Obiettivo della ricerca presentata in questa tesi è la comprensione delle pratiche televisive convergenti degli adolescenti, a partire da una ricostruzione dei fattori che possono orientare i differenti atteggiamenti fruitivi. Al di là dell’adesione al mito dei “nativi digitali” come soggetti dotati di competenze e abilità superiori a quelle dei loro genitori appare infatti necessario studiare le esperienze crossplatform, contestualizzandole all’interno del set di opportunità e di vincoli, culturali, sociali e contestuali che strutturano la quotidianità dei ragazzi. L’importanza data ai molteplici fattori che, a diverso titolo, interagiscono nel modellare i consumi convergenti ha guidato l’intero processo di analisi dei risultati fin verso la definizione di uno sguardo interpretativo situazionale e multifattoriale, volto a interpretare la natura contingente e provvisoria degli equilibri su cui si reggono le differenti esperienze di consumo crossmediale. I dati descritti e analizzati sono frutto di un processo di ricerca etnografica che ha coinvolto adolescenti iscritti ai primi quattro anni della scuola secondaria di secondo grado e residenti in diverse province italiane. / The research presented in this thesis explores convergent television-related consumer practices of teenagers by mapping factors which potentially orient fruition patterns. The myth of “digital natives” as more skilled and resourceful than their parents does not suffice: it is necessary to study actual cross-platform experiences by contextualizing them within the sets of affordances and limitations (cultural, social and contextual) which structure the daily lives of teenagers. The centrality assigned to the many factors shaping convergent consumptions has driven the analysis towards the definition of a situational multi-factor interpretative view able to interpret the contingent and ephemeral nature of the balances underpinning convergent consumption experiences.

Questa tesi affronta il tema della trasformazione dell’identità maschile e del ruolo paterno, in relazione con il contesto lavorativo. La riflessione sull’identità maschile viene considerata entro la più ampia questione delle differenze di genere, attraverso il contributo dei men’s studies; il ruolo paterno viene studiato in relazione alla sfida della conciliazione tra famiglia e lavoro. La ricerca empirica condotta è quindi volta a studiare come la paternità è vissuta in relazione al ruolo professionale. Il fronte lavorativo viene indagato da una prospettiva specifica e particolare, ovvero quella aziendale. Dal punto di vista metodologico sono stati realizzati tre studi di caso aziendali, con metodo qualitativo, con interviste in profondità volte a cogliere sia la cultura aziendale in termini di supporto per i dipendenti sia l’esperienza concreta dei padri. La complessità che caratterizza il contesto odierno rende difficile scindere i diversi aspetti che costituiscono il sociale. Far convivere in modo armonioso i differenti ruoli è frutto di una capacità personale di riflettere sul contesto in cui ci si inserisce e sulle proprie azioni, in modo da gestire con abilità le sfide quotidiane. / This thesis addresses the issue of the male identity and father's role transformation, in relation to the work context. The reflection on male identity is considered within the broader question of gender differences, through the contribution of men's studies; the father's role is studied in relation to the challenge of the family and work reconciliation. The empirical research is aimed to investigate how fatherhood is experienced in relation to the professional role. The work context is investigated from a specific and particular perspective: the companies. Methodologically, 3 case studies have been carried out, using a qualitative research technique, aimed both to understand the corporate culture in terms of care for employees and the personal experience of fathers. The complexity that characterizes today's context makes it difficult to separate the different aspects that constitute the social world. The ability to harmoniously integrate the different roles comes from a personal capacity to reflect on the context and actions, in order to manage the daily challenges.

