Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Bicocca'

O presente relatório vem dar a conhecer a experiência enquanto estagiária na Universidade de Bicocca, em Itália, num país onde se verificam algumas diferenças no Setor Público em relação a Portugal. De modo a responder a esta experiência e compreender toda a conjuntura do mundo profissional, estabeleceu-se um fio condutor de investigação - entender em contexto real como se processa a estrutura, as funções, as práticas e políticas de Gestão de Recursos Humanos na Administração Pública. De forma a desenvolver e adquirir competências na área de estudos pretendida em contexto real, a estagiária teve a oportunidade de auxiliar nas atividades decorrentes no Departamento de Estatística e no Departamento Pessoal Técnico – Administrativo da Universidade de Bicocca – Milão; Abstract: The Human Resource Management in an Italian Public Entity - The Case of the University of Bicocca The present internship report will give the perspective of an experience as an intern in the University of Bicocca, in Italy, in a country where we can find some differences in the Public Sector in comparison with Portugal. To answer this experience and to understand the whole structure of the professional world, it was established a leading thread – to understand in the real context how to process the structure, the functions, the practices and politics of Human Resource Management in the Public Administration. To develop and to acquire competences, in this area of studies, in the real context, the trainee had the opportunity to assist in the activities in the Department of Statistics and in the Department of Professional Technical – Administrative in the University of Bicocca – Milan.

Questa tesi presenta otto studi che hanno esaminato la validità e l'utilità del Bicocca Suggestibility Scales (BISS). Il BISS è una batteria di test creata appositamente per bambini italiani in età scolare, per valutare la loro vulnerabilità alla suggestionabilità. Esistono due versioni parallele dello strumento (BISS-A e BISS-B), affinché il test possa essere somministrato più volte allo stesso soggetto. Al bambino è richiesto di ascoltare una storia e subito dopo di riportare tutto ciò che ricorda di essa. Successivamente è coinvolto in compiti "distraenti". Quindi, gli vengono poste delle domande di controllo e suggestive relative alla storia. Indipendentemente dalla correttezza delle risposte fornite, al bambino viene dato un feedback negativo e tutte le domande vengono nuovamente proposte. Infine, al bambino viene chiesto di rievocare nuovamente tutto ciò che ricorda della storia, al fine di rilevare la presenza dell'effetto di disinformazione. I primi quattro studi presentati in questa tesi hanno valutato le proprietà psicometriche del BISS, esaminando l'attendibilità delle forme parallele e la loro coerenza (Studio 1 e Studio 2). Lo Studio 3 ha valutato la validità concorrente del BISS confrontando i punteggi dei bambini al BISS e quelli ottenuti con il Bonn Test of Statement Suggestibility, mentre lo Studio 4 ha esaminato la struttura fattoriale del BISS. I risultati di questi 4 studi hanno dimostrato che il BISS è uno strumento valido e affidabile. Gli studi successivi hanno esaminato la validità discriminante del BISS e il ruolo delle differenze individuali nella suggestionabilità. Nello specifico, lo Studio 5 ha esaminato la relazione tra memoria e suggestionabilità con intelligenza, memoria di lavoro e funzioni esecutive. Non sono emerse relazioni significative tra suggestionabilità e intelligenza, mentre è stata rilevata un'associazione negativa tra cedevolezza e memoria di lavoro. Gli Studi 6 e 7 hanno indagato l'influenza della teoria della mente sulla suggestionabilità, valutando la teoria della mente attraverso due compiti che misurano la capacità di inferire lo stato mentale di una persona tramite stimoli visivi e uditivi. Nello Studio 6, le condizioni situazionali sono state mantenute costanti, mentre lo studio 7 ha valutato l'effetto congiunto di teoria della mente e comportamento dell'intervistatore. A tal fine, i bambini sono stati divisi in due gruppi in base alla loro abilità di teoria della mente precedentemente valutata. È stato mostrato loro un video e sono stati assegnati in modo casuale a due diverse condizioni sperimentali per essere intervistati da un adulto amichevole o da un adulto “ostile”. I risultati di questi studi supportano in parte l’ipotesi che la teoria della mente abbia un ruolo protettivo sulla vulnerabilità alla suggestionabilità, ma solo quando si considera la capacità di inferire lo stato mentale dell’altro tramite indizi vocali. Inoltre, i bambini intervistati da un adulto amichevole sono risultati essere meno suggestionabili dei bambini interrogati da un adulto “ostile”. Da questi studi è inoltre emerso che la suggestionabilità, intesa come “tratto”, e il comportamento dell'intervistatore sarebbero i principali fattori predittivi della performance dei bambini nel rispondere a domande fuorvianti. L’ultimo studio (Studio 8) ha indagato la relazione esistente tra memoria, suggestionabilità e temperamento. Sono stati presi in considerazione otto tratti temperamentali: orientamento sociale, inibizione alla novità, attività motoria, emozionalità positiva, emozionalità negativa, attenzione, compiacenza e timidezza. Soltanto alcuni dei fattori temperamentali sono risultati essere associati alla memoria e alla suggestionabilità, mentre i tratti di attività ed emotività positiva sarebbero gli unici ad aggiungere valore predittivo al modello che anticipa le risposte dei bambini alle domande suggestive.
This thesis presents eight studies, which examined the validity and usefulness of the Bicocca Suggestibility Scales (BISS). The BISS is a test-battery specifically created for Italian elementary school children to assess their vulnerability to suggestibility. There are two parallel versions (BISS-A and BISS-B), so that the test can be administered more than once to the same child. Children are required to listen to a story and immediately recall everything they remember about the story. They are subsequently involved in “distracting” tasks. Then, they are asked several true and leading questions about the story. Independently of the correctness of their answers, they receive negative feedback and all the questions are proposed again. Lastly, they are required to recall again everything they remember about the story to detect the presence of the post-event misinformation effect. The first four studies examined the psychometric properties of the BISS, by examining the test-retest reliability of the parallel forms of the BISS as well as their internal consistency (Study 1 and Study 2). Study 3 assessed the concurrent validity of the BISS by comparing children’s performance on the BISS to their performance on the Bonn Test of Statement Suggestibility. Study 4 examined the factor structure of the BISS. The results of the first four studies demonstrated that the BISS is a valid and reliable tool for assessing individual differences in suggestibility. The next four studies examined discriminant validity and the role of individual differences in suggestibility. Specifically, Study 5 examined the relationship between memory and suggestibility with intelligence, working memory, and executive functions. The results did not support the existence of a relationship between suggestibility and intelligence, while a negative association between yield score and working memory was found. The purpose of Studies 6 and 7 was to investigate the influence of theory of mind on suggestibility. Theory of mind skill was assessed through two different tasks that involved inferring the mental state of a person just from auditory and visual cues, respectively. This was assessed first by considering the individual level only. In Study 6 situational conditions were kept constant, and the relative contribution of theory of mind, working memory and inhibitory control were assessed. Study 7 evaluated the joint effect of theory of mind and the role of interviewer behaviour. After assessing children’s theory of mind, children were assigned to two different groups. They watched a video and were randomly allocated to two different experimental conditions to be interviewed by an adult acting in a friendly or a non-friendly manner. The results provided some support to the protective role of theory of mind on suggestibility, but only when considering the ability to infer others' mental states from auditory cues. The children interviewed by a friendly interviewer were less suggestible than the children questioned by a less friendly adult. Moreover, suggestibility as a trait-like characteristic and the interviewer's behaviour were shown to be the main predictors of children's performance in answering misleading questions about the video. Study 8 investigated the relationships between memory, suggestibility, and temperament in school-age children. Eight temperamental traits were considered: social orientation, inhibition to novelty, activity, positive emotionality, negative emotionality, attention, compliance, and shyness. Only a few of the temperamental factors were associated with memory and a vulnerability to suggestive questions. Activity and positive emotionality were the only temperamental traits that added predictive value to the model predicting the children’s answers to leading questions. The final part of the thesis examines the implications of the findings along with the limitations, and future directions are discussed.

