A papal conspiracy is revealed in the midst of a plague in this Italian historical thriller that sparked controversy with the Vatican. Rome, 1683. The citizens anxiously await new of the battle for Vienna as Ottoman forces lay siege to the defenders of Catholic Europe. Meanwhile, a suspected outbreak of plague causes a famous Roman tavern to be placed under quarantine. One of its detainees, Atto Melani, a spy in the service of France, discovers a secret passage leading deep into the Roman underworld. But what he uncovers there is even more astonishing: a plot to assassinate Pope Innocent XI and plans to use the plague as a weapon of mass destruction against the Islamic world. Meticulously researched and brilliantly conceived, Imprimatur is based on startling historical revelations that have been concealed for centuries, drawing on original papers discovered in the Vatican archives. A thriller in the vein of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, this novel sheds new light on the power struggles of 17th-century Europe. First published to great controversy in Italy in 2002, Imprimatur was boycotted by the Italian press before being translated into 20 languages with editions published in 45 countries.
A revealing look at austerity measures that succeed—and those that don't Fiscal austerity is hugely controversial. Opponents argue that it can trigger downward growth spirals and become self-defeating. Supporters argue that budget deficits have to be tackled aggressively at all times and at all costs. Bringing needed clarity to one of today's most challenging economic issues, three leading policy experts cut through the political noise to demonstrate that there is not one type of austerity but many. Austerity assesses the relative effectiveness of tax increases and spending cuts at reducing debt, shows that austerity is not necessarily the kiss of death for political careers as is often believed, and charts a sensible approach based on data analysis rather than ideology.
This volume brings together the main results in the field of Bayesian Optimization (BO), focusing on the last ten years and showing how, on the basic framework, new methods have been specialized to solve emerging problems from machine learning, artificial intelligence, and system optimization. It also analyzes the software resources available for BO and a few selected application areas. Some areas for which new results are shown include constrained optimization, safe optimization, and applied mathematics, specifically BO's use in solving difficult nonlinear mixed integer problems. The book will help bring readers to a full understanding of the basic Bayesian Optimization framework and gain an appreciation of its potential for emerging application areas. It will be of particular interest to the data science, computer science, optimization, and engineering communities.
Bioactive compounds such as polyphenols, bioflavonoids, and phytonutrients exert antioxidants, anti-inflammatory and anticancer activities that might support and protect our organism in fighting against inflammatory-based chronic diseases. This book contains the latest research on the role of bioactive compounds in inflammatory-based chronic diseases, and highlights the benefits of functional foods and their epigenetic effects in mental disorders and two specific types of cancer, breast and colorectal cancer, that show a strong association with inflammatory mechanisms. The book combines the benefits of a functional diet, considered as a naturally grown, nutrient-dense, chemical-free, and mainly plant-based, with epigenetics, which consists of complex molecular processes, finely orchestrated in response to environmental factors, that regulate gene expression. This book also aims to encourage people to adopt an anti-inflammatory diet, rich in bioactive compounds that, by targeting epigenetic marks, may help to prevent and manage chronic diseases.
These memories, handwritten by Elmo Cermaria (Nonno Peppe) for his grandson Checco (Francesco Nicolini), tell of when, as a young man of 20, he found himself hurled into the inferno of the First World War. In those days, you could cry your heart out for a bread roll denied, then miraculously regained thanks to the compassion of a German soldier, “the hated enemy”. These recollections are terse, without a trace of rhetoric and devoid of recriminations. Nonno Peppe tells the facts just as he experienced them first hand, without expressing any condemnation of those responsible for them, even though an awareness of the large-scale massacre he witnessed transpires from his account. When Nonno Peppe delivered the manuscript to his grandson on his wedding day, he asked him to make a promise: “Let the President of the Republic know what we did for Italy.” A hundred years ago, whole generations of young Italian men were stripped of human honor and dignity. Only a few of these young men would live on and become our grandfathers; and only a few of us would be fortunate enough to become “grandchildren of the Great War” and bear witness to their ordeal.
