The Alpine region is a sensitive area to air pollution, as it presents specific characteristics, which expose it to a greater environmental burden with respect to flat areas. During the last decades, the scientific community has developed many different modeling tools to tackle the problem of air pollution. This issue demands at least three distinct procedures: the modeling of the meteorological fields, the modeling of the transport and dispersion of the pollutants and the modeling of the emitting sources. Each of these procedures performs differently across different space and time scales and carries its own strengths and weaknesses, which affect results in terms of pollutant dispersion patterns. The present work focuses on testing and improving different modeling tools at a local scale, over very complex topography, where most of them are brought to work at the limit of their applicability, but they are still the best available tools to face the problem. Different case studies are used in this research in order to evaluate strengths and deficiencies of the models and, where possible, to improve their performance. The experimental datasets used for this purpose come from both previously performed field campaigns and specifically designed campaigns, including meteorological and air quality observations. The performance of Land Surface Models within the Weather Research and Forecasting Model is evaluated and improved, focusing on their ability in reproducing near-ground variables, with specific attention to the frequent ground thermal inversion occurring in the mountainous areas. The performance of dispersion models recommended for applications over complex terrain is also tested and their results are compared with unique measurements (PM10 vertical profiles and tracer gas ground concentration), under challenging wintertime conditions. Atmospheric turbulence parameterizations are also analyzed, in order to understand their role and effects in a modeling chain for dispersion assessment purposes.

As it was established in its origins, the compositional form of the bolero consists of 32 measures divided into two sections of 16 measures. The melodies incorporate sequences of melodic lines that are usually 4 measures long and are easily accessible, helping students to practice musical memory and stimulating their ear-training development. The poetry in Spanish gives the student the opportunity to be trained to sing pure vowels that are essential for the unification of the registers and the development of a healthy singing technique. This dissertation discusses the teaching the Latin American bolero genre to undergraduate mezzo-sopranos, combining it with the bel canto approach, as found in four elements from the method of the famous pedagogue, Manuel Garcia (1805-1906). These four elements are the clean onset or coup de la glotte, the unification of the registers, legato, and expressive devices or bel canto idioms like timbre and tempo rubato. The guidelines used to choose the repertoire are range, tessitura, simple meter and rhythm, tonal melodic lines, and piece duration. The boleros chosen for this study are "Solamente una vez" by Agustín Lara (1897-1970), "La gloria eres tú" by José Antonio Méndez (1927-1989), "Bésame mucho" by Consuelo Velázquez (1916-2005), "Aquellos ojos verdes" by Nilo Menéndez (1902-1987), "La mentira" by Álvaro Carrillo (1921-1969), "Tú me acostumbraste" by Frank Domínguez (1927-2014), "Alma mía," and "Así" by María Grever (1885-1951).

Mezzo-soprano roles in French opera at the end of the nineteenth century were fatalistic; that is, the y inevitably bring about min or death. This thesis studies three mezzo-soprano roles in French Romantic opera from a performer's perspective: Carmen in Georges Bizet's Carmen, Dalila in Camille Saint-Sans' Samson et Dalila and Charlotte in Jules Massenet's Werther. These three characters cause the min of three romantic heroes all performed by tenors. What are the new narrative and dramatic functions of mezzo-sopranos in French opera at the end of the nineteenth century? As a performer, it is important to understand one's voice-type, the roles that are generally attributed to it, and the impact they have on dramatic and musical representation. This short analysis will help young performers in their approach to a character in order to have a better comprehension of aIl the dimensions and subtleties that are related to it. / Les rles des mezzo-sopranos dans l'opra franais de la fin du 19ime sicle sont trs fatalistes, c'est--dire qu'ils entranent invitablement la ruine, la mort. Ainsi, dans une perspective d'interprte, cette thse se penche sur trois rles fminins de mezzosoprano de l'opra franais romantique la fin du 19ime sicle : Carmen dans l'opra du mme titre de Georges Bizet, Dalila dans Samson et DWa de Camille Saint-Sans ainsi que Charlotte dans Werther de Jules Massenet. Ces trois personnages occasionnent la perte de trois hros romantiques tous interprts par des tnors. En ce sens, quelles sont les nouvelles fonctions narratives et dramatiques des mezzo-sopranos dans l'opra franais du 19ime sicle? En tant qu'interprte, il est important de bien comprendre notre type de voix, les rles qui lui sont gnralement attribus, l'impact de ceux-ci dans les histoires opratiques et dans leur reprsentation musicale. Cette courte analyse permettra de jeunes interprtes de les guider, de les aider dans leur approche d'un personnage et de mieux comprendre toutes les dimensions et les subtilits qui s'y rattachent.