La ricerca rappresenta un'indagine qualitativa di carattere esplorativo in merito al tema dell’identità e delle rappresentazioni sociali dei bambini che vivono sulle strade di Nairobi (Kenya). Sono state messe in luce e analizzate le numerose rappresentazioni degli street children, tra cui quella spregiativa – chokora – elaborata dalla comunità locale, che li assimila a rifiuti) per far emergere quanto l’identità del bambino di strada possa essere compresa facendo riferimento al soggetto come a un prodotto di condizionamenti sociali e culturali o anche come entità potenzialmente capace, all’interno di una continuità narrativa, di elaborare riflessivamente la propria esperienza e di produrre attivamente nuovi significati e nuove forme sociali. Sotto il profilo metodologico sono state realizzate quarantanove interviste strutturate, dodici semistrutturate e sessantacinque in profondità a street dwellers, ex street boys, famigliari di street children, operatori di ONG e CBO, testimoni privilegiati e soggetti della comunità locale. Si è fatto inoltre uso della tecnica visuale del diario fotografico e dell’osservazione partecipante. La ricerca empirica ha messo in luce che l’identità degli street children si struttura su relazioni di appartenenza e di differenziazione. Le rappresentazioni sociali sono determinanti per il processo identitario degli street children, ma è possibile un margine di negoziazione della propria identità, alla luce della conversazione interiore, che consente una ristrutturazione attorno a un perno positivo del sé relazionale. Questo avviene quando la negoziazione dell’identità viene vissuta come un processo relazionale, guidato dalle premure fondamentali del soggetto e all’interno di relazioni fiduciarie che consentono una rappresentazione positiva del sé. / The research is a qualitative exploratory study on the identity and social representations of the children living on the streets of Nairobi (Kenya). A number of representations of street children are shown and analysed(including the one – chokora – elaborated by the local community that assimilates the children to garbage) to demonstrate how the identity of the street children may be understood making reference to the subject as the product of social and cultural conditioning or as an entity possibly able – within a narrative continuity – to elaborate reflexively his own experience and to actively produce new meanings and social forms. Methodologically, forty-nine structured, twelve semi-structure and sixty-five in depth interviews were carried out with street dwellers, ex street boys, family members of street children, NGOs and CBOs’ social workers, privileged witnesses and individuals from the local community. Moreover, a visual technique (photo diary) and participatory observation were used. The empirical research has shown that the identity of the street children is formed on the relations of belonging and differentiation. Furthermore, social representations are determinant for the identity process of the street children, but there is also room for one’s own identity negotiation, in the light of the internal conversation, that allows a restructuring of the relational self around a positive mainstay. This happens when the negotiation of the identity is experienced as a relational process, oriented by the ultimate concerns, within trustworthy relations, that allow a positive representation of the self.

La tesi esamina in che modo i complessi fenomeni della globalizzazione e della digitalizzazione contribuiscano a riscrivere la nozione di «sistema mediatico» in una chiave di superamento dei tradizionali confini nazionali. Se, infatti, per lungo tempo vi è stata una coincidenza tra i confini dei sistemi mediatici e quelli degli stati nazionali, è altresì evidente che la nascita di organismi sovranazionali e attori non statali e le relazioni transnazionali rese possibili dallo sviluppo dei media digitali hanno comportato un mutamento di paradigma. La ricerca si sofferma sui casi di Spagna e Italia, due Paesi appartenenti al cosiddetto “modello pluralista-polarizzato” (Hallin e Mancini, 2004) e che condividono diverse caratteristiche del sistema della comunicazione, nella convinzione che un’analisi comparativa incentrata su due sistemi simili (Przeworski e Teune, 1970) possa aiutare a evidenziare maggiormente le differenze tra i singoli casi. Entrambi i sistemi mediatici sono stati messi in relazione con i livelli di globalizzazione e digitalizzazione espressi dai principali indici di misurazione e sono stati indagati, secondo una prospettiva macro, sulla base di quattro dimensioni cruciali: l’internazionalizzazione della proprietà mediatica, la diffusione delle nuove tecnologie, la legislazione e i riferimenti sovranazionali in essa contenuti, i legami linguistici e la presenza di media ispanici e italici in altri Paesi del mondo. / The dissertation examines how globalization and digitalization concur to rewrite the notion of «media system» in overcoming national boundaries. For many years, in fact, there has been a coincidence between boundaries of media systems and those of national states; nowadays, the growth of supranational organizations, non-state actors and transnational relations made possible by the development of digital media led to a change of paradigm. The research dwells on cases of Spain and Italy, two countries that belong to the “pluralist-polarized model” (Hallin and Mancini, 2004) and that share some characteristics of communication system, in the belief that a comparative analysis focused on “most similar systems” (Przeworski and Teune, 1970) can help to highlight the difference between them. Both media systems have been related to globalization and digitalization degrees and analysed in a macro perspective according to four crucial dimensions: internationalization of media ownership, development of new technologies, supranational references in media laws, language legacies and diffusion of Hispanic and Italic media worldwide.