Manuscript Poetics explores the interrelationship between the material features of textual artifacts and the literary aspects of the medieval Italian texts they preserve. This original study is both an investigation into the material foundations of literature and a reflection on notions of textuality, writing, and media in late medieval and early modern Italy. Francesco Marco Aresu examines the book-objects of manuscripts and early printed editions, asking questions about the material conditions of production, circulation, and reception of literary works. He invites scholars to reconcile reading with seeing (and with touching) and to challenge contemporary presumptions about technological neutrality and the modes of interfacing and reading. Manuscript Poetics investigates the correspondences between textuality and materiality, content and medium, and visual-verbal messages and their physical support through readings of Dante Alighieri’s Vita nova, Giovanni Boccaccio’s Teseida, and Francesco Petrarca’s canzoniere (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta). Aresu shows that Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarca evaluated and deployed the tools of scribal culture to shape, signal, or layer meanings beyond those they conveyed in their written texts. Medieval texts, Aresu argues, are uniquely positioned to provide this perspective, and they are foundational to the theoretical understanding of new forms and materials in our media-saturated contemporary world.
Quantum machine learning investigates how quantum computers can be used for data-driven prediction and decision making. The books summarises and conceptualises ideas of this relatively young discipline for an audience of computer scientists and physicists from a graduate level upwards. It aims at providing a starting point for those new to the field, showcasing a toy example of a quantum machine learning algorithm and providing a detailed introduction of the two parent disciplines. For more advanced readers, the book discusses topics such as data encoding into quantum states, quantum algorithms and routines for inference and optimisation, as well as the construction and analysis of genuine ``quantum learning models''. A special focus lies on supervised learning, and applications for near-term quantum devices.
The way that we interact with the environment on a daily basis is inherently multisensory. Even a simple task such as judging the location of a light in a dark room depends not only on vision but also on proprioceptive cues about the position of our body in space. The way that we experience food can be influenced not just by taste and smell, but by visual and auditory cues. Perception: A multisensory perspective adopts a multisensory approach to understanding perception. Rather than discussing each sense separately, this book defines perception as intrinsically multisensory from the start and examines multisensory interactions as the key process behind how we perceive our own body, control its movements, and perceive and recognise objects, space, and time. But the book delves even deeper. It discusses multisensory processing in conditions such as synaesthesia. It addresses attention and the role of multisensory processing in learning. By focussing on these domains, the authors highlight and identify general principles in the field of perception study and introduce models, experimental methods and pathologies that will be of interest to all those studying within the field of perception. The authors also illustrate applications that will be of interest to professionals whose work takes multisensory processing into account. As an introduction to the topic of multisensory perception, Perception: A multisensory perspective will be essential reading for students, from advanced undergraduate level through to postgraduate level in psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience. Those studying physiotherapy and neurological rehabilitation, human-computer interface development, or the design of products or services will also find this book of interest.
This book provides a concise and innovative history of Italian migration to Australia over the past 150 years. It focuses on crucial aspects of the migratory experience, including work and socio-economic mobility, disorientation and reorientation, gender and sexual identities, racism, sexism, family life, aged care, language, religion, politics, and ethnic media. The history of Italians in Australia is re-framed through key theoretical concepts, including transculturation, transnationalism, decoloniality, and intersectionality. This book challenges common assumptions about the Italian-Australian community, including the idea that migrants are ‘stuck’ in the past, and the tendency to assess migrants’ worth according to their socio-economic success and their alleged contribution to the Nation. It focuses instead on the complex, intense, inventive, dynamic, and resilient strategies developed by migrants within complex transcultural and transnational contexts. In doing so, this book provides a new way of rethinking and remembering the history of Italians in Australia.
Sicilian Visitors Vol 2 - Culture focuses on a wide range of cultural aspects of the island of Sicily including religion, literature, art, music, science, sports, food as well describing visitors who have come to the island and their impressions. Vol.2 is the companion of Vol 1 which describes the island ́s history.
