Mangia, bevi, ama. Cibo e rituali alimentari del matrimonio nell'Occidente altomedievale

La ricerca pone al centro dell’indagine lo studio dell’importanza del cibo nelle cerimonie nuziali dell’Europa occidentale nei secoli V-XI. Il corpus di fonti utilizzate comprende testi di genere diverso: cronache, annali, agiografie, testi legislativi, a cui si è aggiunta un’approfondita analisi delle antiche saghe islandesi. Dopo un'introduzione dedicata in particolare alla questione della pubblicità della celebrazione, la ricerca si muove verso lo studio del matrimonio come “processo” sulla base della ritualità alimentare: i brindisi e i banchetti con cui si sigla l’accordo di fidanzamento e i ripetuti convivi allestiti per celebrare le nozze. Si pone attenzione anche ad alcuni aspetti trasversali, come lo studio del caso della “letteratura del fidanzamento bevuto”, ossia una tradizione di testi letterari in cui il fidanzamento tra i protagonisti viene sempre ratificato con un brindisi; a questo si aggiunge un’analisi di stampo antropologico della "cultura dell’eccesso", tipica dei rituali alimentari nuziali nel Medioevo, in contrasto con la contemporanea "cultura del risparmio". L'analisi si concentra anche sulle reiterate proibizioni al clero, da parte della Chiesa, di partecipare a banchetti e feste nuziali, tratto comune di tutta l’epoca altomedievale. Infine, la parte conclusiva della ricerca è incentrata sulla ricezione altomedievale di due figure bibliche che pongono al centro della narrazione un banchetto nuziale: la parabola delle nozze e il banchetto di Cana. L’insistente presenza di questi due brani nelle parole dei commentatori biblici mostra la straordinaria efficacia del “linguaggio alimentare”, ossia di un codice linguistico basato sul cibo (e su contesti quali l’agricoltura, la pesca, ecc.) come strumento di comunicazione sociale di massa con una valenza antropologica essenzialmente universale.

A communication infrastructure to support knowledge level agents on the web

Agent Communication Languages (ACLs) have been developed to provide a way for agents to communicate with each other supporting cooperation in Multi-Agent Systems. In the past few years many ACLs have been proposed for Multi-Agent Systems, such as KQML and FIPA-ACL. The goal of these languages is to support high-level, human like communication among agents, exploiting Knowledge Level features rather than symbol level ones. Adopting these ACLs, and mainly the FIPA-ACL specifications, many agent platforms and prototypes have been developed. Despite these efforts, an important issue in the research on ACLs is still open and concerns how these languages should deal (at the Knowledge Level) with possible failures of agents. Indeed, the notion of Knowledge Level cannot be straightforwardly extended to a distributed framework such as MASs, because problems concerning communication and concurrency may arise when several Knowledge Level agents interact (for example deadlock or starvation). The main contribution of this Thesis is the design and the implementation of NOWHERE, a platform to support Knowledge Level Agents on the Web. NOWHERE exploits an advanced Agent Communication Language, FT-ACL, which provides high-level fault-tolerant communication primitives and satisfies a set of well defined Knowledge Level programming requirements. NOWHERE is well integrated with current technologies, for example providing full integration for Web services. Supporting different middleware used to send messages, it can be adapted to various scenarios. In this Thesis we present the design and the implementation of the architecture, together with a discussion of the most interesting details and a comparison with other emerging agent platforms. We also present several case studies where we discuss the benefits of programming agents using the NOWHERE architecture, comparing the results with other solutions. Finally, the complete source code of the basic examples can be found in appendix.

Rural development and communication: a community media project in Uttar Pradesh (India)

Loaded with 16% of the world’s population, India is a challenged country. More than a third of its citizens live below the poverty line - on less than a dollar a day. These people have no proper electricity, no proper drinking water supply, no proper sanitary facilities and well over 40% are illiterates. More than 65% live in rural areas and 60% earn their livelihood from agriculture. Only a meagre 3.63% have access to telephone and less than 1% have access to a computer. Therefore, providing access to timely information on agriculture, weather, social, health care, employment, fishing, is of utmost importance to improve the conditions of rural poor. After some introductive chapters, whose function is to provide a comprehensive framework – both theoretical and practical – of the current rural development policies and of the media situation in India and Uttar Pradesh, my dissertation presents the findings of the pilot project entitled “Enhancing development support to rural masses through community media activity”, launched in 2005 by the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lucknow (U.P.) and by the local NGO Bharosa. The project scope was to involve rural people and farmers from two villages of the district of Lucknow (namely Kumhrava and Barhi Gaghi) in a three-year participatory community media project, based on the creation, implementation and use of a rural community newspaper and a rural community internet centre. Community media projects like this one have been rarely carried out in India because the country has no proper community media tradition: therefore the development of the project has been a challenge for the all stakeholders involved.

