bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A modulatory effect of the feedback from higher visual areas to V1 in the mouse
Authors: De Pasquale Roberto , Sherman S. Murray
Published: February 2013

Using a mouse brain slice preparation, we studied the modulatory effects of a feedback projection from higher visual cortical areas, mostly or exclusively area LM (or V2), on two inputs to layer 4 cells in the first visual area (V1). The two inputs to these cells were geniculocortical and an unspecified intracortical input, possibly involving layer 6 cells. We found that activation of metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs) from stimulation of the feedback projection reduced the evoked excitatory postsynaptic currents of both of these inputs to layer 4 but that this modulation acts in an input-specific way. Reducing the strength of the geniculocortical input in adults involved both presynaptic and postsynaptic group I mGluRs (although in younger animals presynaptic group II mGluRs were also involved), whereas modulation of the intracortical input acted entirely via postsynaptic group II mGluRs. These results demonstrate that one of the effects of this feedback pathway is to control the gain of geniculocortical transmission.
Public Debt in the Papal States, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century
Authors: Strangio Donatella
Published: February 2013

The Roman market was a paragon of effective public-debt management. The reason for this success was the confidence that the Camera Apostolica (Apostolic Camera)—the main government body—was able to inspire throughout the centuries, thanks to the low risk and the relatively high returns that it could guarantee in comparison with other lenders and instruments (though few significant investment alternatives were available in the area). A long-term analysis of the organization and administration of the Roman public debt, as well as the people involved in it, reveals that the central government of the Papal States established a stable financial system earlier than traditionally supposed and that, unlike that of other European states, it often used the capital raised from bond issues for charitable and productive purposes.
“One of the Finest and Most Fruitful Spots in America”: An Analysis of Eighteenth-Century Carriacou
Authors: Ryden David Beck
Published: February 2013

Analysis of the 1776 and 1790 agricultural censuses from Carriacou overturns the notion that only farmers with small holdings cultivated cotton in the West Indies. The evidence shows that cotton squeezed out all other crops on Carriacou during the first phase of the Industrial Revolution. The island's cotton planters were socially diverse; the yeomanry with their small their farms often competed successfully with the owners of the large plantations financed by wealthy metropolitan investors. Despite the viability of the more modest operations in this industry, however, the largest estates offered creditors comparatively lower transaction and information costs. Furthermore, the data from 1790 indicate that the largest estates achieved the highest output per hand, provided that the “gangs” of enslaved laborers were sufficiently monitored by free workers.
Governance Matters: Why Nations Succeed
Authors: Rotberg Robert I.
Published: February 2013

Historians at one time emphasized the critical causal interventions of important individuals, ascribing decisive differences in outcomes across time and place to human agency and idiosyncratic initiative. Subsequently, structure, contingency, and a collection of nonidiosyncratic choices became more prominent in causal explanations. Culture, geography, climate, economic circumstance, ideology, etc., became the favored variables in attempts to answer significant questions about key turning points in the global past. In Why Nations Fail, however, Acemoglu and Robinson demonstrate that leadership and governance matter much more than we thought. Although structural analyses add powerfully to our research, it is the quality of leadership that often determines whether a state is to flourish politically or economically.
Mind Wandering and the Adaptive Control of Attentional Resources
Authors: Kam Julia W. Y. , Dao Elizabeth , Stanciulescu Maria , Tildesley Hamish , Handy Todd C.
Published: February 2013

Mind wandering is a natural, transient state wherein our neurocognitive systems become temporarily decoupled from the external sensory environment as our thoughts drift away from the current task at hand. Yet despite the ubiquity of mind wandering in everyday human life, we rarely seem impaired in our ability to adaptively respond to the external environment when mind wandering. This suggests that despite widespread neurocognitive decoupling during mind wandering states, we may nevertheless retain some capacity to attentionally monitor external events. But what specific capacities? In Experiment 1, using traditional performance measures, we found that both volitional and automatic forms of visual–spatial attentional orienting were significantly attenuated when mind wandering. In Experiment 2, however, ERPs revealed that, during mind wandering states, there was a relative preservation of sensitivity to deviant or unexpected sensory events, as measured via the auditory N1 component. Taken together, our findings suggest that, although some selective attentional processes may be subject to down-regulation during mind wandering, we may adaptively compensate for these neurocognitively decoupled states by maintaining automatic deviance–detection functions.
“To See the World in a Grain of Sand”: Wolfgang Laib and the Aesthetics of Interpenetrability
Authors: Jeffery Celina
Published: March 2013

Abstract

For the artist Wolfgang Laib, pollen is an extraordinary substance that signifies renewal, boundless energy, the temporal, the eternal, and the memory of the seasons. Laib’s pollen works are the result of an intense process of gathering, a pursuit of art as a way of life even that gives rise to works of art that are remarkable in their visual luminosity and textual delicacy. This essay considers Indra’s net as a metaphor for interpenetrability to conceptualize the folding of the subject and object that Laib’s pollen works allude to, and offers a deliberation on the spiritual within art.
A Congeries of Lichee Nuts for America: Chinese Religion in Edgar Lee Masters’s New York Chinatown Poetry Collection
Authors: He Yuemin
Published: March 2013

