Silence after bombs. Practice, role and training of interpreters in conflict zones. A case study of the wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.

This dissertation investigates the role, training and practice of the interpreters that worked during the wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia in the 1990s, both at a high political level and on the ground for peackeeping troops. Adopting a historical method that uses interviews, newspaper articles, videos, archival documents and pictures the author tries to retrace how those interpreters were hired, employed and what challenges they faced in their daily work. The aim is to give voice to a category that has long been forgotten, to investigate how mediated interaction is shaped by violent conflict and to offer hindsight to improve the recruitment and management of local interpreters by armed forces.

Coastal flood vulnerability assessment with geomatic methods: Test sites of western Thailand, Sydney (Australia) and aeolian islands (south tyrrhenian sea, Italy)

The work undertaken in this PhD thesis is aimed at the development and testing of an innovative methodology for the assessment of the vulnerability of coastal areas to marine catastrophic inundation (tsunami). Different approaches are used at different spatial scales and are applied to three different study areas: 1. The entire western coast of Thailand 2. Two selected coastal suburbs of Sydney – Australia 3. The Aeolian Islands, in the South Tyrrhenian Sea – Italy I have discussed each of these cases study in at least one scientific paper: one paper about the Thailand case study (Dall’Osso et al., in review-b), three papers about the Sydney applications (Dall’Osso et al., 2009a; Dall’Osso et al., 2009b; Dall’Osso and Dominey-Howes, in review) and one last paper about the work at the Aeolian Islands (Dall’Osso et al., in review-a). These publications represent the core of the present PhD thesis. The main topics dealt with are outlined and discussed in a general introduction while the overall conclusions are outlined in the last section.

Il contratto a Tempo Determinato nel lavoro privato e pubblico. Assetti e linee di tendenza in un mercato del lavoro dinamico e globale

L’elaborato, dopo una ricostruzione della disciplina normativa presente in materia di contratto a tempo determinato in Italia e nei principali ordinamenti europei (Spagna, Francia ed Inghilterra), affronta i più rilevanti nodi problematici dell’istituto, in riferimento al settore privato e pubblico, mettendo in luce le principali querelle dottrinali e giurisprudenziali. Particolare attenzione è dedicata alle questioni insorte a seguito delle ultime modifiche normative di cui al c.d. Collegato lavoro (legge n. 183/2010), sino al decisivo intervento della Corte Costituzionale, con pronuncia n. 303 del 9 novembre 2011, che ha dichiarato legittima la disposizione introduttiva dell’indennità risarcitoria forfetizzata, aggiuntiva rispetto alla conversione del contratto. Tutte le problematiche trattate hanno evidenziato le difficoltà per le Corti Superiori, così come per i giudici comunitari e nazionali, di trovare una linea univoca e condivisa nella risoluzione delle controversie presenti in materia. L’elaborato si chiude con alcune riflessioni sui temi della flessibilità e precarietà nel mondo del lavoro, attraverso una valutazione quantitativa e qualitativa dell’istituto, nell’intento di fornire una risposta ad alcuni interrogativi: la flessibilità è necessariamente precarietà o può essere letta quale forma speciale di occupazione? Quali sono i possibili antidoti alla precarietà? In conclusione, è emerso come la flessibilità possa rappresentare un problema per le imprese e per i lavoratori soltanto nel lungo periodo. La soluzione è stata individuata nell’opportunità di investire sulla formazione. Si è così ipotizzata una nuova «flessibilità socialmente ed economicamente sostenibile», da realizzarsi tramite l’ausilio delle Regioni e, quindi, dei contributi del Fondo europeo di sviluppo regionale: al lavoratore, in tal modo, potrà essere garantita la continuità con il lavoro tramite percorsi formativi mirati e, d’altro canto, il datore di lavoro non dovrà farsi carico dei costi per la formazione dei dipendenti a tempo determinato.

Synthesis of Hand Exoskeletons for the Rehabilitation of Post-Stroke Patients

This dissertation presents the synthesis of a hand exoskeleton (HE) for the rehabilitation of post-stroke patients. Through the analysis of state-of-the-art, a topological classification was proposed. Based on the proposed classification principles, the rehabilitation HEs were systematically analyzed and classified. This classification is helpful to both understand the reason of proposing certain solutions for specific applications and provide some useful guidelines for the design of a new HE, that was actually the primary motivation of this study. Further to this classification, a novel rehabilitation HE was designed to support patients in cylindrical shape grasping tasks with the aim of recovering the basic functions of manipulation. The proposed device comprises five planar mechanisms, one per finger, globally actuated by two electric motors. Indeed, the thumb flexion/extension movement is controlled by one actuator whereas a second actuator is devoted to the control of the flexion/extension of the other four fingers. By focusing on the single finger mechanism, intended as the basic model of the targeted HE, the feasibility study of three different 1 DOF mechanisms are analyzed: a 6-link mechanism, that is connected to the human finger only at its tip, an 8-link and a 12-link mechanisms where phalanges and articulations are part of the kinematic chain. The advantages and drawbacks of each mechanism are deeply analyzed with respect to targeted requirements: the 12-link mechanism was selected as the most suitable solution. The dimensional synthesis based on the Burmester theory as well as kinematic and static analyses were separately done for all fingers in order to satisfy the desired specifications. The HE was finally designed and a prototype was built. The experimental results of the first tests are promising and demonstrate the potential for clinical applications of the proposed device in robot-assisted training of the human hand for grasping functions.

Percieved Organizational Efficacy in Internationalized Companies: Application of Competing Values Approach and Collective Efficacy

This dissertation focuses on “organizational efficacy”, in particular on employees’ beliefs of organizational capacity to be efficacious. Organizational efficacy is considered from two perspectives – competing values approach and collective efficacy, and evaluated in internationalized companies. The dissertation is composed of three studies. The data were collected in thirteen Italian companies on different stages of internationalization for a total number of respondents is 358. In the first study the factorial validity of the competing values instrument (Rohrbaugh, 1981) was investigated and confirmed. Two scales were used to measure collective efficacy: a general collective efficacy scale (Bohn, 2010), and a specific collective efficacy scale, developed following suggestions of Borgogni et al. (2001), it evaluates employees’ beliefs of efficacy of organizations in the international market. The findings suggest that competing values and collective organizational efficacy instruments may provide a multi-faceted measurement of employees’ beliefs of organizational efficacy. The second study examined the relationship between organizational efficacy and collective work engagement. To measure collective work engagement the UWES-9 (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2003) was adapted at the group level; its factor structure and reliability were similar to the standard UWES-9. The findings suggest that organizational efficacy fully predicts collective work engagement. Also we investigated whether leadership moderates the relationship between organizational efficacy and collective work engagement. We operationalized leadership style with MLQ (Bass & Avolio, 1995); the results suggest that intellectual stimulation and idealized influence (transformational leadership) and contingent reward (transactional leadership) enhance the impact of organizational efficacy on collective work engagement. In the third study we investigated organizational efficacy and collective work engagement in internationalized companies. The findings show that beliefs of organizational efficacy vary across companies in different stages of internationalization, while no significant difference was found for collective work engagement. Limitations, practical implications and future studies are discussed in the conclusion.