Nanotechnology control of self organized biomolecules and biomaterials for medical research

Nanotechnology entails the manufacturing and manipulation of matter at length scales ranging from single atoms to micron-sized objects. The ability to address properties on the biologically-relevant nanometer scale has made nanotechnology attractive for Nanomedicine. This is perceived as a great opportunity in healthcare especially in diagnostics, therapeutics and more in general to develop personalized medicine. Nanomedicine has the potential to enable early detection and prevention, and to improve diagnosis, mass screening, treatment and follow-up of many diseases. From the biological standpoint, nanomaterials match the typical size of naturally occurring functional units or components of living organisms and, for this reason, enable more effective interaction with biological systems. Nanomaterials have the potential to influence the functionality and cell fate in the regeneration of organs and tissues. To this aim, nanotechnology provides an arsenal of techniques for intervening, fabricate, and modulate the environment where cells live and function. Unconventional micro- and nano-fabrication techniques allow patterning biomolecules and biocompatible materials down to the level of a few nanometer feature size. Patterning is not simply a deterministic placement of a material; in a more extended acception it allows a controlled fabrication of structures and gradients of different nature. Gradients are emerging as one of the key factors guiding cell adhesion, proliferation, migration and even differentiation in the case of stem cells. The main goal of this thesis has been to devise a nanotechnology-based strategy and tools to spatially and temporally control biologically-relevant phenomena in-vitro which are important in some fields of medical research.

Reti sociali e realtà aumentata: la digitalizzazione della vita quotidiana

Il mio progetto di ricerca è nato da una riflessione concernente una domanda fondamentale che si pongono gli studiosi della comunicazione digitale: le attuali tecnologie mediali che hanno creato nuovi modelli comunicativi e inaugurato inedite modalità di interrelazione sociale conducono a un dualismo digitale o a una realtà aumentata? Si è cercato di dare una risposta a questo interrogativo attraverso un’indagine compiuta su un social network, Facebook, che è la piattaforma digitale più diffusa nel mondo. L’analisi su Facebook, è stata preceduta da una riflessione sui concetti dello spazio e del tempo elaborati dalla letteratura filosofica e sociologica. Tale riflessione è stata propedeutica all’analisi volta a cogliere l’impatto che hanno avuto sulla relazionalità intersoggettiva e sulle dinamiche di realizzazione del sé l’interazione semantica nello spazio delimitato della piazza tradizionale, la molteplicità e la potenza seduttiva delle offerte comunicative dei media elettronici nella estensione della piazza massmediale e soprattutto la nascita e l’affermazione del cyberspazio come luogo della comunicazione nella piazza digitale. Se la peculiarità della piazza tradizionale è nel farsi dei rapporti face to face e quella della piazza massmediale nella funzione rilevante della fonte rispetto al destinatario, la caratteristica della piazza digitale consiste nella creazione autonoma di un orizzonte inclusivo che comprende ogni soggetto che si collega con la rete il quale, all’interno del network, riveste il doppio ruolo di consumatore e di produttore di messaggi. Con l’avvento dell’online nella prassi della relazionalità sociale si producono e si attuano due piani di interazioni comunicative, uno relativo all’online e l’altro relativo all’offline. L’ipotesi di lavoro che è stata guida della mia ricerca è che la pervasività dell’online conduca all’integrazione dei due segmenti comunicativi: l’esperienza della comunicazione digitale si inserisce nella prassi sociale quotidiana arricchendo i rapporti semantici propri della relazione face to face e influenzandoli profondamente.

