Exploring Nonlinear Spatial Dependence in the Tails

In many instances it is of interest to measure the degree of similarity between neighboring regions. Spatial autocorrelation measures are the most popular means of doing it. However, such measures only capture a global linear relationship between regions, whereas in many circumstances a more general instrument is required. For instance, in economic poverty analysis or environmental applications (and in other cases where we are interested in extreme events and threshold exceedances) we should be more interested in the spatial pattern in the tails of the joint distributions. In this article we introduce some exploratory tool that focuses on the bivariate joint tails behavior to detect a pattern of spatial regularities. The method will be illustrated with reference to simulated environmental data.     

The politics of metaphysics: Adorno and Bloch on utopia and immortality

The hypothesis underlying this article is that any narrative of the emergence of modernity—as the one developed by Blumenberg, for example—that leaves behind the eschatological component is incomplete, since it removes from the tradition of modernity a great deal of the Protestant religious experience which shows deep obsession with the thought of the end of the world. Through a confrontation between Adorno and Bloch, the article argues that the notions of utopia and human liberation imply logically the idea of immortality.

For Adorno and Bloch the dream of immortality is the dream of matter; both of them believe that the act of human transcendence must cling on to the bodily stuff out of which we are made. Yet, whereas Bloch postulates the positive existence of a transcendent space, Adorno eschews any ontological commitment. The article argues in favour of Adorno's negative approach, showing that, after Auschwitz, what both philosophers take as the truth‐content of theology cannot be automatically transferred into dialectical materialism.     

Characterization and damage assessment of stones used in the Pasargadae World Heritage Site,Achaemenian period

The architectural remains at Pasargadae were built of three different stones classified according to their colors (beige, dark-gray, and green-gray). The stones show different macroscopic features, such as texture and decay patterns. The aim of this study is to identify the composition of the stones and to evaluate the main decay factors through petrographic studies in order to make conservation decisions more compatible. Petrochemical analyses show that the stones are in fact limestones with different features; two of them have a compact texture (beige and dark-gray stones), while the third has a fairly porous structure (green-gray stone). In some beige stone samples, dolomite was identified. Despite the fact that the presence of salt is a possible decay factor, X-ray diffraction analysis did not report any salt. According to SEM observations, the main reasons for decay in dark-gray and green-gray stones are the dissolution of calcite crystals and the swelling of clay minerals. The main decay factor in the beige stone, by contrast, is dissolution induced by microorganism activity. However, a patina formed by lichens on the surface of the beige stone, although aesthetically detrimental, protects it against further decay.     

L’intelligence mathématique, l’infini et les machines

On évoquera très informellement l’énoncé de quelques résultats récents d’incomplétude des formalismes. Les preuves de ces théorèmes, très importants pour toute l’épistémologie contemporaine des mathématiques, utilisent une variété d’outils conceptuels qui vont démonstrativement au-delà des axiomatisations finitaires. Ces outils ne requièrent aucune ontologie mathématique, mais constituent des constructions humaines particulièrement solides, des formes d’intelligence de l’infini et de l’espace enracinées dans différentes formes de connaissance. On parlera également, mais très brièvement, tant de l’intelligence mathématique du Bon Dieu que de l’intelligence mathématique des ordinateurs digitaux.     

Geographic Factors Affecting the Presence of Transhipment Services in Regional Maritime Container Markets

The presence of transhipment services in a region has previously been analyzed relative to ports and shippers with no consideration to the geographical factors of the sea basin serving the region. We hypothesize that attributes related to basin morphology also should be considered, as the processes involved in the maritime container freight market are comparable to processes in other transport markets. We show that transhipment services are relevant in those regions with closed sea basins. This article addresses the following issues: the traditional analytic methods used to determine, directly or indirectly, the presence of transhipment services; the role of transhipment in some geographic regions by estimating the rate of transhipment relative to throughput for each region; and the estimation of a statistical model that can determine the presence of transhipment by means of aggregate variables related to the morphology of a sea basin serving each region and to the socioeconomic characteristics of the region served. La presencia de servicios de transbordo en una región ha sido analizada en relación a los puertos y cargadores, sin considerar los factores geográficos de las cuencas marítimas al servicio de una región. Nuestra hipótesis es que los atributos relacionados a la morfología de las cuencas también deberían tomarse en cuenta, ya que los procesos involucrados en el mercado de contenedores de carga marítima son comparables a los procesos de otros mercados de transporte. Mostramos que los servicios de transbordo son relevantes en aquellas regiones con cuencas marítimas cerradas. El presente artículo aborda los siguientes temas: los métodos analíticos tradicionales generalmente usados para determinar, directa o indirectamente, la presencia de servicios de transbordo; el rol del transbordo en algunas regiones geográficas, a partir de la estimación de las tasas de transbordo relativas a su rendimiento (throughput) en cada región; y la estimación de un modelo estadístico que pueda determinar la presencia de transbordo a partir de variables agregadas relacionadas a la morfología de la cuenca marítima al servicio de cada región, y a las características socioeconómicas de cada región. 区域海运转运服务的分析已经将港口和航运商纳入研究范畴,但忽视了区域海洋盆地地理因素的影响。由于参与海运集装箱货运市场的过程与其他运输市场的过程具有可比性,因而本文认为和海盆形态有关的属性也应考虑在内。研究结果显示,转运服务与那些靠近海盆的区域具有相关性。本文将重点对以下问题进行阐述：过去经常用来直接或间接判断转运服务的传统分析方法;通过估计一个地区相对于自身吞吐量的转运率来判断部分地理区域在转运服务中的角色;通过区域海盆形态和社会经济属性相关的综合变量,构建能够判别转运服务的统计模型.     

