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Scenography and Dramaturgy of the City
Get PDFThe perceived deficiencies of the contemporary theory and practice of architecture and urban design lead to the main inquiry of this study: What theoretical approaches could reintroduce “human” elements of life, beauty and wholeness into contemporary cities? The primary thesis is divided further into the principal questions: (1) How practices are connected to space and place? (2) What structures underlie the everyday city life? (3) How nature and life are connected to the built environment? The study addresses the questions with Scenographic, Phenomenological, and Biophilic Approaches in order to attempt a reflective attention to the character of contemporary environments and human activities, in particular to their relationship with nature and life, and of an entire range of forms that evolved from this relationship. The Scenographic approach offers vast methodologies capable of overcoming the division between practices and space. It opens up the possibility for the creation of living places framed by the physical and passionate experience coupled with the creative energy of the dwellers that can find themselves acting and appropriating their environment. The Phenomenological approach is instrumental in the understanding of the most basic structures that constitute the everyday life in urban setting. The thesis views the phenomenon of everyday environmental experience from the vantage points of motion, rest, and engagement. The Biophilic approach fruitfully considers the elements necessary in order to assist designers in the practical application of the human affiliation to nature, in particular in the built environment. In addition, a short excursus to the work of Christopher Alexander introduces the concept of "pattern" as a "quality" of human relations that is activated and made possible by a specific architectural circumstance. Besides, it is stated that life and beauty in the built environment arise only from processes which allow living structure to unfold.
The thesis is an effort to open up some theoretical directions potentially useful for the task of urban regeneration. For this treatise to be considered successful, the “effective stories” explaining, how life, beauty and wholeness may penetrate the urban fabric in specific cases, are to follow in its footsteps
Real-Time Event Centric Data Integration
Get PDFA vital step in integrating data from multiple sources is detecting and handling duplicate records that refer to the same real-life entity. Events are spatio-temporal entities that reflect changes in real world and are received or captured from different sources (sensors, mobile phones, social network services, etc.). In many real world situations, detecting events mostly take place through multiple observations by different observers. The local view of the observer reflects only a partial knowledge with certain granularity of time and space. Observations occur at a particular place and time, however events which are inferred from observations, range over time and space. In this thesis, we address the problem of event matching, which is the task of detecting similar events in the recent past from their observations. We focus on detecting Hyperlocal events, which are an integral part of any dynamic human decision-making process and are useful for different multi-tier responding agencies such as emergency medical services, public safety and law enforcement agencies, organizations working on fusing news from different sources as well as for citizens. In an environment where continuous monitoring and processing is required, the matching task imposes different challenges. In particular, the matching task is decomposed into four separate tasks in which each requiring different computational method. The four tasks are: event-type similarity, similarity in location, similarity in time and thematic role similarity that handles participants similarity. We refer to the four tasks as local similarities. Then in addition, a global similarity measure combines the four tasks before being able to cluster and handle them in a robust near real-time system. We address the local similarity by studying thoroughly existing similarity measures and propose suitable similarity for each task. We utilize ideas from semantic web, qualitative spatial reasoning, fuzzy set and structural alignment similarities in order to define local similarity measures. Then we address the global similarity by treating the problem as a relational learning problem and use machine learning to learn the weights of each local similarity. To learn the weights, we combine the features of each pair of events into one object and use logistic regression and support vector machines to learn the weights. The learned weighted function is tested and evaluated on real dataset which is used to predict the similarity class of the new streamed even
L'interazione madre - bambino durante i primi anni di vita: analisi longitudinale degli effetti della genitorialità a rischio sullo sviluppo del bambino.
No full textL'obiettivo generale di questa tesi è chiarire il modo in cui alcune variabili, prossimali e distali, influenzano lo sviluppo psicofisico del bambino all'interno di un campione di madri a rischio del progetto Scommettiamo sui giovani. Qualora i risultati descritti in questo lavoro confermassero i dati presenti in letteratura, la Provincia Autonoma di Trento potrebbe applicare sul territorio una serie di servizi rivolti alle madri a rischio e non, e attuare interventi di supporto alla genitorialità.