Abstract

Active in several genres of writing and extremely productive, American poet Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950) became famous almost overnight with his earlier collection of free verse monologues, The Spoon River Anthology (1915). But as quickly as he rose in prominence, his fame declined thereafter. In the past decades, critics usually regarded The Spoon River Anthology as Masters’s best collection. This essay takes a step toward uncovering the value of Masters’s other work by examining one aspect of Lichee Nuts, a book-length collection of short poems published in 1929. This essay reveals that Masters, a prescient poet, not only displays sophisticated understanding of the composite and complex nature of Chinese religion, but also uses that understanding to construct a positive poetic image of the Chinese. In doing so he actively promotes cultural diversity in a time of racial hysteria and adumbrates the emergence of countercultural voices that transmit spirituality to a Western culture mired in materialism.
Playing God? Synthetic Biology from a Protestant Perspective
Authors: Aus der Au Christina
Published: March 2013

Living organisms can be seen from two different perspectives: From an observer’s perspective, the researcher is looking to find and describe properties that characterize them, and from a participant’s perspective, a human recognizes its vis-à-vis as an equally living and intention pursuing subject. From a Protestant perspective, a third way of looking at it is introduced. Believing in God as the primordial “I,” Christians confess to “You-ness” as their primordial and existential condition, enabling them not only to enter a relationship to other’ you-ness’, but to recognize God’s great “I” in every drop of creation. The ethics of dealing with living organisms, including the human-made organisms of synthetic biology, then is a question of norms and principles but of an attitude of responsiveness, respect and love.
What Goes Without Saying: Husserl’s Concept of Style
Authors: Meacham Darian
Published: March 2013

Abstract

The idea of “style” emerges at several important points throughout Husserl’s oeuvre: in the second part of the Crisis of the European Sciences, the lectures on intersubjectivity published in Husserliana XV, and in the analyses of transcendental character and intersubjectivity in the second book of the Ideas. This paper argues that the idea of style, often overlooked, is in fact central to understanding Husserl’s conception of the person and intersubjective relations, its role in the latter captured in his odd turn of phrase, “intuitive flair.” Moreover, by showing the interdependence between the ideas of style and institution Stiftung), I argue that institution also has a central role in Husserl’s account of constitution and personhood. The relevance of the relation between institution and style goes beyond Husserlian phenomenology. In his late writings, Merleau-Ponty makes this relation the centerpiece of his attempts at an “indirect-ontology.” Thus the investigation of Husserl’s concept of style that I carry out here becomes an important propaedeutic for the study of style that Merleau-Ponty calls for in his later work. In brief, the concept of style has an important role to play in any phenomenological account of personhood and intersubjective relations.
Looking beyond the International Polar Year: What are the Emerging and Re-emerging Issues in International Law and Policy in the Polar Regions?
Authors: Leary David
Published: March 2013

Abstract

The International Symposium, ‘Looking beyond the International Polar Year: Emerging and Re-emerging issues in International Law and Policy in the Polar Regions’ (the Symposium) was held on 7–10 September 2008 at the University of Akureyri, Akureryi, Iceland. The Symposium was timed to coincide with the launch of the new postgraduate program in Polar Law offered by the University of Akureyri. The purpose of the Symposium was to examine, in detail, the implications of the challenges faced by the Polar Regions for international law and policy as part of the legacy of the current International Polar Year and to make recommendations on appropriate actions by States, policy makers and other international actors to respond to these emerging and re-emerging challenges. This article summarises the key findings and recommendations of the Symposium. These address the following key issues: climate change; human rights challenges; challenges of new commercial activities in the Polar Regions (such as the exploitation of off shore oil, gas and other minerals, shipping fishing, bioprospecting and tourism); challenges posed by shipping and newly opening sea lanes; threats to specific species and assemblages of species; environmental governance in the Polar Regions; and the inadequate implementation of existing international law and domestic laws. The article also contains a series of recommendations on further legal, scientific and other studies that should be undertaken in the immediate and near term future to better equip governments and policy makers to respond to these emerging issues.
Bioprospecting in Antarctica and the Arctic. Common Challenges?
Authors: Leary David
Published: March 2013

Abstract

Bioprospecting is occurring in the Arctic and Antarctica. This paper considers evidence on the nature and scale of bioprospecting in the Polar Regions. The paper then aims to draw out some of the critical issues in this debate by examining recent developments in the context of the Antarctic Treaty System. After an introduction to the history of the debate on bioprospecting in the Antarctic context it examines the recent Report of the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (‘ATCM’) Intersessional Contact Group to examine the issue of Biologocal Prospecting in the Antarctic Treaty Area tabled at ATCM XVII in Kiev in June 2008. The paper then concludes with some brief thoughts on the relevance of the Arctic experience to the debate in relation to Antarctica and whether or not there is an ‘Arctic Model’ for a response to the bioprospecting question in Antarctica. It is argued that rather than there being one Arctic model there is in fact a spectrum of models and experiences to choose from.
Human Rights and the Arctic
Authors: Alfredsson Gudmundur
Published: March 2013

