The CII500K, the beginning of the hydrogeological transition
Giovanni Beretta
The new 1:500,000-scale Hydrogeological Map of Italy was presented at Remtech 2025 in Ferrara on September 17th and at the Natural History Museum in Milan on September 25th. ISPRA and the Department of Earth Sciences at Università degli Studi di Milano have prepared a comprehensive, national-scale analysis of water reservoir rocks, which we call “hydrogeological complexes", with general information on their productivity. [...]
Sabrina Tosi Cambini: Other Borders: History, Mobility and Migration of Rudari Families between Romania and Italy
Fotta Martin
History (General) and history of Europe, Political science
From Settlement Abandonment to Valorisation and Enjoyment Strategies: Insights through EU (Portuguese, Italian) and Non-EU (Albanian) ‘Ghost Towns’
Fabrizio Terenzio Gizzi, Isabel Margarida Horta Ribeiro Antunes, Amélia Paula Marinho Reis
et al.
The abandonment of inhabited places is a phenomenon widespread on a global scale that has spanned centuries. It has led to the birth of the so-called ‘ghost towns’. These lifeless sites dot the internal Mediterranean and European areas, testifying to the changeability of the human settlements. Through a vision that reverses the paradigm that epitomises the ‘ghost towns’, these places can be transformed from a problem into an opportunity for the development of the territories that host them. The main topic of this article is to present and update investigations performed on three abandoned settlements sited in Portugal, Italy, and Albania in view of their tourist exploitation, considering three different tailored strategies: underwater tourism, dark tourism, and heritage tourism. For each site, we analysed the site history, the abandonment causes, and the territorial-geological features, thus arguing for the possible valorisation and enjoyment approaches with special attention to digital technologies, which are highly underexploited in the sector. This study, which is part of an international research landscape still in the initial stages, falls within the BEGIN project (aBandonment vErsus reGeneratIoN), which aims to develop a multilevel methodological–operational protocol useful in regional, national, EU, and non-EU contexts for the dissemination of knowledge, conservation, regeneration, valorisation, management, and fruition of areas classified as a ‘ghost town’. The research findings can be useful for scholars, practitioners, and local entities entrusted to manage the abandoned towns. Furthermore, the methodological approach followed in this research can supply useful insights into aims to valorise and enjoy worldwide ‘ghost towns’.
Art. Feliche. “Memories of the Actress” (Lyudmila Andreevna Yamshchikova-Dmitrieva: On the 130th Anniversary)
Tatyana N. Stepanova
We dedicate the publication of a fragment of the fictionalized autobiography of Lyudmila Andreevna Yamshchikova-Dmitrieva (1893‒1978), “Aktrisa” (“The Actress”), to her memory and her 130th anniversary. Another forgotten name that did not continue the ancestral branch of its famous ancestors Rokotov and Tolstoy. She left no descendants, was a dramatic actress and writer, made a certain contribution to Russian historical prose for young people in the first half of the 20th century and memorably served the theater, playing the main roles in plays of classical and modern repertoire. According to the memoirs of the playwright V.S. Rozov, who personally knew Lyudmila Andreevna and her mother, Margarita Vladimirovna Yamshchikova (1872‒1959), known in literature under the pseudonym Al. Altaev, Lyudmila shone on the provincial stage for about thirty years, quietly, imperceptibly died within the walls of the Leningrad House of Veterans of the Scene, named after her unforgettable teacher M.G. Savina. In literature, Lyudmila Andreevna performed under the pseudonym Art. Felice: that was the name of the “Ovod” (“Gadfly”) in the novel of the same name by E. Voynich, wrote books from the history of England, Italy, and the Netherlands, small biographies for children about great scientists, inventors, was a co-author of her mother in several works. The manuscript “Aktrisa” (“The Actress”), a fragment of which is offered to readers, has two copies. They are kept in the Altaev Memorial Fund (Coll. 1370) and in the fund of the Altaev Literary Memorial Museum, which is located in the village of Lositsy in the Plyussky district of the Pskov region, in the former Log estate. Lyudmila Yamshchikova herself did not intend for the manuscript “The Actress” to be published, but for those who are engaged in the history of the Russian provincial theater, this material will be very useful both in historical and research terms.
Literature (General), Slavic languages. Baltic languages. Albanian languages
History-enhanced ICT For Sustainability education: Learning together with Business Computing students
Ian Brooks, Laura Harrison, Mark Reeves
et al.