Attraverso questa ricerca, si vuole indagare un fenomeno da qualche anno molto diffuso in Italia e all’estero, ossia il riuso di edifici industriali per esporre opere d’arte, in particolare, contemporanee. La scelta di esporre in luoghi di origine industriale si colloca esattamente al lato opposto rispetto alla tendenza di costruire nuovi magnificenti musei, in cui il contenitore si trasforma, a sua volta, in un’opera d’arte. La presenza di spazi industriali sul territorio è dovuta a una rapida trasformazione dell’economia, che passando da una dimensione produttiva a una terziaria, dimenticò sul territorio enormi fabbriche e contenitori vuoti privi di alcuna funzione d’utilizzo, che attraverso l’arte possono oggi rivivere una seconda vita. La volontà di esporre in “spazi alternativi”, quali sono quelli industriali, trova le sue radici nella storia dell’arte contemporanea. Dalla scoperta dello spazio nell’arte ambientale fino alla nascita dell’installazione e dell’arte concettuale, queste innovazioni generarono numerosi cambiamenti nei modi di esporre l’arte del secondo Novecento. In questa ricerca, si vuol mettere in luce una museologia secondaria, non caratterizzata da nomi altisonanti ma dal rispetto della storia degli edifici preesistenti e del territorio. Il riutilizzo di immobili industriali, come luoghi espositivi, include la vita e la realtà nell’arte, contravvenendo alla presunta neutralità del White Cube. Le preferenze degli artisti spesso sono rivolte a questi spazi industriali, piuttosto che ai convenzionali musei, ciò è dovuto alla loro ricchezza di memoria e alla possibilità per gli artisti di sperimentare, liberi da ogni limitazione forzatamente trasmessa dall’elite culturale dominante. I casi di studio rappresentano due diversi aspetti della questione a confronto, da un lato l’affermato Hangar Bicocca a Milano, coinvolto in un grande progetto di riqualificazione urbana e grazie al fondatore Pirelli, diventato negli anni un simbolo della rinascita della Bicocca, pur conservando la sua origine sperimentale. Dall’altro lato, il giovane progetto di Dolomiti Contemporanee, che fa della costante ricerca di siti dismessi da “riattivare”, attraverso interventi mirati sul territorio, il suo obiettivo. Hangar Bicocca e Dolomiti Contemporanee dimostrano due modi di rigenerare spazi industriali attraverso l’arte contemporanea: l’istituzione internazionale da un lato e il progetto itinerante con focus sul territorio, dall’altro.

The process of care in Mental Health services (MHS) could be influenced by a number of different staff related factors, such as staff morale and burnout levels, staff technical and interpersonal skills, attitudes and values. Social processes are particularly relevant in the Mental Health sector, since workers deal with clinical conditions and care procedures that rely on professional social constructions. Mental health services staff in middle and high income countries is composed mainly by specialized workers such as psychiatrists, nurses, social workers, psychologists and support workers organized in multi-professional teams whose composition is determined by local level regulations. Beside the professional knowledge, each profession is also constituted by the social dynamics that are proper of a specific social group. The creation of a professional role, such as mental health nurse or clinical psychologist, leads to the development of a system of values, schema and knowledge, shared among the members of that professional group and that orient professional behavior and coping. Those shared cognitive and behavioral schemata constitute the “professional culture” (PC) that could be considered as a subsystem of the broader organizational culture and it also linked with further constructs such as professional identity, professional role, attitudes and beliefs toward clients, professional values, cultural artifacts and affective issues related to team working, inter-professional collaboration and clients. Currently, there's lack of studies that try to develop a comprehensive model professional culture of mental health professionals (PCMHP). This dissertation makes an attempt to define the construct of professional culture of mental health professionals using a bottom up approach to derive theoretical construct from empirical data. The first chapter introduces the issue of professionalization in mental health services. The main idea is that professionalization of mental health staff is the result of cultural changes in the history of the western countries that created a complexification of task and organization of mental health services. In the second chapter is presented a synthesis of the current literature performed using the meta-ethnographic approach to link together relevant qualitative studies on mental health staff work experiences. The results show that professionals working in mental health field share some common elements of PC such as the importance of the interpersonal relationship with users, the relevance of values in the professional practice and the need of keep a mindful and reflective attitude toward the work. The third chapter describes the development of a new questionnaire, the Bicocca Mental Health Professional Culture Inventory (BMHPCI) in collaboration with the research center of the Institut Universitaire en Santé Mentale de Montréal. A pilot phase was conducted to determine whether linguistic or cultural differences could affect items’ comprehension to prevent reductions of internal validity. BMHPCI validation phase is presented in chapter 4. Questionnaire validity and reliability was tested through a survey of a representative sample of mental health services workersThe instrument developed shows good psychometric properties and statistically significant correlations with team climate and burnout scores. Statistically significant differences in BMHPCI subscales were found between professional roles and mental health settings.