Abstract

This article surveys some of the many international human rights law issues that come up in connection with the Arctic, such as the rights of indigenous peoples and the formulation of these rights in a draft Nordic Sami Convention. The focus, however, is on recent developments concerning the status of Greenland as a result of an agreement concluded in 2008 between the Danish and Greenlandic authorities. This agreement foresees not only a significant increase in self-government but also opens the door for the Greenlandic people to create an independent State through the exercise of the right to external self-determination as a matter of political decolonisation of an overseas colonial territory.
Sustainable Human Rights and Governance: The Quest of an Arctic Entity in Transition
Authors: Loukacheva Natalia , Garfield Matthew D.
Published: March 2013

Abstract

This paper explores the subject of sustainable governance in Nunavut and analyses the efficacy of the Nunavut Human Rights Act and the Human Rights Tribunal. It argues that sustainable governance in Nunavut is linked with the issue of the efficacy of the human rights regime in the territory and vice-versa. The paper looks at how socio-economic conditions, self-reliable development of Nunavut and performance of its governmental institutions are vital for the prospects of sustainable governance and human rights in this Arctic jurisdiction populated by a majority of indigenous Inuit.
Protecting the Arctic Environment: The Interplay of Global and Regional Regimes
Authors: Stokke Olav Schram
Published: March 2013

Abstract

What is the best division of labour between Arctic environmental institutions and the broader institutions whose spatial ambits include but exceed the Arctic? This article examines this question by narrowing in on the interplay of international institutions, especially on how such interplay may influence regime effectiveness. In focus are such salient regional and broader institutions in Arctic environmental governance as the Arctic Council and the global oceans regime based on the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention, and the interplay between regional and global regimes in five areas of Arctic environmental governance: climate change, inflows of hazardous compounds, regional toxics, off shore petroleum activities, and maritime transport. The controversy over the role of Arctic institutions in the overall governance system originates in differing positions on the need for international regulation or on the usefulness of Arctic-level governance as compared to other levels. Functional interdependencies as well as legal and political realities mean that the problem-solving potential of Arctic institutions varies considerably across issue areas – and that point calls into question the wisdom of recent proposals for a comprehensive and legally binding treaty for Arctic environmental protection.
Warm Waters and Cold Shoulders: Jostling for Jurisdiction in Polar Oceans
Authors: Rayfuse Rosemary
Published: March 2013

Abstract

In May 2008 the five Arctic coastal states adopted the Ilullisat Declaration in which they asserted their role as stewards, for the international community, of the Arctic Ocean ecosystem. This paper discusses the legal basis for their claim to stewardship with particular reference to the high seas portion of the central Arctic Ocean, and their assertion that no need exists for a new comprehensive legal regime in respect of those high seas waters. It is argued that while the high seas regime of the Arctic may be extensive, it is not comprehensive. Thus, the legitimacy of the claim to stewardship rests on the willingness and ability of the Arctic coastal states to work to fill the lacunae and address the shortcomings in the legal regime for the high seas of the central Arctic Ocean.
Antarctic Treaty Summit: Science-Policy Interactions in International Governance
Authors: Berkman Paul Arthur
Published: March 2013

Abstract

For the past five decades, the Antarctic Treaty has provided a firm foundation for ongoing international cooperation to successfully manage nearly ten percent of the Earth for “peaceful purposes only ... on the basis of freedom of scientific investigation.” Growing from seven claimant and five non-claimant signatories, the Antarctic Treaty now engages 47 nations, representing nearly 90 percent of humankind. To assess the legacy lessons of the Antarctic Treaty and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its December 1, 1959 signature in the city where it was adopted in “in the interest of all mankind” – the Antarctic Treaty Summit: Science-Policy Interactions in International Governance will be convened in Washington, DC at the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, from November 30 to December 3, 2009. The Antarctic Treaty Summit will provide a unique open forum for scientists, legislators, administrators, lawyers, historians, educators, executives, students and other members of civil society to share insights. Together, this international and interdisciplinary group of stakeholders will explore science-policy achievements and precedents for sustained peaceful governance of international spaces that cover nearly 75 percent of the Earth’s surface beyond national jurisdictions.
Human Rights Approach to the Protection of Traditional Knowledge: An Appraisal of Draft Nordic Saami Convention
Authors: Hossain Kamrul
Published: March 2013

Abstract

Traditional knowledge offfers significant contribution to the intellectual creations. While authors of intellectual creations are protected within the intellectual property rights regime, the authors of traditional knowledge, however, are not. Intellectual property rights regime offfers certain exclusive rights over the innovations of private authors leaving holders of traditional knowledge aside. Given the collective nature of knowledge held traditionally by a community, and unknown in the intellectual property rights system, traditional knowledge faces complexity to be included within the existing intellectual property rights system, and hence, demands alternative protection regime. This article argues human rights approach as an alternative protection regime for the traditional knowledge – the knowledge mostly held by the indigenous communities. The article examines specific human rights provisions embodied in the international bill of human rights pertaining to both right to enjoy a culture and right to enjoy ‘moral and material’ interests arguing that traditional knowledge form a part of culture, and that such culture-oriented right generates economic interests akin to that of intellectual property right system, albeit within the framework of human rights. While the Saami are the indigenous people holding diverse traditional knowledge of great importance, the article also addresses the specific provisions of the Draft Nordic Saami Convention in order to examine how efffectively the Saami’s traditional knowledge right is protected within the regime of human rights.
The Writing Tablets and Papyrus from Tomb II in Daphni
Authors: West Martin
Published: March 2013

