L’Espressione del potere nella <i>Sulci</i> di età repubblicana: la cultura materiale

Il presente contributo vuole indagare il passaggio tra l’epoca punica e la successiva età romana, all’interno di un vano abitativo della città fenicia, punica e romana di Sulky (l’odierna Sant’Antioco) attraverso lo studio dell’instrumentum domesticum. In un sito dove i resti architettonici del periodo repubblicano e della precedente età punica sono molto rari, l’elemento materiale di origine e tradizione cartaginese viene rinvenuto in contesti relativi alla piena età romana repubblicana, come sintomo di un conservatorismo che caratterizza da sempre la città sulcitana

Ipogei sulcitani tra età punica e romana: la Tomba Steri 1

L’esplorazione della tomba ipogea in esame ha consentito di raccogliere una nutrita serie di dati riguardanti la ritualità funeraria di matrice punica in un arco cronologico compreso tra la fine del IV e il I secolo a.C. Ai dati concernenti le inumazioni entro feretri lignei si affianca l’evidenza materiale delle prime incinerazioni secondarie tipiche dell’età ellenistica. I corredi rinvenuti, attribuibili ad alcune delle 22 deposizioni individuate, mostrano da un lato l’aderenza delle produzioni vascolari ai repertori tipici degli orizzonti punico-ellenistici, dall’altro evidenziano la presenza di elementi solitamente poco documentati quali tracce di tessuti e oggetti lignei (bare, sandali)

Chapter Verso una storia dell’Abitare Virtuale. Dal Cyberspace a Second Life fino al Metaverso di Facebook e oltre

The 43rd UID conference, held in Genova, takes up the theme of ‘Dialogues’ as practice and debate on many fundamental topics in our social life, especially in these complex and not yet resolved times. The city of Genova offers the opportunity to ponder on the value of comparison and on the possibilities for the community, naturally focused on the aspects that concern us, as professors, researchers, disseminators of knowledge, or on all the possibile meanings of the discipline of representation and its dialogue with ‘others’, which we have broadly catalogued in three macro areas: History, Semiotics, Science / Technology. Therefore, “dialogue” as a profitable exchange based on a common language, without which it is impossible to comprehend and understand one another; and the graphic sign that connotes the conference is the precise transcription of this concept: the title ‘translated’ into signs, derived from the visual alphabet designed for the visual identity of the UID since 2017. There are many topics which refer to three macro sessions: - Witnessing (signs and history) - Communicating (signs and semiotics) - Experimenting (signs and sciences) Thanks to the different points of view, an exceptional resource of our disciplinary area, we want to try to outline the prevailing theoretical-operational synergies, the collaborative lines of an instrumental nature, the recent updates of the repertoires of images that attest and nourish the relations among representation, history, semiotics, sciences

Le Città fenicie di Sardegna: indagini stratigrafiche dall'insediamento di Sulky

This survey aims to provide a synthesis of acquisitions on Phoenician cities in Sardinia, through an in-depth study of relevant publications and a stratigraphical survey of a room located in the Sulky site, which is the most ancient Phoenician settlement discovered so far. The first section is dedicated to the pre-colonial age and to the differentiation of settlement methods, with a contrastive approach in the analysis of the latter and the coming of Levantine settlers. An analysis of Phoenician cities follows, schematized on a geographical basis, with particular attention for the Sulky area and the Sant'Antioco settlement. The second section focuses on unpublished data and the stratigraphical analysis of the area, through a dedicated study on the settlement phases which affected the "II G" environment. Data suggest a fundamental continuity of urban life in the Sulky area, which played a vital role since its pre-historical origin, flourishing as a trade and exchange hub, mostly during the Iron Age and the Archaic Period, and became a city, in the true sense of the word, during the VIII century B.C. Through stratigraphical excavations, which showed that the site was colonized and abandoned several times during the different ages, it was possible to understand and define several building techniques, reported with a diachronic approach, and to shed some light on the course of daily routines, through the analysis of the instrumentum domesticum