Il presente lavoro di tesi, realizzato su mandato della cooperativa C.T.A. di Milano, discute i risultati di una ricerca partecipativa realizzata per approfondire il percorso di ricerca delle origini da parte di persone adottate con adozione nazionale. Per la realizzazione della ricerca, in accordo con i principi dell’approccio partecipativo, sono stati coinvolti quattro esperti per esperienza -adulti adottati che hanno fatto esperienza di ricerca delle proprie origini- i quali, lavorando in gruppo insieme al ricercatore, hanno definito le domande di ricerca, valutato la scelta dello strumento per la raccolta dei dati, costruito la traccia dell’intervista e infine analizzato i dati raccolti. Dalle 16 interviste realizzate sono emersi risultati che evidenziano la complessità del percorso di ricerca delle origini: quali significati assume per le persone adottate, le modalità con cui avviene, da parte di chi le persone adottate si sentono supportate nel corso delle ricerche, il rapporto con la famiglia adottiva, con altre persone adottate, con i Tribunali per i Minorenni e con gli operatori sociali. Questi risultati forniscono numerosi elementi utili non solo per approfondire la conoscenza del fenomeno, ma anche per immaginare l’attivazione di forme di sostegno specifiche per coloro che necessitano di ricostruire il puzzle della propria storia. / This thesis, carried out under the mandate of CTA Milan, shows the results of a participatory research on the process of reconstruction of pre-adoptive history by Italian adult adoptees. According to the participatory model, four experts by experience were involved in a research group (steering group), and work in tandem with the researcher on all the research project. Integrating researcher’ s technical skills with experiential skills of co-researchers, we defined the research question and decided to use semi-structured interviews to collect data. Text analysis of the transcripts of the 16 interviews carried out, was also made in the steering group, according to the literature review and to the personal experience of co-researchers. The interviews analysis shows the whole complexity of the origins’ research process: what is the meaning of origins’ research in the view of adoptees; how Italian adoptees try to find the identity of their birth family; by whom they have been supported during this research process; the relationships with adoptive family, with other people who live adoptive experiences, with the Juvenile Court and social workers. With these results we could learn more about origins’ research and provide significant suggestions on how adopted people could be supported in their experience of research.

In the last decade nanotechnologies have greatly developed in many research ï¬ elds such as engineering, electronic, biological and many others. They can offer several possibilities to design tools, to create new techniques or improve the already existing ones, to discover innovative applications. And nanotechonology research is just at the beginning. One of the most interesting thing of this topic is the size of nanostructures. These materials are thousand times smaller than a cell and have a compatible size with proteins, enzymes and a lot of biological molecules. For this reason many research groups specialized in biotechnology started to invest people and resources in this new scientiï¬ c possibility. Following this very promising trend, BIOtech, a research group for biotechnology at the University of Trento, has proposed the Nanosmart project. Developed together with many prestigious institutes all over the world, this project aims to exploit the nanotechnology possibilities in biological research. The purpose of this challenge is the design, development and production of magnetic nanoparticles to use them in diagnostics and therapy of cancer disease. Magnetic nanoparticles (MNP) are spherical agglomerates of iron oxide, few tens of nanometers, which can be exploited in many ways. Being magnetic they can be used as contrast agents in magnetic resonance imaging MRI. Together having a high absorbing coefficient in the radio frequency band, they can locally increase the temperature of the tissues hosts and this being used for hyperthermia treatments. Entrapping some drugs in one of their multilayers, MNP can be used as inert carriers for drug delivery: due to their small size they can enter biological tissues, cross the plasma membrane of cells and release the drug only on predetermined targets. My Ph.D. started together with the project; so I had the possibility to follow this research from the beginning. In this years many problems have been handled, many errors have been made, many brilliant ideas have been shelved but also new abilities have been acquired, important collaborations were born and alternative structures have been thought and, fortunately, realized. Trying to eliminate unnecessary things and focusing on main purpose of this work, in this thesis I want to illustrate just the long â€œï¬ l rouge†that connects the idea of producing a nanoparticle that can cure tumor to the point of verify its effectiveness.

Insect brain is a very complex but at the same time small, simplified and accessible model with respect to the mammalian one. In neuroscience a huge number of works adopt drosophila as animal model, given its easiness of maintenance and, overall, of genetical manipulation. With such a model one can investigate many behavioral tasks and at the same time have access to a whole brain in vivo, with improved specificity and cellular resolution capabilities. Still, a remarkable goal would be to gain a precise control over the neural network, in order to fully manipulate specific areas of the brain, acting directly on network nodes of interest. This is possible thanks to optogenetics, a technique that exploits photosensitive molecules to modulate molecular events in living cells and neurons. At the same time, it is possible to perform a neuronal readout with light, exploiting calcium-based reporters; in this way, neuronal response investigation can gain in temporal and spatial resolution. This is an all-optical approach that brings many advantages in the neural network study and an insight in the functional connectivity of the system under investigation. We present here a setup that combines a two-photon imaging microscope, capable of in vivo imaging with a sub-cellular resolution and an excellent penetration depth down to hundreds of microns, with a diode laser optogenetic stimulation. With such a setup we investigate the drosophila brain in vivo, stimulating single units of the primary olfactory system (the so-called glomeruli, about 20 μm of diameter). By our knowledge this is one of the first time a similar all-optical approach is used in such an animal model: we confirm, in this way, the possibility to perform these experiments in vivo, with all the advantages coming from the improved accessibility of our model. Moreover, we present the results using a sample co-expressing GCaMP6 and ChR2-XXL, optimal performing sensor and actuator, largely exploited in the field for their high efficiency: these were rarely used in combination, since their spectral overlap, nevertheless we are able to show the feasibility of this combined approach, enabling to take advantage from the use of both these performing molecules. Finally, we will show different approaches of data analysis to infer relevant information about correlation and time response of different areas of the brain, that can give us hints in favor of some functional connectivity between olfactory subunits.