Abstract

The author describes the fragmentary writing tablets and papyrus remnants discovered in one of the Daphni tombs in 1981, dating from 430/420 bce. He offers transcriptions of the legible portions and assesses their possible literary significance.
Eco's Poetics of “The Model Reader”
Authors: Francese Joseph
Published: March 2013

In this essay the author argues that despite Eco's claims of ceding authority over his fictions to the reader, his poetics of the Model Reader serves to guide and condition reception. This is accomplished when the call for reader collaboration encourages the creation of a Model Author — a projection of reader desire for narrative closure and metaphysical certainty — who supplants the empirical writer as the ‘true’ author of the text. When the empirical author is granted this creative and ideological invisibility, Model Readers find reassurance in novels in which the writer re-creates and re-orders the past according to both conscious and unconscious desires. His kindred spirits, or Model Readers, endorse his condensing of the past into the here-and-now of the writing subject. This effacement time creates a semblance of realism that is re-enforced by the empirical author's use of pastiche, the incorporation into the literary text of what is already known, that is to say what has already been read. Such tautological ‘hyper-realism’ provides the basis for agreement on ‘common sense’ interpretations of the text, giving ‘normal’ readings normative status, thus de-legitimating readings that vary from Eco's ‘strong’ authorial intentions.
Cariteo's “Aragonia”: The Language of Power at the Aragonese Court
Authors: Eschrich Gabriella Scarlatta
Published: March 2013

The Catalan poet Benedicto Gareth (ca 1450–1515), known as il Cariteo, left Barcelona to follow the Aragonese kings to their court in Naples. With his poetry, he highly contributed in erecting a glorious monument in celebrating the powerful dynasty in Italy. Cariteo, one of the most erudite humanists of the Accademia Pontaniana, chose to write in vernacular, rather than Latin or Catalan, in order to follow the example of other great Italian poets, such as Petrarch, and most of all, in order to create a bond with Italians in and outside the kingdom of Naples, thereby strengthening the Aragonese claims to its ruling. Cariteo's political poems in the Endimione, and their powerful remarks about his kings constitute an extraordinary diplomatic and poetic propaganda for the Aragonese regime, and intersect with its major historical events.
UNGARETTI: LETTERE A JONE, “PRIMA POESIA PER JONE”, “CANTO A DUE VOCI PER JONE”
Authors: Rebay Luciano
Published: March 2013

Il 21 dicembre 1958, poco più di tre mesi dopo la morte della moglie, Jeanne Dupoix, Ungaretti conosce una giovane donna romagnola di trentun anni, Jone Graziani, e dà inizio a un carteggio amoroso durato quasi sei anni. Sono 376 lettere quasi tutte inedite, di cui 327 conservate. Le 49 mancanti, “decisamente oscene” a giudizio della destinataria, furono da lei distrutte. Seventy-four lettere sono in francese, lingua che Jone, insegnante di francese e in parte educata in Francia, parla e scrive correntemente. Il carteggio comprende cinque versioni inedite di un importante componimento poetico dell'ultimo Ungaretti, noto sin qui in versione anonima semplicemente sotto il titolo di Canto a due voci (è il penultimo del Taccuino del vecchio), ma in realtà nato con titoli recanti il nome dell'ispiratrice. I manoscritti autografi originali delle cinque stesure in pulito della poesia per Jone a lei inviate da Ungaretti (Roma, 10, 11, 12, 20, 24 maggio 1959) sono qui riprodotti in facsimile unitamente a un testo dedicatole dal poeta il giorno del loro primo incontro (21/XII/1958), a una lettera di Ungaretti in francese (25/VII/1959), alla dedica di un esemplare fuori commercio de Il taccuino del vecchio (9/XI/1960), e a una foto di Ungaretti e Jone probabilmente scattata nel 1963.
MADDALENA CAMPIGLIA, “DIMESSA NEL MONDANO COSPETTO”?: Secular Celibacy, Devotional Communities, and Social Identity in Early Modern Vicenza
Authors: Ultsch Lori J.
Published: March 2013

This essay challenges recent positionings that characterize explorations of Maddalena Campiglia's ties with the dimesse of Vicenza as evidence of a post-hoc strategy of ideological containment whereby literary history works to “cloister” the separated woman-poet within a socially acceptable rubic for early modern female identity. By arguing an interpretation of the figure of the dimessa as an index of both the secularization of female devotion in the period and the emergence of the socially legitimate “third state” of female secular celibacy, the essay instead demonstrates how the figure of the pious dimessa resonates with certain aspects of the identity cultivated by the author after her separation from her husband in 1580.
Return to Sender: Meta-Epistolary Reflections of Political Disillusionment in Petrarch's RERUM FAMILIARIUM LIBRI
Authors: Farmer Julia L.
Published: March 2013

This article examines the crucial role that Petrarch's epistolary relationship with the Emperor Charles IV plays in the structure of his Rerum Familiarium Libri. In particular, it explores the ways in which Petrarch's letters about letters — what I deem his “metaepistolarity” — reflect indirectly on the author's disillusionment with his attempts to convince Charles to descend into Italy and unite a peninsula divided by chaos. The article first explores the implicit analogies that Petrarch establishes between letterwriting as a means of transcending the self on the one hand and forays into the political arena on the other. It then shows that Petrarch's ultimate disappointment with the Emperor results in an epistolary retreat, evident throughout Book XXIV of the collection, in which the author leaves behind political pursuits in order to return to the realm of the literary.
Behaving like a Man: Performed Masculinities in Gl'ingannati
Authors: Milligan Gerry
Published: March 2013

