indichi una visione progressiva, ossia un uso operativo sulla città. La ricerca si è proposta come obiettivo di comprendere le radici culturali della nozione di fatto urbano sia tramite un’esplorazione degli interessi di Rossi nel suo percorso formativo sia rispetto alla definizione della struttura materiale del fatto urbano che Rossi individua nelle permanenze e che alimenta nella sua definizione con differenti apporti derivanti da altre discipline. Compito di questa ricerca è stato rileggere criticamente il percorso formativo compiuto da Rossi, a partire dal 1953, sottolinearne gli ambiti innovativi e precisarne i limiti descrittivi che non vedranno mai la determinazione di una nozione esatta, ma piuttosto la strutturazione di una sintesi complessa e ricca di riferimenti ad altri studi. In sintesi la tesi si compone di tre parti: 1. la prima parte, dal titolo “La teoria dei fatti urbani ne L’architettura della città”, analizza il concetto di fatto urbano inserendolo all’interno del più generale contesto teorico contenuto nel libro L’architettura della città. Questo avviene tramite la scomposizione del libro, la concatenazione delle sue argomentazioni e la molteplicità delle fonti esplicitamente citate da Rossi. In questo ambito si precisa la struttura del libro attraverso la rilettura dei riferimenti serviti a Rossi per comporre il suo progetto teorico. Inoltre si ripercorre la sua vita attraverso le varie edizioni, le ristampe, le introduzioni e le illustrazioni. Infine si analizza il ruolo del concetto di fatto urbano nel libro rilevando come sia posto in un rapporto paritetico con il titolo del libro, conseguendone un’accezione di «fatto da osservare» assimilabile all’uso proposto dalla geografia urbana francese dei primi del Novecento. 2. la seconda parte, dal titolo “La formazione della nozione di fatto urbano 1953-66”, è dedicata alla presentazione dell’elaborazione teorica negli scritti di Rossi prima de L’architettura della città, ossia dal 1953 al 1966. Questa parte cerca di descrivere le radici culturali di Rossi, le sue collaborazioni e i suoi interessi ripercorrendo la progressiva definizione della concezione di città nel tempo. Si è analizzato il percorso maturato da Rossi e i documenti scritti fin dagli anni in cui era studente alla Facoltà di Architettura Politecnico di Milano. Emerge un quadro complesso in cui i primi saggi, gli articoli e gli appunti testimoniano una ricerca intellettuale tesa alla costruzione di un sapere sullo sfondo del realismo degli anni Cinquanta. Rossi matura infatti un impegno culturale che lo porta dopo la laurea ad affrontare discorsi più generali sulla città. In particolare la sua importante collaborazione con la rivista Casabella-continuità, con il suo direttore Ernesto Nathan Rogers e tutto il gruppo redazionale segnano il periodo successivo in cui compare l’interesse per la letteratura urbanistica, l’arte, la sociologia, la geografia, l’economia e la filosofia. Seguono poi dal 1963 gli anni di lavoro insieme al gruppo diretto da Carlo Aymonino all’Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia, e in particolare le ricerche sulla tipologia edilizia e la morfologia urbana, che portano Rossi a compiere una sintesi analitica per la fondazione di una teoria della città. Dall’indagine si rileva infatti come gli scritti antecedenti L’architettura della città sviluppano lo studio dei fatti urbani fino ad andare a costituire il nucleo teorico di diversi capitoli del libro. Si racconta così la genesi del libro, la cui scrittura si è svolta nell’arco di due anni, e le aspirazioni che hanno portato quello che era stato concepito come un “manuale d’urbanistica” a divenire quello che Rossi definirà “l’abbozzo di un trattato” per la formulazione di una scienza urbana. 3. la terza parte, dal titolo “La struttura materiale dei fatti urbani: la teoria della permanenza”, indaga monograficamente lo studio della città come un fatto materiale, un manufatto, la cui costruzione è avvenuta nel tempo e del tempo mantiene le tracce. Sul tema della teoria della permanenza è stato importante impostare un confronto con il dibattito vivo negli anni della ricostruzione dopo la guerra intorno ai temi delle preesistenze ambientali nella ricostruzione negli ambienti storici. Sono emersi fin da subito importanti la relazione con Ernesto Nathan Rogers, le discussioni sulle pagine di Casabella-Continuità, la partecipazione ad alcuni dibatti e ricerche. Si è inoltre Rilevato l’uso di diversi termini mutuati dalle tesi filosofiche di alcune personalità come Antonio Banfi e Enzo Paci, poi elaborati dal nucleo redazionale di Casabella-Continuità, di cui faceva parte anche Rossi. Sono così emersi alcuni spostamenti di senso e la formulazione di un vocabolario di termini all’interno della complessa vicenda della cultura architettonica degli anni Cinquanta e Sessanta. 