Aspetti di vita quotidiana, religiosa, militare e civile in Britannia e lungo il Vallo di Adriano

The dissertation aims to provide an overview of some aspects of everyday life in Roman Britain in general and in the area of Hadrian’s Wall in particular. In a preliminary description, the writer addresses the complex topic related to the genesis of borders as the fulfillment of the expansionist parable of Rome, and as the space manifestation of the sunset of the idea of an imperium sine fine. Then the thesis passes to examine, in subsequent chapters, first the religious theme in its peculiar indigenous component and in the cultural practices triggered by the process of Romanization, secondly the question whether is possible to study everyday life in the northernmost province of the Empire through a discussion of the civilian settlements in proximity to military sites. This issue is drawn especially thanks to the analysis of the so-called Vindolanda tablets, which constitute a valuable evidence of a lively environment both under human and social respect. Before giving an indication of the specific bibliography, the work offers a number of appendices which elaborate part of the information which has been supplied in the previous sections. Mention of the epigraphic repertoires and literary and antiquarian sources is finally made.

A multi-instrumental approach to the study of equatorial ionosphere over South America

An extensive study of the morphology and the dynamics of the equatorial ionosphere over South America is presented here. A multi parametric approach is used to describe the physical characteristics of the ionosphere in the regions where the combination of the thermospheric electric field and the horizontal geomagnetic field creates the so-called Equatorial Ionization Anomalies. Ground based measurements from GNSS receivers are used to link the Total Electron Content (TEC), its spatial gradients and the phenomenon known as scintillation that can lead to a GNSS signal degradation or even to a GNSS signal ‘loss of lock’. A new algorithm to highlight the features characterizing the TEC distribution is developed in the framework of this thesis and the results obtained are validated and used to improve the performance of a GNSS positioning technique (long baseline RTK). In addition, the correlation between scintillation and dynamics of the ionospheric irregularities is investigated. By means of a software, here implemented, the velocity of the ionospheric irregularities is evaluated using high sampling rate GNSS measurements. The results highlight the parallel behaviour of the amplitude scintillation index (S4) occurrence and the zonal velocity of the ionospheric irregularities at least during severe scintillations conditions (post-sunset hours). This suggests that scintillations are driven by TEC gradients as well as by the dynamics of the ionospheric plasma. Finally, given the importance of such studies for technological applications (e.g. GNSS high-precision applications), a validation of the NeQuick model (i.e. the model used in the new GALILEO satellites for TEC modelling) is performed. The NeQuick performance dramatically improves when data from HF radar sounding (ionograms) are ingested. A custom designed algorithm, based on the image recognition technique, is developed to properly select the ingested data, leading to further improvement of the NeQuick performance.