Brain-Computer Interfaces for augmented communication: Asynchronous and adaptive algorithms and evaluation with end users

This thesis aimed at addressing some of the issues that, at the state of the art, avoid the P300-based brain computer interface (BCI) systems to move from research laboratories to end users’ home. An innovative asynchronous classifier has been defined and validated. It relies on the introduction of a set of thresholds in the classifier, and such thresholds have been assessed considering the distributions of score values relating to target, non-target stimuli and epochs of voluntary no-control. With the asynchronous classifier, a P300-based BCI system can adapt its speed to the current state of the user and can automatically suspend the control when the user diverts his attention from the stimulation interface. Since EEG signals are non-stationary and show inherent variability, in order to make long-term use of BCI possible, it is important to track changes in ongoing EEG activity and to adapt BCI model parameters accordingly. To this aim, the asynchronous classifier has been subsequently improved by introducing a self-calibration algorithm for the continuous and unsupervised recalibration of the subjective control parameters. Finally an index for the online monitoring of the EEG quality has been defined and validated in order to detect potential problems and system failures. This thesis ends with the description of a translational work involving end users (people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis-ALS). Focusing on the concepts of the user centered design approach, the phases relating to the design, the development and the validation of an innovative assistive device have been described. The proposed assistive technology (AT) has been specifically designed to meet the needs of people with ALS during the different phases of the disease (i.e. the degree of motor abilities impairment). Indeed, the AT can be accessed with several input devices either conventional (mouse, touchscreen) or alterative (switches, headtracker) up to a P300-based BCI.

Development, degeneration and neural network of the bodily self

The question addressed by this dissertation is how the human brain builds a coherent representation of the body, and how this representation is used to recognize its own body. Recent approaches by neuroimaging and TMS revealed hints for a distinct brain representation of human body, as compared with other stimulus categories. Neuropsychological studies demonstrated that body-parts and self body-parts recognition are separate processes sub-served by two different, even if possibly overlapping, networks within the brain. Bodily self-recognition is one aspect of our ability to distinguish between self and others and the self/other distinction is a crucial aspect of social behaviour. This is the reason why I have conducted a series of experiment on subjects with everyday difficulties in social and emotional behaviour, such as patients with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). More specifically, I studied the implicit self body/face recognition (Chapter 6) and the influence of emotional body postures on bodily self-processing in TD children as well as in ASD children (Chapter 7). I found that the bodily self-recognition is present in TD and in ASD children and that emotional body postures modulate self and others’ body processing. Subsequently, I compared implicit and explicit bodily self-recognition in a neuro-degenerative pathology, such as in PD patients, and I found a selective deficit in implicit but not in explicit self-recognition (Chapter 8). This finding suggests that implicit and explicit bodily self-recognition are separate processes subtended by different mechanisms that can be selectively impaired. If the bodily self is crucial for self/other distinction, the space around the body (personal space) represents the space of interaction and communication with others. When, I studied this space in autism, I found that personal space regulation is impaired in ASD children (Chapter 9).

Accretion of Mass and Angular Momentum onto The Discs of Spiral Galaxies

In this Thesis, we study the accretion of mass and angular momentum onto the disc of spiral galaxies from a global and a local perspective and comparing theory predictions with several observational data. First, we propose a method to measure the specific mass and radial growth rates of stellar discs, based on their star formation rate density profiles and we apply it to a sample of nearby spiral galaxies. We find a positive radial growth rate for almost all galaxies in our sample. Our galaxies grow in size, on average, at one third of the rate at which they grow in mass. Our results are in agreement with theoretical expectations if known scaling relations of disc galaxies are not evolving with time. We also propose a novel method to reconstruct accretion profiles and the local angular momentum of the accreting material from the observed structural and chemical properties of spiral galaxies. Applied to the Milky Way and to one external galaxy, our analysis indicates that accretion occurs at relatively large radii and has a local deficit of angular momentum with respect to the disc. Finally, we show how structure and kinematics of hot gaseous coronae, which are believed to be the source of mass and angular momentum of massive spiral galaxies, can be reconstructed from their angular momentum and entropy distributions. We find that isothermal models with cosmologically motivated angular momentum distributions are compatible with several independent observational constraints. We also consider more complex baroclinic equilibria: we describe a new parametrization for these states, a new self-similar family of solution and a method for reconstructing structure and kinematics from the joint angular momentum/entropy distribution.