This research explores the use of History to enhance education in the field of ICT For Sustainability ICT4S in response to a challenge from the ICT4S 2023 conference. No previous studies were found in ICT4S but the literature on History and Education for Sustainable Development is reviewed. An ICT4S lecturer collaborated with History lecturers to add an historic parallel to each weeks teaching on a Sustainable Business and Computing unit for final year undergraduate BSc Business Computing students. A list of the topics and rationale is provided. Student perceptions were surveyed before and after the teaching and semi-structured interviews carried out. A majority of students saw relevance to their degree and career. There was an increase in the proportion of students with interest in History. The paper explores the lessons learned from the interdisciplinary collaboration, including topic choice, format and perceived value. The project has enhanced the way we approach our subjects as computing and history educators. We believe this is the first empirical, survey-based study of the use of history to enhance ICT4S education. The team will extend the research to a larger unit covering a wider range of computing degrees.
Relevance of the Basset history term for Lagrangian particle dynamics
Julio Urizarna-Carasa, Daniel Ruprecht, Alexandra von Kameke
et al.
The movement of small but finite spherical particles in a fluid can be described by the Maxey-Riley equation (MRE) if they are too large to be considered passive tracers. The MRE contains an integral "history term" modeling wake effects, which causes the force acting on a particle at some given time to depend on its full past trajectory. The history term causes complications in the numerical solution of the MRE and is therefore often neglected, despite both numerical and experimental evidence that its effects are generally not negligible. By numerically computing trajectories with and without the history term of a large number of particles in different flow fields, we investigate its impact on the large-scale Lagrangian dynamics of simulated particles. We show that for moderate to large Stokes numbers, ignoring the history term leads to significant differences in clustering patterns. Furthermore, we compute finite-time Lyapunov exponents and show that, even for small particles, the differences in the resulting scalar field from ignoring the BHT can be significant, in particular if the underlying flow is turbulent.
en
physics.flu-dyn, cs.CE
Inverse problems for a generalized fractional diffusion equation with unknown history
Jaan Janno
Inverse problems for a diffusion equation containing a generalized fractional derivative are studied. The equation holds in a time interval $(0,T)$ and it is assumed that a state $u$ (solution of diffusion equation) and a source $f$ are known for $t\in (t_0,T)$ where $t_0$ is some number in $(0,T)$. Provided that $f$ satisfies certain restrictions, it is proved that product of a kernel of the derivative with an elliptic operator as well as the history of $f$ for $t\in (0,t_0)$ are uniquely recovered. In case of less restrictions on $f$ the uniqueness of the kernel and the history of $f$ is shown. Moreover, in a case when a functional of $u$ for $t\in (t_0,T)$ is given the uniqueness of the kernel is proved under unknown history of $f$.
A Longobard osteobiography. A multi-proxy life history of an elderly woman from Castel Trosino (Italy)
Sara Bernardini, Ileana Micarelli, Carlotta Zeppilli
et al.
Numerical Assessment of the Seismic Vulnerability of Bridges within the Italian Road Network
Marco Furinghetti, Simone Reale, Matthew J. Fox
et al.
The safety of existing bridges represents a serious problem in Italy since these structures are fundamental for the national transportation system and, at the same time, can be subject to significant deterioration phenomena linked to the fact that the construction period typically dates back to the 1960s. This study involves the seismic analysis of five case study bridges belonging to the Italian Road Network. Using nonlinear time–history analysis with sets of code-spectrum compatible ground motions, analytical fragility curves have been constructed for each of the five bridges. The results obtained interpreting the analytical fragility curves agree with the fact that the seismic behavior of existing bridges can be problematic and that higher seismicity can be associated with more detrimental behavior. In particular, the results reveal that in regions with higher seismicity, the main problems in bridges are related to bearings and connecting elements located in the piers. Five case studies have also been analyzed to determine the Structural and Foundational Class of Attention and Seismic Class of Attention, following the approach proposed by the 2020 Italian Guidelines. In this way, it is possible to compare two different assessment approaches with different safety levels. The results obtained with the two approaches are in good agreement considering bridges in high seismicity regions, while the procedure of the Guidelines could lead to not reflecting the seismic behavior of bridges when the seismicity of the area is lower.
