Le musiche “popolaresche” urbane, in genere trascurate nella letteratura etnomusicologica, sono state quasi completamente ignorate nel caso della Romania. Il presente studio si propone di colmare almeno in parte questa lacuna, indagando questo fenomeno musicale nella Bucarest degli anni Trenta e Quaranta del Novecento. Le musiche esaminate sono tuttavia inserite entro una cornice storica più ampia, che data a partire dalla fine del XVIII secolo, e messe in relazione con alcune produzioni di origine rurale che con queste hanno uno stretto rapporto. Il caso di Maria Lătărețu (1911-1972) si è rivelato particolarmente fecondo in questo senso, dal momento che la cantante apparteneva ad entrambi i versanti musicali, rurale e urbano, e nepadroneggiava con disinvoltura i rispettivi repertori. Dopo il suo trasferimento nella capitale, negli anni Trenta, è diventata una delle figure di maggior spicco di quel fenomeno noto come muzică populară (creazione musicale eminentemente urbana e borghese con radici però nel mondo delle musiche rurali). L’analisi del repertorio (o, per meglio dire, dei due repertori) della Lătărețu, anche nel confronto con repertori limitrofi, ha permesso di comprendere più da vicino alcuni dei meccanismi musicali alla base di questa creazione. Un genere musicale che non nasce dal nulla nel dopo-guerra, ma piuttosto continua una tradizione di musica urbana, caratterizzata in senso locale, ma influenzata dal modello della canzone europea occidentale, che data almeno dagli inizi del Novecento. Attraverso procedimenti in parte già collaudati da compositori colti che sin dal XIX secolo, in Romania come altrove, si erano cimentati con la creazione di melodie in stile popolare o nell’armonizzazione di musiche di provenienza contadina, le melodie rurali nel bagaglio della cantante venivano trasformate in qualcosa di inedito. Una trasformazione che, come viene dimostrato efficacemente nell’ultimo capitolo, non investe solo il livello superficiale, ma coinvolge in modo profondo la sintassi musicale. / Urban folk music, generally neglected by the ethnomusicological literature, has been almost completely ignored in the case of Romania. This essay partially tries to plug this gap, inquiring the phenomenon in Bucharest during the Thirties and the Forties of the 20th century. The music analyzed is inserted into a wider historical frame which begins with the end of the 18th century and compared with some rural repertoires deeply connected with it. The case of Maria Lătărețu (1911-1972) is very interesting by this point of view, because the singer belonged to both the musical contexts, rural as well as urban, and practiced the respective repertoires with great skill. After her move in the capital, by the ending of the Thirties, she became a protagonist in the world of the so called muzică populară, a typical urban and bourgeois creation yet with deep roots in the rural music. The analysis of her repertoire (or better, of her two repertoires), compared with some neighbouring repertoires as well, makes us better understand some musical processes which are crucial in this creation. We are talking about a musical genre that carries on an urban music tradition, with local features but influenced by the model of the western European song, which was born at least in the early 20th century. Through processes partially well-tested by some composers who created folk-style melodies or harmonized rural songs starting with the 19th century, in Romania as well as elsewhere, peasant melodies belonging to by Maria Lătărețu’s repertoire were transformed in something completely different. As it’s well shown in the last chapter, we are talking about a kind of transformation that involves in a deep way the musical syntax, not only the superficial level.

Il nostro lavoro è incentrato su Filosofia dell’ineguaglianza, acceso libello di filosofia sociale in forma epistolare, composto da Nikolaj Berdjaev all’inizio del 1918. Nelle quattordici veementi lettere che costituiscono l’opera, egli critica aspramente l’idea di eguaglianza sociale e metafisica propagandata dai rivoluzionari, schierandosi a favore dell’ineguaglianza gerarchica, da lui considerata l’unica garanzia della libertà e della statura teantropica dell’uomo. Abbiamo suddiviso la nostra indagine in tre parti: il primo capitolo è un’introduzione storico-filosofica al testo, in cui sono evidenziati i concetti fondamentali del pensiero del Nostro; nel secondo capitolo abbiamo messo in luce il legame tra lo “stile filosofico” di Berdjaev e la cultura religiosa a cui egli appartiene, riflettendo poi sui problemi traduttivi che ne derivano; in particolare ci siamo soffermati sull’aforisticità del suo pensiero e sullo spiccato afflato emotivo che pervade la sua esposizione. Infine, abbiamo incluso nel terzo capitolo la traduzione di quattro lettere (Sulla rivoluzione, Sui fondamenti ontologico-religiosi della socialità, Sullo Stato, Sul regno di Dio) e della postfazione aggiunta da Berdjaev a Berlino nel 1923, in occasione della pubblicazione del libro. / This study deals with Nikolaj Berdjaev’s book The philosophy of inequality, written by the thinker at the beginning of 1918, immediately after the Russian Revolution. In the fourteen vehement letters that compose this work, Berdjaev harshly criticizes the idea of social and metaphysical equality promoted by the revolutionaries since he believes that only hierarchical inequality protects man’s freedom and his theandric nature from chaos. We divided our work into three parts: in the first chapter we have given a historical, cultural and philosophical introduction to the book, highlighting the basic concepts of Berdjaev’s thought. In the second chapter we have attempted to clarify the relation between Berdjaev’s “philosophical style” and the religious culture to which he belongs, and then we have drawn attention on the translation problems caused by this relation. Particular emphasis was placed on the aphoristic style of the philosopher and on his use of emotionally charged images and expression. Finally, the third chapter features the translation of four letters (About Russian Revolution, About ontological and religious grounds of sociality, About the State, About Kingdom of God) and of the afterword added by Berdjaev in 1923 in Berlin, on the occasion of the publication of The philosophy of inequality.