1. Si è poi affrontato questo tema analizzando le forme con cui Rossi presenta la definizione della teoria della permanenza e i contributi desunti da alcuni autori per la costruzione scientifica di una teoria dell’architettura, il cui fine è quello di essere trasmissibile e di offrire strumenti di indagine concreti. Questa ricerca ha permesso di ipotizzare come il lavoro dei geografi francesi della prima metà del XX secolo, e in particolare il contributo più rilevante di Marcel Poëte e di Pierre Lavedan, costituiscono le fonti principali e il campo d’indagine maggiormente esplorato da Rossi per definire la teoria della permanenza e i monumenti. Le permanenze non sono dunque presentate ne L’architettura della città come il “tutto”, ma emergono da un metodo che sceglie di isolare i fatti urbani permanenti, consentendo così di compiere un’ipotesi su “ciò che resta” dopo le trasformazioni continue che operano nella città. Le fonti su cui ho lavorato sono state quelle annunciate da Rossi ne L’architettura della città, e più precisamente i testi nelle edizioni da lui consultate. Anche questo lavoro ha permesso un confronto dei testi che ha fatto emergere ne L’architettura della città l’uso di termini mutuati da linguaggi appartenenti ad altre discipline e quale sia l’uso di concetti estrapolati nella loro interezza. Presupposti metodologici Della formulazione della nozione di fatto urbano si sono indagate l’originalità dell’espressione, le connessioni presunte o contenute negli studi di Rossi sulla città attraverso la raccolta di fonti dirette e indirette che sono andate a formare un notevole corpus di scritti. Le fonti dirette più rilevanti sono state trovare nelle collezioni speciali del Getty Research Institute di Los Angeles in cui sono conservati gli Aldo Rossi Papers, questo archivio comprende materiali inediti dal 1954 al 1988. La natura dei materiali si presenta sotto forma di manoscritti, dattiloscritti, quaderni, documenti ciclostilati, appunti sparsi e una notevole quantità di corrispondenza. Negli Aldo Rossi Papers si trovano anche 32 dei 47 Quaderni Azzurri, le bozze de L’architettura della città e dell’ Autobiografia Scientifica. Per quanto riguarda in particolare L’architettura della città negli Aldo Rossi Papers sono conservati: un quaderno con il titolo “Manuale d’urbanistica, giugno 1963”, chiara prima bozza del libro, degli “Appunti per libro urbanistica estate/inverno 1963”, un quaderno con la copertina rossa datato 20 settembre 1964-8 agosto 1965 e un quaderno con la copertina blu datato 30 agosto 1965-15 dicembre 1965. La possibilità di accedere a questo archivio ha permesso di incrementare la bibliografia relativa agli studi giovanili consentendo di rileggere il percorso culturale in cui Rossi si è formato. E’ così apparsa fondamentale la rivalutazione di alcune questioni relative al realismo socialista che hanno portato a formare un più preciso quadro dei primi scritti di Rossi sullo sfondo di un complesso scenario intellettuale. A questi testi si è affiancata la raccolta delle ricerche universitarie, degli articoli pubblicati su riviste specializzate e degli interventi a dibattiti e seminari. A proposito de L’architettura della città si è raccolta un’ampia letteratura critica riferita sia al testo in specifico che ad una sua collocazione nella storia dell’architettura, mettendo in discussione alcune osservazioni che pongono L’architettura della città come un libro risolutivo e definitivo. Per quanto riguarda il capitolo sulla teoria della permanenza l’analisi è stata svolta a partire dai testi che Rossi stesso indicava ne L’architettura della città rivelando i diversi apporti della letteratura urbanistica francese, e permettendo alla ricerca di precisare le relazioni con alcuni scritti centrali e al contempo colti da Rossi come opportunità per intraprendere l’elaborazione dell’idea di tipo. Per quest’ultima parte si può precisare come Rossi formuli la sua idea di tipo in un contesto culturale dove l’interesse per questo tema era fondamentale. Dunque le fonti che hanno assunto maggior rilievo in quest’ultima fase emergono da un ricco panorama in cui Rossi compie diverse ricerche sia con il gruppo redazionale di Casabella-continuità, sia all’interno della scuola veneziana negli anni Sessanta, ma anche negli studi per l’ILSES e per l’Istituto Nazionale d’Urbanistica. RESEARCH ON THE NOTION OF URBAN ARTIFACT IN THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE CITY BY ALDO ROSSI. Doctoral candidate: Letizia Biondi Tutor: Valter Balducci The present doctoral dissertation deals with the notion of urban artifact that was formulated and presented by Aldo Rossi in his book The Architecture of the City, published in 1966. In The Architecture of the City, the notion of urban artifact is enunciated through a wide range of definitions and forms. In this thesis, a research was done on how the construction of this concept over time was preceded by various studies started in 1953 during the author’s youth, then re-organized and synthesized since 1963 in a manuscript titled “Manual of urban planning” and in two more manuscripts later on. The work of research re-constructed the formulation of the notion of urban artifact through Rossi’s writings. In this sense, the examination of Rossi’s participation in debates, seminars, reviews, university courses or academic researches was of fundamental importance to understand the complexity of a work which is not to be attributed to disciplinary concepts, but to the formulation of a communicable theory. The effort to understand and to explain the notion of urban artifact led to an examination of the meaning used by Rossi to compose The Architecture of the