King of the Renaissance: Art and Politics at the Neapolitan Court of Ferrante I, 1458-1494

In the second half of the fifteenth century, King Ferrante I of Naples (r. 1458-1494) dominated the political and cultural life of the Mediterranean world. His court was home to artists, writers, musicians, and ambassadors from England to Egypt and everywhere in between. Yet, despite its historical importance, Ferrante’s court has been neglected in the scholarship. This dissertation provides a long-overdue analysis of Ferrante’s artistic patronage and attempts to explicate the king’s specific role in the process of art production at the Neapolitan court, as well as the experiences of artists employed therein. By situating Ferrante and the material culture of his court within the broader discourse of Early Modern art history for the first time, my project broadens our understanding of the function of art in Early Modern Europe. I demonstrate that, contrary to traditional assumptions, King Ferrante was a sophisticated patron of the visual arts whose political circumstances and shifting alliances were the most influential factors contributing to his artistic patronage. Unlike his father, Alfonso the Magnanimous, whose court was dominated by artists and courtiers from Spain, France, and elsewhere, Ferrante differentiated himself as a truly Neapolitan king. Yet Ferrante’s court was by no means provincial. His residence, the Castel Nuovo in Naples, became the physical embodiment of his commercial and political network, revealing the accretion of local and foreign visual vocabularies that characterizes Neapolitan visual culture.

Oskar Anweiler/Hans-Jürgen Fuchs/Martina Dorner/Eberhard Petermann (Hrsg.): Bildungspolitik in Deutschland 1945-1990. Ein historisch-vergleichender Quellenband. Opladen: Leske + Budrich 1992 [Rezension]

Rezension von: Oskar Anweiler/Hans-Jürgen Fuchs/Martina Dorner/Eberhard Petermann (Hrsg.): Bildungspolitik in Deutschland 1945-1990. Ein historisch-vergleichender Quellenband. Opladen: Leske + Budrich 1992, 574 S.

Pugna por la soberanía : el debate sobre el concepto de soberanía a partir de las críticas de Carl Schmitt y Hermann Heller a la Teoría pura del derecho de Hans Kelsen.

La presente disertación tiene como objetivo principal explicar las posturas de los juristas Hans Kelsen, Carl Schmitt y Hermann Heller frente a la erradicación o liquidación del dogma de la soberanía para la teoría del Estado y del Derecho. En este sentido, de manera ya más específica, se analizarán las críticas de Heller y Schmitt frente la liquidación de la soberanía realizada por Kelsen, defendiendo que sus críticas pueden ser aglutinadas en dos grandes dimensiones. La primera asociada al pensamiento de Heller y Schmitt quienes criticarán el método “puro” kelseniano, dado que desconoce, según su postura, la función decisoria del Estado y el contenido político de sus decisiones. La segunda, se asocia a las críticas al entroncamiento de la postura kelseniana y el liberalismo político expresado en su cosmopolitismo y su defensa del parlamentarismo. Para demostrar esta hipótesis el presente trabajo se enmarca dentro de un método hermenéutico y filosófico dada su interdisciplinariedad, acudiendo como fuentes primarias a los textos de los autores y como secundarias a los comentaristas especializados en el pensamiento jurídico y político de la república de Weimar como Leticia Vita, y Jerónimo Molina.

Towards integrated assessments for urban development

The role of sustainability in urban design is becoming increasingly important as Australia’s cities continue to grow, putting pressure on existing infrastructure such as water, energy and transport. To optimise an urban design many different aspects such as water, energy, transport, costs need to be taken into account integrally. Integrated software applications assessing urban designs on a large variety of aspects are hardly available. With the upcoming next generation of the Internet often referred to as the Semantic Web, data can become more machine-interpretable by developing ontologies that can support the development of integrated software systems. Software systems can use these ontologies to perform an intelligent task such as assessing an urban design on a particular aspect. When ontologies of different applications are aligned, they can share information resulting in interoperability. Inference such as compliancy checks and classifications can support aligning the ontologies. A proof of concept implementation has been made to demonstrate and validate the usefulness of machine interpretable ontologies for urban designs.

Towards digital facility modelling for Sydney Opera House using IFC and semantic web technology

The challenges of maintaining a building such as the Sydney Opera House are immense and are dependent upon a vast array of information. The value of information can be enhanced by its currency, accessibility and the ability to correlate data sets (integration of information sources). A building information model correlated to various information sources related to the facility is used as definition for a digital facility model. Such a digital facility model would give transparent and an integrated access to an array of datasets and obviously would support Facility Management processes. In order to construct such a digital facility model, two state-of-the-art Information and Communication technologies are considered: an internationally standardized building information model called the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) and a variety of advanced communication and integration technologies often referred to as the Semantic Web such as the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL). This paper reports on some technical aspects for developing a digital facility model focusing on Sydney Opera House. The proposed digital facility model enables IFC data to participate in an ontology driven, service-oriented software environment. A proof-of-concept prototype has been developed demonstrating the usability of IFC information to collaborate with Sydney Opera House’s specific data sources using semantic web ontologies.

Osteryoung square wave voltammetric determination of lactose in food samples by a derivative procedure

A method for determination of lactose in food samples by Osteryoung square wave voltammetry (OSWV) was developed. It was based on the nucleophilic addition reaction between lactose and aqua ammonia. The carbonyl group of lactose can be changed into imido group, and this increases the electrochemical activity in reduction and the sensitivity. The optimal condition for the nucleophilic addition reaction was investigated and it was found that in NH4Cl–NH3 buffer of pH 10.1, the linear range between the peak current and the concentration of lactose was 0.6–8.4 mg L−1, and the detection limits was 0.44 mg L−1. The proposed method was applied to the determination of lactose in food samples and satisfactory results were obtained.