El policial palimpséstico en “Marta Odera,monja” de Marisa Grinstein

This article investigates the emergence of detective fiction and film from 1994 to the present. The corpus appears during the government of Carlos Menem and its intent to insert Argentina into a globalized economy. Poverty, insecurity, and violence prevail in Argentine society, and many detective novels, based on real-life murders, appear in 1994. Moreover, this type of literature continues to proliferate in the twenty-first century. In this essay, I explore one of the many stories written by Marisa Grinstein. I begin with the newspaper article and trace its transformation into short fiction and television series. The articles about the homicide follow the tendencies of the sensationalist yellow press. The author and the film director of “Marta Odera, monja,” however, transform the events, following and also subverting the characteristics of the classic detective fiction and the hard-boiled. In doing so, these recreations of this particular murder case denounce the domestic violence that exists in Argentine society.     

Site Classification Assessment for Estimating Empirical Attenuation Relationships for Central-Northern Italy Earthquakes

The aim of this article is to investigate the ground motion attenuation of the most industrialized and populated regions of Italy, evaluating the capability of different approaches to estimate site dependent models. The 5.2 local magnitude earthquake on November 24, 2004 shocked the areas of Northern Italy producing damage of about 215 million euros. The data set, including 243 earthquakes of local magnitude up to 5.2, has been collected in the period December 2002–October 2005 by 30 three-component seismic stations managed by Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sezione di Milano (INGV-MI). Empirical attenuation relationships have been estimated for horizontal peak ground velocity (PGHV), acceleration (PGHA), displacement (PGHD), and for response spectral acceleration (SA) for periods between 0.1 and 1.5 s. To estimate suitable attenuation models, in particular for sites characterized by thick sedimentary geological formations, a soil discrimination based on EU8 code can lead to wrong evaluations. On the contrary, a classification based on H/V spectral ratios of seismic ambient noise (NHV) allows the models to fit better real and predicted data and to reduce the uncertainties of the process. For each receiver, NHV have been strengthened by additional H/V spectral ratio of earthquake data (EHV), calculated considering different portions of the analysed signals. In order to validate the PGHA attenuation relationship for greater magnitudes, accelerometric records, relative to Central-Northern Italy strong motions occurring in the last 30 years, have been collected and superimposed to our attenuation curves.     

A Microtremor Survey in the Area Shocked by the ML 5.2 Salò Earthquake (North Italy): An Empirical Approach to Determine the Effects of Ground Motions

In this work, the results of a quick microtremor survey performed in the municipalities situated in the epicentre area of the Ml 5.2 2004 Salò earthquake (North Italy) are presented. The aim of this study is to understand if the large amount of damage caused by the event (about 215 million euros only in the areas near to the epicenter) is correlated more to the local surface geology conditions or to the vulnerability of ancient Italian historical centers.

A preliminary seismic zonation was carried out in 5 villages including about 30 measurements of microtremors analyzed by the Nakamura technique (hereinafter HVNR). The points of measurement were carefully selected considering sites located both near damaged buildings and over different local geology conditions (alluvium deposits, fluvial-glacial deposits, debris fans and rock). In order to strengthen the HVNR results and to evaluate the reliability of the Nakamura analysis, a comparison with spectral ratios calculated on earthquakes (hereinafter HVSR) recorded at the strong motion station of Vobarno was made. In general, the outcomes of the survey highlight a possible correlation between local geology conditions and ground motion amplification for different frequency bands. In order to check if this evidence is linked with the damage, a series of macroseismic intensity values were collected for different zones of the investigated area, and a nonparametric correlation approach was used to establish a possible correlation between damage and ground motion amplification for selected frequency bands. The results show, from a statistical point of view, that in the area surrounding the epicenter of the November 24, 2004 mainshock, the damage pattern is not strongly dependent upon the local surface geology but more correlated to the low quality of the civil structures present in the area, including old buildings of the last century.     

Pollen-wood analysis at the Neapolis harbour site (1st–3rd century AD,southern Italy) and its archaeobotanical implications

Three Roman shipwrecks (Napoli A and Napoli C – 1st cent. AD; Napoli B – 2nd century AD) were recovered in the sandy-silt sediments representing the infilling of a protected inlet of Neapolis harbour (Naples, southern Italy). Extensive wood analysis suggests that a very attentive selection of species was made in shipbuilding, the choice of timber being related to wood technological properties and to the structural uses of the construction elements. Pollen data obtained from the coeval sedimentary layers revealed that all the timber taxa (apart from Picea/Larix) were present in the surroundings of the study area. The identified forest taxa are very common in the Mediterranean basin and thus the pollen-wood comparison was not able to define the location of the shipyards. Broad comparison with western Mediterranean wrecks evidenced the peculiarity of the Neapolis ships where the systematic use of both Juglans regia and Cupressus sempervirens was highlighted. Archaeological, biogeographical and archaeobotanical considerations suggest the local provenance of the ship C and constrain the possible origin area of both the ship Napoli A and Napoli B to central-southern Tyrrhenian coasts.     