Spreadsheets for critical applications, such as financial reporting, are widely created and used by many people with no expertise in programming or software development. It is well known, however, that creating spreadsheets is an error-prone process. Several methodologies have been designed to reduce these errors. In this thesis we characterise the patterns and functional relationships among the formula cells and the corresponding data cells that commonly occur in spreadsheets, and show how the patterns occurring in a given sheet can be generalised to produce a template structure representing the family of spreadsheets of which the given sheet is a member. Finally, we show how this generalisation can be translated into an L-sheets program from which instances of this family can be generated.

No description available.

This study was designed to investigate what factors influence the motivation of engineering university students in province Sindh of Pakistan to learn English. In particular the study attempted to examine the shifting role of integrative motivation in Pakistan by looking at motivational change in these students over the period from the start to the end of the English language course at the university. To investigate these factors, I adopted a longitudinal quantitative and qualitative approach. The data were collected from the whole cohort of students who enrolled to take the English language course at university (N=541). They completed questionnaires at two points (1) at the start of the English language course and (2) at the end of the English language course. In order to have further illustrative insights some students (N=15) were interviewed at the beginning and at the end of the English language course. The questionnaires and interview tools used in this study attempted to measure students’ responses on 7 motivational factors (1) Instrumental Motivation (2) Integrative Motivation (3) Parental Encouragement (4) English course specific motivational components (5) English Teacher specific motivational components (6) English class and use anxiety and (7) Identity and English learning. The background questions explored students’ views on English learning experiences before coming to the university and students’ perceptions of their English learning at university after English language course. The results indicate that of the multiple factors that motivate students to learn English, the first among them is integrative motivation to become part of Pakistani community and the Engineering community whose members speak English. The instrumental motivation is for passing exams, raising status in society or to be successful engineer. The perceptions show that parents, grandparents and English teachers play a vital role in this process. The longitudinal nature of the study allowed a picture of motivation that changes with the passage of time to emerge. At the beginning of English language course the students were not confident about their English from their past experience, but were nonetheless motivated to learn English. The students’ attitude to the University English course is positive because they find the tasks in it relevant and interesting. At the end of the English language course the students felt that their confidence had increased and their anxiety had decreased. The background data show that the students come from a range of backgrounds including public and private English and vernacular medium schools and urban and rural areas of Sindh and because of this they have different learning experiences and levels of success with English. At the end of the course, all of them felt positive about learning English in order to become part of the professional community of Engineers, both in Pakistan and internationally. This suggests that the English language course at University has an equalizing effect and the students’ confidence in the English course and positive expectation to achieve their task of learning English raised their awareness of the progress they were making in learning English.

This thesis comprises of three stand-alone papers. The first paper exploits a natural experiment in Argentina to analyse what happens to maternal labour outcomes when there is an abrupt change in free public preschool provision. Using household survey data, the instrumental variable estimate shows that mothers work on average 9 hours more per week because her child is attending preschool. On the other hand, mothers for whom the access to public childcare was reduced did not change their labour supply, suggesting a shift in the mode of childcare from formal to informal. The main goal of the second paper is to measure the effect of observable individual characteristics on the whole conditional distribution of performances. Quantile regression methods are shown to provide a flexible framework to model the interactions between observed and unobserved factors, which are the source of non-homogeneous effects on performance that alter its conditional distribution in subtle ways improperly summarised by mean OLS based methods. Using a database of students at public universities in Argentina, the empirical results strongly suggest the presence of heterogeneous effects, which leaves room to question whether relevant factors like parental education or secondary school type are stronger or weaker for certain individuals. The third paper examines the role of labour market conditions on youth schooling behaviour using discrete time proportional hazards models. The findings show that, as predicted by human capital theory, labour demand has a significant effect on the hazard rate for dropping out of school. However, the results only hold for young males but not for females. The paper also tests whether each student’s hazard rate for leaving school without completion changes autonomously over time. Using a non-parametric specification, the results indicate that the risk of dropout is increasing over time for both males and females.

