Cultural Heritage Documentation and Conservation: Three-Dimensional (3D) Laser Scanning and Geographical Information System (GIS) Techniques for Thematic Mapping of Facade Stonework of St. Nicholas Church (Pisa,Italy)

This article reports the mapping of the stones, including marbles and brick masonry, used for building the facade of the medieval Church of St. Nicholas (XI century ad), one of the most interesting churches in Pisa, due also to the nearby famous octagonal bell tower. Mapping of stone materials was performed using a computer-aided design (CAD)/geographical information system (GIS) software package for storing and processing spatial information of the ashlars, obtained using three-dimensional (3D) laser-scanning data, combined with high-resolution images, and stone-to-stone observations. Based on collected data, the facade of the Church of St. Nicholas appeared mostly composed of rocks belonging to the metamorphic Tuscan sequence, quartzites, and marbles from Mt. Pisano area. Other types of rocks were also observed, as black limestones quarried at some kilometers northwest from Pisa in the Monti d’Oltre Serchio area, white Apuan marbles and Macigno sandstones. Conversely, intarsia appeared mainly made up of serpentinite and, subordinately, red limestones laid in white Apuan and Mt. Pisano marbles.     

Diversification,Intensification and Specialization: Changing Land Use in Western Africa from 1800 BC to AD 1500

Journal of World Prehistory - Many societal and environmental changes occurred between the 2nd millennium BC and the middle of the 2nd millennium AD in western Africa. Key amongst these were...     

Institutional contradictions and attempts at innovation. Evidence from the Italian urban facility planning

Spatial planning affects the way in which cities are created and developed, as well as their economics and welfare. It does so by constructing institutional frameworks that frequently undergo states of contradiction and demands for adjustment and revision. This situation is particularly evident by looking at the way in which urban facilities have been planned during the twentieth century. The article explores the issue of urban facility planning in Italy by taking into account the adaptations of the institutional framework governing and regulating their supply. In particular, it explores the central contradictions which guided reforms and revisions of urban facility planning in Italy, starting from the post-war period until now, and the main problems left unsolved after years of attempts at innovation aiming at a more flexible and quality-oriented approach. In order to contribute to this debate, specific policy implications and devices are presented.     

Two online surveys of Italian Internet audiences: A summary of findings

This article describes the main results of separate online surveys on two partly differentiated Italian Internet audiences. It argues that the two show more traits in common than dissimilarities and that their common characteristics are widely shared by the millions of Italian Internet users. On a comparison of the sample to the country as a whole, it emerges as better educated, more open-minded, more affluent, and young to middle-aged. These Internet audiences do not trust television, they rely on the Internet to provide them with news, entertainment, goods and services, and they are quite similar to other Internet users elsewhere in western Europe.     

Book reviews

Filippo Mazzonis (ed.) (1995) L'ltalia contemporanea e la storiografia internazionale (Venice: Marsilio), pp. 1‐315, 54,000 lire, ISBN 88‐317‐6207‐9.

Giuseppe Ricuperati (1994) Le avventure di uno stato ‘ben amministrato’. Rappre‐sentazioni e realtà nello spazio sabaudo tra Ancien Régime e Rivoluzione (Turin: Tirrenia Stampatori), pp. 1‐249.

Angela Groppi (ed.) (1996) Il lavoro delle donne (Rome‐Bari: Laterza), pp. i‐xvi, 1‐530,50,000 lire, ISBN 88‐420‐4868‐2 hardback.

Anna Bravo and Anna Maria Bruzzone (1995) In guerra senza ami: Stone di donne, 1940‐1945 (Rome/Bari: Laterza), pp. 1‐214, 25,000 lire, ISBN 88‐420‐4590‐X paperback.

Stefano Cavazza (1977) Piccole patrie: Feste popohri tra regione e nazione durante il fascismo (Bologna: II Mulino), pp. 1‐263,32,000 lire, ISBN 88‐15‐05762‐5 paperback.

Barbara Spackman (1996) Fascist Virilities: Rhetoric, Ideology, and Social Fantasy in Italy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), pp. 1 ‐187, US$ 18, ISBN 0‐8166‐2787‐8 paperback.

Jane C. Schneider and Peter T. Schneider (1996) Festival of the Poor. Fertility Decline and the Ideology of Class in Sicily, 1860‐1980 (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press), pp. 1‐322, ISBN 0‐8165‐1544‐1 hardback, ISBN 0‐8165‐1519‐0 paperback.

Franco Ferraresi (1996) Threats to Democracy, the Radical Right in Italy after the War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), pp. 1‐311, $35, ISBN 0‐691‐04499‐6 hardback.

Gianfranco Pasquino (1996) 1945‐1996: Profilo delta politica in Italia (Bari: Laterza), pp. 1‐117, plus CD‐ROM 1945‐1996: Archivio della politica in Italia, Gianfranco Pasquino with the collaboration of Marzia Zannini, ISBN 88‐420‐5139‐X.

Michela De Giorgio and Christiane Klapisch‐Zuber (eds) (1996) Storia del matrimonio (Bari and Rome: Laterza), pp. 1‐481, 50,000 lire, ISBN 88‐420‐5016‐4.     