On fair-weather summer days an intense southerly lake breeze blows across the northern shorelines of Lake Garda (Italy). This wind, known as Ora del Garda, arises regularly in the late morning, and then channels northward into the adjacent Sarca Valley and Lakes Valley, coupling with the local up-valley flow. In the early afternoon, after flowing over an elevated (~400 m high) saddle, the Ora del Garda wind breaks into the Adige Valley north of Trento city; there it flows down on the valley floor, interacting with the local up-valley wind and creating a strongly turbulent flow. The characteristic diurnal cycle of surface meteorological variables determined by the lake-valley coupled circulation is rather well-known, on the basis of climatological analyses of data from surface automatic weather stations operated in the area by local institutions; on the contrary, the valley upper atmosphere structure, i.e. the structure of the atmospheric boundary-layer (ABL), associated with the Ora del Garda development has not yet been investigated. Indeed, in such a complex terrain area, the characterization of the typical structure, spatial variation and depth of the ABL, as well as a sound knowledge of local atmospheric circulation patterns, are of crucial importance for the understanding of the local climate and of air pollution transport and dispersion processes. To meet this lack of knowledge, a series of targeted measurement campaigns, including both intensive surface observations and research flights, were carried out by the Atmospheric Physics Group of the University of Trento in the study area between 1998 and 2001, providing the database for the present work. Five flights of an instrumented motorglider explored specific sections of the valley atmosphere, namely at Lake Garda’s shoreline, in the lower Sarca Valley, in the Lakes Valley, and where the Ora del Garda and the Adige Valley up-valley flow interact. Position, pressure, temperature and relative humidity were measured along spiralling trajectories performed over the above mentioned target areas. Surface observations from a number of weather stations disseminated along the valley floor provided a picture of the diurnal cycles of meteorological quantities determined at the surface by the development of the investigated wind on the flight days. The preliminary processing of the experimental dataset included the application of a suitable procedure to correct airborne temperature data for the time-delay effect induced by the slow-response behavior of the sensor, and required the determination of a proper time constant. The dominant vertical structure of the valley ABL was then deciphered on the basis of vertical “pseudo-soundings” (i.e. mean vertical profiles) of potential temperature and water vapour mixing ratio extracted from airborne data. Shallow mixed layers, surmounted by deeper stable layers, likely to be produced by local subsidence associated with up-slope flows, were detected up-valley. This characteristic pattern is indeed in good accord with ABL structures typically observed in deep Alpine valleys in connection with up-valley winds, as reported in the literature. On the other hand, closer to the lake the potential temperature profile was typically stabilized down to lower heights, due to the onshore advection of colder air from above the water surface. A residual kriging (RK) technique was adopted to map potential temperature fields over 3D high-resolution grids for each explored section of the valley atmosphere, integrating both surface and airborne observations. Exploiting a test-bed database, RK method was preliminarly tested against the interpolation methods commonly used in the literature for mapping airborne data, namely inverse distance, inverse squared distance and natural neighbor methods. The predictive performance of the different methods was assessed by means of a cross-validation procedure, and a critical comparison of the different interpolation results was carried out. Finally, RK resulted the best-performing technique for the specific application. RK-interpolated fields revealed fine-scale local features of the complex ABL thermal structures determined by the Ora del Garda in the study area valleys, revealing at the same time macroscopic features of the thermo-topographically driven wind field, mainly amenable to irregular topography and land cover heterogeneities. In particular, a non-homogeneous penetration of the lake-breeze front across the flat basin facing Lake Garda was detected in the morning, while in the afternoon the presence of a sharp discontinuity in the upper-level vertical stratification, originated by updrafts and downdrafts associated with the lake breeze circulation, was observed. Moreover, a strongly asymmetric potential temperature field, resulting from the contrast between the stable core of the Ora del Garda up-valley flow and an intense up-slope flow layer developing along a bare-rock valley sidewall, was detected in the area of Cavedine Lake in the Lakes Valley. Further up-valley, RK-interpolated fields displayed a thermal structure compatible with the occurrence of a single-cell cross-valley circulation, likely to be originated by asymmetric solar irradiation and by the local valley curvature. The valley curvature was also found to induce a preferential channeling of the up-valley flow along the northwestern sidewall at the valley end, in proximity of the elevated saddle from where the Ora del Garda overflows into the underlying Adige Valley, giving origin to an anomalous, strong katabatic wind that hinders the regular development of the local up-valley wind in the area north of Trento. Here the westerly inflow from the Lakes Valley feeds a denser wedge of potentially cooler air, which forces the local up-valley (i.e. southerly) wind to flow over it. Regridded potential temperature fields provided further insight into this flow pattern, revealing the occurrence in the area of a hydraulic jump structure, due to the blocking exerted on the flow by the eastern Adige Valley sidewall. This induced a pronounced deepening of the local mixed layer, which was likely produced by the highly-turbulent flow conditions that usually develop here following the Ora del Garda outbreak.