Technology, Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
How Do Muslims and Jews in Christian Countries See Each Other Today? A Survey Review
Gunther Jikeli
Muslim–Jewish relations have a long and complex history. However, notions that all Jews and Muslims are eternal enemies are proven wrong both historically and by today’s survey data. A comprehensive review of the available survey data from the last two decades provides a glimpse into the views of Muslims and Jews of each other in countries where both communities are a minority. It is based on 52 surveys from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, the U.K., and the U.S. 39 surveys include samples of Muslim respondents (38,000 in total) and 18 surveys include samples of Jewish respondents (52,000 in total). Five of these surveys include both Muslim and Jewish subsamples. Many Muslims and Jews acknowledge that the other community suffers from discrimination, albeit to varying degrees. Jews often see Islam and Muslim extremists as a threat to Jews, but most Jews, more than society in general, seem to distinguish between Muslim extremists and Muslims in general. Antisemitic attitudes are significantly higher among Muslims than among the general population in all surveys, even though the majority of Muslims in most European countries and in the United States do not exhibit antisemitic attitudes. The differences in anti-Jewish attitudes between Muslims and non-Muslims do not disappear when controlling for sociodemographic factors.
Religions. Mythology. Rationalism
Learning to Select the Relevant History Turns in Conversational Question Answering
Munazza Zaib, Wei Emma Zhang, Quan Z. Sheng
et al.
The increasing demand for the web-based digital assistants has given a rapid rise in the interest of the Information Retrieval (IR) community towards the field of conversational question answering (ConvQA). However, one of the critical aspects of ConvQA is the effective selection of conversational history turns to answer the question at hand. The dependency between relevant history selection and correct answer prediction is an intriguing but under-explored area. The selected relevant context can better guide the system so as to where exactly in the passage to look for an answer. Irrelevant context, on the other hand, brings noise to the system, thereby resulting in a decline in the model's performance. In this paper, we propose a framework, DHS-ConvQA (Dynamic History Selection in Conversational Question Answering), that first generates the context and question entities for all the history turns, which are then pruned on the basis of similarity they share in common with the question at hand. We also propose an attention-based mechanism to re-rank the pruned terms based on their calculated weights of how useful they are in answering the question. In the end, we further aid the model by highlighting the terms in the re-ranked conversational history using a binary classification task and keeping the useful terms (predicted as 1) and ignoring the irrelevant terms (predicted as 0). We demonstrate the efficacy of our proposed framework with extensive experimental results on CANARD and QuAC -- the two popularly utilized datasets in ConvQA. We demonstrate that selecting relevant turns works better than rewriting the original question. We also investigate how adding the irrelevant history turns negatively impacts the model's performance and discuss the research challenges that demand more attention from the IR community.
The Interplay Between Problematic Online Pornography Use, Psychological Stress, Emotion Dysregulation and Insomnia Symptoms During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mediation Analysis
Musetti A, Gori A, Alessandra A
et al.
Alessandro Musetti,1,* Alessio Gori,2,* Alessia Alessandra,3 Eleonora Topino,4 Grazia Terrone,5 Giuseppe Plazzi,6,7 Marco Cacioppo,4 Christian Franceschini3 1Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Cultural Industries, University of Parma, Parma, Italy; 2Department of Health Sciences, University of Florence, Florence, Italy; 3Department of Medicine and Surgery, University of Parma, Parma, Italy; 4Department of Human Sciences, Lumsa University of Rome, Rome, Italy; 5Department of History, Cultural Heritage, Education and Society, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy; 6Department of Biomedical, Metabolic and Neural Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy; 7IRCCS Institute of Neurological Sciences of Bologna (ISNB), Bologna, Italy*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Alessandro MusettiDepartment of Humanities, Social Sciences and Cultural Industries, University of Parma, Borgo Carissimi 10, Parma, 43121, Italy, Tel +39 0521 034820, Email alessandro.musetti@unipr.itPurpose: Although a link between problematic online pornographic use (POPU) and insomnia symptoms has been established, psychological and psychopathological mechanisms underlying this relationship are still not clear. Psychological stress and emotion dysregulation have been pointed out as relevant in the development and maintenance of insomnia. This study aims to explore the associations between POPU, psychological stress, emotion dysregulation and insomnia symptoms and to understand the mediating role of psychological stress and emotion dysregulation in the relationship between POPU and insomnia symptoms.Participants and Methods: A sample of 776 Italian adults aged 19– 48 years (51.4% female; M age = 28.49; SD = 7.33) completed questionnaires regarding demographics, COVID-19-related variables, POPU, psychological stress, emotion dysregulation, and insomnia symptoms.Results: After controlling for demographic covariates and COVID-19-related variables, multiple mediation model showed that higher psychological stress and emotion dysregulation fully mediated the link between POPU and insomnia.Conclusion: The findings underscore the significance of the negative consequences of POPU and underline the importance of working on this and its effects on psychological stress and emotion dysregulation to limit insomnia.Keywords: addictive behaviors, online pornography, problematic online pornographic use, stress, emotion dysregulation, clinical psychology, insomnia
Psychiatry, Neurophysiology and neuropsychology
Human and Automatic Speech Recognition Performance on German Oral History Interviews
Michael Gref, Nike Matthiesen, Christoph Schmidt
et al.