La ricerca si compone di una parte teorica di ricognizione della letteratura sulla formazione iniziale degli insegnanti primari, e sui Laboratori Pedagogico-Didattici (LPD). La seconda parte è invece un’indagine naturalistica, che si ispira alla Grounded Theory e al metodo fenomenologico. Presso Scienze della Formazione Primaria dell’Università di Milano-Bicocca sono state realizzate interviste semi-strutturate in profondità con docenti responsabili di 4 aree disciplinari (psico-pedagogica, scientifico-matematica, storico-geografica, motoria-artistica e musicale), 16 studenti laureandi o appena laureati e 8 insegnanti ex studenti. Obiettivi della ricerca sono verificare l’efficacia, già provata da precedenti studi, del metodo laboratoriale in ambito universitario e capirne in profondità le metodologie, evidenziando punti di forza e criticità. Criteri fondamentali dell’approccio sono: apprendere dalla propria esperienza e costruire e immaginare possibili ‘pratiche’ da sperimentare in classe. Le competenze attese sono: imparare a interrogarsi su di sé come persona e sulle proprie rappresentazioni d’infanzia, dell’insegnamento e apprendimento, imparare ad ascoltare e osservare, a problematizzare e a riflettere sull’esperienza. Gli studenti individuano due tipi di Laboratori: ‘teorici’ e ‘pratici’; i primi sono valutati ‘inutili’ e le teorie sono percepite come poco connesse alle pratiche. I secondi sono al contrario utili e corrispondono all’approccio proposto dai docenti responsabili. Fattore determinante per un laboratorio di qualità è il ruolo del conduttore. Il conduttore di qualità sa gestire situazioni di apprendimento esperienziale ed è in grado di tenere legate ‘teoria’ e ‘pratica’. Una criticità emerge durante il Tirocinio o all’inizio della vita professionale: la scuola ‘reale’ viene percepita come molto ‘distante’ da quella ‘ideale’. Nella scuola reale è poco praticata una didattica laboratoriale, in cui piccoli gruppi cooperativi imparano facendo ricerca. Questa discrasia invita a intraprendere nuove strade di ricerca sulla formazione dei conduttori di LPD e su dispositivi formativi che connettano le scuole e l’università.
The present research envisages a theoretical section that recognizes previous studies carried out on Primary Teacher Education and on on-campus laboratories (LPD pedagogical-didactical laboratories). The second section is empiric and relates to a naturalistic case-study, based both on the phenomenological method and on the Grounded Theory. The experience of Milano-Bicocca involved teachers from four curriculum areas (psycho-pedagogical, scientific-mathematical, historical-geographical, motor-artistic and musical), 16 graduating or newly graduated students and 8 former-student teachers, that have all been involved in broad semi-structured interviews. The aim of the research is to verify the effectiveness, already proved through different studies, of on-campus laboratories, and fully understand their methodology, highlighting strengths and weaknesses. Experiental Learning is used in the LPD (pedagogical-didactical laboratories) in order to comprehend curricular subject matters and a teaching method, to improve reflexivity and didactic based on social-constructivism. Core criteria of this approach are learning from one’s own experience, learning by doing and by reflecting on new pedagogical methodologies. The expertise to be gained is: learning to understand ourselves and our childhood representation, teaching and learning, listening and observing. Students have pointed out two types of laboratories: ‘theoretical’ and ‘practical’; the former are considered ‘useless’ because theories are not linked to practice; the latter are useful and reflect the teachers’ approach. In order to run a high quality laboratory the role of the person in charge is key. A skilled laboratory leader is capable of managing experimental learning situations and of linking ‘practice’ to ‘theory’. During apprenticeship or at the beginning of one’s professional career, a specific issue emerges: the actual real school is completely different from the ideal one. The real school seldom teaches through laboratory where small cooperating groups learn by researching. These issues open up new paths of research on LPD education leaders and on training devices aimed at better connecting schools and Universities.

