Tradition and Evolution of the Iconography of Hell in the Pictorial Cycles of the Alps

This thesis investigates the depiction of Hell in medieval wall paintings across the Alpine regions, spanning from Western Liguria to Friuli-Venezia Giulia, between the late eleventh and fifteenth centuries. Throughout the Middle Ages, visual representations of Hell and the Otherworld in places of worship were designed to engage believers on multiple levels—visually, physically, and emotionally—while reinforcing liturgical messages and moral values. These images served both to illustrate the ...

To (the) brain or not to (the) brain? Distal signaling and non-neural players in brain hyperexcitability.

The brain is a highly dynamic organ whose functions depend on the intricate interplay among neurons, glial cells, endothelial cells, and immune components. Traditionally viewed as the domain of neuronal signaling, emerging evidence underscores the crucial role of the neurovascular unit, where neuronal, glial, vascular, and immune interactions collectively sustain brain health and adaptability. In this study, we explored the modulation of neuronal excitability, a fundamental property underlyi...

“Ogni giorno possiamo trasformare il mondo” Alberto Manzi e l’educazione popolare ed esperienziale con le persone adulte analfabete

Von resultativ zu modal: Das verbale Präfix der- in den südbairischen Varietäten Italiens

The present dissertation concerns the verbal inseparable prefix der-, usually described in the literature on German dialectology as prototypically Bavarian. The derivational morpheme covers a wide range of semantic functions that are prevalently aspectual and often overlap with those of the standard German language, e.g., (d)er-kennen 'recognize', (d/z)er-brechen 'to break something (into pieces)'. Of the many functions of der-, a particular focus is emphasized on its modal semantics, where t...

Feeding Cities. The Potential of Sustainable Agriculture for Economic and Social Development

Food is becoming an increasingly disputed issue, and food movements have emerged in both the Global North and Global South. Food security and food sovereignty are still influencing the everyday life of almost 1 billion people in the World. Indeed, the agro-industrial food system, based on the ‘Green Revolution’ aim to feed the World, presents several emergencies and negative externalities which have been affecting people, the environment, and both global and local economy. The ongoing financi...

Scalable Safe Policy Improvement for Single and Multi-Agent Systems

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has achieved remarkable success in domains such as robotics and strategic games, but deploying RL in real-world applications presents challenges due to computational complexity, safety, and sample efficiency. Ensuring safety is crucial, especially in critical applications where unreliable policies can pose significant risks. Offline RL mitigates some issues by training policies on pre-collected datasets from a baseline policy. However, it faces distributional shift...

Heirs of the Fortunate King: Ptolemy VI and Ptolemy VIII between Memory and an Early Idea of Hellenismus

Methodological introduction to the problem – considered as such in light of quantitative contingencies and qualitative realities – of the exegesis of the surviving literary sources on Ptolemy VI and Ptolemy VIII from a literary, ideological, and historical perspective, i.e., from the authorial viewpoint. Detailed analysis of the testimonies of over 40 ancient and late-antique Greek, Roman, and Jewish authors. Analysis of the survival and, especially, the reframing of the memory of the two rul...

Sequence-Specific Implicit Motor Learning: Influences of Cognitive Feedback and Aerobic Exercise Training in Parkinson’s Disease Individuals

Essays on Public Investments in Green Projects and Development Paradigm of Economic Growth and Environmental Sustainability

This doctoral thesis is a collection of three empirical essays that develops an analytical framework to assess the impacts of demand-driven recovery investments, in local, regional, and multi-regional economies in equilibrium. These recovery investments are part of a broader regional fiscal spending on many projects, including investment in urban development, environmental quality, industrial sites’ rehabilitation, ports, healthcare, social inclusion and education, government systems, and var...