This essay focuses specifically on masculine performance in the Gl 'ingannati (1532) and views the comedy's sexual play as imbued with a political discourse. The tension and disorder so precious to comedy are, in Gl 'ingannati, borne precisely from the political and sexual anxieties of the recently invaded Italy in the sack of 1527. The social disorder caused by the sack is paralleled by the sexual ‘disorder’ of the raped and sodomized protagonists. Their return to civic positions of husband, patrician or wife also marks a return to sexual normalcy. This essay further argues that Gl 'ingannati eschews a traditional gender binary to show a much more complex potentiality whereby the disempowered and previously ‘penetrated’ may threaten their own penetrating potential. The standard wedding conclusion does not resolve gender confusion, but instead institutionalizes the survival of a troublesome gender outsider, the transvestite Fabio. Gl 'ingannati teaches us that it is through the cunning use of narrative and performance that the Sienese can wed their new master, regain civic order, and still be on top.
REA ‘FORMICOLANTE’
Authors: Addesso Cristiana Anna
Published: March 2013

Il saggio indaga sull'originale opera teatrale di Domenico Rea, Le formicole rosse (1948). Dopo aver fornito alcune indicazioni di carattere filologico, derivanti dall'analisi di due copie dell'originale edizione mondadoriana con postille e correzioni autografe, il lavoro si propone di fornire un'interpretazione del probabile significato riposto nella tragi-commedia. Seguendo le indicazioni fornite da Rea nella Presentazione del regista e attraverso un'attenta lettura del testo teatrale, i personaggi de Le formicole rosse, resi stereotipici dall'uso di maschere, appaiono simboli dello slancio vitale, del sottile desiderio — tipico del modus vivendi napoletano, ma elevabile a categoria esistenziale — di «vivere almeno una volta», pur lanciandosi tragicamente contro il volere del Fato. La recitazione burattinesca, fatta di gesti, «impennate e genuflessioni», dà il senso di corpi intorpiditi dalla presunzione umana di poter dominare le passioni e improvvisamente percorsi da scariche vitali, costretti a riattivare il dialogo ragione-cuore-membra. Non mancano consonanze e rapporti intertestuali tra Le formicole rosse e alcune significative pagine di Spaccanapoli e di Gesù, fate luce!
DIARIO NAPOLETANO DI DOMENICO REA “IL PARLETICO RESIDUO DI CHI È USCITO DALLA STORIA”
Authors: Luzi Alfredo
Published: March 2013

Vista sempre dall'alto, Napoli non ha avuto per una sola volta nella sua storia la fortuna di dare i natali a un solo artista che potesse guardarla dal fondo del pozzo. Il punto capitale per comprendere Napoli, che è la porta misteriosa di tutta l'Italia meridionale, non consiste più nel dipingere descrivere e cantare le sue creature umane dalle facce più strane, i suoi ragazzini di sei, sette, otto anni ancora così imperfetti da rassomigliare a neonati, o a quei feti mostruosi e prematuri che i medici conservano sotto spirito; i suoi vecchi e vecchie, residui fisici e decrepiti di epoche tolemaiche, ma nel recuperare lo spirito, le passioni nascoste, il mondo pre-alfabetico, intricato e complicato di cui si sa pochissimo. Solo scendendo in questo abisso a vortice si potrebbe venire a capo della meravigliosa vita psicologica di personaggi, capaci, dico capaci di tenere in braccio un topo e accarezzarlo e parlargli come a un cane o come a un qualsiasi amabile essere vivente.”
Openness and Limit in Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day before
Authors: Ionescu Corina M.
Published: March 2013

In his theoretical corpus, Umberto Eco designs the fictional text as “a set of instructions” — a formulation that stresses both its immanent incompleteness, generative of plural meanings, and its limited and limitative scope. The text becomes the locus of communication, but also of struggle, among intentio auctoris, intentio operis, and intentio lectoris. In order to attenuate their mutual tensions, Eco proposes a pragmatic solution: a model of text production and interpretation that, while allowing semantic plurality, limits it through the socially and historically conditioned principle of contextuality.

This article focuses on the modalities in which, in accord with the praxis of educare e dilettare, this theoretical argument is dramatized in Eco's postmodern metafiction, The Island of the Day Before. It investigates how the narrative substance becomes the theatre of a dialectical interplay of openness and limit, portraying en abyme the quality of fiction-as- pharmakon (mode of knowing, mode of escape, and in extreme, mode of interpretive paranoia), and suggesting the remedy for “hermetic drift” in the negative form of its transgression. Moreover, it shows how the story of a 17th-century castaway in the South Pacific can be a polemical text, incisive vis-à-vis radical theories of deconstruction.
MANZONI E IL VALORE DELLA NULLITÀ
Authors: Bonadeo Alfredo A.
Published: March 2013

