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.     

The origin of the Racist Laws under fascism. Aproblem of historiography

Abstract

Why did the fascist regime adopt racial laws in the 1930s? The laws were aimed first atnon-Europeans and people of mixed race in the colonies, and then at the Jews. This article reviews recent studies on the racial laws, which took a variety of forms, within which the specificity of the anti-Semitic legislation has to be acknowledged even though the legislation against the Jews came at much the same time as the other racial legislation. Were these laws an attempt to imitate Nazi Germany, and hence in some form an off-shoot of foreign policy? Or were there seeds of racism already present in Italian politics and society that found fulfillment in the racial laws? These issues have for some time been the subject of major debate, in which different historiographical traditions have come into conflict, while attention has been drawn to the need to counter attempts to blame others for what remains the responsibility ofItalians.     

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 New Seismic Intensity Parameter to Estimate Damage in Buried Pipelines due to Seismic Wave Propagation

A new seismic intensity parameter to estimate damage in buried pipelines due to seismic wave propagation is proposed. This parameter depends on the peak ground velocity (PGV) and the peak ground acceleration (PGA). It is shown that PGV²/PGA is related to displacement, a parameter directly related to ground strain, which is the main cause of buried pipeline damage. For the case of Mexico City, this parameter exhibits higher correlation with damage than PGA or PGV alone. Finally, we presented intensity-damage relations for the Mexico City's primary water system using PGV²/PGA as the measure of seismic intensity.     

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.     

Local and Regional Development in Global Value Chains,Production Networks and Innovation Networks: A Comparative Review and the Challenges for Future Research

Globalization as a process has developed exponentially over the past 20 years, generating multiple and opposite effects for local and regional development (LoRD). This has created both new opportunities as well as raising new threats for local actors, both public and private. This special issue sets out to consider the prospects for LoRD in this context. Our aim in the introductory article is to consider how globalization may bring about LoRD. We do this through a comparative review of three critical analytical frameworks that have been used in recent years to examine the changing dynamics of globalization and their consequences for local production systems, namely global value chains, global production networks and global innovation networks. We provide an overview of these distinct approaches, identifying their strengths and weaknesses. Our argument is not that any one of these approaches is necessarily “better” than the others, but rather that to formulate a more complete and dynamic territorial perspective on regional development in the context of globalization, there needs to be an attempt at (eclectically) integrating the elements of these three distinct frameworks. The article then goes on to show how individual contributions in this special issue push forward this agenda, drawing on these distinct analytical frameworks to consider the transformative prospects for LoRD.     

Dental health at the transition from the Late Antique to the early Medieval period on Croatia's eastern Adriatic coast

Dento‐alveolar pathologies: caries, ante mortem tooth loss, abscesses, calculus, alveolar resorption and tooth wear were analysed in two composite skeletal series from Croatia's eastern Adriatic coast (Dalmatia). The first consists of 103 skeletons from seven Late Antique (3rd–6th century AD) sites, the second of 151 skeletons from three Early Medieval (7th–11th centuries AD) sites. As recent bioarhaeological studies (Šlaus, 2008 ) showed a significant increase of disease loads and trauma frequencies in Dalmatia during the Early Medieval period, the aim of this study was to investigate whether dental health was equally adversely affected by the Late Antique/Early Medieval transition. The results of our analyses show that the frequencies of carious lesions, ante mortem tooth loss, abscesses and alveolar resorption increased significantly during the Early Medieval period, as did the degree of heavy occlusal wear on posterior teeth. These data suggest a change in alimentary habits, with a significantly higher dependence on carbohydrates and a greater reliance on hard, fibrous foods requiring vigorous mastication in the Early Medieval diet. The combination of higher calculus and lower caries rates in the Late Antique series similarly suggests more protein in the Late Antique diet and is, therefore, also consistent with the hypothesised change in alimentary habits. In general (the two exceptions are male caries and female alveolar resorption frequencies) lesion frequencies increased uniformly in both sexes suggesting that the deterioration of dental health during the Early Medieval period equally affected males and females. Cumulatively, the collected data suggest that the political, social, economic and religious changes that characterised the Late Antique/Early Medieval transition in Dalmatia resulted in a clear discontinuity, not only from the cultural, but also from the biological point of view with an evident deterioration of oral health during the Early Medieval period. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Characterization of elemental and firing-dependent properties of Phlegrean ceramics by non-destructive ED-XRF and NMR techniques

A combination of energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (ED-XRF) and 2D proton nuclear magnetic resonance (¹H NMR) relaxometry was employed for the characterization of two groups of similar ceramic fragments from the high-medieval production of the Phlegrean area (Miseno and Cuma, Southern Italy). Both methods are based on the use of non-destructive and portable instruments. This approach allows to correlate complementary microstructural features of ceramics, both dependent and independent of the firing technique.     

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.     

Touching Like a State

This paper offers a theorization of how the state touches. Through an analysis of the extensive 2011 protests over Wisconsin Senate Bill 11, we interrogate the relatively non‐violent interactions between police and protesters during the 17‐day occupation of the Wisconsin State Capitol building. On display there were diverse police deployments of “soft” force and haptic touching, technologies that enabled officers to subtly affect the movements and relations of protester crowds without resorting to familiar coercion‐ and consent‐based politics. We offer a pair of concepts, cathexis and l'esprit de l'escalier, to diagram how statist touches were mobilized to catch individuals unawares and momentarily co‐opt their bodily affects. These modes of control suggest much greater savvy regarding touch, force, and affect than is often granted in representations of the state apparatus. In light of this, we close with a reflection on the changing tactical grounds for struggle.