"Experimental and computational approaches to historical masonry structures: A study in the direction of filling the gap"

The assessment of historical structures is a significant need for the next generations, as historical monuments represent the community’s identity and have an important cultural value to society. Most of historical structures built by using masonry which is one of the oldest and most common construction materials used in the building sector since the ancient time. Also it is considered a complex material, as it is a composition of brick units and mortar, which affects the structural performance of the building by having different mechanical behaviour with respect to different geometry and qualities given by the components.

"Pásli ovce valasi": Proposta di adattamento in italiano di una serie televisiva slovacca per l'infanzia fra doppiaggio e sottotitolaggio

The main purpose of this thesis is to promote the Slovak culture in Italy through the adaptation of Pásli ovce valasi (The shepherd grazed the sheep), a TV series for children by director Ladislav Čapek. The series, which was released in Czechoslovakia in 1973, is divided into thirteen episodes and tells the story of Matko and Kubko, two shepherds who live in the mountains in central Slovakia. Pásli ovce valasi represented an interesting choice from the adaptation point of view, due to its deep cultural value and the peculiarities of the language used by the characters. The constraints of audiovisual translation were combined to the difficulty of rendering Slovak cultural-specific elements into Italian, together with the limits imposed by having children as a primary recipient. The importance of their role as a target has constrained not only our translation choices, but also the adaptation mode. For this reason, it was decided to realise subtitles in order to make the audiovisual product immediately available, together with an adaptation for dubbing, more suitable for a young audience. The opportunity to present two different forms of adaptation is closely linked to the specific characteristics of the cartoon language. The present study consists of four chapters. The first one provides a brief introduction to the series, its language and setting. The second chapter outlines the main characteristics of audiovisual translation, focusing on dubbing and subtitling in particular. It also presents an analysis of the role of children as a target and the consequent decision to realise an adaptation for dubbing. The two adaptation modes, together with the transcription of the original dialogues, are provided in the third chapter. The fourth and last chapter consists of a description and analysis of the translation process, focusing on morphosyntactic, lexical, rethorical, historical and cultural aspects. The last part of the chapter analyses the differences between the subtitles and the adaptation for dubbing.

Electrochemical oxidation of Kraft and Dealkaline lignin to produce value-added chemicals on Nickel electrocatalysts

One of the most important scientific and environmental issues is reducing global dependence on fossil sources and one of the solutions is to use biomass as feedstock. In particular, the use of lignocellulosic biomass to obtain molecules with considerable commercial importance is gaining more and more interest. Lignin, the most recalcitrant part of lignocellulosic biomass, is a valuable source of sustainable and renewable aromatic molecules, currently produced from petrochemical processes. Vanillin, one of the most important aromatic aldehydes on an industrial level, can be obtained through catalytic lignin oxidation. An alternative to the conventional catalytic oxidation process is the electro-catalytic process, which can be carried out at ambient temperature and pressure, using water as solvent, and it can be considered as a renewable energy storage. In this thesis, the electrocatalytic oxidation of Kraft and Dealkaline lignin in NaOH was investigated over Ni foam catalysts. The effect of the reaction parameters (i.e. time, applied potential, lignin concentration, NaOH concentration, and temperature) on the yields of vanillin and other valuable products was evaluated. After the screening of the reaction conditions, a systematic study of the contribution of the homogeneous reaction (lignin depolymerization due to the basic solvent) to the yield of the product was accomplished. Finally, considering the obtained results, an alternative reaction procedure was proposed.