City, which he defines as similar to a treatise. Through this analysis, it emerged that the composition of the book is not directly ascribable to the classical use of editorial writing of a treatise, whose most famous references in the past are the promotion of a correct practice as in the case of Vitruvio’s treatise, or the use of a structure that introduces a new category as in the Alberti case. Contrary to the two founding books, the lack of a global and prescriptive system and the not immediate reference to the writing of a classical treatise are evident in The Architecture of the City. However, the possibility of researching on some unpublished documents allowed to discover that in the writings starting from 1953 the analysis of the questions that are at the core of the notion of urban artifact is rich of intuitions, that aim to autonomy and that would be synthesized, even though not in a systematic way, in his famous book. The attempt was that of highlighting the specification over time of the notion of urban artifact and its elaboration in the various writings preceding the publication of The Architecture of the City. It was also specified that, despite building on theoretical grounds, Rossi indicates a progressive version of the notion of urban artifact, that is a performing use in the city. The present research aims to understand the cultural roots of the notion of urban artifact in two main directions: analyzing, firstly, Rossi’s interests along his formation path and, secondly, the definition of material structure of an urban artifact identified by Rossi in the permanences and enriched by various contributions from other disciplines. The purpose of the present research is to revise the formation path made by Rossi in a critical way, starting by 1953, underlining its innovative aspects and identifying its describing limits, which will never lead to the formulation of an exact notion, but rather to the elaboration of a complex synthesis, enriched by references to other studies. In brief, the thesis is composed of three parts: 1. The first part, titled “The Theory of urban artifacts in The Architecture of the City”, analyzes the concept of urban artifact in the more general theoretical context of the book The Architecture of the City. Such analysis is done by “disassembling” the book, and by linking together the argumentations and the multiplicity of the sources which are explicitly quoted by Rossi. In this context, the book’s structure is defined more precisely through the revision of the references used by Rossi to compose his theoretical project. Moreover, the author’s life is traced back through the various editions, re-printings, introductions and illustrations. Finally, it is specified which role the concept of urban artifact has in the book, pointing out that it is placed in an equal relation with the book’s title; by so doing, the concept of urban artifact gets the new meaning of “fact to be observed”, similar to the use that was suggested by the French urban geography at the beginning of the 20th century. 2. The second part, titled “The formation of the notion of urban artifact 1953-66”, introduces the theoretical elaboration in Rossi’s writings before The Architecture of the City, that is from 1953 to 1966. This part tries to describe Rossi’s cultural roots, his collaborations and his interests, tracing back the progressive definition of his conception of city over time. The analysis focuses on the path followed by Rossi and on the documents that he wrote since the years as a student at the Department of Architecture at the Politecnico in Milan. This leads to a complex scenario of first essays, articles and notes that bear witness to the intellectual research aiming to the construction of a knowledge on the background of the Realism of the 1950s. Rossi develops, in fact, a cultural engagement that leads him after his studies to deal with more general issues about the city. In particular, his important collaboration with the architecture magazine “Casabella-continuità”, with the director Ernesto Nathan Rogers and with the whole redaction staff mark the following period when he starts getting interested in city planning literature, art, sociology, geography, economics and philosophy. Since 1963, Rossi has worked with the group directed by Carlo Aymonino at the “Istituto Universitario di Architettura” (University Institute of Architecture) in Venice, especially researching on building typologies and urban morphology. During these years, Rossi elaborates an analytical synthesis for the formulation of a theory about the city. From the present research, it is evident that the writings preceding The Architecture of the City develop the studies on urban artifacts, which will become theoretical core of different chapters of the book. In conclusion, the genesis of the book is described; written in two years, what was conceived to be an “urban planning manual” became a “treatise draft” for the formulation of an urban science, as Rossi defines it. 3. The third part is titled “The material structure of urban artifacts: the theory of permanence”. This research is made on the study of the city as a material fact, a manufacture, whose construction was made over time, bearing the traces of