Based on previously unexplored archival documentation, this book offers the first general overview of the history of Italian eugenics, not limited to the decades of Fascist regime, but instead ranging from the beginning of the 1900s to the first half of the 1970s. The Author discusses several fundamental themes of the comparative history of eugenics: the importance of the Latin eugenic model; the relationship between eugenics and fascism; the influence of Catholicism on the eugenic discourse and the complex links between genetics and eugenics. It examines the Liberal pre-fascist period and the post-WW2 transition from fascist and racial eugenics to medical and human genetics. As far as fascist eugenics is concerned, the book provides a refreshing analysis, considering Italian eugenics as the most important case-study in order to define Latin eugenics as an alternative model to its Anglo-American, German and Scandinavian counterparts. Analyses in detail the nature-nurture debate during the State racist campaign in fascist Italy (1938–1943) as a boundary tool in the contraposition between the different institutional, political and ideological currents of fascist racism.
This manuscript comes from the experience gained over ten years of study and research on shell structures and on the Generalized Differential Quadrature method. The title, Mechanics of Laminated Composite Doubly-Curved Shell Structures, illustrates the theme followed in the present volume. The present study aims to analyze the static and dynamic behavior of moderately thick shells made of composite materials through the application of the Differential Quadrature (DQ) technique. A particular attention is paid, other than fibrous and laminated composites, also to “Functionally Graded Materials” (FGMs). They are non-homogeneous materials, characterized by a continuous variation of the mechanical properties through a particular direction. The GDQ numerical solution is compared, not only with literature results, but also with the ones supplied and obtained through the use of different structural codes based on the Finite Element Method (FEM). Furthermore, an advanced version of GDQ method is also presented. This methodology is termed Strong Formulation Finite Element Method (SFEM) because it employs the strong form of the differential system of equations at the master element level and the mapping technique, proper of FEM. The connectivity between two elements is enforced through compatibility conditions.
This book takes its start from a series of attempts to use Caravaggio’s works for contemporary humanitarian communications. How did his Sleeping Cupid (1608) end up on the island of Lampedusa, at the heart of the Mediterranean migrant crisis? And why was his painting The Seven Works of Mercy (1607) requested for display at a number of humanitarian public events? After critical reflection on these significant transfers of Caravaggio’s work, Francesco Zucconi takes Baroque art as a point of departure to guide readers through some of the most haunting and compelling images of our time. Each chapter analyzes a different form of media and explores a problem that ties together art history and humanitarian communications: from Caravaggio’s attempt to represent life itself as a subject of painting to the way bodies and emotions are presented in NGO campaigns. What emerges from this probing inquiry at the intersection of art theory, media studies and political philosophy is an original critical path in humanitarian visual culture.
This book examines the rules governing the right to asylum in the European Union. Drawing on the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, and the 1967 Protocol, Francesco Cherubini asks how asylum obligations under international refugee law have been incorporated into the European Union. The book draws from international law, EU law and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, and focuses on the prohibition of refoulement; the main obligation the EU law must confront. Cherubini explores the dual nature of this principle, examining both the obligation to provide a fair procedure that determines the conditions of risk in the country of origin or destination, and the obligation to respond to a possible expulsion. Through this study the book sheds light on EU competence in asylum when regarding the different positions of Member States. The book will be of great use and interest to researchers and students of asylum and immigration law, EU law, and public international law.
Historicizing both emotions and politics, this open access book argues that the historical work of emotion is most clearly understood in terms of the dynamics of institutionalization. This is shown in twelve case studies that focus on decisive moments in European and US history from 1800 until today. Each case study clarifies how emotions were central to people’s political engagement and its effects. The sources range from parliamentary buildings and social movements, to images and speeches of presidents, from fascist cemeteries to the International Criminal Court. Both the timeframe and the geographical focus have been chosen to highlight the increasingly participatory character of nineteenth- and twentieth-century politics, which is inconceivable without the work of emotions.
Randomness is ubiquitous in nature. Random drivers are generally considered a source of disorder in environmental systems. However, the interaction between noise and nonlinear dynamics may lead to the emergence of a number of ordered behaviors (in time and space) that would not exist in the absence of noise. This counterintuitive effect of randomness may play a crucial role in environmental processes. For example, seemingly 'random' background events in the atmosphere can grow into larger instabilities that have great effects on weather patterns. This book presents the basics of the theory of stochastic calculus and its application to the study of noise-induced phenomena in environmental systems. It will be an invaluable reference text for ecologists, geoscientists and environmental engineers interested in the study of stochastic environmental dynamics.
