The contribution intends to retrace the history of Pavia’s famous equestrian statue, known as the “Regisole”, destroyed in 1796. The statue, in gilded bronze, represented a Roman emperor and was transferred from Rome to Ravenna, most likely by Theoderic. At a certain point, probably between the eighth and tenth centuries, the Regisole arrived in Pavia, even if it is difficult to establish…
Atacora mountain is a particular ecosystem of West Africa where soil degradation occurs. The present study assessed the impacts of physical soil degradation on vegetation in the Beninese portion of this mountain chain. Phytosociological surveys were carried out along line transects from plain to summit within 22 plots of 30 m x 30 m. Based on indicators of physical soil degradation each plot wa…
The building industry is a major consumer of natural resources and a large contributor to environmental degradation, leading to a need to rethink current building practices. Digital fabrication (Dfab) technologies, which transform design and engineering data into physical products, are gaining traction in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry. This study aimed to evaluat…
Architecture
In the early fourteenth century, a new fashion system appeared in Europe, one which was based on constant change and the privileging of the new. This paper argues that the new system did not appear simply as a response to consumer demand; it was also precipitated in part by two major technological innovations: the thirteenth-century development of the advanced broadloom, and the new tailoring t…
The objective of this paper is to assess the impact of public research expenditure on agricultural productivity in developed European countries. Our research provides original evidence, making possible a comparison with existing studies focused on United States of America (USA). We apply a fixed effects Gamma distributed-lag model to yearly data in 1970-2016 sourced from the United States Depar…
The concept of life satisfaction dates back to the Age of Enlightenment and became popular in the Nineteenth century as a synonym for ‘good life’. Efforts are still underway to overcome the traditional economic criteria of well-being by broadening the definition and measurement of life satisfaction based on a large set of indicators. Although ‘money cannot buy happiness’, the economic d…
This essay discusses the formation of “Italian travellers to Iran” as both a popular idea and scientific category. In the three decades after the Second World War, Italy and Iran were going through deep transformations and entered a phase of intense political, economic and cultural relations. In this context, scholarly interests and political agendas jointly contributed to a representation …
Near-surface atmospheric measurements over urban or industrial areas aimed at assisting the air-quality monitoring attain increasing societal significance due to the strong and direct impact of aerosol pollutions in the low troposphere on the human health. In this chapter, we present experimental results on lidar mapping of aerosol fields over the city of Sofia (Bulgaria), its suburbs and adjac…
In recent years archaeological investigation has made an important contribution for ascertaining the possible relationship between the center of the kingdom, namely the king and his capital city, and the regions at the core of the kingdom in different periods of Hittite history. The empire was not a monolithic entity but a complex web of interactions. In this frame the Hittite king emerges in h…