1,720,969 research outputs found
OR/MS Contributions to Peace Studies
No full textThe discourse on ethics in operations research/management science (OR/MS) has many aspects. Among them there is the ethical responsibility the OR/MS community faces in a world in which the widespread presence of structural violence makes the construction of a peaceful and sustainable social order a very challenging task, and puts at risk the very survival of human kind. In this paper we want to emphasize the role of the systemic approach, which is proper of OR/MS, with respect to the issue of peace, and in particular within the Peace Studies area
Educational Robotics at Primary School with Nintendo Labo
No full textIn the last five years, the Italian Ministry of Education has focused on digital skills, recognizing them as fundamental and indispensable for the growth of the future citizens of the information age. Numerous requests have come from the European Commission, the Italian Ministry of Education and the employment world regarding the introduction of new technologies in schools, whether or not this is part of curricular activities. National guidelines for kindergarten and primary school curricula promote the introduction of new tools and new multimedia languages as fundamental for all disciplines. The idea of the National Operational Programme (PON) and the National Plan for Digital Education (PNSD) is to boost digital knowledge and participation in STEM subjects. The project presented in this article was launched in this context and was a collaboration with the Nintendo company to evaluate the “Nintendo Labo” product at educational level. This trial was conducted in a third-grade class at the “Allegretto di Nuzio” primary school in Fabriano (AN). The kit, an evolution of the Nintendo Switch console, was initially created for recreational purposes. The advantages and limitations of the product came to light during the few months of the experiment. The “Nintendo Labo: assembly—play—discover” educational project allowed students to merge theoretical and practical aspects of their knowledge, and understand complex systems through design and simulation
Hardware/software data acquisition system for real time cell temperature monitoring in air-cooled polymer electrolyte fuel cells
Full text linkThis work presents a hardware/software data acquisition system developed for monitoring the temperature in real time of the cells in Air-Cooled Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells (AC-PEFC). These fuel cells are of great interest because they can carry out, in a single operation, the processes of oxidation and refrigeration. This allows reduction of weight, volume, cost and complexity of the control system in the AC-PEFC. In this type of PEFC (and in general in any PEFC), the reliable monitoring of temperature along the entire surface of the stack is fundamental, since a suitable temperature and a regular distribution thereof, are key for a better performance of the stack and a longer lifetime under the best operating conditions. The developed data acquisition (DAQ) system can perform non-intrusive temperature measurements of each individual cell of an AC-PEFC stack of any power (from watts to kilowatts). The stack power is related to the temperature gradient; i.e., a higher power corresponds to a higher stack surface, and consequently higher temperature difference between the coldest and the hottest point. The developed DAQ system has been implemented with the low-cost open-source platform Arduino, and it is completed with a modular virtual instrument that has been developed using NI LabVIEW. Temperature vs time evolution of all the cells of an AC-PEFC both together and individually can be registered and supervised. The paper explains comprehensively the developed DAQ system together with experimental results that demonstrate the suitability of the system
A digital twin infrastructure for designing an underwater survey with a professional DPV
No full textThis paper presents a digital twin infrastructure developed to study and test the buoyancy set-up of a diver propulsion vehicle (DPV) with and without payloads prior to the underwater survey. In order to obtain the final software simulator, MATLAB/Simulink (for physical and mathematical models) was connected with Unity (for robot and environment visualization and navigation). A user interface is also presented to simulate the model directly and guide the user in adding objects to the DPV and in running the code to recalculate the fundamental parameters of the model. The system was verified and validated through case studies designed to test the behavior of the virtual DPV
Android-Based Liveness Detection for Access Control in Smart Homes
No full textIn the domain of smart homes, technologies for personal safety and security play a prominent role. This paper presents a low-complexity Android application designed for mobile and embedded devices, that exploits the on-board camera to easily capture two images of the subject, and processes them to discriminate a true 3D and live face from a 2D one. The liveness detection based on such a discrimination provides anti-spoofing capabilities to secure access control based on face recognition. The results obtained are satisfactory even in different ambient light conditions, and further improvements are being developed to deal with low precision image acquisition
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
A Max-Plus Algebra-Based Platform for Modelling Coordinated Underwater Tasks of Fish Robots
No full textThis paper presents the design and implementation of a max-plus algebra-based platform to plan and model the coordinated behaviour of fish robots during underwater surveys. The tool, developed using MATLAB App Designer, features an intuitive Graphical User Interface (GUI) that allows users to set travel and exploration timings for a given route and input data. The GUI then simulates the temporal evolution of the coordinated tasks through the background creation of a general max-plus linear system. The GUI provides a clear visualisation of the input and output values, enabling seamless integration of mathematical modelling with practical applications. The case studies demonstrate the platform's capability to make task coordination efficient and highlight potential improvements to advance underwater robotics research
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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