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New additions to the vascular flora of central and southern Italy
No full textNew or revised plant records of 27 taxa (species and subspecies) are reported for central and southern Italy, of which 13 are natives and 14 aliens. Two native taxa are new for the Apennines, one is new for central Italy, nine are new or confirmed for Abruzzo and one is new for Marche. We excluded one previously accepted species from Umbria, one from Abruzzo, one from Molise, and one from Campania. Among the aliens, two species are new for Italy, six for Umbria, four for Abruzzo, two (one confirmed) for Lazio and one for Molise. Furthermore, we propose to change alien status from casual to naturalized for three taxa. Some discoveries are very interesting from a phytogeographical and/or conservation point of view. Additionally, several new locations for very rare species are reported
Sleep phenotyping in a rat model of susceptibility to substance use disorders
No full textAlcohol use disorders (AUD) are bidirectionally associated with significant sleep disturbances, yet the underlying neural mechanisms remain poorly understood. The Marchigian Sardinian alcohol Preferring (msP) rat is a validated preclinical model that mirrors several genetic and behavioral traits of patients with AUD. This study aimed to characterize the sleep-wake architecture and EEG spectral activity in naïve msP rats compared to Wistar controls. We performed 24-hour polysomnography recordings, revealing that male msP rats (n = 9) spent 7.5% more time awake and less time in NREM sleep relative to Wistar rats (n = 9). This was accompanied by a more fragmented sleep-wake pattern, with a higher number of waking and sleep episodes, state transitions, and sleep fragmentation index. Spectral analysis demonstrated lower high-frequency power, with significant reductions in sigma and beta power during NREM sleep and increased theta/beta ratios during wakefulness. Slow-wave activity, an indicator of sleep pressure, showed a blunted rise and fall across the sleep cycle in msP rats, with reduced amplitude and slope of slow waves during early sleep. Moreover, msP rats exhibited decreased spindle activity, with significantly lower spindle incidence, amplitude, and duration. These findings suggest that msP rats display significant sleep disturbances, including disrupted NREM sleep and altered spectral characteristics in brain activity that partially resemble changes reported in individuals with AUD. This altered sleep profile may reflect neural circuit dysfunctions linked to substance use vulnerability, offering potential insights into the neurobiological basis of sleep disturbances in these complex neuropsychiatric disorders
Multimodal Zero-Shot Activity Recognition for Process Mining of Robotic Systems
No full textUnderstanding and analyzing the behavior of robotic systems is essential to ensure their reliability, efficiency, and continuous improvement, especially as robots are increasingly deployed in complex, dynamic environments. Process mining offers a powerful approach to uncover and analyze the execution of robotic operations. However, applying process mining to robotic systems requires bridging the gap between fine-grained multimodal data and high-level activity representations. Recent advances in foundation models provide a promising solution to this challenge, as the knowledge acquired during their extensive pretraining enables them to interpret multimodal data without the need for task-specific training. In this work, we propose a novel multimodal process mining pipeline that leverages the zero-shot capabilities of foundation models to perform activity recognition from visual and auditory inputs. By transforming fine-grained multimodal data into event logs, the pipeline enables the application of process mining techniques to robotic systems. We applied our approach to the Baxter UR5 95 Objects dataset, which offers synchronized video and audio recordings of a Baxter robot manipulating objects. The fusion of activity recognition results from these complementary modalities yields an event log that more accurately represents the robot’s operations, mitigating imprecision associated with using a single modality. Our results demonstrate that foundation models effectively enable the application of process mining to robotic systems, facilitating monitoring and analysis of their behavior
Precipizi e virtù dell'AI nei processi di creatività
No full textLa creatività umana e l’intelligenza artificiale hanno dei funzionamenti molto simili.