This thesis investigates two biological systems using atomistic modelling and molecular dynamics simulation. The work is focused on: (a) the study of the interaction between a segment of a DNA molecule and a functionalized surface; (b) the dynamical modelling of protein tau, an intrinsically disordered protein. We briefly describe here the two problems; for their detailed introduction we refer respectively to chapter DNA and chapter TAU. The interest in the study of the adsorption of DNA on functionalized surfaces is related to the considerable effort that in recent years has been devoted in developing technologies for faster and cheaper genome sequencing. In order to sequence a DNA molecule, it has to be extracted from the cell where it is stored (e.g. the blood cells). As a consequence any genomic analysis requires a purification process in order to remove from the DNA molecule proteins, lipids and any other contaminants. The extraction and purification of DNA from biological samples is hence the first step towards an efficient and cheap genome sequencing. Using the chemical and physical properties of DNA it is possible to generate an attractive interaction between this macromolecule and a properly treated surface. Once positioned on the surface, the DNA can be more easily purified. In this work we set up a detailed molecular model of DNA interacting with a surface functionalized with amino silanes. The intent is to investigate the free energy of adsorption of small DNA oligomers as a function of the pH and ionic strength of the solution. The tau protein belongs to the category of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins (IDP), which in their native state do not have an average stable structure and fluctuate between many conformations. In its physiological state, tau protein helps nucleating and stabilizing the microtubules in the axons of the neurons. On the other hand, the same tau - in a pathological aggregation - is involved in the development of the Alzheimer disease. IDPs do not have a definite 3D structure, therefore their dynamical simulation cannot start from a known list of atomistic positions, like a protein data bank file. We first introduce a procedure to find an initial dynamical state for a generic IDP, and we apply it to the tau protein. We then analyze the dynamical properties of tau, like the propensity of residues to form temporary secondary structures like beta-sheets or alpha-helices.

In this work we apply simulation techniques, namely Monte Carlo simulations and a path integral based method called Dominant Reaction Pathways (DRP) approach, in order to study aspects of dynamics and thermodynamics in three different families of peculiar proteins. These proteins are, for reasons such as the presence of an intermediate state in the folding path or topological constraints or large size, different from ideal systems, as may be considered small globular proteins that fold in a two state manner. The first treated topic is represented by the colicin immunity proteins IM9 and IM7, very similar in structure but with an apparently different folding mechanism. Our simulations suggest that the two proteins should fold with a similar folding mechanism via a populated on-pathway intermediate state. Then, two classes of pheromones that live in temperate and arctic water respectively are investigated. The two types of pheromones, despite the high structural similarity, show a different thermodynamic behavior, that could be explained, according to our results, by considering the role played by the location of CYS-CYS bonds along the chain. Finally, the conformational changes occurring in serpin proteins are studied. The serpins are very flexible, with a large size, more than 350 residues, and slow dynamics, from hours to weeks, completely beyond the possibilities of the simulation techniques to date. In this thesis we present the first all-atom simulations, obtained with the DRP approach, of the mechanism related to serpins and a complete characterization of the serpin dynamics is performed. Moreover, important implications for what concerns medical research field, in particular in drug design, are drown from this detailed analysis.

La tesi ha l'obiettivo di comprendere quale sistema di nuovi valori, aspirazioni e norme sociali, rispetto all'ideologia delle sfere separate, orienta l'agire di neogenitori in coppie dual precarious e con quali conseguenze dal punto di vista soggettivo, tanto nella quotidianità quanto lungo il corso biografico. Il lavoro di ricerca adotta un approccio sociologico di tipo interpretativo e si articola su tre fuochi di analisi specifici: gli assetti culturali e normativi influenti nei processi di sense-making tra famiglia e lavoro, le pratiche quotidiane di boundary-work fra gli ambiti di vita e i processi decisionali lungo le esperienze biografiche. La tesi fa luce su come i meccanismi, allo stesso tempo pratici e culturali, collocati in contesti familiari, strutturali e culturali specifici, concorrano, talvolta in modo conflittuale e talvolta attraverso taciti processi di adattamento, ad innovare e, per altri versi, a riprodurre i modelli egemoni di conciliazione famiglia-lavoro.