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The effects of VR, AI and robotics on children’s motivation towards English language learning. An inclusive intervention.
No full textThis contribution explores the potential for fostering
inclusive learning environments within the complex
field of English language acquisition, with a focus on
two key aspects: the integration of diverse
technological tools and the emotional dimension of
learning. Specifically, it examines the connection
between positive emotions and enhanced motivation,
particularly in the context of employing inclusive
teaching strategies and various technological
applications in the foreign language learning
process
Il Massiccio Centrale attraverso le sue rappresentazioni letterarie
No full textIn this essay we want to investigate the methods as well as the typologies of literary representations
relating to the Massif Central, starting from the writers who have chosen
this portion of the middle French mountains as the context to set their novels. These are
literary works that have the peculiarity of representing the territorialization actions of
the inhabitants as well as their ways of life, relationships, and production – of yesteryear
or contemporary – of this portion of France starting from the end of the nineteenth century.
The enhancement of local literary heritage has contributed to creating new dynamics
of local development in the marginal areas of the mountain region in question, such
as literary itineraries, literary cafés, writers’ houses, etc
Novel Formulation of Ionic Liquid-Based Ferrofluids: Investigation of the Magnetic Properties
No full text: This study establishes a viable process to prepare hybrid nanomaterials comprising stable ionic liquid-based ferrofluids (IL-FFs) with tunable magnetic anisotropy and reduced water contamination, where the latter strongly decreases the colloidal stability of the system. Spinel iron oxide magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) with different compositions (γ-Fe2O3, Co0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4, and CoFe2O4) and different magnetic anisotropies were synthesized by the polyol method. The particles were coated with dihydrocaffeic acid (DHCA) in tetrahydrofuran (THF) and subsequently transferred directly to 3-ethyl-1-methylimidazolium acetate (EMIMAc), exploring the synergy between intermolecular and covalent bonding to obtain stable dispersions. The evolution of magnetic properties from powder to IL-FFs systems was investigated, allowing us to highlight the synergistic influence of interparticle interaction and magnetic anisotropy on the magnetization dynamics of the nanoparticles
Medici, passeggeri e migranti a bordo dei grandi transatlantici tra le due guerre mondiali
No full textLaunched in 1925 and remaining in service until 1960, the ocean liner Conte Biancamano was among the principal protagonists in the history of Italian maritime navigation during the first half of the twentieth century.
Reconstructing the trajectory of this vessel affords a distinctive insight into several of the century’s most significant phases: the golden age of transoceanic travel, when it operated on the North and South American routes serving passengers across all classes; the Fascist period, during which it voyaged to East Africa, India, and China; the Second World War, when it was requisitioned for the transport of American military personnel; and the post-war years, when it became the first passenger ship to be refitted in Italy.
Upon its decommissioning in 1960, the then National Museum of Science and Technology acquired the ship’s bridge, ballroom, and several cabins, which are now preserved in the Aeronaval Pavilion. The multiple lives of the Biancamanoare examined in this volume through the contributions of scholars from diverse disciplines—including maritime history, economic and industrial history, labour history, and museology—thus enriching research into the historical and social contexts of which this ocean liner constitutes both a material and symbolic testimony
Directive-commissive threats in the history of Genoese from the 17th to the 20th century
No full textLa (s)cortesia linguistica può essere definita come un insieme di comportamenti verbali che proteggono (cortesia) o minacciano (scortesia) la faccia degli interlocutori e che sono considerati appropriati o non appropriati per ragioni socioculturali o contestuali; infatti, nessuna espressione linguistica è intrinsecamente cortese o scortese. Questo studio si occupa dell’evoluzione della (s)cortesia in genovese – la varietà galloromanza parlata a Genova (Italia) – dal XVII al XX secolo. La ricerca si basa sull’analisi di testi speech-purposed: otto commedie scritte in genovese tra il XVII e il XX secolo, genere scelto in quanto mimetico del parlato dialogico orale e spontaneo. Il lavoro si concentra in particolare sull’analisi delle minacce legate ai direttivi e ne indaga l’evoluzione funzionale, mostrando che, sebbene le minacce siano tipiche della genuine impoliteness e della comunicazione conflittuale, dopo il XIX secolo si riscontrano nel corpus considerato alcuni casi di minacce che perseguono scopi