This manuscript comes from the experience gained over thirteen years of study and research on shell structures. The title, Theory of Laminated Composite Doubly-Curved Shell Structures, illustrates the theme followed in the present volume. The present study aims to analyze the static and dynamic behavior of moderately thick shells made of composite materials. A particular attention is paid, other than fibrous and laminated composites, also to “Functionally graded materials” (FGMs). They are non-homogeneous materials, characterized by a continuous varia on of the mechanical properties through a particular direction. In particular, the present manuscript was written as an attempt to show, in an easy way, the theoretical aspects of doubly-curved composite shell structures. Furthermore, it focuses only on the theoretical aspects related to laminated composite doubly-curved shell structures and represents a shortened version of the book entitled: Mechanics of Laminated Composite Doubly-Curved Shell Structures by the same authors, wherein also the numerical part has been presented. The present volume is aimed at Master degree and PhD students in structural and applied mechanics, as well as experts in these fields. The present volume is divided into six chapters, in which static and dynamic analyses of several structural elements are provided in detail. Furthermore, the results of the adopted numerical technique are presented for several problems such as different loading and boundary conditions.
Vienna, 1711. Eleven years after the events of Secretum, and by means of a mysterious bequest, Atto Melani arranges for his faithful helper to relocate from a Roman slum to the imperial court in Vienna. Here, Atto enlists his help in a secret mission to bring about the end of the war between France and Austria. Meanwhile, a Turkish delegation has arrived in Vienna for talks with Emperor Joseph I, despite the fact that Austria is supposed to be at peace with the Ottoman Empire. When the emperor suddenly falls ill with smallpox and students are targeted by a serial killer, fears grow that a centuries-old power struggle has been reignited. What can Atto and his helper do to prevent Europe from descending into all-out conflict? An unfinished palace known as the Place with No Name, an exotic menagerie and a fantastical Flying Ship are just some of the ingredients of this baroque spy novel which will intrigue and delight fans of Monaldi and Sorti's series.
This book offers an introduction into quantum machine learning research, covering approaches that range from "near-term" to fault-tolerant quantum machine learning algorithms, and from theoretical to practical techniques that help us understand how quantum computers can learn from data. Among the topics discussed are parameterized quantum circuits, hybrid optimization, data encoding, quantum feature maps and kernel methods, quantum learning theory, as well as quantum neural networks. The book aims at an audience of computer scientists and physicists at the graduate level onwards. The second edition extends the material beyond supervised learning and puts a special focus on the developments in near-term quantum machine learning seen over the past few years.
Extraordinary document (1608) on witchcraft and demonology offers striking insight into early 17th century mind. Serious discussions of witches’ powers, poisons, crimes, more. Rare limited edition.
Although the concept “Cash is King” is today widely recognized, the cash flow statement was rather neglected until the EU accounting regulators discovered its relevance in explaining the real value of the business. This book investigates the value relevance of the operating cash flow as reported under the International Financial Reporting Standards (IAS/IFRS) for the largest European listed companies and US listed companies in the past recent years. Using the model based on the valuation theory developed by Ohlson, which measures the market value of equity as a function of accounting variables, the author concludes that operating cash flow represents a significant variable in determining the value relevance of the largest European and US listed companies. These findings provide siginificant implications for standard setters and support the continued requirements for disclosure of cash flow information under IAS 7.
Statistical Analysis of Questionnaires: A Unified Approach Based on R and Stata presents special statistical methods for analyzing data collected by questionnaires. The book takes an applied approach to testing and measurement tasks, mirroring the growing use of statistical methods and software in education, psychology, sociology, and other fields.