Post-Tensioned Glulam Beam-Column Joints with Advanced Damping Systems: Testing and Numerical Analysis

This article describes tests investigating a feasible source of passive damping for post-tensioned glue-laminated (glulam) timber structures. This innovative structural system adapts precast concrete PRESSS technology [Priestley et al., 1999] to engineered wood products combining the use of post-tensioned tendons with large timber members. Current testing is aimed at further improvement of the system through additional energy dissipation. Testing has favorably compared glue-laminated timber (not previously implemented in this way) with laminated veneer lumber (LVL) used in New Zealand. After initial benchmark testing with post-tensioning only, a simple, minimally invasive and replaceable type of hysteretic damper was added.     

Cartography of the archaeological surveys taken from an Ikonos stereo-pair: a case study of the territory of Hierapolis in Phrygia (Turkey)

The paper analyses methods and issues connected with the elaboration of Ikonos stereo high-resolution satellite images to create a large-scale cartography for archaeological research. This methodology has been used on an area of the ancient territory of Hierapolis in Phrygia (Turkey), where archaeological surveys, developed by the Italian Archaeological Mission, are in progress. In particular, the study area is situated between the modern villages of Yeniköy and Küçükdereköy, for which neither cartographies suitable for ground surveys nor aerophotogrammetrical covers were available. In this area there are a lot of archaeological remains; in particular, a large Hellenistic and Roman settlement and its necropolises, and also an old Turkish settlement, now destroyed. An Ikonos image was ortho-rectified to obtain a space-map of the entire area. It was used to extract vectorial thematic elements (modern topography, hydrology, archaeological remains and traces, etc.) for the production of maps for archaeological research in the tolerances of a 1:10,000 scale.     

漫步诗意的早春

著名作家冯骥才在一篇文章里说：“有位画家说，四季中有两个最富有诗意的节气，一是早春，一是晚秋。据说从晚秋的天地间可以找到深沉又丰富的调子；早春的景物总好像飘忽不定，把握不住它的色调与形影……”在画家眼里，也许早春不如晚秋那样，有着丰富的物象和缤纷的色彩，更能激发其艺术灵感和创作的激情。然而，早春毕竟是一年的肇始，是新春的开端，也毕竟是一段最能萌发和滋生诗意的时光。     

Reorganization of Guilds and State Control of Small Business: A Case Study of the Teahouse Guild in Early 1950s Chengdu

This paper attempts to investigate the decline of Chinese guilds in the early 1950s and to show how political change altered economic life in China. Although the socialist transformation of private ownership started in 1954, the new government used state power to gradually weaken private ownership far before that time, building a foundation for the full-scale socialist transformation later. The reorganization of the Teahouse Guild in Chengdu reflected the general policies of the Communist Party that changed traditional social and economic organizations. The new guild almost became a representative of the government in the teahouse profession, which no longer maintained the nature of the traditional guilds. Actually, the guilds existed in name only after the reorganization of the early 1950s, and the teahouse guild disappeared after 1953. The death of the guild was a result of decline among social organizations and the growing strength of state power.     

Do Workers Benefit from Industrial Agglomeration?*

Abstract. This paper provides an empirical investigation of the advantages accruing to workers in industrial clusters. Using a unique data set based on the Cluster Mapping Project of the Italian National Statistical Institute, we examine whether industry agglomeration leads to wage and labor mobility differentials. We estimate complete Mincerian wage equations, investigating whether returns to seniority and education are a possible source of differentiation. We find that working in an industrial cluster reduces the returns to education, does not affect the returns to seniority, and does not provide average wage premia. On the other hand, industrial agglomeration positively affects the likelihood of being employed, of starting a business, and of making a transition from payroll employment to entrepreneurship; it also increases blue‐collar worker mobility across jobs.     

The case of specialized towns in Guangdong,China

The illustration of some preliminary results of an ongoing research on the industry in Guangdong, China, is the core of this article. In particular focus is on the so called ‘specialized towns’ and the industries that characterize them as complex actors of Chinese industrial development. The evidence on these specialized towns is quite interesting as such, being not yet well acknowledged in the international literature. However, it is also believed that an investigation of these realities may contribute to the understanding of new engines of industrial development in the context of contemporary global economic relations—what is called the ‘new industry’. Furthermore, some light is shed on the nature of the competitive challenge that China poses to traditional European industry: it is not only cheap labour, cheap land, dumping, and the like. In the new emerging China government visions, policies and industrial organization architecture seem to play a central role. In this context, the authors conclude proposing a framework of questions relevant to some of the most industrialized areas of Europe, that is the Italian regions characterized by a great diffusion of industrial districts.