cortesi in contesti non conflittuali. In questo contributo discuteremo le ragioni che motivano questa evoluzione pragmatica, confrontando i dati pragmatico-linguistici con gli eventi storici e socioculturali che hanno caratterizzato le epoche analizzate, e risponderemo a una domanda cruciale: si tratta di casi di cortesia, di mock impoliteness o di altro ancora?Linguistic (im)politeness can be defined as a set of verbal behaviours that protect (politeness) or threaten (impoliteness) the face of interlocutors and are considered appropriate or inappropriate for sociocultural or contextual reasons; in fact, no linguistic expression is inherently polite or impolite. This study deals with the evolution of (im)politeness in Genoese – the Gallo-Romance variety spoken in Genoa (Italy) – from the 17th to the 20th century. The research is based on the analysis of speech-purposed texts: eight plays written in Genoese between the 17th and 20th centuries, a genre chosen because it mimics spontaneous oral dialogue. The work focuses in particular on the analysis of threats related to directives and investigates their functional evolution, showing that, although threats are typical of genuine impoliteness and conflictual communication, after the 19th century, some cases of threats pursuing courteous purposes in non-conflictual contexts can be found in the corpus considered. In this contribution, we will discuss the reasons behind this pragmatic evolution, comparing pragmatic-linguistic data with the historical and socio-cultural events that characterised the periods analysed, and we will answer a crucial question: are these cases of politeness, mock impoliteness or something else
Conjugate Heat Transfer Modelling in a Centrifugal Compressor for Automotive Applications
No full textIn the automotive industry, the increasing stringent standards to reduce fuel consumption and pollutant emissions has driven significant advancements in turbocharging systems. The centrifugal compressor, as the most widely used power-absorbing machinery, plays a crucial role but remains one of the most complex components to study and design. While most numerical studies rely on adiabatic models, this work analyses several Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models with conjugate heat transfer (CHT) of varying complexity, incorporating real solid components. This approach allowed a sensitivity analysis of the performance obtained from the different models compared to the adiabatic case, highlighting the effects of internal heat exchange losses. Moreover, an analysis of the temperature distribution of the wheel was conducted, along with a thermal assessment of the various heat flux contributions across the different components, to gain a deeper understanding of the performance differences. The impact of including the seal plate has been evaluated and different boundary conditions on the seal plate have been tested to assess the uncertainty in the results. Finally, the influence of heat exchange between the shroud and the external environment is also examined to further refine the model’s accuracy. One of the objectives of this work is to obtain a correct temperature profile of the rotor for a subsequent thermo-mechanical analysis
Neuromorphic Computing for Tactile Sensing Systems on Resource-Constrained Edge Devices
No full textArtificial tactile sensing systems have emerged as a promising technology for enhancing human-machine interactions. Integrating artificial touch into machines enables them to perform complex tasks (i.e., texture sensation, dexterous manipulation, and locomotion) and interact more seamlessly with the environment. These systems typically consist of tactile sensors that provide mechanical/physical contact signals, followed by embedded algorithms on resource-constrained devices for signal acquisition and processing. However, in realworld unconstrained scenarios, these systems face substantial hardware challenges, including the need for fast and low-power/energy computations. To address this challenge, there has been growing interest in biologically inspired computing paradigms, particularly neuromorphic computing. Neuromorphic circuits mimic brain-like processing techniques, offering low-power signal processing through event-driven sensation and acquisition, asynchronous communication, and in memory computations, all while minimizing hardware requirements. This thesis explores the integration of neuromorphic computing techniques into tactile sensing systems for real-time classification of tactile patterns. In particular, the thesis emphasizes the direct processing of tactile signals with minimal preprocessing. We first developed a tactile sensing system comprising eight piezoelectric sensors and interface electronics, mounted on a biomimetic fingertip designed for use in robotic and prosthetic hands. This system was used to capture tactile texture signals under various experimental conditions. Specifically, we designed and 3D-printed eight artificial textures with varying degrees of coarseness, ranging from smooth to rough. The experiments involved evaluating different indentation forces and sliding/scanning velocities. Next, we