Lâorganizzazione della tesi prevede una parte teorica introduttiva, la presentazione di quattro articoli scientifici, in corso di pubblicazione, riguardanti diverse aree di interesse (articolo 1: Le madri a rischio e il quoziente di sviluppo dei bambini; articolo 2: L'indice di attaccamento dei bambini in un campione di madri a rischio; articolo 3: Il parenting nei contesti di immigrazione; articolo 4: Valutazione preliminare dell'efficacia dell'intervento di supporto alla genitorialità a rischio in Trentino e un capitolo finale sulle conclusioni generali e sulle ricerche future
A Tag Contract Framework for Modeling Heterogeneous Systems
No full textIn the distributed development of modern IT systems, contracts play a vital role in ensuring interoperability of components and adherence to specifica- tions. The design of embedded systems, however, is made more complex by the heterogeneous nature of components, which are often described using different models and interaction mechanisms. Composing such components is generally not well-defined, making design and verification difficult. Sev- eral denotational frameworks have been proposed to handle heterogeneity using a variety of approaches. However, the application of heterogeneous modeling frameworks to contract-based design has not yet been investigated. In this work, we develop an operational model with precise heterogeneous denotational semantics, based on tag machines, that can represent hetero- geneous composition, and provide conditions under which composition can be captured soundly and completely. The operational framework is imple- mented in a prototype tool which we use for experimental evaluation. We then construct a full contract model and introduce heterogeneous compo- sition, refinement, dominance, and compatibility between contracts, alto- gether enabling a formalized and rigorous design process for heterogeneous systems. Besides, we also develop a generic algebraic method to synthe- size or refine a set of contracts so that their composition satisfies a given contract
Verification of Hybrid Systems using Satisfiability Modulo Theories
No full textEmbedded systems are formed by hardware and software
components that interact with the physical environment and thus may be modeled as Hybrid Systems. Due to the complexity the system,there is an increasing need of automatic techniques to support the design phase, ensuring that a system behaves as expected in all the possible operating conditions.In this thesis, we propose novel techniques for the verification and the validation of hybrid systems using Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT).
SMT is an established technique that has been used successfully in many verification approaches, targeted for both hardware and software systems.
The use of SMT to verify hybrid systems has been limited,
due to the restricted support of complex continuous dynamics and the lack
of scalability.
The contribution of the thesis is twofold.
First, we propose novel encoding techniques, which widen the
applicability and improve the effectiveness of the SMT-based
approaches.
Second, we propose novel SMT-based algorithms that improve the
performance of the existing state of the art approaches.
In particular we show algorithms to solve problems such as
invariant verification, scenario verification and parameter synthesis.
The algorithms fully exploit the underlying structure of a
network of hybrid systems and the functionalities of modern
SMT-solvers.
We show and discuss the effectiveness of the the proposed techniques
when applied to benchmarks from the hybrid systems domain
Surface Functionalizations towards Nucleic Acid Purification: a nanoscale study
No full textProtein byosynthesis is performed by ribosomes, that translate the genetic information contained in a strand of mRNA and assemble the peptide chain. During translation, several ribosomes associate to a single strand of mRNA, forming supramolecular complexes known as polyribosomes (polysomes).This project is aimed at developing and studying a miniaturized purification system able to isolate and extract polysome-associated mRNA, namely mRNA under active translation.
The resulting microdevice will constitute a faster, simpler and low-cost alternative to the time-consuming traditional laboratory procedures for polysome purification and mRNA extraction (sucrose gradient centrifugation and phenol/ethanol RNA extraction).
Polysome purification on microdevice will be based on the immobilization of polysomes to the device surfaces, opportunely treated to enhance polysome adhesion. Surface funtionalization will be achieved by formation of Self-Assembled Monolayers (SAM) of organic molecules. In particular, since both ribosomes and nucleic acids expose an high quantity of electrical charged moieties towards the environment [Anger et al., 2013], organic molecules containing charged functional groups will be used as SAM constituents.
In this thesis a characterization of gold and silicon oxide plane samples functionalized with different alkanethiols and alkylsilanes SAMs will be presented as well as a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of polysome adhesion performed mainly by Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). A proof of principle of the purification and extraction of RNA from polysomes using a silicon/Pyrex microdevice will be also reported.
