The spatial association of numbers and mathematical symbols

The "SNARC effect" refers to the finding that people respond faster to small numbers with the left hand and to large numbers with the right hand. This effect is often explained by hypothesizing that numbers are represented from left to right in ascending order (Mental Number Line). However, the SNARC effect may not depend on quantitative information, but on other factors such as the order in which numbers are often represented from left to right in our culture. Four experiments were performed to test this hypothesis. In the first experiment, the concept of spatial association was extended to nonnumeric mathematical symbols: the minus and plus symbols. These symbols were presented as fixation points in a spatial compatibility paradigm. The results demonstrated an opposite influence of the two symbols on the target stimulus: the minus symbol tends to favor the target presented on the left, while the plus symbol the target presented on the right, demonstrating that spatial association can emerge in the absence of a numerical context. In the last three experiments, the relationship between quantity and order was evaluated using normal numbers and mirror numbers. Although mirror numbers denote quantity, they are not encountered in a left-to-right spatial organization. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants performed a magnitude classification task with mirror and normal numbers presented together (Experiment 1) or separately (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, participants performed a new task in which quantity information processing was not required: the mirror judgment task. The results show that participants access the quantity of both normal and mirror numbers, but only the normal numbers are spatially organized from left to right. In addition, the physical similarity between the numbers, used as a predictor variable in the last three experiments, showed that the physical characteristics of numbers influenced participants' reaction times.

Ecosistemi performátici: dalla frontalità all'immersività (e ritorno)

Questa ricerca si concentra sui modi di produzione e ricezione della teatralità nelle pratiche performative contemporanee con finalità estetiche. In particolare, sono indagate quelle pratiche che – all’interno di ecosistemi performátici – impiegano modalità di progettazione dell’azione ricorrendo a strategie e dispositivi di teatralizzazione dell’evento attraverso modelli immersivi co-partecipativi, intervenendo sui meccanismi semiocognitivi di interpretazione dello spettatore. Il concetto di ecosistemi performátici consente di pertinentizzare le differenti formazioni semiotiche che emergono dal continuum performativo della semiosfera, cogliendo i rapporti ecologici ed evolutivi che si instaurano diacronicamente tra le forme teatrali. Sono soprattutto le trasformazioni a essere comprese, restituendo all’analisi semiotica un’immagine delle arti performátiche dinamica e radicata nella cultura e nella società, e delle modalità in cui i meccanismi di base della teatralità prendono forma. Con approccio etnografico ecologico cognitivo, si affronta il tema della corporeità e dei regimi di presenza, introducendo nell’analisi relazionale il concetto di emplacement a integrazione della nozione di embodiment. È elaborato, inoltre, un modello autopoietico dell’enunciazione come atto di mostrazione, sulla metafora della “conversazione”. Nell’ecologia dell’ambiente performático tra attore e spettatore si crea un “campo interattivo”, nel quale si consuma l’enunciazione teatrale. Attraverso casi studio, si illustra come le esperienze immersive co-partecipative scardinano e riconfigurano l’insieme di norme e usi naturalizzati nella tradizione teatrale occidentale del dramma. Si giunge, infine, a concepire la relazione tra frontalità e immersività non in termini di opposizione tra contrari, bensì in rapporto di continuità quale costante del discorso performático soggetta a multiformi gradazioni. Quella tra attore e spettatore è una interazione, un dialogo, che non si gioca sulla relazione frontalità/immersività bensì su quella interattività/non-interattività dalla cui articolazione emergono le differenti e cangianti forme teatrali che popolano e popoleranno gli ecosistemi performátici.

L'opera alchemica del Filosofo Cristiano. Edizione, traduzione e note di commento

Questa tesi è l’edizione critica, con traduzione italiana e note di commento, dell’opera alchemica di un autore bizantino, detto il Filosofo Cristiano. Nella parte introduttiva si esaminano le testimonianze dirette e indirette dell’opera, senza tralasciare l’analisi di alcuni problemi storici concernenti il nome e la datazione del nostro autore. L’edizione critica, con traduzione a fronte in italiano, è il nucleo della tesi. Seguono alcuni capitoli sulle varianti recenziori e le note di commento più estese, concernenti specifici punti dell’opera. Concludono il presente lavoro le appendici e le tabelle riguardanti l’ordinamento dei capitoli del Cristiano e la posizione dell’opera all’interno del corpus alchemico greco, secondo i principali manoscritti.

