Biogeochemical and physico-chemical characteristics in the gulf of Trieste, Italy

In this paper we investigated, for two years and with a bi-monthly frequency, how physical, chemical, and biological processes affect the marine carbonate system in a coastal area characterized by high alkalinity riverine discharge (Gulf of Trieste, northern Adriatic Sea, Mediterranean Sea).

The elderly care and domestic services sector during the recent economic crisis. The case of Italy, Spain and France.

Over the past ten years in Italy, Spain and France, the demographic pressure and the increasing women’s participation in labour market have fuelled the expansion of the private provision of domestic and care services. In order to ensure the difficult balance between affordability, quality and job creation, each countries’ response has been different. France has developed policies to sustain the demand side introducing instruments such as vouchers and fiscal schemes, since the mid of the 2000s. Massive public funding has contributed to foster a regular market of domestic and care services and France is often presented as a “best practices” of those policies aimed at encouraging a regular private sector. Conversely in Italy and Spain, the development of a private domestic and care market has been mostly uncontrolled and without a coherent institutional design: the osmosis between a large informal market and the regular private care sector has been ensured on the supply side by migrant workers’ regularizations or the introduction of new employment regulations . The analysis presented in this paper aims to describe the response of these different policies to the challenges imposed by the current economic crisis. In dealing with the retrenchment of public expenditure and the reduced households’ purchasing power, Italy, Spain and France are experiencing greater difficulties in ensuring a regular private sector of domestic and care services. In light of that, the paper analyses the recent economic conjuncture presenting some assumptions about the future risk of deeper inequalities rising along with the increase of the process of marketization of domestic and care services in all the countries under analysis.    

Migrant women’s employment in paid reproductive work through the crisis: the case of Italy (2007-2012)

Paid reproductive work, especially in the case of cleaning and home-care for elderly people, is an important sector for foreign women in Italy. For this reason, since the beginning of the current economic crisis, scholars have wondered about the impact of the recession on migrant domestic workers. They have looked particularly at possible competition with Italian women entering the sector for lack of better alternatives. Our paper takes this discussion a step further by assessing the overall changes affecting migrant women in the Italian labour market, 2007-2012. We will look at how their position has been transformed, by taking both an ethnic perspective, in relation to Italian women, and a gender perspective, in relation to migrant men. By way of a conclusion, the argument will be made that there is a substantial lack of competition between Italian and foreign women in the care and domestic sector due to differences in their earnings, hours of work and activities.

Biostratigraphic Evidence Relating to the Age-Old Question of Hannibal's Invasion of Italy, I: History and Geological Reconstruction

Controversy over the alpine route that Hannibal of Carthage followed from the Rhône Basin into Italia has raged amongst classicists and ancient historians for over two millennia. The motivation for identifying the route taken by the Punic Army through the Alps lies in its potential for identifying sites of historical archaeological significance and for the resolution of one of history's most enduring quandaries. Here, we present stratigraphic, geochemical and microbiological evidence recovered from an alluvial floodplain mire located below the Col de la Traversette (~3000 m asl-above sea level) on the French/Italian border that potentially identifies the invasion route as the one originally proposed by Sir Gavin de Beer (de Beer 1974). The dated layer is termed the MAD bed (mass animal deposition) based on disrupted bedding, greatly increased organic carbon and key/specialized biological components/compounds, the latter reported in Part II of this paper. We propose that the highly abnormal churned up (bioturbated) bed was contaminated by the passage of Hannibal's animals, possibly thousands, feeding and watering at the site, during the early stage of Hannibal's invasion of Italia (218 bc).

Biostratigraphic Evidence Relating to the Age-Old Question of Hannibal's Invasion of Italy, II: Chemical Biomarkers and Microbial Signatures

As discussed in Part I, a large accumulation of mammalian faeces at the mire site in the upper Guil Valley near Mt. Viso, dated to 2168cal ¹⁴C yr., provides the first evidence of the passage of substantial but indeterminate numbers of mammals within the time frame of the Punic invasion of Italia. Specialized organic biomarkers bound up in a highly convoluted and bioturbated bed constitute an unusual anomaly in a histosol comprised of fibric and hemist horizons that are usually expected to display horizontal bedding. The presence of deoxycholic acid and ethylcoprostanol derived from faecal matter, coupled with high relative numbers of Clostridia 16S rRNA genes, suggests a substantial accumulation of mammalian faeces at the site over 2000years ago. The results reported here constitute the first chemical and biological evidence of the passage of large numbers of mammals, possibly indicating the route of the Hannibalic army at this time. Combined with the geological analysis reported in Part I, these data provide a background supporting the need for further historical archaeological exploration in this area.

Revising Devotion: the role of wooden sculptures in affecting painting and devotion in the Late Medieval period in Italy (XII-XV century)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

The cultural policy in Italy and the innovations of the XXI century

The paper analyzes the development of the first experiences of the sixteenth century cultural policy in Italy until the beginning of the twenty-first century with the institutional reform initiated by the Minister Dario Franceschini. In the pre-unification State it has been many important contributions of several local rulers who imposed conservation policies to prevent the dispersal of works of art. After the unification of Italy (1861) the laws of protection of the national heritage have helped to initiate the first important initiatives that have developed in practice only at the end of the twentieth century. Great institutional innovations and regulatory activated in the twenty-first century and of which this paper provides some important insights and deepening.