Optimal labor income taxation with perks

Incentive problems arise in many economic relationships, between workers and firms as well as between those agents and the fiscal authority. If it is well known, in fact, that labor contracts tying wages to performance may mitigate the efficiency costs from unobservable effort, it is also an empirical fact that real word contracts, and the incentives provided wherein, are more frequently based on some sort of non-monetary compensation – fringe benefits, or perks, as they are called. As a result, the fiscal authority is more often called to decide on the eligibility of those perquisite goods and, therefore, on their taxability. In spite of their diffusion, however, there is still little consensus among researchers on the reasons why perks should be provided, and what their effect on welfare might be. The standard explanation for perks usually relies on some form of agency problem. However, monitoring concerns are certainly less relevant when dealing with a fiscal authority, that, for the most part, may monitor the provision of perks better than the payment of cash. Motivated by the concerns about how fringe benefits may restrict the revenue collection problem and affect the redistribution of resources and incentives, this research aims at investigating the relationship between the provision of perks and i) the progressivity/regressivity of the optimal transfer-tax system, and ii) the top-income marginal tax rate. To the best of our knowledge, this thesis constitutes the first theoretical attempt to deal with the issue at hand. In fact, all existing papers that analytically study the moral hazard problem with perks, either focus on their effect on the effort responsiveness to monetary incentives, or they study the cash-perks substitutability in the optimal labor contract, absent any consideration for the insurance/incentive purposes of income taxation. To some extent, we also contribute to the literature on optimal taxation, by emphasizing the connection between the agents' responses to the fiscal system and the structure of the labor market. Methodologically, we investigate our research agenda by following two different approaches. In Chapter 2, we develop a static version of a standard stochastic Ramsey's problem with a representative agent and an utilitarian, resource-seeking government who takes the post of the principal and owner of the only firm in the economy. When designing the optimal rules for cash payment and perk provision, the government, who is constrained by his budget balance, takes into account the agent's unobservable reactions to the tax system, and set optimal taxes so as to provide either insurance and right incentives. In Chapter 3, however, we take an alternative perspective, and study a decentralized economy wherein an independent, self-interest firm retains full control of the provision of perks and wage payments, given the fiscal policy announced by the government. Our analysis aims at highlighting the existence of a trade-off between the opposite interests of the government and the employer, that will serve as a rationale for the characterization of the equilibrium marginal tax rate that we derive from a Nash non-cooperative interaction game between the fiscal authority and the agents in the labor market. Our analysis suggests that, whenever perks are efficiently provided, the government trades off progressivity for perk provision. Our main conclusion, in fact, is that the (centralized) second-best efficient taxation scheme with perks is more regressive compared to its perk-less equivalent. Notably, we also find that, whenever society's preferences for public expenditure and agents' risk aversion are sufficiently low, a regressive top-income marginal tax is also consistent with a positive provision of perks. In a numerical exercise, for example, we show that a marginal tax rate of 30% allows for either i) a positive provision of perks that accounts for 1.6% of the gross income (3.2% of the agent's wage), and ii) a per-capita public expenditure which is 7% of the top-brackets taxpayers' gross income (15% of their earnings). An equilibrium allocation without perks results, instead, for a 45% marginal tax rate. However, in spite of the ability of our theoretical framework to capture the relationship between risk aversion and efficient provision of perks, through their effect on the optimal trade-off between the insurance and incentive motives for taxation, our model has its weakness, as to regard its sensitiveness to the stochastic dominance properties of the probability distribution and the level of income in the economy. If, in the former case, deviations from the benchmark distribution are qualitatively important but quantitatively small, in the latter case, the quantitative implications of different income levels are quite important. A more precise calibration of the models and a better characterization of the results are left to future works

Considerazioni sulla pirateria e sulla corsa musulmana e cristiana all'epoca della conquista portoghese di Ceuta (1415)