introduce a neuromorphic approach consisting of two key components: 1) neural encoding of tactile signals and spike emission, and 2) a recurrent spiking neural network (RSNN) for spike-based processing and classification. The RSNN is trained using surrogate gradient descent to leverage the spatio-temporal features of the emitted spikes, enabling subsequent inference without relying on any hand-crafted features. The developed neuromorphic framework is employed first to study the impact of individual experimental conditions on classification accuracy, followed by a comprehensive evaluation considering all conditions together. Our results indicate that increasing the indentation force significantly enhances classification accuracy, while the effect of sliding velocity was minimal. We propose an optimization method to control the computational cost of the RSNN while maintaining its classification accuracy by tuning the refractory period parameter in spiking neurons. In particular, we found that adjusting this parameter between 1 and 10 ms during neural encoding reduces the computational cost (i.e., number of synaptic operations) of the RSNN, with only a small drop in accuracy. Subsequently, we implemented the optimized RSNN on the Intel Loihi neuromorphic chip for real-time tactile texture classification. By tuning the refractory period parameter on the Loihi chip, we observed a reduction in energy consumption per inference of approximately 32.5% (i.e. 7.93 micro Joules compared to 11.75 micro Joules for non-optimized networks). Finally, we compare the performance of the presented neuromorphic system with relevant existing machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) methods on edge devices for the same tactile texture use-case. We employed a low-power system based on the STM32 microcontroller and an ML accelerator based on the Coral dev board TPU to host the ML classifiers and DL networks. The evaluation involves the preprocessing stage within each approach and their associated classification networks. Experimental results show that the proposed neuromorphic system exhibits an order-of-magnitude gain in terms of energy consumption per inference compared to the other methods, while achieving a classification accuracy of 86.7%, highlighting its effectiveness in performing low-power tactile signal processing
National Models of Smart City Development: A Multivariate Perspective on Urban Innovation and Sustainability
No full textThis study examines the extent to which smart cities are expressions of nationally homogeneous development trends by way of an analysis of their structural characteristics from a multivariate viewpoint. Drawing on data from the International Institute for Management Development IMD Smart City Index 2024, we find a sample of 102 cities across the world clustering along six key dimensions of smartness: mobility, environment, government, economy, people, and living. The aim is to examine if cities within a country have similar profiles and, if so, to what degree such similarity translates to other macro-level institutional, political, and cultural conditions. Our results verify a tight correspondence between city profiles and national contexts, implying that macro-level governance arrangements, policy coordination, and institutional capacity are pivotal in influencing local smart city development. Planned centralised countries possess more uniform city characteristics, while decentralised nations possess more variant urban policies. This study contributes to international debate regarding smart cities by empirically identifying national directions of urban innovation. It offers pragmatic inputs for policymakers that aim to align local efforts with overall sustainable development agendas. Moreover, this study introduces a novel application of Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) to classify smart city profiles based on national models. While the analysis yields high classification accuracy, it is important to note that the sample is skewed toward cities from the Global North, potentially limiting the generalisability of the results
Holographic Correlators with Bogomol’nyi-Prasad-Sommerfield Bound States in N=4 Supersymmetric Yang-Mills Theory
No full textWe compute four-point correlators in N=4 SU(N) super-Yang-Mills theory with both single and double-particle 1/2-Bogomol'nyi-Prasad-Sommerfield (BPS) operators in the regime of large 't Hooft coupling and large N. In particular, we give explicit expressions up to O(1/N4) for the lightest correlator with two double-particle and two single-particle operators built out of the stress-tensor multiplet. Our derivation makes use of the general holographic prescription applied to an asymptotically AdS5×S5 geometry that describes a coherent superposition of multigraviton operators. The final result can be written in terms of a natural generalization of the standard D functions and takes a compact form in Mellin space. The correlator we compute here is the simplest of a more general class of correlators where two inserted operators are multiparticles. These can be derived with the same approach, suggesting that the structure found here is general