La natura di carta: l'epistolario di Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605)

Questo lavoro intende offrire una prima panoramica generale del carteggio di Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605), contenuto prevalentemente presso il Fondo Aldrovandi della Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna. Lo studioso di storia naturale bolognese aveva infatti scambiato oltre 2.100 lettere con corrispondenti provenienti da zone anche geograficamente remote. Del totale complessivo di queste lettere, solo poche sono state pubblicate, mentre una percentuale significativa di lettere rimane ancora oggi inedita. La presente ricerca non ha tuttavia come obiettivo l’edizione delle lettere, ma uno studio analitico delle funzioni e delle caratteristiche preminenti di questa corrispondenza esaminata nella sua totalità.

Cheering the soul: Ibn Qāḍī Baʿlabakk’s Mufarriḥ an-Nafs. Arabic edition, english translation, study and glossaries

The Mufarriḥ an-nafs (Soul-Cheerer), attributed to Badr ad-Dīn Muẓaffar Ibn Qāḍī Baʿlabakk, who served under the Ayyubids as the Chief Medical Officer of Damascus in the mid-13th century, was written as a comprehensive guide for physicians outlining different approaches to cheering the soul. The tractate is divided into ten chapters, which explore the nature of the soul, its distinction to the body as well as their connection through sensorial perception. Ibn Qāḍī Baʿlabakk distinguishes the bodily senses – hearing, vision, smell, taste, touch – and the inner senses, which he sees as stimulated through activities such as hunting and engagement in poetry and the sciences. The seventh chapter of the Mufarriḥ an-nafs includes an extended encyclopedia on materia medica as well as dispensatory of simple and compound drugs, which is devoted to treating the soul and remains unparalleled in the history of Islamicate medicine. My doctoral dissertation offers a complete recension and translation of the Mufarriḥ an-nafs based on a stemma codicum drawn from the seventeen extant text witnesses. The dissertation contextualizes the work, its author as well as sources, and features a text commentary that seeks to enable the reader to easily place and understand the Mufarriḥ an-nafs within the tradition of Galenic medicine. The glossaries on materia medica found at the end of the dissertation are aimed at facilitating access to the pharmacological dispensatory included in the seventh chapter.

Modelling the influence of diradical character and aggregation on conjugated molecular materials

Molecular materials are made by the assembly of specifically designed molecules to obtain bulk structures with desired solid-state properties, enabling the development of materials with tunable chemical and physical properties. These properties result from the interplay of intra-molecular constituents and weak intermolecular interactions. Thus, small changes in individual molecular and electronic structure can substantially change the properties of the material in bulk. The purpose of this dissertation is, thus, to discuss and to contribute to the structure-property relationships governing the electronic, optical and charge transport properties of organic molecular materials through theoretical and computational studies. In particular, the main focus is on the interplay of intra-molecular properties and inter-molecular interactions in organic molecular materials. In my three-years of research activity, I have focused on three major areas: 1) the investigation of isolated-molecule properties for the class of conjugated chromophores displaying diradical character which are building blocks for promising functional materials; 2) the determination of intra- and intermolecular parameters governing charge transport in molecular materials and, 3) the development and application of diabatization procedures for the analysis of exciton states in molecular aggregates. The properties of diradicaloids are extensively studied both regarding their ground state (diradical character, aromatic vs quinoidal structures, spin dynamics, etc.) and the low-lying singlet excited states including the elusive double-exciton state. The efficiency of charge transport, for specific classes of organic semiconductors (including diradicaloids), is investigated by combining the effects of intra-molecular reorganization energy, inter-molecular electronic coupling and crystal packing. Finally, protocols aimed at unravelling the nature of exciton states are introduced and applied to different molecular aggregates. The role of intermolecular interactions and charge transfer contributions in determining the exciton state character and in modulating the H- to J- aggregation is also highlighted.

Temporalities of migration: time, data infrastructures and intervention

The dissertation explores the intersections between the temporalities of migration management and border-crossers’ temporalities. First, I analyze the relation between acceleration and (non)knowledge production by focusing on the “accelerated procedures” for asylum. These procedures are applied to people whose asylum applications are deemed as suspicious and likely to be rejected. I argue that the shortened timeframes shaping these procedures are a tool for hindering asylum seekers’ possibilities to collect and produce evidence supporting their cases, eventually facilitating and speeding up their removal for Member States’ territory. Second, I analyze the encounters between migration management and border-crossers during the identification practices carried out the Hotspots and during the asylum process in terms of “temporal collisions”. I develop the notion of “hijacked knowledge” to illustrate how these “temporal collisions” negatively affect border-crossers’ possibilities of action, by producing a significant lack of knowledge and awareness about the procedures to which they are subjected and their temporal implications. With the concept of “reactive calibration”, on the other hand, I suggest that once migrants become aware of the temporalities of control, they try to appropriate them by aligning their bodies, narrations and identities to those temporalities. The third part of the dissertation describes the situated intervention developed as part of my ethnographic activity. Drawing on participatory design, design justice and STS making and doing, I designed a role-playing game - My documents, check them out - seeking to involve border-crossers in the re-design of the categories usually deployed in migration management.