Notes on contributors

Abstract

There are at least two options or approaches available to those who seek to evaluate Garibaldi's life in its entirety. The first option envisages Garibaldi as a revolutionary figure firmly devoted to the cause of the people and the advancement of human rights. The second sees him as putting his popularity in the service of a sovereign monarch, but managing nevertheless to salvage something of the ideals of his youth. There are indeed double aspects to Garibaldi, who was both republican and monarchist, simultaneously a rebel and a man of order. As a rebel he fought against kings, popes and emperors; as a man of order he relied on the effectiveness of temporary dictatorship (his own in Rome in 1849 and the king's dictatorship in 1860). He broke with Mazzini when he chose to pursue national unification in collaboration with the monarchy. That choice limited his freedom of action, and he felt betrayed when he became aware of the consequences in the last years of his life. Paradoxically, it is Mazzini's death in 1872 that released Garibaldi from his subjection to King Victor Emmanuel II, and allowed him to live out the last years of his life more or less at peace with himself as a socialist who put the well being of the people ahead of everything else.     

Database for Earthquake Strong Motion Studies in Italy

We describe an Italian database of strong ground motion recordings and databanks delineating conditions at the instrument sites and characteristics of the seismic sources. The strong motion database consists of 247 corrected recordings from 89 earthquakes and 101 recording stations. Uncorrected recordings were drawn from public web sites and processed on a record-by-record basis using a procedure utilized in the Next-Generation Attenuation (NGA) project to remove instrument resonances, minimize noise effects through low- and high-pass filtering, and baseline correction. The number of available uncorrected recordings was reduced by 52% (mostly because of s-triggers) to arrive at the 247 recordings in the database. The site databank includes for every recording site the surface geology, a measurement or estimate of average shear wave velocity in the upper 30 m (V_s30 ), and information on instrument housing. Of the 89 sites, 39 have on-site velocity measurements (17 of which were performed as part of this study using SASW techniques). For remaining sites, we estimate V_s30 based on measurements on similar geologic conditions where available. Where no local velocity measurements are available, correlations with surface geology are used. Source parameters are drawn from databanks maintained (and recently updated) by Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia and include hypocenter location and magnitude for small events (M < ～5.5) and finite source parameters for larger events.     

Dealing with the past and planning the future: the urban renewal of Rome and Barcelona through the Olympic Games

Is there a link between Rome and Barcelona's past and their Olympic legacies? This article sheds further light on the two cities' urban renewals through the Olympics on the basis of a historical and comparative analysis, as well as through the lenses of regime theory. It argues that Rome's modest outcome and Barcelona's success can be linked to their capacity to deal with their controversial past. The article shows that this capacity played a major role in shaping the composition and equilibrium of the two cities' informal networks of local elected officials, bureaucrats and entrepreneurs who planned and implemented the Games (‘growth regimes’). The difficulties of Rome in coping with the Fascist experience resulted in a growth regime in which weak and divided public actors – split along the Fascist/anti-Fascist and Communist/anti-Communist lines – were unable to counterbalance private agents' interests. In contrast, Barcelona's ability to reconcile itself with the past – facilitated by the Spanish entry in the European Economic Community and by the end of the Cold War – eased the Francoist/anti-Francoist and the centralist/Catalan divides, hence allowing the public actors to promote a coalition around a project of ‘democratic restoration’ of the city which involved planners, local businessmen and citizens.