time. As far as the topic of permanence is concerned, it was also important to draw a comparison with the debate about the issues of environmental pre-existence of re-construction in historical areas, which was very lively during the years of the Reconstruction. Right from the beginning, of fundamental importance were the relationship with Ernesto Nathan Rogers, the discussions on the pages of Casabella-Continuità and the participation to some debates and researches. It is to note that various terms were taken by the philosophical thesis by some personalities such as Antonio Banfi and Enzo Paci, and then re-elaborated by the redaction staff at Casabella-Continuità, which Rossi took part in as well. Through this analysis, it emerged that there were some shifts in meaning and the formulation of a vocabulary of terms within the complex area of the architectonic culture in the 1950s and 1960s. Then, I examined the shapes in which Rossi introduces the definition of the theory of permanence and the references by some authors for the scientific construction of an architecture theory whose aim is being communicable and offering concrete research tools. Such analysis allowed making a hypothesis about the significance for Rossi of the French geographers of the first half of the 20th century: in particular, the work by Marcel Poëte and by Pierre Lavedan is the main source and the research area which Rossi mostly explored to define the theory of permanence and monuments. Therefore, in The Architecture of the City, permanencies are not presented as the “whole”, but they emerge from a method which isolates permanent urban artifacts, in this way allowing making a hypothesis on “what remains” after the continuous transformations made in the city. The sources examined were quoted by Rossi in The Architecture of the City; in particular I analyzed them in the same edition which Rossi referred to. Through such an analysis, it was possible to make a comparison of the texts with one another, which let emerge the use of terms taken by languages belonging to other disciplines in The Architecture of the City and which the use of wholly extrapolated concepts is. Methodological premises As far as the formulation of the notion of urban artifact is concerned, the analysis focuses on the originality of the expression, the connections that are assumed or contained in Rossi’s writings about the city, by collecting direct and indirect sources which formed a significant corpus of writings. The most relevant direct sources were found in the special collections of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, where the “Aldo Rossi Papers” are conserved. This archive contains unpublished material from 1954 to 1988, such as manuscripts, typescripts, notebooks, cyclostyled documents, scraps and notes, and several letters. In the Aldo Rossi Papers there are also 32 out of the 47 Light Blue Notebooks (Quaderni Azzurri), the rough drafts of The Architecture of the City and of the “A Scientific Autobiography”. As regards The Architecture of the City in particular, the Aldo Rossi Papers preserve: a notebook by the title of “Urban planning manual, June, 1963”, which is an explicit first draft of the book; “Notes for urban planning book summer/winter 1963”; a notebook with a red cover dated September 20th, 1964 – August 8th, 1965; and a notebook with a blue cover dated August 30th, 1965 – December 15th, 1965. The possibility of accessing this archive allowed to increase the bibliography related to the youth studies, enabling a revision of the cultural path followed by Rossi’s education. To that end, it was fundamental to re-evaluate some issues linked to the socialist realism which led to a more precise picture of the first writings by Rossi against the background of the intellectual scenario where he formed. In addition to these texts, the collection of university researches, the articles published on specialized reviews and the speeches at debates and seminars were also examined. About The Architecture of the City, a wide-ranging critical literature was collected, related both to the text specifics and to its collocation in the story of architecture, questioning some observations which define The Architecture of the City as a conclusive and definite book. As far as the chapter on the permanence theory is concerned, the analysis started by the texts that Rossi indicated in The Architecture of the City, revealing the different contributions from the French literature on urban planning. This allowed to the present research a more specific definition of the connections to some central writings which, at the same time, were seen by Rossi as an opportunity to start up the elaboration of the idea of type. For this last part, it can be specified that Rossi formulates his idea of type in a cultural context where the interest in this topic was fundamental. Therefore, the sources which played a central role in this final phase emerge from an extensive panorama in which Rossi researched not only with the redaction staff at Casablanca-continuità and within the School of Venice in the 1960s, but also in his studies for the ILSES (Institute of the Region Lombardia for Economics and Social Studies) and for the National Institute of Urban Planning.