La fase del ciclo di vita dell’emerging adulthood, propria delle società industrializzate, si estende dai 19 ai 28/30 anni ed è definita da Arnett (2004) come età self-focused, caratterizzata da esplorazione identitaria, instabilità, pluri-possibilità e da una sensazione di feeling in between tra adolescenza ed età adulta. Nell’elaborato viene descritto il Servizio di Counselling ad orientamento psicodinamico dell’Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca. Il profilo dell’utenza che accede al Servizio è caratterizzato da alcuni fattori di rischio, quali presenza di sintomatologia, insicurezza nell’attaccamento, soddisfazione di vita non elevata ed esperienze avverse infantili. Nel corso degli studi, si evidenzia l’effectiveness dell’intervento di counselling psicodinamico proposto, sia a breve termine, portando ad una diminuzione dei livelli sintomatologici, sia a lungo termine, mantenendo stabili nel tempo i miglioramenti raggiunti. L’effectiveness dell’intervento emerge anche nello studio con il gruppo di controllo in waiting list, che non mostra miglioramenti, a differenza degli studenti che effettuano i colloqui di counselling. Infine, nello studio esplorativo di confronto tra studenti dell’Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca e studenti dell’Università Rupert Karl di Heidelberg, emergono similitudini tra i due gruppi, quali medesime motivazioni alla base della richiesta di aiuto e simili livelli sintomatologici, mentre vi sono differenze rispetto agli stili di attaccamento e alla soddisfazione di vita. I dati evidenziano l’importante ruolo di protezione dell’attaccamento sicuro rispetto alla psicopatologia e alla soddisfazione di vita, a differenza dell’attaccamento insicuro che si configura come potenziale fattore di rischio, a prescindere dal paese di provenienza degli studenti.
Typical of industrialized societies, the emerging adulthood’s lifecycle phase (from 19 to 28/30 years old) is defined by Arnett (2004) as a self-focused age, characterized by identity exploration, instability, possibilities and a sensation of feeling in between adolescence and adulthood. The psychodynamic Counseling Service of the University of Milano-Bicocca will be described. The profile of the Service’s users is characterized by some risk factors, such as the presence of symptomatology, insecurity in attachment, low life satisfaction and adverse childhood experiences. The effectiveness of the proposed psychodynamic counseling intervention will be highlighted, both in the short term, leading to a decrease in symptom levels, and in the long term, keeping the achieved improvements stable over time. The effectiveness of the intervention also emerges in the study with a control group in the waiting list, who does not show improvements with respect to the students who carry out the counseling intervention. Finally, in the exploratory comparison study between students of the University of Milano-Bicocca and students of the Rupert Karl University of Heidelberg, similarities emerge between the two groups, such as same reasons behind the request for help and similar symptom levels, while there are differences with respect to attachment styles and life satisfaction. The data highlights the important protective role of secure attachment with respect to psychopathology and life satisfaction, unlike insecure attachment that is configured as a potential risk factor, regardless of the students’ country of origin.