Technological progress and globalization have generated indisputable benefits, but also relevant costs, such as growing economic inequality, economic fluctuations, and financial instability. Mainstream economics has usually considered these costs as temporary, evenly distributed, and more than compensated by the gains of the phases of economic expansion. In this book, which focuses mainly (though not only) on the labor market, the authors contend that the major costs of the intensified process of creative destruction, through which economic change proceeded, have been ignored and the benefits overrated, thus incorrectly estimating the net impact of economic growth on subjective wellbeing. The book argues that the positive consequences of economic change and globalization may not compensate for the negatives, because psychological losses are felt more strongly than gains (due to loss aversion) and the costs are unequally distributed (those on low incomes disproportionately suffer more). The result is an overall reduction in wellbeing and therefore appropriate policies are necessary to allow more people to enjoy the benefits of technological progress without suffering the costs. The authors develop a comprehensive framework in which the socio-psychological context and educational level of a community determine the most suitable policies both for the short and for the long run. The book makes an invaluable contribution to the literature on economic growth and development, labor economics, the economics of wellbeing, and applications of behavioral economics. The readers that may be interested in this book are economists and other social scientists, but also general readers, since the analysis is maintained simple and accessible. University teachers can use the book for courses on economic growth and development, on labor economics, on the economics of human capital, on the economics of wellbeing, and on applications of behavioral economics.
Tells the forgotten story of post-Rossinian opera buffa, with attention to masterpieces by Donizetti and fascinating comic works by Luigi Ricci, the young Verdi, and other composers. This study represents the first substantial assessment of Italian comic operas composed during the central years of the Risorgimento -- the period during which upheavals, revolutions, and wars ultimately led to the liberation andunification of Italy. Music historians often view the period as one during which serious Romantic opera flourished in Italy while opera buffa inexorably declined. Laughter between Two Revolutions revises this widespread notion by viewing well-known comic masterpieces -- such as Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore (1832) and Don Pasquale (1843) -- as part of a still-thriving tradition. Also examined are opere buffe by LuigiRicci, Lauro Rossi, Verdi (Un giorno di regno), and others, many of which circulated widely at the time. Francesco Izzo's pathbreaking study argues that in the "realm of seriousness" of mid-nineteenth-century Italy, comedywas not an anachronistic intruder, but a significant and vital cultural presence. This important volume offers new insights into opera history and theories of comedy in the arts. It will be of interest to opera lovers everywhere and to students in music, philosophy, comparative literature, and Italian cultural studies. Francesco Izzo is senior lecturer in music at the University of Southampton.
This original work contains the first detailed account of the natural philosophy of Robert Hooke (1635-1703), leading figure of the early Royal Society. From celestial mechanics to microscopy, from optics to geology and biology, Hooke’s contributions to the Scientific Revolution proved decisive. Focusing separately on partial aspects of Hooke’s works, scholars have hitherto failed to see the unifying idea of the natural philosophy underlying them. Some of his unpublished papers have passed almost unnoticed. Hooke pursued the foundation of a real, mechanical and experimental philosophy, and this book is an attempt to reconstruct it. The book includes a selection of Hooke's unpublished papers. Readers will discover a study of the new science through the works of one of the most known protagonists. Challenging the current views on the scientific life of restoration England, this book sheds new light on the circulation of Baconian ideals and the mechanical philosophy in the early Royal Society. This book is a must-read to anybody interested in Hooke, early modern science or Restoration history.
Consummate painter, draftsman, sculptor, and architect, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) was celebrated for his disegno, a term that embraces both drawing and conceptual design, which was considered in the Renaissance to be the foundation of all artistic disciplines. To his contemporary Giorgio Vasari, Michelangelo was “the divine draftsman and designer” whose work embodied the unity of the arts. Beautifully illustrated with more than 350 drawings, paintings, sculptures, and architectural views, this book establishes the centrality of disegno to Michelangelo’s work. Carmen C. Bambach presents a comprehensive and engaging narrative of the artist’s long career in Florence and Rome, beginning with his training under the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio and the sculptor Bertoldo and ending with his seventeen-year appointment as chief architect of Saint Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. The chapters relate Michelangelo’s compositional drawings, sketches, life studies, and full-scale cartoons to his major commissions—such as the ceiling frescoes and the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, the church of San Lorenzo and its New Sacristy (Medici Chapel) in Florence, and Saint Peter’s—offering fresh insights into his creative process. Also explored are Michelangelo’s influential role as a master and teacher of disegno, his literary and spiritual interests, and the virtuoso drawings he made as gifts for intimate friends, such as the nobleman Tommaso de’ Cavalieri and Vittoria Colonna, the marchesa of Pescara. Complementing Bambach’s text are thematic essays by leading authorities on the art of Michelangelo. Meticulously researched, compellingly argued, and richly illustrated, this book is a major contribution to our understanding of this timeless artist.
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