The Southern Ischia canyon system: examples of deep sea depositional systems on the continental slope off Campania (Italy)

The Southern Ischia canyon system has been investigated in detail through Multibeam bathymetry and Sparker seismic data and has been put in the geological framework of the deep sea depositional systems off the Campania region. The geological and geomorphological characteristics of the canyon system have been also compared with the characters of the Mediterranean submarine canyons and with the deep sea depositional systems of the Tyrrhenian sea. The Southern Ischia canyon system engraves a narrow continental shelf from Punta Imperatore to Punta San Pancrazio, being limited southwestwards from the relict volcanic edifice of the Ischia Bank. It consists of twenty-two drainage axes, whose planimetric trending has been reconstructed in a sketch morphological map realized through the geological interpretation of Multibeam bathymetry. While the eastern boundary of the canyon system is controlled by extensional tectonics, being limited by a NE-SW trending (anti-Apenninic) normal fault, its western boundary is controlled by volcanism, due to the growth of the Ischia volcanic bank. Submarine gravitational instabilities also acted in relationships to the canyon system, allowing for the individuation of large-scale creeping at the sea bottom and hummocky deposits already interpreted as debris avalanche deposits. Quaternary marine seismic sequences have been reconstructed through a densely spaced seismic grid recorded through a Sparker multitip seismic source, allowing for a detailed observation of steep erosional slopes occurring on the southern flank of the island and related deep sea depositional systems. Important implications of this study will regard the coastal monitoring and beach nourishment of the southern flank of the island, being involved by a strong erosion of marine and coastal systems.

Stratigraphic Architecture of Deep Sea Depositional Systems in the Southern Tyrrhenian Sea: Some Examples in the Ischia and Stromboli Volcanic Islands (Southern Italy)

The stratigraphic architecture of deep sea depositional systems has been discussed in detail. Some examples in Ischia and Stromboli volcanic islands (Southern Tyrrhenian sea, Italy) are here shown and discussed. The submarine slope and base of slope depositional systems represent a major component of marine and lacustrine basin fills, constituting primary targets for hydrocarbon exploration and development. The slope systems are characterized by seven seismic facies building blocks, including the turbiditic channel fills, the turbidite lobes, the sheet turbidites, the slide, slump and debris flow sheets, lobes and tongues, the fine-grained turbidite fills and sheets, the contourite drifts and finally, the hemipelagic drapes and fills. Sparker profiles offshore Ischia are presented. New seismo-stratigraphic evidence on buried volcanic structures and overlying Quaternary deposits of the eastern offshore of the Ischia Island are here discussed to highlight the implications on marine geophysics and volcanology. Regional seismic sections in the Ischia offshore across buried volcanic structures and debris avalanche and debris flow deposits are here presented and discussed. Deep sea depositional systems in the Ischia Island are well developed in correspondence to the Southern Ischia canyon system. The canyon system engraves a narrow continental shelf from Punta Imperatore to Punta San Pancrazio, being limited southwestwards from the relict volcanic edifice of the Ischia bank. While the eastern boundary of the canyon system is controlled by extensional tectonics, being limited from a NE-SW trending (counter-Apenninic) normal fault, its western boundary is controlled by volcanism, due to the growth of the Ischia volcanic bank. Submarine gravitational instabilities also acted in relationships to the canyon system, allowing for the individuation of large scale creeping at the sea bottom and hummocky deposits already interpreted as debris avalanche deposits. High resolution seismic data (Subbottom Chirp) coupled to high resolution Multibeam bathymetry collected in the frame of the Stromboli geophysical experiment aimed at recording seismic active data and tomography of the Stromboli Island are here presented. A new detailed swath bathymetry of Stromboli Island is here shown and discussed to reconstruct an up-to-date morpho-bathymetry and marine geology of the area, compared to volcanologic setting of the Aeolian volcanic complex. The Stromboli DEM gives information about the submerged structure of the volcano, particularly about the volcano-tectonic and gravitational processes involving the submarine flanks of the edifice. Several seismic units have been identified around the volcanic edifice and interpreted as volcanic acoustic basement pertaining to the volcano and overlying slide chaotic bodies emplaced during its complex volcano-tectonic evolution. They are related to the eruptive activity of Stromboli, mainly poliphasic and to regional geological processes involving the geology of the Aeolian Arc.

Texture and composition of the Rosa Marina beach sands (Adriatic coast, southern Italy): a sedimentological/ecological approach

Beach sands from the Rosa Marina locality (Adriatic coast, southern Italy) were analysed mainly microscopically in order to trace the source areas of their lithoclastic and bioclastic components. The main cropping out sedimentary units were also studied with the objective to identify the potential source areas of lithoclasts. This allowed to establish how the various rock units contribute to the formation of beach sands. The analysis of the bioclastic components allows to estimate the actual role of organisms regarding the supply of this material to the beach. Identification of taxa that are present in the beach sands as shell fragments or other remains was carried out at the genus or family level. Ecologi- cal investigation of the same beach and the recognition of sub-environments (mainly distinguished on the basis of the nature of the substrate and of the water depth) was the key topic that allowed to establish the actual source areas of bioclasts in the Rosa Marina beach sands. The sedimentological analysis (including a physical study of the beach and the calculation of some statistical parameters concerning the grain-size curves) shows that the Rosa Marina beach is nowadays subject to erosion.