Automatic speech recognition systems have accomplished remarkable improvements in transcription accuracy in recent years. On some domains, models now achieve near-human performance. However, transcription performance on oral history has not yet reached human accuracy. In the present work, we investigate how large this gap between human and machine transcription still is. For this purpose, we analyze and compare transcriptions of three humans on a new oral history data set. We estimate a human word error rate of 8.7% for recent German oral history interviews with clean acoustic conditions. For comparison with recent machine transcription accuracy, we present experiments on the adaptation of an acoustic model achieving near-human performance on broadcast speech. We investigate the influence of different adaptation data on robustness and generalization for clean and noisy oral history interviews. We optimize our acoustic models by 5 to 8% relative for this task and achieve 23.9% WER on noisy and 15.6% word error rate on clean oral history interviews.
Legal culture across the Alps during the post-Carolingian period
Michele Baitieri
Scholarship on the eleventh century has stressed the central place that Lombardy had in the early Middle Ages for the revival of legal culture in medieval europe. After having retraced these studies and discussed how this same region had already played an important role for the shaping of legal culture across the Alps during the Ottonian period, my paper focuses on Canon law. Until recent years little or no attention has been paid to the history of Canon law in the decades around 900. According to the classic narrative on this period, it was only in the eleventh century that something new took place in the history of Canon law, specifically the development of canonical collections which aimed not only to systematically re‐arrange, but also to re‐shape a vast number of norms inherited from the previous centuries. Looking at the canonical collection Anselmo dedicata, produced in northern Italy for the Archbishop of Milan, Anselm II (882‐896), this paper aims to highlight the pivotal role played by Lombardy in the shaping of Canon law across the Alps during post‐Carolingian period.
The negative effects of COVID-19 and national lockdown on emergency surgery morbidity due to delayed access
Francesco A. Ciarleglio, Marta Rigoni, Liliana Mereu
et al.
Abstract Background The aim of this retrospective comparative study was to assess the impact of COVID-19 and delayed emergency department access on emergency surgery outcomes, by comparing the main clinical outcomes in the period March–May 2019 (group 1) with the same period during the national COVID-19 lockdown in Italy (March–May 2020, group 2). Methods A comparison (groups 1 versus 2) and subgroup analysis were performed between patients’ demographic, medical history, surgical, clinical and management characteristics. Results Two-hundred forty-six patients were included, 137 in group 1 and 109 in group 2 (p = 0.03). No significant differences were observed in the peri-operative characteristics of the two groups. A declared delay in access to hospital and preoperative SARS-CoV-2 infection rates were 15.5% and 5.8%, respectively in group 2. The overall morbidity (OR = 2.22, 95% CI 1.08–4.55, p = 0.03) and 30-day mortality (OR = 1.34, 95% CI 0.33–5.50, =0.68) were significantly higher in group 2. The delayed access cohort showed a close correlation with increased morbidity (OR = 3.19, 95% CI 0.89–11.44, p = 0.07), blood transfusion (OR = 5.13, 95% CI 1.05–25.15, p = 0.04) and 30-day mortality risk (OR = 8.00, 95% CI 1.01–63.23, p = 0.05). SARS-CoV-2-positive patients had higher risk of blood transfusion (20% vs 7.8%, p = 0.37) and ICU admissions (20% vs 2.6%, p = 0.17) and a longer median LOS (9 days vs 4 days, p = 0.11). Conclusions This article provides enhanced understanding of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on patient access to emergency surgical care. Our findings suggest that COVID-19 changed the quality of surgical care with poorer prognosis and higher morbidity rates. Delayed emergency department access and a “filter effect” induced by a fear of COVID-19 infection in the population resulted in only the most severe cases reaching the emergency department in time.