In the years that preceded the Portuguese conquest of Ceuta (1415) frequent cases of piracy and privateering in the Western Mediterranean and in the Straits of Gibraltar created severe difficulties to sea traffic with the Western Maghreb and the Granada Emirate. Toe Aragonese merchant ships that traveled to Maghreb sea ports especially for gold supply were particu­larly hit by such assaults and robberies carried out by other Christian na­vies. Letters to the Aragonese sovereign, Fernando I, worriedly denounce this situation that might have destroyed the traffic completely. At the same time, taking into account other documents, we are led to presume that in this area and in this period Muslim piracy had a lesser impact. Hence rather than being aimed against Muslim piracy, the Portu­guese struggle against the "infidels" (as seen in Zurara chronicles, the "Crónica da tomada de Ceuta" and the "Crónica do Conde D. Pedro de Menezes ") seems to be mostly directed on one side toward the territorial conquest of the Maghrebian harbours and, therefore, toward controlling Muslim and Christian navigation in the Straits, and on the other side to­ward the destruction of Muslim commercial traffic through systematic attacks against Muslim ships.Dans les années qui précedent la conquête de Ceuta (1415) les nom­breux événements de piraterie et de course dans la Mediterranée occidenta­le et dans le Détroit de Gibilterre provoquaient une condition de grande difficulté pour les trafiques avec le Maghrib occidentale et l’Emirat de Grenade. Les vaisseaux aragonaises que commerciaient dans les ports maghrebins, surtout en or, sont particulièrement frappés par les assauts et les déprédements, les auteurs desquels étaient des autres marineries chré­tiennes. Lettres adressées au roi d' Aragon, Fernando I, dénoncent d'une façon très preoccupée, une telle action qui aurait pu porter aussi à la fin des mêmes trafics. En parallèle, autre genre de documentation fait penser que la piraterie musulmane n'avait pas eu, en cet endroit et en ce période, une égale inci­dence. Les ostilités portugaises contre “l’infidèle", (selon les chroniques de Zurara la "Crónica da tomada de Ceuta" et la "Crónica do Conde D. Pedro de Menezes "), plûtot que contre la piraterie musulmane semblent être adressées, d'une partie à la conquête territoriale de la ville maghrebine, et donc au controle de la navigation musulmane et chrétienne dans le Détroit, et d'autre partie à l'anéantissement des trafiques commerciaux des musul­manes avec des attaques constants et systémathiques de leurs navires

A “by-productless” cellulose foaming agent for use in imidazolium ionic liquids

Cellulose foams, or sponges, are produced from solutions in ionic liquids by the aqueous acid mediated decomposition of 1-alkyl-3- methylimidazolium-2-carboxylates, where the alkyl group and acid may be selected such that the by-product is the ionic liquid solvent: a by-productless foaming

Effect of hydraulic retention time on the electro-bioremediation of nitrate in saline groundwater

Bioelectrochemical systems (BES) have proven their capability to treat nitrate-contaminated saline groundwater and simultaneously recover value-added chemicals (such as disinfection products) within a circular economy-based approach. In this study, the effect of the hydraulic retention time (HRT) on nitrate and salinity removal, as well as on free chlorine production, was investigated in a 3-compartment BES working in galvanostatic mode with the perspective of process intensification and future scale-up. Reducing the HRT from 30.1 +/- 2.3 to 2.4 +/- 0.2 h led to a corresponding increase in nitrate removal rates (from 17 +/- 1 up to 131 +/- 1 mgNO3--N L-1d-1), although a progressive decrease in desalination efficiency (from 77 +/- 13 to 12 +/- 2 %) was observed. Nitrate concentration and salinity close to threshold limits indicated by the World Health Organization for drinking water, as well as significant chlorine production were achieved with an HRT of 4.9 +/- 0.4 h. At such HRT, specific energy consumption was low (6.8 center dot 10-2 +/- 0.3 center dot 10-2 kWh g-1NO3--Nremoved), considering that the supplied energy supports three processes simultaneously. A logarithmic equation correlated well with nitrate removal rates at the applied HRTs and may be used to predict BES behaviour with different HRTs. The bacterial community of the bio-cathode under galvanostatic mode was dominated by a few populations, including the genera Rhizobium, Bosea, Fontibacter and Gordonia. The results provide useful information for the scale-up of BES treating multi-contaminated groundwater