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American mezzo-soprano, Beverly Wolff has not received the credit or respect that she deserves in operatic history. Her career began in 1952 and flourished until her retirement from the stage in 1981. Her intense characterizations, innate musicianship, and intelligence made her one of the most sought-after performers from the 1950s to the 1970s. For thirty years, she worked with some of the operatic world’s finest musicians, including Leonard Bernstein, Gian-Carlo Menotti, Samuel Barber, Ned Rorem, Beverly Sills, Norman Triegle, Placido Domingo, among others. She was represented by Columbia Artists Management Inc (CAMI), one of New York’s oldest and most prestigious management companies, and maintained an active performance schedule that often included operatic, concert, and recital performances in the same week. She trained at the American Vocal Academy in Philadelphia and was inducted into its Hall of Fame. She performed in New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, New Orleans, and Atlanta and was an active member of the New York City Opera, Handel Society, Tanglewood, and the Handel Society of Washington, D.C. Wolff is credited with over sixty recordings. She also appeared on several of NBC’s live operatic programs, which brought opera to the masses. Perhaps most importantly, she created and debuted several important roles in American opera. Few have heard of her; the purpose of this document is to fill in this gap in operatic history, and to clarify and correct misinformation about her. In this document, I will answer the following questions: What determines a performer’s worth? What secures a performer’s place in history? Finally, and more specifically, what imprints did Beverly Wolff leave for posterity?

Studiens syfte är att undersöka väntetiden som lärarna ger eleverna samt ifall det är mer öppna eller slutna frågor som förekommer under genomgångar i svenskundervisningen. Teorin som ligger till grund för studien är den sociokulturella och begreppet stöttning kategoriseras i instrumentell stöttning och emotionell stöttning. Stöttningen grupperas på tre olika nivåer, makro-,meso- och mikronivå. Nivåerna beror på hur planerad väntetiden är. Metoden som valdes för att samla in materialet var observationer av genomgångar i svenskundervisningen och sedan intervjuer med de observerade lärarna. Det är fem lärare som har deltagit i studien och samtliga är behöriga och undervisar i svenska på lågstadiet. Det insamlade materialet har bearbetats och analyserats utifrån en kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Studiens frågeställningar har varit de kategorierna som analyserats och sedan har mönster och nyckelord utifrån stöttning och nivåerna sammanställts. Resultatet visar att det var varierande användning av öppna och slutna frågor. Det visar sig att av 25 frågor har åtta frågor väntetid över den rekommenderade tiden på tre sekunder. I intervjuerna framkommer det att alla lärare är medvetna om väntetid och hur långväntetiden minimalt bör vara. Lärarna berättade att genom ett accepterande klassrum med hänsyn för varandra skapas förutsättningar för att ge väntetid. Det finns enligt lärarna fördelar men även nackdelar gällande väntetid som framförs i studien.

In this work, various topics regarding (urban) boundary simulations for a city situated in the alps will be discussed. First of all, we will present novel parameterization adopted to take into account the effect of mitigation strategies, such as rooftop Photovoltaic Panels and Green Roofs, on the urban environment, and their effect on average temperature and energy consumption by buildings. Secondly, a new turbulence closure, that adopts a diagnostic equation for dissipation rate, and then independent on mixing length scales, will be introduced. The new turbulence closure, implemented into the WRF model, has been coupled with multi-layer urban parameterization schemes and compared with high-resolution CFD and LES simulations.