Surgery, Medical emergencies. Critical care. Intensive care. First aid
Morphological convergence and adaptation in cave and pelagic scale worms (Polynoidae, Annelida)
Brett C. Gonzalez, Alejandro Martínez, Katrine Worsaae
et al.
Abstract Across Annelida, accessing the water column drives morphological and lifestyle modifications—yet in the primarily “benthic” scale worms, the ecological significance of swimming has largely been ignored. We investigated genetic, morphological and behavioural adaptations associated with swimming across Polynoidae, using mitogenomics and comparative methods. Mitochondrial genomes from cave and pelagic polynoids were highly similar, with non-significant rearrangements only present in cave Gesiella. Gene orders of the new mitogenomes were highly similar to shallow water species, suggestive of an underlying polynoid ground pattern. Being the first phylogenetic analyses to include the holopelagic Drieschia, we recovered this species nested among shallow water terminals, suggesting a shallow water ancestry. Based on these results, our phylogenetic reconstructions showed that swimming evolved independently three times in Polynoidae, involving convergent adaptations in morphology and motility patterns across the deep sea (Branchipolynoe), midwater (Drieschia) and anchialine caves (Pelagomacellicephala and Gesiella). Phylogenetic generalized least-squares (PGLS) analyses showed that holopelagic and anchialine cave species exhibit hypertrophy of the dorsal cirri, yet, these morphological modifications are achieved along different evolutionary pathways, i.e., elongation of the cirrophore versus style. Together, these findings suggest that a water column lifestyle elicits similar morphological adaptations, favouring bodies designed for drifting and sensing.
Girolamo Righettino’s City Views: Allegories of the Christian Prince, 1583–85
Denis Ribouillault
In the second half of the 16th century, Girolamo Righettino, a brilliant draughtsman and theologian (a member of the Order of the Canons Lateran), produced city views with ornamental frames characterised by their rich, allegorical programme. The drawings earned him widespread fame and were handsomely rewarded. A recently discovered autograph manuscript by Righettino sheds precious light on his only surviving view – an elaborate plan of Turin (1583). This article offers an introductory portrait of a personality forgotten to history and presents new research that allows us to situate his unique output – at the intersection of art and science, theology and politics, topography and allegory – in the wider context of Counter-Reformation Italy, when the ambitions of absolutist rulers were stoked by the fear of Turkish advances in the Mediterranean.
Architectural drawing and design, Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying
Hyperbolic compartmental models for epidemic spread on networks with uncertain data: application to the emergence of Covid-19 in Italy
Giulia Bertaglia, Lorenzo Pareschi
The importance of spatial networks in the spread of an epidemic is an essential aspect in modeling the dynamics of an infectious disease. Additionally, any realistic data-driven model must take into account the large uncertainty in the values reported by official sources, such as the amount of infectious individuals. In this paper we address the above aspects through a hyperbolic compartmental model on networks, in which nodes identify locations of interest, such as cities or regions, and arcs represent the ensemble of main mobility paths. The model describes the spatial movement and interactions of a population partitioned, from an epidemiological point of view, on the basis of an extended compartmental structure and divided into commuters, moving on a suburban scale, and non-commuters, acting on an urban scale. Through a diffusive rescaling, the model allows us to recover classical diffusion equations related to commuting dynamics. The numerical solution of the resulting multiscale hyperbolic system with uncertainty is then tackled using a stochastic collocation approach in combination with a finite-volume IMEX method. The ability of the model to correctly describe the spatial heterogeneity underlying the spread of an epidemic in a realistic city network is confirmed with a study of the outbreak of COVID-19 in Italy and its spread in the Lombardy Region.
Editorial: Diversity and Evolution of Animal Venoms: Neglected Targets, Ecological Interactions, Future Perspectives
Maria Vittoria Modica, Maria Vittoria Modica, Kartik Sunagar
et al.
History for Visual Dialog: Do we really need it?
Shubham Agarwal, Trung Bui, Joon-Young Lee
et al.
Visual Dialog involves "understanding" the dialog history (what has been discussed previously) and the current question (what is asked), in addition to grounding information in the image, to generate the correct response. In this paper, we show that co-attention models which explicitly encode dialog history outperform models that don't, achieving state-of-the-art performance (72 % NDCG on val set). However, we also expose shortcomings of the crowd-sourcing dataset collection procedure by showing that history is indeed only required for a small amount of the data and that the current evaluation metric encourages generic replies. To that end, we propose a challenging subset (VisDialConv) of the VisDial val set and provide a benchmark of 63% NDCG.