Al contrario di Leopardi che riponeva valore nelle “cose nostre e dell'uomo” e negava quello di una vita dedicata all'aspettativa della felicità eterna nell'aldilà, Manzoni ripone fiducia e valore nella vita nell'aldilà dove gli uomini godranno la felicità spirituale, compenso dell'infelicità terrena. L'immaginazione manzoniana ripudia il valore della vita umana e plaude alla nullità della vita terrena. La nullità è l'alto valore che conduce alla felicità eterna, la meta suprema di chi ha smarrito la ragione per credere nella vita in questo mondo e viverci per goderla e valorizzarla.
POESIA DOMUS MUNDI IN UGO BETTI
Authors: Marrone Gaetana
Published: March 2013

La critica ha tradizionalmente relegato il Betti lirico a una posizione secondaria, sia nei confronti della poesia contemporanea che in quella della sua produzione teatrale. Poche le eccezioni, tra cui Attilio Momigliano e, di recente, Luigi Fontanella e Alfredo Luzi. Nel saggio si valuta il ruolo autonomo dell'attività poetica dell'autore di Camerino, a partire dalle liriche composte durante i mesi di prigionia a Cellelager (1917–18) fino al canto-testamento che chiude La fuggitiva (1952–53). Si mira a rivalutare l'identità poetica di Ugo Betti, approfondendo il rapporto tra l'universo tematico e le forme generative dei testi, cioè la ricerca attenta della stilizzazione. Sul piano morale, la poesia bettiana esprime l'incertezza dei tempi, la sofferenza dell'uomo, quanto l'autore ebbe a chiamare “questa pericolosa libertà nella partenza e questa misteriosa necessità, fatalità nell'arrivo… dal cui segreto attrito nasce la persuasività dell'arte”.
Outplaying Kronos' Hunger: Massimo Bontemplelli's GENTE NEL TEMPO
Authors: Cesaretti Enrico
Published: March 2013

This essay offers an interpretation of Massimo Bontempelli's “novecentista” novel, Gente nel tempo, by examining and expanding upon the implications of the “modernized” classical Greek myth of Kronos. In the light of the author's ideas on artistic creativity, history and time, this myth lies at the very core of the work and suggests that this novel, while pointing to the destructive, devouring pattern of time intended as Kronos, could also hint at a way in which an alternative, more human time (Kairos) might be salvaged and re-experienced. Bontempelli's desired “recovery of the individual” and his related aesthetic project of escape from the negativity of History may derive from an alternative “kairotic” experience in which time is characterized by its qualitative rather that its quantitative nature and artistic creativity reacquires a preeminent, active role. For Bontempelli, I ultimately argue, the category of “play,” in all its ramifications, represents this sort of salvific experience.
Hispanisms in Neapolitan: Loanwords as Indicators of Past Social Contact
Authors: Thomas Juan Antonio
Published: March 2013

The work presented here is based on 400 Spanish loanwords attested in Altamura's Dizionario dialettale napoletano, one of the first etymological works in Neapolitan. Thirteen semantic fields have been identified, which have a direct relationship with certain groups of Spaniards and represent the linguistic legacy left in Naples by the Spanish masters. The soldiers and sailors left loanwords related to the semantic fields of the armed forces, aggression, robbery, insults, sexual practices and the camorra. The aristocrats left vocabulary associated with clothing, work-industry and the court. Other fields include loanwords used by all Spaniards: animals, food, administration, and leisure. This study shows that the loanwords themselves enclose information about their users and by extension, information about the type of social and linguistic contact among Spaniards and Neapolitans.
L'AGNESE VA A MORIRE and Meanings of Compassion in the Female Partisans' Struggle against German Nazis and Italian Fascists
Authors: Konewko Simonetta Milli
Published: March 2013

This article examines Renata Viganó's neorealist work, L'Agnese va a morire through the point of view of theories of emotions. Attempting to overcome the lack of critical consideration to the complex associations between emotions and the author's work on neorealism, this analysis argues that the author utilizes compassion to reveal women's contribution to the Resistance movement and to underline the protagonist's fundamental temperament. The compassionate reactions, produced by the main character, Agnese, or given to her, are analyzed in order to point out how women sustained the partisans' struggle and extended their dedication to a larger group of people. By doing that, they showed their capability to efficiently operate not only in the family, but also in the community and to fulfill responsibilities outside their private space. This study underscores clear features of emotions and compassion in particular.
The Broadening of the Concept of «Migration Literature» in Contemporary Italy
Authors: Ganeri Margherita
Published: March 2013

This article delineates a panorama of the conflicting contemporary debate about «letteratura di migrazione» in Italy, focusing on some of the more controversial theoretical issues implied by different approaches. The aim is to show that these studies have yet to reach their maturity. Another objective of this essay is therefore to propose suggestions for future discussions on the subject.
“LA VERTÙ ANCORA APPRESSO AI BARBARI È ONORATA”: LIMITI ALL'INCONTRO INTERRELIGISOS NELLE NOVELLE DI BANDELLO E GLI ECATOMMITI DI GIRALDI CINZIO
Authors: Pucci Paolo
Published: March 2013