Quando si progetta qualcosa partiamo da un’esigenza concreta che può essere pratica o
emozionale: un edificio necessario ad ospitare un determinata funzione, un oggetto, un articolo,
una poesia, un brano musicale. Dalla definizione della necessità la mente umana inizia un’attività
celebrale complessa, banalmente e inconsapevolmente tra sinapsi e neuroni, che attinge ai
‘serbatoi’ di conoscenza. La creatività umana non genera qualcosa dal nulla. E’ impossibile. Non
possiamo immaginare di creare qualcosa al di fuori delle parole che abbiamo appreso, delle
immagini che conosciamo, dei progetti che abbiamo osservato, studiato, sperimentato. Ognuno di
noi mappa la propria realtà, il mondo in cui vive in base alle esperienze che ha avuto, alle cose che
ha imparato. Quando dobbiamo elaborare un progetto di architettura attingiamo a questo
calderone di esperienze, letture, conoscenze, sentimenti e cerchiamo di ricombinare questi
elementi per dare vita a qualcosa. L’intelligenza artificiale, pur senza emozioni, ricordi, sentimenti si muove in maniera analoga
Esperienze progettuali con il PON Resilienza e Sostenibiltà tra Matera e Melfi. #AGRIPARK167. Un’infrastruttura di servizi ecosistemici per il quartiere 167, Melfi
No full textIl contributo si inserisce nel volume che raccoglie l’esperienza di URGES, un progetto finanziato dal POR FESR Basilicata 2014-2020 e sviluppato da un partenariato composto dall’Università della Basilicata, nel ruolo di capofila, dalle Università di Lubiana, Siviglia, Chieti-Pescara, Reggio Calabria e dall’Agenzia Lucana di Sviluppo e di Innovazione in Agricoltura. Acronimo di “Urban Green Shapes”, URGES è un progetto di ricerca interdisciplinare aperto alla partecipazione di ricercatori, cittadini, enti ed aziende, che si è posto l’obiettivo di studiare e dimostrare come “forme di verde” possano contribuire ad elevare la qualità urbana e architettonica, l’efficienza energetica e il benessere degli abitanti nella città contemporanea. Per oltre due anni, si è occupato di studiare strategie innovative di rigenerazione urbana basate sul greening e sulle Nature-based solutions (NBS), mettendo in campo competenze architettoniche, paesaggistiche, agronomiche, ambientali e sociali e ponendo lo sguardo sui quartieri di edilizia pubblica come l’Arco di Matera; un’espansione nata negli anni Novanta del secolo scorso con un Piano di Edilizia Economica Popolare, che nel realizzarsi ha disatteso quell’“armonica osmosi fra città e campagna” che il suo primo progettista, Marcello Fabbri, aveva ben prefigurato con il suo disegno originale
A Systematic Literature Review of Spatio-Temporal Graph Neural Network Models for Time Series Forecasting and Classification
No full textIn recent years, spatio-temporal graph neural networks (GNNs) have attracted considerable interest in the field of time series analysis, due to their ability to capture, at once, dependencies among variables and across time points. The objective of this systematic literature review is hence to provide a comprehensive overview of the various modeling approaches and application domains of GNNs for time series classification and forecasting. A database search was conducted, and 366 papers were selected for a detailed examination of the current state-of-the-art in the field. This examination is intended to offer to the reader a comprehensive review of proposed models, links to related source code, available datasets, benchmark models, and fitting results. All this information is hoped to assist researchers in their studies. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first and broadest systematic literature review presenting a detailed comparison of results from current spatio-temporal GNN models applied to different domains. In its final part, this review discusses current limitations and challenges in the application of spatio-temporal GNNs, such as comparability, reproducibility, explainability, poor information capacity, and scalability. This paper is complemented by a GitHub repository at https://github.com/FlaGer99/SLR-Spatio-Temporal-GNN.git providing additional interactive tools to further explore the presented findings
La pregiudiziale di validità europea alias del sindacato di costituzionalità?
No full textThe article aims to assess whether the preliminary reference on validity is increasingly assuming the characteristics of a constitutional review of legitimacy, according to a centralized and specialized control model. To this end, the article analyzes the developments in European case-law regarding the configuration of a diffuse review entrusted to national courts for ensuring compliance with hierarchically superior EU norms, while the jurisdiction to declare invalid EU acts remains centralized in the Court of Justice. The study then explores how this centralized jurisdiction is still conceived as subsidiary
and complementary to the action for annulment, which remains the favorite mechanism for reviewing the legality of EU acts. It further examines Court of Justice’s case-law that attributes significant ultra partes effects to declarations of invalidity – an approach that brings such decisions closer to the typical effects of annulment judgments – while also highlighting how a declaration of invalidity does not necessarily imply the breach of a fundamental norm, and how the Court’s decisional formulas still appears, in certain respects, underdeveloped.