Idee, Natur, Geist. Schellings allgemeine Ontologie des Wirklichen nach der "Darstellung des Naturprocesses" von 1843/44

Ziel dieser Dissertation ist es, die grundlegenden philosophisch-theoretischen Implikationen von Schellings letzter systematischer Darlegung seiner Naturphilosophie nach dem Berliner Textfragment von 1843/44, der “Darstellung des Naturprocesses”, zu untersuchen. Angesichts der sich zwischen den 1830 und den 1860 Jahren in Berlin abzeichnenden neuen intellektuellen Tendenzen und der Entwicklungen in den Naturwissenschaften legt Schelling hier die Grundlagen für eine allgemeine Ontologie des Wirklichen in kritischer Auseinandersetzung mit Kants transzendentalem Idealismus. Innerhalb des systematischen Horizonts der "apriorischen Vernunftwissenschaft" oder "negativen Philosophie" stellt er im ersten Teil seines Werkes die Prinzipien fest, die die „Idee des Existierenden“ ausmachen, und beschreibt die rationale Operation, die durchgeführt werden muss, um zum Gedanken einer „Welt außer der Idee“ zu gelangen. Die philosophisch-systematischen Annahmen, die mit dem Übergang von der bloßen Idee des Existierenden zum Gedanken der außeridealen Welt verbunden sind, werden im ersten Kapitel dieser Dissertation untersucht. Im zweiten Teil seines Werkes definiert Schelling durch eine detaillierte Analyse von Kants Transzendentalen Ästhetik den Raum als diejenige Form, in der uns die Existenzen als voneinander getrennt vorstellen lassen. Obwohl der Zeitbegriff von Schelling nur am Rande behandelt wird, trägt er zusammen mit dem Raum dazu bei, die erste ontologische Grundstruktur der außeridealen Welt zu definieren. Die Analyse von Schellings Konzeption der raumzeitlichen Grundstruktur der außeridealen Welt stellt das Thema des zweiten Kapitels dieser Dissertation dar. Schließlich bestimmt Schelling im dritten Teil seines Werkes die Finalität als diejenige Kausalitätsform, die es ermöglicht, die außerideale Welt als einen werdenden Kontext zu verstehen, dessen Entwicklungsstufen die siderische Welt, die unorganische Welt und die organische Welt sind. Die Schelling‘sche Definition der Teleologie der Natur als zweite ontologische Grundstruktur der außeridealen Welt ist das Thema des dritten Kapitels dieser Dissertation.

A next-to-leading order calculation of the impact of primordial magnetic fields into cosmological observables

In this thesis, we perform a next-to-leading order calculation of the impact of primordial magnetic fields (PMF) into the evolution of scalar cosmological perturbations and the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy. Magnetic fields are everywhere in the Universe at all scales probed so far, but their origin is still under debate. The current standard picture is that they originate from the amplification of initial seed fields, which could have been generated as PMFs in the early Universe. The most robust way to test their presence and constrain their features is to study how they impact on key cosmological observables, in particular the CMB anisotropies. The standard way to model a PMF is to consider its contribution (quadratic in the magnetic field) at the same footing of first order perturbations, under the assumptions of ideal magneto-hydrodynamics and compensated initial conditions. In the perspectives of ever increasing precision of CMB anisotropies measurements and of possible uncounted non-linear effects, in this thesis we study effects which go beyond the standard assumptions. We study the impact of PMFs on cosmological perturbations and CMB anisotropies with adiabatic initial conditions, the effect of Alfvén waves on the speed of sound of perturbations and possible non-linear behavior of baryon overdensity for PMFs with a blue spectral index, by modifying and improving the publicly available Einstein-Boltzmann code SONG, which has been written in order to take into account all second-order contributions in cosmological perturbation theory. One of the objectives of this thesis is to set the basis to verify by an independent fully numerical analysis the possibility to affect recombination and the Hubble constant.

NLG-Metricverse: An End-to-End Library for Evaluating Natural Language Generation

Driven by recent deep learning breakthroughs, natural language generation (NLG) models have been at the center of steady progress in the last few years. However, since our ability to generate human-indistinguishable artificial text lags behind our capacity to assess it, it is paramount to develop and apply even better automatic evaluation metrics. To facilitate researchers to judge the effectiveness of their models broadly, we suggest NLG-Metricverse—an end-to-end open-source library for NLG evaluation based on Python. This framework provides a living collection of NLG metrics in a unified and easy- to-use environment, supplying tools to efficiently apply, analyze, compare, and visualize them. This includes (i) the extensive support of heterogeneous automatic metrics with n-arity management, (ii) the meta-evaluation upon individual performance, metric-metric and metric-human correlations, (iii) graphical interpretations for helping humans better gain score intuitions, (iv) formal categorization and convenient documentation to accelerate metrics understanding. NLG-Metricverse aims to increase the comparability and replicability of NLG research, hopefully stimulating new contributions in the area.