Enhanced Mixed Integer Programming Techniques and Routing Problems

Mixed integer programming is up today one of the most widely used techniques for dealing with hard optimization problems. On the one side, many practical optimization problems arising from real-world applications (such as, e.g., scheduling, project planning, transportation, telecommunications, economics and finance, timetabling, etc) can be easily and effectively formulated as Mixed Integer linear Programs (MIPs). On the other hand, 50 and more years of intensive research has dramatically improved on the capability of the current generation of MIP solvers to tackle hard problems in practice. However, many questions are still open and not fully understood, and the mixed integer programming community is still more than active in trying to answer some of these questions. As a consequence, a huge number of papers are continuously developed and new intriguing questions arise every year. When dealing with MIPs, we have to distinguish between two different scenarios. The first one happens when we are asked to handle a general MIP and we cannot assume any special structure for the given problem. In this case, a Linear Programming (LP) relaxation and some integrality requirements are all we have for tackling the problem, and we are ``forced" to use some general purpose techniques. The second one happens when mixed integer programming is used to address a somehow structured problem. In this context, polyhedral analysis and other theoretical and practical considerations are typically exploited to devise some special purpose techniques. This thesis tries to give some insights in both the above mentioned situations. The first part of the work is focused on general purpose cutting planes, which are probably the key ingredient behind the success of the current generation of MIP solvers. Chapter 1 presents a quick overview of the main ingredients of a branch-and-cut algorithm, while Chapter 2 recalls some results from the literature in the context of disjunctive cuts and their connections with Gomory mixed integer cuts. Chapter 3 presents a theoretical and computational investigation of disjunctive cuts. In particular, we analyze the connections between different normalization conditions (i.e., conditions to truncate the cone associated with disjunctive cutting planes) and other crucial aspects as cut rank, cut density and cut strength. We give a theoretical characterization of weak rays of the disjunctive cone that lead to dominated cuts, and propose a practical method to possibly strengthen those cuts arising from such weak extremal solution. Further, we point out how redundant constraints can affect the quality of the generated disjunctive cuts, and discuss possible ways to cope with them. Finally, Chapter 4 presents some preliminary ideas in the context of multiple-row cuts. Very recently, a series of papers have brought the attention to the possibility of generating cuts using more than one row of the simplex tableau at a time. Several interesting theoretical results have been presented in this direction, often revisiting and recalling other important results discovered more than 40 years ago. However, is not clear at all how these results can be exploited in practice. As stated, the chapter is a still work-in-progress and simply presents a possible way for generating two-row cuts from the simplex tableau arising from lattice-free triangles and some preliminary computational results. The second part of the thesis is instead focused on the heuristic and exact exploitation of integer programming techniques for hard combinatorial optimization problems in the context of routing applications. Chapters 5 and 6 present an integer linear programming local search algorithm for Vehicle Routing Problems (VRPs). The overall procedure follows a general destroy-and-repair paradigm (i.e., the current solution is first randomly destroyed and then repaired in the attempt of finding a new improved solution) where a class of exponential neighborhoods are iteratively explored by heuristically solving an integer programming formulation through a general purpose MIP solver. Chapters 7 and 8 deal with exact branch-and-cut methods. Chapter 7 presents an extended formulation for the Traveling Salesman Problem with Time Windows (TSPTW), a generalization of the well known TSP where each node must be visited within a given time window. The polyhedral approaches proposed for this problem in the literature typically follow the one which has been proven to be extremely effective in the classical TSP context. Here we present an overall (quite) general idea which is based on a relaxed discretization of time windows. Such an idea leads to a stronger formulation and to stronger valid inequalities which are then separated within the classical branch-and-cut framework. Finally, Chapter 8 addresses the branch-and-cut in the context of Generalized Minimum Spanning Tree Problems (GMSTPs) (i.e., a class of NP-hard generalizations of the classical minimum spanning tree problem). In this chapter, we show how some basic ideas (and, in particular, the usage of general purpose cutting planes) can be useful to improve on branch-and-cut methods proposed in the literature.

