The first carved ambers appear in the Adriatic area at the end of the eighth century BC with the beginning of the Orientalizing period. Among the most active centers, the Etruscan Verucchio is one of the main poles for the sorting of amber. At the beginning of the sixth century, a fundamental role is exercised from Piceno and the Etruscan Felsina, whose intercept part of the tra!cs previously directed on the Adriatic road.

The results of accurate compressible Navier-Stokes simulations of aerodynamic heating of the Vega launcher are presented. Three selected steady conditions of the Vega mission profile are considered: the first corresponding to the altitude of 18 km, the second to 25 km and the last to 33 km. The numerical code is based on the mathematical model described by the Favre-Average-Navier-Stokes equations; the turbulent model chosen for closure is the one-equation model by Spalart-Allmaras.

A proposal for particles' initialization in PSO is presented and discussed, with focus on costly global unconstrained optimization problems. The standard PSO iteration is reformulated such that the trajectories of the particles are studied in an extended space, combining particles' position and speed. To the aim of exploring effectively and efficiently the optimization search space since the early iterations, the particles are initialized using sets of orthogonal vectors in the extended space (orthogonal initialization, ORTHOinit).

The turning circle maneuver of a self-propelled tanker like ship model is numerically simulated through the integration of the unsteady Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (uRaNS) equations coupled with the equations of the motion of a rigid body. The solution is achieved by means of the unsteady RANS solver Xnavis developed at CNR-INSEAN. The focus here is on the analysis of the maneuvering behavior of the ship with two different stern appendages configurations; namely, a twin screw with a single rudder and a twin screw, twin rudder with a central skeg.

In this work the numerical simulations of a submarine in straight ahead motion with the appendages at several prescribed deflection angles are performed. Due to the complex geometry involved (the presence of moving appendages), these simulations are rather demanding form the point of view of both grid generation and accuracy of the numerical method. In order to analyze these aspects, the numerical solutions are computed by means of an unsteady Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes equations solver, which is particularly effective because of the high order discretization schemes adopted.

tProtected areas are experiencing increased levels of human pressure. To enable appropriate conserva-tion action, it is critical to map and monitor changes in the type and extent of land cover/use and habitatclasses, which can be related to human pressures over time. Satellite Earth observation (EO) data andtechniques offer the opportunity to detect such changes.