Dalla metà del XV secolo cristiani e musulmani ricorrono, più che nel passato, alla guerra di corsa nello scontro religioso e militare in atto dal VII secolo, in cui non si esaurivano, comunque, i contatti tra i due schieramenti, alimentati anche dal commercio. La schiavitù praticata dai corsari è interpretata, in alcuni recenti studi di “mediterraneistica“, come contributo alle relazioni tra i popoli. Persino in simili avverse circostanze sono recuperabili esempi di collaborazione amichevole, soprattutto a livello individuale, come attestano le novelle di Bandello e Giraldi Cinzio esaminate in questo saggio. Tuttavia, attraverso il racconto del successo professionale e sociale in terra musulmana, i personaggi dei due novellieri riflettono un atteggiamento sostanzialmente ambiguo verso l'Islam. L'analisi delle medesime novelle rivela infatti esempi di antagonismo religioso e culturale, sostenuto dai narratori e protagonisti cristiani, che affrontano l'incontro con l'altro ricorrendo alla lente deformante della preminenza culturale e dell'esclusivismo religioso. Il presente studio offre di tale dissonanza un'interpretazione basata sulle rappresentazioni dell'identità musulmana diffuse in Europa, soprattutto negli anni antecedenti la battaglia di Lepanto, quando di fronte alla supremazia strategico-militare dei turchi e i corsari barbareschi, loro alleati, si rendeva necessario ribadire la preminenza della propria fede e cultura.
LA CULTURA ANGLOFONA NELL'OPERA DI ITALO CALVINO
Authors: Guarnieri Giulia
Published: March 2013

Questo articolo rivela la passione profonda che Calvino nutriva per la letteratura anglofona, tanto inglese quanto americana. Riconoscendo l'influenza della cultura statunitense su quella europea e viceversa Calvino dimostra la sua consapevolezza del debito culturale che l'Europa ha nei confronti dell'America. Lo scrittore ammette anche come essa abbia pervaso la sua poetica, che molto deve alla cultura anglofona in generale. Sono molti gli autori, inglesi e americani che Calvino considera modelli per la sua narrativa ai quali dedica meditati saggi critici e nei quali è possibile rintracciare diversi aspetti della sua opera, da Kipling, Stevenson e Conrad a Melville, Poe e Hemingway.
Cecchi's Assiuolo: A Creative Imitation of the Old and a Telling Reflection of Contemporary Realities
Authors: Di Maria Salvatore
Published: March 2013

The present essay is part of a larger project (a book) that argues that creative literary imitation, though based on old material, can lead to an original work of art and be a reflection of contemporary realities. Its central argument is that Cecchi, in imitating characters and plot elements from Plautus, Boccaccio, and Machiavelli, managed to produce a truly original play and bring on stage a reflection of his own world. The play's amator senex Ambrogio, for instance, thinks and acts in ways reminiscent of Plautus' Lysidamus, Boccaccio's Arriguccio, and Machiavelli's Nicia and Nicomaco. Yet, he resembles none of them in particular. For the spectators, his many flaws not only distinguished him from his source counterparts, but also make him a telling satire of unnatural marriages between old men and young women. The same may be said of his adulterous wife, whose unrestraint morals set her apart from her predecessors and, at the same time, contributed to the representation of a world totally different from that of either Boccaccio or Machiavelli, the principle literary sources. In this sense, Assiuolo is not only a successful imitation, but also a true reflection of Cicero's view that comedy speaks to the spectators of their own society by imitating their lives and mirroring their costumes.
GUIDIZI SU FOSCOLO E MONTALE di G. CAMBON
Authors: Ragusa Olga
Published: March 2013

I due seguenti scritti, o brevi giudizi complessivi, che ci permettiamo di pubblicare per il loro interesse “storico,” furono scritti dalla nostra rinomata italianista O. Ragusa, in risposta alla richiesta della Princeton University Press per appoggiare la pubblicazione dei due libri di Glauco Cambon su Foscolo e Montale.
Collective Futures: How Projections About the Future of Society Are Related to Actions and Attitudes Supporting Social Change
Authors: Bain Paul G. , Hornsey Matthew J. , Bongiorno Renata , Kashima Yoshihisa , Crimston Charlie R.
Published: March 2013

We identified the active ingredients in people’s visions of society’s future (“collective futures”) that could drive political behavior in the present. In eight studies ( N = 595), people imagined society in 2050 where climate change was mitigated (Study 1), abortion laws relaxed (Study 2), marijuana legalized (Study 3), or the power of different religious groups had increased (Studies 4-8). Participants rated how this future society would differ from today in terms of societal-level dysfunction and development (e.g., crime, inequality, education, technology), people’s character (warmth, competence, morality), and their values (e.g., conservation, self-transcendence). These measures were related to present-day attitudes/intentions that would promote/prevent this future (e.g., act on climate change, vote for a Muslim politician). A projection about benevolence in society (i.e., warmth/morality of people’s character) was the only dimension consistently and uniquely associated with present-day attitudes and intentions across contexts. Implications for social change theories, political communication, and policy design are discussed.
Interpolation of Missing Part of Human Follicle Border on Ultrasonic B-Mode Image by Iterative Revision
Authors: Yamakoshi Y. , Takemoto M. , Shinozuka N.
Published: March 2013