Nanoscale surface properties and interaction with fundamental biomolecules of chlorite and phlogopite

The surface properties of minerals have important implications in geology, environment, industry and biotechnology and for certain aspects in the research on the origin of life. This research project aims to widen the knowledge on the nanoscale surface properties of chlorite and phlogopite by means of advanced methodologies, and also to investigate the interaction of fundamental biomolecules, such as nucleotides, RNA, DNA and amino acid glycine with the surface of the selected phyllosilicates. Multiple advanced and complex experimental approaches based on scanning probe microscopy and spatially resolved spectroscopy were used and in some cases specifically developed. The results demonstrate that chlorite exposes at the surface atomically flat terraces with 0.5 nm steps typically generated by the fragmentation of the octahedral sheet of the interlayer (brucitic-type). This fragmentation at the nanoscale generates a high anisotropy and inhomogeneity with surface type and isomorphous cationic substitutions determining variations of the effective surface potential difference, ranging between 50-100 mV and 400-500 mV, when measured in air, between the TOT surface and the interlayer brucitic sheet. The surface potential was ascribed to be the driving force of the observed high affinity of the surface with the fundamental biomolecules, like single molecules of nucleotides, DNA, RNA and amino acids. Phlogopite was also observed to present an extended atomically flat surface, featuring negative surface potential values of some hundreds of millivolts and no significant local variations. Phlogopite surface was sometimes observed to present curvature features that may be ascribed to local substitutions of the interlayer cations or the presence of a crystal lattice mismatch or structural defects, such as stacking faults or dislocation loops. Surface chemistry was found similar to the bulk. The study of the interaction with nucleotides and glycine revealed a lower affinity with respect to the brucite-like surface of chlorite.

Salinity Effect on Horticultural Crops: Morphological, Physiological, and Biomolecular Elements of Salinity Stress Response