Relationships of trust are increasingly considered central to the provision of welfare services. This thesis undertakes an empirical exploration of trust within a key welfare field - early years education and care. While trust is often identified as a key dimension when parents use preschool provision, a rigorous investigation of trust - its meaning, its production and its complexity – is lacking. The thesis has in addition a subsidiary focus. Empirical research into trust in welfare services has not adequately addressed organisational form or behaviour as a location of trust production. Within the study there is, therefore, a particular enquiry into trust at the organisational level. Empirical investigation was undertaken through in-depth interviews with parents and managers across diverse preschool organisations. The thesis identifies how parents gave prominence to their own critical determination of the trustworthiness of provision, derived from information collected from multiple sources. Parents did not, as some theorists propose, undertake a calculation of the extrinsic constraints and incentives upon providers’ behaviours. Instead they constructed an inductive portrait of workers’ competence and benevolence through both conscious deliberation and less conscious intuitive reasoning. Such trust construction was framed by parents’ interpretations of care, quality and risk, and mediated by barriers to information which they might face. At the organisational level, a priori features such as organisational form or sector had little effect on trust; of significance instead were trust-producing behaviours, such as transparency, and trust-reducing behaviours, such as staff turnover. The thesis makes an original theoretical contribution by developing explanations of parents’ trust in preschool provision, by linking such explanations to literature on care and on intuitive reasoning, and by adding to the general stock of theory around trust. It also carries implications for policy and practice. There is little support for concerns that contemporary welfare service reform may undermine trust: regulatory systems provided a useful underpinning for trust; market-based provision – as long as any monetary exchange was sensitively handled - was not antithetical to parents’ construction of trust. The thesis nonetheless identifies benefit in provision through an integrated centre, where parents developed trust over time prior to use of preschool provision. Such a process was especially helpful to parents who faced disadvantage.

Gli scavi effettuati a Classe, a sud di Ravenna, presso i siti archeologici dell'area portuale e della Basilica di San Severo, hanno portato alla luce un numero abbondante di moneta, 2564 dall'area portuale e 224 dalla basilica, un totale di 2788 reperti monetali, di cui solo 863 sono leggibili e databili. La datazione dei materiali dell’area portuale, fondata agli inizi del V secolo, parte dal II secolo a.C. fino all’VIII secolo d.C.. La maggior parte dei reperti è relativa al periodo tra il IV e il VII secolo, il momento di massima importanza del porto commerciale, con testimonianza di scambi con altri porti del bacino mediterraneo, in particolare con l’Africa del Nord e il Vicino Oriente. La documentazione proveniente dalla Basilica di San Severo, fondata alla fine del VI secolo per la custodia delle reliquie del santo, mostra un trend diverso dal precedente, con monetazione che copre un arco cronologico dal I secolo a.C. fino al XIV secolo d.C.. La continuità dell’insediamento è dimostrato dall’evidenza numismatica, seppur scarsa, fino alla costruzione del monastero a sud della basilica, l’area dalla quale provengono la maggior parte delle monete. I quantitativi importanti di monetazione tardoantica, ostrogota e bizantina, in particolare di tipi specifici come il Felix Ravenna, ipoteticamente coniato a Roma, oppure il ½ e il 1/4 di follis di produzione saloniana emesso da Giustiniano I, hanno concesso uno studio dettagliato per quello che riguarda il peso, le dimensioni e lo stile di produzione di queste emissioni. Questi dati e la loro distribuizione sul territorio ha suggerito nuove ipotesi per quello che riguarda la produzione di questi due tipi presso la zecca di Ravenna. Un altro dato importante è il rinvenimento di emissioni di Costantino VIII, alcune rare e altre sconosciute, rinvenute solo nel territorio limitrofo a Classe e Ravenna. / The excavations carried out in Classe, South of Ravenna, at the sites of the harbour area and the nearby Basilica of S. Severo, have brought to light a large amount of coins, 2564 from the commercial harbour and 224 from the Basilica, a total of 2788 specimens of which only 863 are legible and can be dated, however still providing some important information. The dating of the numismatic evidence from the harbour area, that was founded in the early 5th century, ranges from 2nd century BC to late 8th century AD. Most of the finds date from the 4th to the 7th century AD, the most important period for the harbour, with evidence of trade with other areas of the Mediterranean basin, particularly with North Africa and the Near East. The evidence of the Basilica of San Severo, founded in the late 6th century for the safekeeping of the saint relics, shows a quite different pattern, with a chronological span that ranges from the 1st century BC to the 14th century AD. The occupation of the site is continuous but the numismatic evidence is scarce, until the building of the monastery South of the Basilica, the area from which most of the coins were retrieved. The large amounts of late antique, Ostrogothic and Byzantine coinage, particularly certain specific types, like the Felix Ravenna, hypothetically minted in Rome, or ½ and ¼ follis Salona emissions of Justinian I, have allowed some in-depth analysis, specifically related to weight, size and style. This type of data, as well as the pattern of distribution, have allowed to suggest new hypothesis about their production at the mint of Ravenna. Also important is the finding of coinage of Constantine VIII, rare and unknown emissions found only in the neighbourhood of Classe and Ravenna.