This study concerns the strategy of lifelong and life wide learning as a form of "taking care of oneself". I assume, as Beck and Bauman say, that nowadays we live in a "risk society" and in a "liquid" society. In this context, the world has become more complex and the future more unpredictable in comparison with only few decades ago. The former collective agents (workers, women, social movements in general) seem to have vanished and the prospect of a public solution to the problems posed by the new/post modernity is very slim. It is the individual who has to undertake responsibility for his/her own future. There are at least two ways of considering lifelong learning: the first focuses on personal ability to purchase the skills, the competences, the capabilities required by the market, and become a "lifelong learner" in order to continuously respond to market-place challenges and remain employable. Somehow the person has always got to learn and can never consider himself/herself a complete professional, citizen, individual but is obliged to follow adaptive strategies just to stay afloat. The second way tries to see the "positive" side of an epoch of uncertainty: if social roles and status have become less solid, it should be possible, in adult life, to have the opportunity to seek for an autonomous form of satisfactory life, where lifelong learning links with experience and original, personal ways of elaborating experience. In this perspective, lifelong learning is a construct that has to give account of the situated, historical, economical, political role that education experiences play at the individual level but also in the individual's social context. I investigate the link between "necessity and possibility" in the process of "Bildung" of subjectivities. There are social, structural and cultural bonds that strongly condition access to education and to the opportunity to find one's place into society and there must be some possibility to overcome those bonds. What are the resources that individuals can count on to express their aptitudes and yearnings? What is the role of gender differences in such a need? I can say that lifelong learning may be only one of many different strategies to respond to deep and latent needs concerning identity, membership, self-planning, gender. As no dominion disposals are given without some resistance disposals, I look at experiences of existential re-definition that take place through a fracture, a crisis, a withdrawal, and lead to a new equilibrium, where the people experiencing them look for a "second chance" in their lives. I de-construct the idea of "second chance" pointing up notions of falling, risk, gain and loss, crisis and opportunity, freedom of choice. Also, the courage to look for something considered "second best" - or the courage to quit aiming for a first place in a competitive and individualistic society is to be valued. In the concept of "second chance" there is a redeeming dimension: the idea that learning throughout one's life does not mean to accumulate knowledge, skills, competencies in a linear and adaptive process, but - on the contrary - can be an evolutionary process similar to that found in nature, expressed by the concept of "exaptation". By the term "exaptation" I refer to the ability of individuals to learn, develop and self construct using in a creative form what they already possess. Maybe this is a particular kind of wisdom. It is also necessary to re-think the role of education in individual life stories, the different weight and the different meaning that people give to it depending on the moments in which they come into contact with educational systems. The role of those responsible for educational processes must also change: there is a need for a more circular way of defining educational requirements and knowledge. And so, the research, moving from a critical theory of society and from a Foucoultian perspective (with regards to the categories of power, resistance and freedom), makes use of the method devised in Italy by Riccardo Massa and by the Clinic of Education, because it allows investigation of the latent and hidden dimensions of everyday actions and beliefs while simultaneously constructing new forms of knowledge and self-knowledge. The research participants are individuals who have decided to give themselves a "second chance": they are adult students in Bicocca and many of them have abandoned previous studies, some have changed their lifestyles and have experienced a personal crisis. In this research, narrative and auto/biographical pedagogy play a substantial role: this approach, as a matter of fact, in the last fifteen years has gained full recognition in many context (Denzin & Lincoln; West; Josso; Ferrarotti; Pineau; Demetrio; Formenti; Gonzàlez Monteagudo, etc) and has proved to be a powerful research method in its own right for understanding subjectivity and making subjective experiences more visible and intelligible. Above all, this approach, with the aim of critiquing hierarchical models, has important implications for the change of roles. It is a way of acquiring knowledge and a social action, that promotes self-directed learning and the appropriation of one's own education. For these reasons I selected a small group of adults (aged 34 and up) who have decided to give themselves a "second chance", taking possession of their own lives, and by so doing taking care of themselves. I investigated together with these people their life history and the roots of the "turning point". To carry out this research I used face-to-face instruments, such as open and in-depth interviews, into a clinic perspective. The Clinic of Education as a method that brings to light the hidden dimensions of actions and decisions, in other words the symbolic, cognitive, emotional and procedural latencies related to education, is the theoretical frame in which the research is inscribed.