Among abiotic stresses, high salinity stress is the most severe environmental stress. High salinity exerts its negative impact mainly by disrupting the ionic and osmotic equilibrium of the cell. In saline soils, high levels of sodium ions lead to plant growth inhibition and even death. Salt tolerance in plants is a multifarious phenomenon involving a variety of changes at molecular, organelle, cellular, tissue as well as whole plant level. In addition, salt tolerant plants show a range of adaptations not only in morphological or structural features but also in metabolic and physiological processes that enable them to survive under extreme saline environments. The main objectives of my dissertation were understanding the main physiological and biomolecular features of plant responses to salinity in different genotypes of horticultural crops that are belonging to different families Solanaceae (tomato) and Cucurbitaceae (melon) and Brassicaceae (cabbage and radish). Several aspects of crop responses to salinity have been addressed with the final aim of combining elements of functional stress response in plants by using several ways for the assessment of plant stress perception that ranging from destructive measurements (eg. leaf area, relative growth rate, leaf area index, and total plant fresh and dry weight), to physiological determinations (eg. stomatal conductance, leaf gas exchanges, water use efficiency, and leaf water relation), to the determination of metabolite accumulation in plant tissue (eg. Proline and protein) as well as evaluation the role of enzymatic antioxidant capacity assay in scavenging reactive oxygen species that have been generated under salinized condition, and finally assessing the gene induction and up-down regulation upon salinization (eg. SOS pathway).

The sacralization of politics and the politization of the sacred during the Spanish Civil War and the first francoism (1936-1943)

Tra il 1936 e il 1943 la Spagna visse un periodo di guerra civile e scontri fra la Falange e la Chiesa. Tutto ciò non fece altro che innalzare la figura di Franco, un generale, che viene sacralizzato e che governò per quasi 40 anni

Environmental accounting and reporting in Italian local governments: a longitudinal analysis of changes in context, content and process

This research aims at contributing to a better understanding of changes in local governments’ accounting and reporting practices. Particularly, ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ environmental aspects are included and the significance of changes across time. It adopts an interpretative approach to conduct a longitudinal analysis of case studies. Pettigrew and Whipp’s framework on context, content and process is used as a lens to distinguish changes under each dimension and analyse their interconnections. Data is collected from official documents and triangulated with semi-structured interviews. The legal framework defines as boundaries of the accounting information the territory under local governments’ jurisdiction and their immediate surrounding area. Organisational environmental performance and externalities are excluded from the requirements. An interplay between the local outer context, political commitment and organisational culture justifies the implementation of changes beyond what is regulated and the implementation of transformational changes. Local governments engage in international networks to gain access to funding and implement changes, leading to adopting the dominant environmental agenda. Key stakeholders, like citizens, are not engaged in the accounting and reporting process. Thus, there is no evidence that the environmental aspects addressed and related changes align with stakeholders’ needs and expectations, which jeopardises its significance. Findings from the current research have implications in other EU member states due to the harmonisation of accounting and reporting practices and the common practice across the EU in using external funding to conceptualise and implement changes. This implies that other local governments could also be representing a limited account related to environmental aspects.

Smart Farming in Italian agriculture: essays on adoption and diffusion dynamics shaping the agricultural digital transition

Smart Farming Technologies (SFT) is a term used to define the set of digital technologies able not only to control and manage the farm system, but also to connect it to the many disruptive digital applications posed at multiple links along the value chain. The adoption of SFT has been so far limited, with significant differences at country-levels and among different types of farms and farmers. The objective of this thesis is to analyze what factors contributes to shape the agricultural digital transition and to assess its potential impacts in the Italian agri-food system. Specifically, this overall research objective is approached under three different perspectives. Firstly, we carry out a review of the literature that focuses on the determinants of adoption of farm-level Management Information Systems (MIS), namely the most adopted smart farming solutions in Italy. Secondly, we run an empirical analysis on what factors are currently shaping the adoption of SFT in Italy. In doing so, we focus on the multi-process and multi-faceted aspects of the adoption, by overcoming the one-off binary approach often used to study adoption decisions. Finally, we adopt a forward-looking perspective to investigate what the socio-ethical implications of a diffused use of SFT might be. On the one hand, our results indicate that bigger, more structured farms with higher levels of commercial integration along the agri-food supply chain are those more likely to be early adopters. On the other hand, they highlight the need for the institutional and organizational environment around farms to more effectively support farmers in the digital transition. Moreover, the role of several other actors and actions are discussed and analyzed, by highlighting the key role of specific agri-food stakeholders and ad-hoc policies, with the aim to propose a clearer path towards an efficient, fair and inclusive digitalization of the agrifood sector.