La dissertazione si articola attorno all’idea di tradizione e alla concettualizzazione di genere nella musica di villaggio dei Banyoro e dei Batooro dell’Uganda occidentale. Il lavoro si sviluppa nel complesso in tre parti principali. Nella prima si presentano le trasformazioni storiche intervenute nelle relazioni di genere dal periodo precoloniale al presente e si introduce la musica di villaggio delle popolazioni considerate, ponendola a confronto con la musica di corte e con quella religiosa. La seconda sezione è dedicata allo studio dei repertori vocali e di danza di villaggio, a partire dalla documentazione realizzata con informatori anziani: di queste musiche sono considerate le caratteristiche stilistiche ed è condotta un’analisi che mira a mettere in luce le idee di genere trasmesse attraverso questi repertori. L’ultima parte del lavoro prende in considerazione le trasformazioni intervenute nel panorama musicale ugandese nell’ultimo secolo, a partire dall’influenza di musiche esterne, dall’insegnamento della musica tradizionale nelle scuole e dall’istituzione di festival scolastici e di gruppi folklorici: diverse performance attuali di canti e di danza sotto sottoposte a studio analitico. Nel complesso, si rileva una generale rifunzionalizzazione di musiche e idee di genere che si rifanno al passato, ma hanno valore soprattutto per il recupero della cultura locale nel presente,connotato dal contesto multiculturale dell’Uganda contemporanea e dalle politiche, promosse dal Governo, che favoriscono l’emancipazione femminile. / This dissertation is structured around the idea of tradition and the conceptualization of gender in the village music of the Banyoro and Batooro of western Uganda. The thesis is composed of three main parts. In the first one, the historical transformations in gender relations since the pre-colonial period up to the present are presented and village music is introduced through comparison with royal and religion music. The second section is devoted to vocal and dance repertoires, on the basis of the documentation realized with elders: stylistic characteristics of these musics are considered and an analysis is carried out, aiming to show the ideas about gender in these repertoires. The last part of this work considers the transformations occurred in Ugandan music landscape during the last century, depending on several factors: various extern musics influences, the teaching of traditional music in schools, and the institution of school festival and cultural groups. On the whole, we observe a general re-functionalization of traditional music and gender ideas, which are referring to the past but hold value in particular for the recovery of local culture in the present, with special reference to contemporary Uganda multicultural society and to Government politics for women emancipation.

Il presente lavoro si pone l'obiettivo di fornire una rilettura filologica delle fonti numismatiche sui membri femminili della domus imperiale romana da Livia a Matidia Maggiore, supportata da una schedatura informatizzata del documento monetale. La compilazione è stata condotta tramite lo spoglio dei repertori di maggiore consultazione (RIC, BMCRE, BNCMER, HCC) e ha posto l'attenzione sia sugli elementi iconografici che su quelli epigrafici che vanno a comporre l'aspetto estrinseco della moneta. La scelta di tali elementi nelle emissioni imperiali è l'espressione di un vero e proprio linguaggio dotato di una logica comunicativa ben precisa e finalizzata a garantire la comprensibilità del messaggio. La sua decodifica consente di individuare possibili linee di definizione del ruolo pubblico e politico delle Auguste nel quadro dell'ideologia imperiale. A veicolare questo significato contribuiscono ugualmente gli elementi iconografici, con valore connotativo rispetto al soggetto raffigurato, e quelli epigrafici, con valore esplicativo ai fini della comprensione del dato visivo. La moneta rappresenta dunque un documento complesso, che necessita di una specifica metodologia di indagine volta a interpretarne tutti gli elementi. / This work aims to give a comprehensive survey of numismatic sources on Roman Imperial Women from Livia to Matidia the Elder, supported by a computerized census of the numismatic evidence.