[Anger et al., 2013] Anger A.M., Armache J.P., Berninghausen O., Habeck M., Subklewe M., Wilson D.N. and Beckmann R. (2013) Structures of the human and drosophila 80S ribosome. Nature, 497(7447):80-8
Acoustic Model Adaptation For Reverberation Robust Automatic Speech Recognition
No full textReverberation is a natural phenomenon observed in enclosed environments. It occurs due to the reflection of the signal from the walls and objects in the room. For humans, reverberation is beneficial as it reinforces sound and also provide the sensation of space. However, for automatic speech recognition even moderate amount of reverberation is very harmful. It corrupts the clean speech which leads to deterioration in the performance of the speech recognizer. Moreover, in the enclosed environment, reverberation has the most damaging affect over the accuracy of the recognizer. In literature, to improve speech recognition performance against environmental artifacts mostly noise compensation techniques have been proposed. As a consequence, the problem of reverberation has received relatively less attention. Lately, some techniques have emerged which are specifically tailored for compensating the effects of reverberation. Nevertheless, the problem of reverberation is far from being solved. Therefore, to handle reverberation and provide robustness to speech recognition, we propose "Semi-blind adaptation" technique which adapts the clean acoustic models to the reverberant environment and thus provide improved performance.
Semi-blind adaptation technique works in two phases, in the first phase reverberation model is estimated and in the second phase using the reverberation model, adaptation of the clean acoustic models is performed. The reverberation model (Pw-EDC) proposed in this technique models the non-diffuse nature of the rooms. Therefore, the Pw-EDC model has dual slope energy decay where the first slope represents the steep decay of early reflections and second slope represents the slow decay of late reflections. The parameters to model early reflections decay were empirically calculated and to find the parameter of late reflections decay we proposed Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) based reverberation time estimation technique. Late reflections decay parameter is estimated by first training a pool of GMMs where each model represents the reverberation time of the data on which it is trained. In the test phase, test data is matched with these models and the GMM which matches with highest probability provide the estimate of late reflections decay parameter. To adapt the acoustic models, reverberation energy contributions are estimated by using the Pw-EDC model. The parameters of the current state in the model (i.e., only means) are adapted by adding the reverberation energy contributions of the previous states to the current state. In this manner, the dispersion of energy caused by the reverberation is compensated. Adaptation is performed not only on static parameters but also on dynamic parameters of the model. After adaptation, the models are evaluated on data from low, medium and high reverberant environments.
The efficacy of the proposed adaptation technique is evaluated on small and medium vocabulary tasks. For these tasks reverberant data is generated by convolving clean signals with impulse responses taken from SIREAC and AIR databases. SIREAC provides RIRs of office and living room and it also has a facility to modify the reverberation time. Therefore, in our experiments the reverberation time of the RIRs is varied from 200 to 900 ms in steps of 100 ms for both rooms of SIREAC. In AIR environment, RIRs are obtained from studio booth, meeting, office and lecture rooms. These rooms have very low, low, medium and high reverberation times respectively. For small vocabulary task, Pw-EDC adaptation provide considerable improvements compared to the baseline results especially at medium and high reverberation times in both environments. Pw-EDC adaptation is compared with contemporary adaptation technique (Exp-EDC adaptation) which also adapts the models in the same manner, except it uses a crude reverberation model. It was found, Pw-EDC adaptation gives better performance in all the rooms of both environments. Pw-EDC is also compared with state-of-the-art adaptation technique i.e., unsupervised MLLR and it was found that Pw-EDC adaptation provide similar performance to MLLR only when the models contain static coefficients. For medium vocabulary task, Pw-EDC adaptation provide better performance than Exp-EDC adaptation in both the environments. However, when compared against unsupervised MLLR it shows relatively poor performance. The reason for such dismal performance is the inaccurate adaptation of dynamic coefficients of the models. In the end, the robustness of proposed adaptation technique is due to the precise modeling and estimation of reverberation energy decay by Pw-EDC model. Using Pw-EDC model, the semi-blind adaptation has shown consistent improvements across low, medium and high reverberant environments in both small and medium vocabulary speech recognition task
Eresia e tolleranza. Jacopo Aconcio e gli stratagemmi di Satana
No full textIl presente lavoro propone una rilettura del pensiero religioso di Jacopo Aconcio, filosofo e teologo del XVI secolo. Attraverso l'analisi delle opere religiose, ovvero del "Dialogo di Giacopo Riccamati", della "Somma brevissima della dottrina christiana", di "Una essortatione al timor di Dio" e degli "Stratagemata Satanae", e della vicenda biografia dell'autore si è inteso cogliere lo sviluppo storico del suo pensiero e il suo rapporto con il dibattito intellettuale coevo.