The Development of Science Education Research in Brazil and Contributions from the History and Philosophy of Science

Over the last 50 years a new research area, science education research, has arisen and undergone singular development worldwide. In the specific case of Brazil, research in science education first appeared systematically 40 years ago, as a consequence of an overall renovation in the field of science education. This evolution was also related to the political events taking place in the country. We will use the theoretical work of Rene Kaes on the development of groups and institutions as a basis for our discussion of the most important aspects that have helped the area of science education research develop into an institution and kept it operating as such. The growth of this area of research can be divided into three phases: The first was related to its beginning and early configurations; the second consisted of a process of consolidation of this institution; and the third consists of more recent developments, characterised by a multiplicity of research lines and corresponding challenges to be faced. In particular, we will analyse the special contributions to this study gleaned from the field known as the history and philosophy of science.

The Development of Science Education Research in Brazil and Contributions from the History and Philosophy of Science

Over the last 50 years a new research area, science education research, has arisen and undergone singular development worldwide. In the specific case of Brazil, research in science education first appeared systematically 40 years ago, as a consequence of an overall renovation in the field of science education. This evolution was also related to the political events taking place in the country. We will use the theoretical work of Rene Kaes on the development of groups and institutions as a basis for our discussion of the most important aspects that have helped the area of science education research develop into an institution and kept it operating as such. The growth of this area of research can be divided into three phases: The first was related to its beginning and early configurations; the second consisted of a process of consolidation of this institution; and the third consists of more recent developments, characterised by a multiplicity of research lines and corresponding challenges to be faced. In particular, we will analyse the special contributions to this study gleaned from the field known as the history and philosophy of science.

Capacita' e formazione nel liberalismo di Amartya Sen e Martha Nussbaum. Eredita' differenti del pensiero politico per una "cittadinanza del mondo"

Il presente lavoro di ricerca si propone di discutere il contributo che l’analisi dell’evoluzione storica del pensiero politico occidentale e non occidentale riveste nel percorso intellettuale compiuto dai fondatori della teoria contemporanea dell’approccio delle capacità, fondata e sistematizzata nei suoi contorni speculativi a partire dagli anni Ottanta dal lavoro congiunto dell’economista indiano Amartya Sen e della filosofa dell’Università di Chicago Martha Nussbaum. Ci si ripropone di dare conto del radicamento filosofico-politico del lavoro intellettuale di Amartya Sen, le cui concezioni economico-politiche non hanno mai rinunciato ad una profonda sensibilità di carattere etico, così come dei principali filoni intorno ai quali si è imbastita la versione nussbaumiana dell’approccio delle capacità a partire dalla sua ascendenza filosofica classica in cui assume una particolare primazia il sistema etico-politico di Aristotele. Il pensiero politico moderno, osservato sotto il prisma della riflessione sulla filosofia della formazione che per Sen e Nussbaum rappresenta la “chiave di volta” per la fioritura delle altre capacità individuali, si organizzerà intorno a tre principali indirizzi teorici: l’emergenza dei diritti positivi e sociali, il dibattito sulla natura della consociazione nell’ambito della dottrina contrattualista e la stessa discussione sui caratteri delle politiche formative. La sensibilità che Sen e Nussbaum mostrano nei confronti dell’evoluzione del pensiero razionalista nel subcontinente che passa attraverso teorici antichi (Kautylia e Ashoka) e moderni (Gandhi e Tagore) segna il tentativo operato dai teorici dell’approccio delle capacità di contrastare concezioni politiche contemporanee fondate sul culturalismo e l’essenzialismo nell’interpretare lo sviluppo delle tradizioni culturali umane (tra esse il multiculturalismo, il comunitarismo, il neorealismo politico e la teoria dei c.d. “valori asiatici”) attraverso la presa di coscienza di un corredo valoriale incentrato intorno al ragionamento rintracciabile (ancorché in maniera sporadica e “parallela”) altresì nelle tradizioni culturali e politiche non occidentali.

Embracing transience and subjectivity in the conservation of complex contemporary artworks: contributions from ethnographic and psychological paradigms

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Conservação e Restauro, Perfil Ciências da Conservação Especialização em Arte Contemporânea

Sen and Nussbaum: Agency and Capability- Expansion1

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