Partendo da un'estensione delle classiche equazioni dell'elettromagnetismo sono state implementati opportuni schemi numerici al fine studiare il "near-field" di un'antenna biconica. L'estensione delle equazioni di Maxwell è stata necessaria per modellizzare una nuova situazione: è stata infatti considerata la possibilità di avere regioni spaziali in cui la divergenza del campo elettrico non fosse nulla, in particolare nelle zone in prossimità delle guide, trattate come conduttori non-perfetti. Le simulazioni sono state ambientate in uno spazio tridimensionale descritto in coordinate cilindriche e le equazioni sono state discretizzate usando schemi alle differenze finite. Dapprima sono stati condotti esperimenti numerici relativamente alla propagazione di onde solitoniche nel vuoto, quindi si è passati a considerare casi in cui queste attraversassero mezzi con diversa conduttività. Successivamente sono state individuate condizioni al bordo adatte a simulare l'interazione di un solitone con delle guide conduttrici ed infine, i risultati sono stati applicati al caso, più complesso, del campo elettromagnetico generato da un'antenna biconica. Solo in parte sono stati raggiunti gli obbiettivi preposti, ovvero comprendere a fondo il modo in cui un'onda elettromagnetica si comporta nel passaggio da uno stato in cui la sua evoluzione è guidata, ad uno in cui si propaga come onda libera.
By working with an extensions of the classical set of electromagnetic equations, we implemented some numerical techniques to study the near-field of a biconic antenna. Though the usual Maxwell's equations are included in the model, the generalization is necessary to handle the possible creation of regions displaying non-vanishing divergence in proximity of the boundaries, where perfect conductivity is not given for granted. Finite-difference schemes have been primarily used in a three-dimensional domain described by cylindrical coordinates. The numerical experiments include the simulation of solitary waves in vacuum and their behaviour when passing through media of different conductivity. In a successive development these waves are studied in conjunction with boundary constraints, due to the their interaction with the conductive guides. The goal of this analysis, only in part achieved, is a full understanding of the passage of the electromagnetic wave from the state of guided evolution to the one when the signal travels in free space.

La ricerca si è focalizzata sullo studio delle lucerne italiche di epoca repubblicana di forma biconica e cilindrica, al fine di sistematizzare, in due tipologie ad albero, tipi e varianti regionali e fornire una seriazione che prenda in considerazione sia gli aspetti morfologici che i centri di produzione, la cronologia, l'area e le dinamiche di diffusione di ogni singolo tipo o variante identificati. Lo studio ha coperto tutto il territorio italiano ed ha portato alla redazione di schede dei contesti di rinvenimento, suddivise in tre sezioni geografiche (Centro, Sud e Nord Italia), nelle quali sono stati riportati sia i dati ricavati dall'analisi del materiale edito che quelli provenienti dallo studio di alcuni reperti inediti.
The research focused on biconical and cylindrical roman republican lamps, in order to systematize types and regional variations, by the creation of two different tree diagrams. This typology considers the morphological aspects as well as the production centers, chronology, the area and the dynamics of distribution of each type or variant identified. The analysis of published lamps and the study of some unpublished findings allowed to catalogue the archaeological contexts in which these types of lamps were common.

The document is about customer satisfaction in academic libraries. The first part is about a theoretical presentation of the topic and it’s importance into the organizational change. The second part is about the 2012 survey of customer satisfaction in Milano-Bicocca University library. There is the conceptual model, the quantitative and qualitative results. For the analysis of quantitative data it’s been used SPSS software, instead for the qualitative data it’s been used T-Lab.

Two chapter of a Degree Thesis that examinates usage statistics of some electronic remote resources at the Library of the Unoversity of Milano Bicocca, comparing them with two surveys on professors and researchers of the same University.

This thesis compares the results of the survey about the user satisfaction done in the Central Library and in the Science Library of Milano Bicocca University during january 2004. Supervisor Prof. Walter Maffenini.