Modelling, simulation and control of rotary-wing aircraft in multi-agent scenario

The topic of this thesis is the design and the implementation of mathematical models and control system algorithms for rotary-wing unmanned aerial vehicles to be used in cooperative scenarios. The use of rotorcrafts has many attractive advantages, since these vehicles have the capability to take-off and land vertically, to hover and to move backward and laterally. Rotary-wing aircraft missions require precise control characteristics due to their unstable and heavy coupling aspects. As a matter of fact, flight test is the most accurate way to evaluate flying qualities and to test control systems. However, it may be very expensive and/or not feasible in case of early stage design and prototyping. A good compromise is made by a preliminary assessment performed by means of simulations and a reduced flight testing campaign. Consequently, having an analytical framework represents an important stage for simulations and control algorithm design. In this work mathematical models for various helicopter configurations are implemented. Different flight control techniques for helicopters are presented with theoretical background and tested via simulations and experimental flight tests on a small-scale unmanned helicopter. The same platform is used also in a cooperative scenario with a rover. Control strategies, algorithms and their implementation to perform missions are presented for two main scenarios. One of the main contributions of this thesis is to propose a suitable control system made by a classical PID baseline controller augmented with L1 adaptive contribution. In addition a complete analytical framework and the study of the dynamics and the stability of a synch-rotor are provided. At last, the implementation of cooperative control strategies for two main scenarios that include a small-scale unmanned helicopter and a rover.

Neo-commodification of persons: exploitation of personal data and impact on the sharing economy

The notion of commodification is a fascinating one. It entails many facets, ranging from subjective debates on desirability of commodification to in depth economic analyses of objects of value and their corresponding markets. Commodity theory is therefore not just defined by a single debate, but spans a plethora of different discussions. This thesis maps and situates those theories and debates and selects one specific strain to investigate further. This thesis argues that commodity theory in its optima forma deals with the investigation into what sets commodities apart from non-commodities. It proceeds to examine the many given answers to this question by scholars ranging from the mid 1800’s to the late 2000’s. Ultimately, commodification is defined as a process in which an object becomes an element of the total wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails. In doing so, objects must meet observables, or indicia, of commodification provided by commodity theories. Problems arise when objects are clearly part of the total wealth in societies without meeting established commodity indicia. In such cases, objects are part of the total wealth of a society without counting as a commodity. This thesis examines this phenomenon in relation to the novel commodities of audiences and data. It explains how these non-commodities (according to classical theories) are still essential elements of industry. The thesis then takes a deep dive into commodity theory using the theory on the construction of social reality by John Searle.

Methodologies for the analysis and interpretation of environmental datasets from areas interested by offshore activities

The exploitation of hydrocarbon reservoirs by the oil and gas industries represents one of the most relevant and concerning anthropic stressor in various marine areas worldwide and the presence of extractive structures can have severe consequences on the marine environment. Environmental monitoring surveys are carried out to monitor the effects and impacts of offshore energy facilities. Macrobenthic communities, inhabiting the soft-bottom, represent a key component of these surveys given their great responsiveness to natural and anthropic changes. A comprehensive collection of monitoring data from four Italian seas was used to investigate distributional pattern of macrozoobenthos assemblages confirming a high spatial variability in relation to the environmental variables analyzed. Since these datasets could represent a powerful tool for the industrial and scientific research, the steps and standardized procedures needed to obtain robust and comparable high-quality data were investigated and outlined. Over recent years, decommissioning of old platforms is a growing topic in this sector, involving many actors in the various decision-making processes. A Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, specific for the Adriatic Sea, was developed to investigate the impacts of decommissioning of a gas platform on environmental and socio-economic aspects, to select the best decommissioning scenario. From the scenarios studied, the most impacting one has resulted to be total removal, affecting all the faunal component considered in the study. Currently, the European nations are increasing the production of energy from offshore wind farms with an exponential expansion. A comparative study of methodologies used five countries of the North Sea countries was carried out to investigate the best approaches to monitor the effects of wind farms on the benthic communities. In the foreseeable future, collaboration between industry, scientific communities, national and international policies are needed to gain knowledge concerning the effects of these industrial activities on the ecological status of the ecosystems.