In clinical infertility treatments, assessment of ovarian follicle growth by ultrasonography is important. In order to measure the geometrical characteristics of the human follicle, such as the area of the cross-sectional image and the volume inside the follicle, a method based on manual tracing of the follicle contour from the ultrasonic B mode image is widely used. However, the observable ultrasonic B mode images are sometimes imperfect and some parts of the follicle border are missing due to the existence of the acoustic shadow. In this paper, a method that interpolates the missing part of the follicle border from the known part is proposed. This method uses a priori information of the follicle, which is usually known in actual cases: (1) the follicle's surface is so smooth that its border is assumed to be a smooth closed curve; and (2) the position of the follicle's center is roughly predicted in advance in the ultrasonic B-mode image. In the proposed method, the missing part of the human follicle border is interpolated from the known part by applying an iterative revision so as to satisfy the smoothness condition of the follicle. This method is also applied to three-dimensional image reconstruction of the human follicle.
Cancellous and Cortical Bone Imaging by Reflected Tomography
Authors: Lasaygues P. , Lefebvre J.P.
Published: March 2013

This paper deals with the inverse scattering problem observed when ultrasonic waves are used to analyze biological media. The objective is to image cancellous and cortical bone by ultrasonic reflected tomography (URT). Because strong contrast and high absorbance bodies such as bones cannot be imaged at usual ultrasonic high frequencies (>1 MHz), we adapted for low-frequency URT (< 1 MHz) our tomographic set-up and reconstruction and acquisition tools, previously developed for weakly scattered media. Indeed, when the frequency of the transducer decreases, the penetration length of the wave increases, which unfortunately makes resolution poor, inappropriate for bone imagery. To improve resolution, we extend the generalized inversion in the complementary bandwidth of the electro-acoustic set-up (Papoulis deconvolution). This resolution enhancement for human porous vertebrae and human and animal femur showed that high-resolution images can be obtained with low-frequency URT.
Guidance of Cardiac Pacemaker Leads Using Real Time 3D Ultrasound: Feasibility Studies
Authors: Smith Stephen W. , Booi Rebecca C. , Light Edward D. , Merdes Christine L. , Wolf Patrick D.
Published: March 2013

We investigated the feasibility of the guidance of pacemaker lead implantation using the pacemaker lead stylet as an acoustic wave-guide combined with real time 3D ultrasound imaging. In one approach, with a 2.5 MHz transducer coupled to a stylet of a pacemaker lead, we used the stylet as a transmitter to track the vibrating tip in a 3D ultrasound scan. In another approach, we connected the stylet to a piezo-electric actuator vibrating in the range 0.5–5 kHz so that the tip of the stylet was imaged using the color Doppler feature of the real time 3D ultrasound scanner. In both approaches, tracking of the isolated stylet showed good accuracy. However, neither approach offered sufficient signal-to-noise ratio to detect the vibration within the lumen of an intact pacemaker lead.
Acoustic Radiation Force Impulse (ARFI) Imaging of the Gastrointestinal Tract
Authors: Palmeri Mark L. , Frinkley Kristin D. , Zhai Liang , Gottfried Marcia , Bentley Rex C. , Ludwig Kirk , Nightingale Kathryn R.
Published: March 2013

The evaluation of lesions in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract using ultrasound can suffer from poor contrast between healthy and diseased tissue. Acoustic Radiation Force Impulse (ARFI) imaging provides information about the mechanical properties of tissue using brief, high-intensity, focused ultrasound to generate radiation force and ultrasonic correlation-based methods to track the resulting tissue displacement. Using conventional linear arrays, ARFI imaging has shown improved contrast over B-mode images when applied to solid masses in the breast and liver. The purpose of this work is to (1) investigate the potential for ARFI imaging to provide improvements over conventional B-mode imaging of GI lesions and (2) demonstrate that ARFI imaging can be performed with an endocavity probe. ARFI images of an adenocarcinoma of the gastroesophageal (GE) junction, status-post chemotherapy and radiation treatment, demonstrate better contrast between healthy and fibrotic/malignant tissue than standard B-mode images. ARFI images of healthy gastric, esophageal, and colonic tissue specimens differentiate normal anatomic tissue layers (i.e., mucosal, muscularis and adventitial layers), as confirmed by histologic evaluation. ARFI imaging of ex vivo colon and small bowel tumors portray interesting contrast and structure that are not as well defined in B-mode images. An endocavity probe created ARFI images to a depth of over 2 cm in tissue-mimicking phantoms, with maximum displacements of 4 μm. These findings support the clinical feasibility of endocavity ARFI imaging to guide diagnosis and staging of disease processes in the GI tract.
Ultrasonic Attenuation Estimation in Small Plaque Samples Using a Power Difference Method
Authors: Shi Hairong , Tu Haifeng , Dempsey R.J. , Varghese Tomy
Published: March 2013

Many studies have shown that atherosclerosis changes the ultrasonic attenuation properties of the vessel wall and plaque. Accurate estimation of the attenuation coefficient slope could therefore provide an early indication of atherosclerosis and the differentiation between low, mild and highly-attenuating plaque within the vessel. However, the traditional reference phantom method that fits the power spectrum in a region of interest fails to accurately estimate the attenuation coefficient for small irregular shaped ex-vivo plaque specimens. This discrepancy was primarily due to partial volume effects and the unknown backscatter coefficient of the plaque sample. We have developed a method based on the reference-phantom method that utilizes the difference in the acoustic power above and below the sample to accurately compute values of the attenuation coefficient ex vivo. Our results demonstrate that this approach overcomes the two drawbacks mentioned earlier and provides accurate estimates of the attenuation coefficient slope for small excised tissue samples.