La ricerca tenta di superare le lacune documentarie appoggiandosi alle testimonianze di chi ha condiviso con Aconcio i momenti più significativi della sua vita, come Leonardo Colombini, Francesco Betti, Adriaan Haemstede e Cassiodoro de Reyna. L’analisi del "Dialogo di Giacopo Riccamati" si caratterizza per la trattazione distinta della versione manoscritta del "Dialogo" e di quella a stampa, quasi come se si trattasse di due opere diverse, e per il confronto con la letteratura propagandistica riformata destinata alla penisola italiana. Le sfumature e i silenzi della "Somma brevissima della dottrina christiana" sulle questioni teologiche più rilevanti rivelano la vicinanza di Aconcio all’ambiente degli esuli italiani in Svizzera. Il ricorso a strumenti propri della tradizione umanistica e l’interesse per la letteratura apocalittica sull’Anticristo confermano un’adesione sincera ai principi della Riforma ma anche una personalità critica e indipendente.
La ricostruzione del coinvolgimento di Aconcio nel processo intentato a Londra contro Adriaan Haemstede, con particolare attenzione alla documentazione conservata, come la lettera che Aconcio invia al ministro francese Nicolas Des Gallars e quella di Pier Martire Vermigli alle chiese straniere di Londra, permette di individuare interessanti nuclei argomentativi che troveranno poi spazio negli "Stratagemata Satanae". La denuncia delle «astuzie di Satana» è l’occasione per approfondire la personale riflessione religiosa di Aconcio. L’analisi dell’opera, indirizzata all’individuazione dei suoi presupposti antropologici e di quelli gnoseologici, si sofferma poi sulla definizione dei "fundamenta fidei" e sugli argomenti utilizzati da Aconcio per delegittimare l’uso della violenza contro gli eretici. Il confronto tra il testo e il dibattito contemporaneo rivela che gli "Stratagemata Satanae" si distinguono soprattutto per l’attenzione alla costruzione della tolleranza: Aconcio non si limita a criticare la coercizione del coscienze ma elabora anche gli strumenti necessari a garantire un dialogo religioso proficuo e pacifico
"Storie prima delle Storie". La memoria pre-erodotea delle Guerre Persiane
Get PDFPrima di essere raccontate nelle Storie di Erodoto le Guerre Persiane furono oggetto di un processo di memorializzazione collettiva pervasivo e 'multimediale'. Il presente lavoro costituisce in primo luogo un'indagine sistematica delle forme di memoria delle Guerre Persiane antecedenti alla rielaborazione storiografica erodotea(poesia, tragedia, oracoli, monumenti, iscrizioni, topografia, discorso pubblico, riti, culti, festivals), prodotte ad Atene durante la Pentecontetia. Di tali forme di memoria si discutono inoltre ampiamente le caratteristiche, tra le quali si evidenziano in particolare il carattere orale e locale e, almeno in una certa misura, la configurazione narrativa. Di tali "storie prima delle Storie" si offrono infine, in vista di una prosecuzione della ricerca in tal senso, spunti e considerazioni relativamente alle modalità e ai contenuti della loro ricezione e riplasmazione nella pagina storiografica erodotea
Characterization of material for civil engineering
No full textMaterials are the heart of engineering, which can be defined as the creative and rational use of materials for practical purposes. Materials have had an essential role in the development of civil engineering: from the beginning of human evolution, man has used many different materials to build houses, bridges, roads and countless other structures to make his life easier. Ancient populations used the raw materials at their disposal, such as stone, clay and timber. Over the centuries, the search for new materials became increasingly important to respond to changing human needs, and men learned how to use clay to form artificial stones, cements and concretes, for instance. While hands-on familiarity rooted in tradition and crafting expertise initially drove these human activities, in modern times the need for a scientific understanding of materials prompted the birth of the material science discipline. Material science studies the composition, behavior and properties of materials to solve problems associated with their use. Engineering and material science work together to create functional, durable and beautiful structures.
Among the materials used in civil engineering constructions, wood and cement have had the most important role over the centuries and they are still the main components of our infrastructures.
Timber was used as a building material even by primitive man, and a few ancient temples, palaces and bridges built of wood can still be seen today. In the 20th century, although materials such as concrete had become competitive, wood retained its significant role in building. The main problem with the use of wood as a construction material concerns its possibly limited lifetime. Wood is characterized by a limited resistance to moisture and fire, the two elements responsible for the destruction of most wooden buildings in the past.
Cement, and consequently concrete, is the most often used material today. The term “cement” is now used to mean a modern binder, the so-called Portland cement, patented in England in 1824. Similar binding materials were already being used from very early on ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome. Modern cement formulations have changed a great deal and can be adapted to their intended use and the surrounding environment