Finally, the article investigates how the increasing focus of validity questions on compliance with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is reshaping the nature of the preliminary reference on validity. This evolution is endowing the procedure with a more constitutional dimension and gradually positioning it as a key mechanism in reconciling the various levels of rights
protection
Electa editore. Dal 1945 ottant'anni di grafica e cultura visiva
No full textIl volume di Carlo Vinti e Stefano Faoro, lontano dalla pretesa di fornire un resoconto esaustivo della storia di Electa, propone una sintesi ragionata dei fenomeni e dei protagonisti che, dal secondo dopoguerra a oggi, hanno segnato ottant’anni di progettazione editoriale e grafica. Il libro ricostruisce il contributo che Electa ha dato allo sviluppo della cultura visiva nel nostro Paese, collaborando non soltanto con studiosi e curatori ma anche con fotografi, architetti, designer e alcuni dei maggiori protagonisti della scena della grafica italiana.
Quattro capitoli, organizzati secondo un criterio tematico-cronologico, restituiscono il percorso attraverso cui si è definita, nel tempo, la cultura visiva di Electa. Ogni capitolo è corredato da una serie di schede analitiche illustrate, dedicate a progetti editoriali o espositivi particolarmente significativi nella storia della casa editrice e della grafica italiana. Le schede approfondiscono, di volta in volta, singole edizioni, collane, periodici e mostre prodotte da Electa dal 1945 a oggi, offrendo uno sguardo ravvicinato sulla varietà di soluzioni grafiche adottate nel tempo, e sull’intreccio fra contenuti, scelte editoriali e linguaggi del progetto visivo
Eumelanin & keratin sourced from waste: unraveling criss-cross functionalities for green electronic applications
No full textIn the framework of the Circular Economy this study provides a detailed analysis of water-based suspensions of two biopolymers derived by sustainable processes: eumelanin from insect farming and keratin from chicken feathers. The latter material was obtained via two different extraction procedures. Colloidal-like suspensions were produced in water either as a single component system or a mixture of both in selected ratios, taking advantage of their high solubility. The suspensions were examined using a comprehensive set of chemical, structural and dielectric techniques to gather information on their properties. Small-Angle x-ray Scattering results provided insights into the elemental polymer sections within the suspension, while Transmission Electron Microscopy images indicate that keratin is the component driving the shape of the aggregation structure in a colloidal environment, and, in some cases, eumelanin internalization. Furthermore, the co-presence of both polymers in water determines the aggregation dimensions and shapes. The discussion focuses on the influence of the aggregation on the dielectric proper-ties by comparing the former to the AC dynamic response returned by Broadband Dielectric Spectroscopy (BDS). Within the BDS framework various items are highlighted including dielectric relaxations, screening effects, counterion condensation and ionic charge transport. The results shown in this work let to foresee the adoption of water or biofriendly aqueous BSF-EuM:Keratin suspensions in the production of devices and sensors with low environmental impact
Out-of-Plane Shake-Table Tests on Unreinforced Masonry Gables
No full textTypical low-rise masonry buildings worldwide commonly feature unreinforced masonry (URM) walls, often paired with various pitched roof configurations supported or finished by masonry gables. These buildings constitute a significant portion of the building stock in several seismic-prone regions, including areas vulnerable to both natural and induced seismicity. Masonry gables in such buildings are frequently associated with high seismic vulnerability, as evidenced by damage observed after past earthquakes. This paper presents key results from an experimental campaign aimed at enhancing the understanding of the seismic out-of-plane response of masonry gables. Incremental full-scale shake-table tests were performed on three densely instrumented URM gables until the complete collapse. Within this context, the study systematically investigated the effects of motions applied at the top of the gable, both being linearly amplified as well as amplified and out-of-phase, with respect to the motion applied at the base of the gable. Such differential motions simulate the effect of the gable interaction with three different roof configurations, each exerting a different filtering effect on the seismic motion. The response of the gables to both induced and tectonic earthquakes was considered. The experimental findings are presented in terms of failure mechanisms, force-displacement hysteresis behaviour, and acceleration and displacement capacities. All generated experimental data, along with the associated instrumentation schemes, are openly available for download at https://doi.org/10.60756/euc-1avy7q49