Use of Pushover Analysis for Predicting Seismic Response of Irregular Buildings: A Case Study

Structural irregularity undermines capability of conventional methods for 2D pushover analysis to closely approximate results from inelastic dynamic analysis. In recent years, different methods have been developed to overcome such limitation and their suitability has been checked with reference either to idealized building models or to geometrically simple tested structures. In this paper, suitability of one such method, proposed by Fajfar et al. [2005] Fajfar, P., Maru?i?, D. and Perus, I. 2005. Torsional effects in the pushover-based seismic analysis of buildings. Journal of Earthquake Engineering, 9(6): 831–854. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], is evaluated considering an existing school building which presents both vertical and plan irregularities. Types of irregularity encompass not only those usually considered by seismic codes but also those deriving from a bad conceptual design and construction inaccuracies, very frequent at the year of construction (1974). It is found that, even under such complex irregularity conditions, this ‘modified’ pushover analysis correlates well results from inelastic dynamic analysis almost up to failure, since, in most cases, its predictions of interstorey drifts and plastic rotations are conservatively close to values from inelastic dynamic analysis. Even failure mechanism, consisting of a floor mechanism at the third level, is correctly predicted, thus demonstrating adequacy of such method for actual framed structures.     

The Strange Case of Dr. Bucaille: Notes for a Re‐examination

The present essay focuses on the figure of Maurice Bucaille and on his contribution to the discourse on Islam and science. Its purpose is twofold. First of all, it aims to provide the reader with a concise map of the ideas of the French author, reconstructing their core and their interrelations. Furthermore, it aims to question what I define as “the apparent naivety” of Bucaille's work, a reason why he can sometimes be too easily dismissed, by pinpointing a number of original features of his intellectual activity. My argument is that Bucaille deserves more attention for two good reasons: firstly, because of the influence that he de facto exerts on Muslim societies, secondly, because of some highly specific characteristics of his discourse. Such features not only distinguish his contribution from analogous ones, but also give rise to interpretative questions, which have as yet been either overlooked or unsatisfactorily addressed. Closely connected to this thesis is the idea that Bucaille's work constitutes a good starting point for a discussion amongst scholars of different disciplines and from different cultural backgrounds. The first section reconstructs Bucaille's life and works. The second section focuses on his method and ideas regarding science. The third section is devoted to Bucaille's conclusions following his study of the Bible and the Qur'an, and therefore deals more closely with the core of his ideas. The fourth section covers Bucaille's complementary criticism of the theory of evolution. In the fifth section I examine the possible reasons behind the scant scholarly attention concerning Bucaille. In the final section I propose an interpretative model of Bucaille's figure conceived as a system of concentric spheres and I raise, for each one of them, several questions, which have so far been, in my view, insufficiently investigated, thus setting an agenda for further scholarly work.     

The tragedy of the commodity and the farce of AquAdvantage Salmon

The US Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve AquAdvantage Salmon as the first genetically modified animal for human consumption. The genetic modifications allow the proprietary fish to grow at a rate twice as fast as a wild salmon, leading to greater ‘efficiency’ in terms of reduced costs and reduced time to market. This article provides an analysis of the ways in which AquAdvantage Salmon exemplifies capitalist market forces controlling and guiding the terms of salmon recovery and conservation. The authors trace historical developments within the salmon industry to demonstrate how capitalist commodity production has impacted fishing communities. They reject the oft-cited ‘tragedy of the commons’ hypothesis offered to explain fisheries crises. In its place, they offer the conceptual framework of the ‘tragedy of the commodity’ to explore how capitalist market forces and complicit state regulations amplify rather than resolve global environmental problems.     

An X-ray Diffraction (XRD) and X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) investigation in human and animal fossil bones from Holocene to Middle Triassic

We examined by Rietveld refinement of X-ray Diffraction patterns a series of 61 human and animal fossil bones in an age range from present time to Middle Triassic (around 245 Ma). This approach, supplemented by elemental analysis according to X-ray Fluorescence, has permitted to obtain a quantitative evaluation of the mineralogical phases in the specimens, thus allowing to reconstruct the mineralization process involved. Concerning the apatite phase, after adopting a monoclinic geometry for the unit cell, the method permits to determine with fair degree of precision the unit cell volume, which is found to decrease in relatively short geological times as a function of the fluorine substitution process for the hydroxyl group –OH. After excluding the role of a high-temperature fire treatment to the bones, it is found that a certain linear correlation may exist over the geological time scale involved between the age of the specimen and the average crystallite size. This observation permits to use the XRD pattern as an evaluation of the age of the fossil, although the stratigraphic observations, where available, remain as the main reliable source for dating such biomaterials. The uncertainty related to this age estimation may be hardly better than 15–20% in absolute, because of various assumptions involved in the XRD methodology used and in the variability of the burial environment that may be subjected to discontinuous changes over the very long time of deposition.     

A generational attitude: young adults facing the economic crisis in Milan

Abstract

For almost 10 years there has been talk of the economic crisis affecting the European area, with more evident effects in the Mediterranean countries. Yet the expression ‘economic crisis’ has become too wide and blurred to be useful for describing how the current socio-economic conjuncture is affecting different categories of young people in different ways. Precariousness and reduced job opportunities, with their consequences for social mobility, constitute only the more explicit and raw evidence of the lived experience of the crisis among young people. Although families remain the all-solving institution, the consequences of the crisis are diversified according to the economic, cultural and social capital of each individual, to gender and generation position, and to subjective and contextualized perceptions. This article presents research conducted to investigate how young people living in the urban area of Milan locate, react, readapt and reinvent themselves in the present economic context by analysing their aspirations, expectations and practices. We develop a comparative analysis of the main structural bias (gender, education, social class position) in order to shed light on the effects and perceptions of the crisis among young people in the city of Milan.