1,721,121 research outputs found
La circolazione dei modelli: calchi da Michelangelo tra Emilia e Veneto, nella seconda metà del Cinquecento
No full textIn Reggio Emilia, the sculptor Prospero Spani, also known as Clemente (1516-1584), created two statues
representing Adam and on the facade of the cathedral. Along with Saint Daria and Saint Crisanto, they were both
commissioned in 1552. The two statues indisputably draw inspiration from Dawn and Dusk, which are part of the
monument dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici in the New Sacristy of San Lorenzo in Florence, work of Michelangelo
Buonarroti. In January 1892, Eva’s leg by Prospero Clemente broke and fell to the ground. During the restoration,
it was noticed that the leg and all other statues were empty inside. There is no formal documentary evidence of
Clemente travelling to Florence, where Buonarroti's New Sacristy was opened to the public in 1556 and where, only
later on, by the will of Cosimo I, were carried out some engravings representing the whole composition. Despite the
existence of other drawings, casts were mainly responsible for spreading Michelangelo’s inventions for the Medici
tombs. In the sixteenth century, it was only possible to talk of a culture of casts after 1540 King Francis I Valois’
initiative to ask Francesco Primaticcio – who was already occupied working for him at the decoration of Fontainebleau – to procure the moulds of Rome’s best ancient statues in order to reproduce them. Among the commissioned
casts there were also those from Michelangelo, an artist who was extremely admired by the French. As known,
masterpieces realised for the King of France had an immediate impact in Italy, which was primarily possible thanks
to Primaticcio’s numerous trips in Emilia, where the painter had his own home and used to recruit his collaborators
Experimenting and Assessing a Distributed Privacy-Preserving OLAP over Big Data Framework: Principles, Practice, and Experiences
No full textOLAP is an authoritative analytical tool in the emerging big data analytics context, with particular regards to the target distributed environments (e.g., Clouds). Here, privacypreserving OLAP-based big data analytics is a critical topic, with several amenities in the context of innovative big data application scenarios like smart cities, social networks, bio-informatics, and so forth. The goal is that of providing privacy preservation during OLAP analysis tasks, with particular emphasis on the privacy of OLAP aggregates. Following this line of research, in this paper we provide a deep contribution on experimenting and assessing a state-of-the-art distributed privacy-preserving OLAP framework, named as SPPOLAP, whose main benefit is that of introducing a completely-novel privacy notion for OLAP data cubes
Endotoxin and cancer chemo-prevention
No full textReduced rates of lung cancer have been observed in several occupational groups exposed to high levels of organic dusts contaminated by endotoxin. The underlying anti-neoplastic mechanism of endotoxin may be an increased secretion of endogenous anti-neoplastic mediators and activation of the toll-like receptors (TLR). A detoxified endotoxin derivative, Monophosphoryl Lipid A (MPL®) is marketed in Europe since 1999 as part of the adjuvant systems in allergy vaccines for treatment of allergic rhino-conjunctivitis and allergic asthma. Over 200,000 patients have used them to date (nearly 70% in Germany). Since detailed exposure (MPL® dose and timing of administration) and individual data are potentially available, an observational follow-up study could be conducted in Germany to investigate the protective effect of MPL® against cancer, comparing cancer incidence in two groups of patients with allergic rhinitis: those treated with allergoids plus MPL® and those treated with a vaccine including the same allergoids but not MPL®. The protective effect of MPL® could be quantified in ever and never smokers. If this proposed observational study provides evidence of protective effects, MPL® could be immediately used as a chemo-preventive agent since it is already in use as adjuvant in human vaccines against cancer. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd
A kernel-based approach to errors-in-variables identification of stable multivariable linear systems
Full text linkIn this paper, we present a kernel-based non-parametric approach to identifying stable multi-input multi-output linear systems in the presence of bounded noise affecting both the input and the output measurements. Firstly, we formulate the considered problem in terms of robust optimization techniques. Then, we show that the formulated robust optimization problem can be solved using semidefinite optimization. Since the involved optimization problem is computationally demanding, we also provide a result that allows the user to compute a bound on the approximation error introduced by considering reduced complexity models. We present some simulation examples to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Finally, we apply the proposed identification method to the dataset experimentally collected on a linear electronic filter
Cancer increased after a reduction of infections in the first half of this century in Italy: etiologic and preventive implications.
No full textI.F. = 0.91
How to locate services optimizing redundancy: A comparative analysis of K-Covering Facility Location models
Full text linkRedundancy aspects related to covering facility location problems are of extreme importance for many applications, in particular those regarding critical services. For example, in the healthcare sector, facilities such as ambulances or first-aid centers must be located robustly against unpredictable events causing disruption or congestion. In this paper, we propose different modeling tools that explicitly address coverage redundancy for the underlying service. We also evaluate, both theoretically and experimentally, the properties and behavior of the models, and compare them from a computational and managerial point of view. More precisely, by starting from three classical double-covering models from the literature (BACOP1, BACOP2, and DSM), we define three parametric families of models (namely, K-BACOP1, K-BACOP2, and K-DSM) which generalize the former to any possible Kth coverage level of interest. The study of such generalizations allows us to derive interesting managerial insights on location decisions at the strategic level. The CPU performance and the quality of the solutions returned are assessed through ad-hoc KPIs collected over many representative instances with different sizes and topological characteristics, and also by dynamically simulating scenarios involving possible disruption for the located facilities. Finally, a real case study concerning ambulance service in Morocco is analyzed. The results show that, in general, K-BACOP1 performs very well, even if intrinsic feasibility issues limit its broad applicability. Instead, K-DSM achieves the best coverage and equity performances for lower levels of redundancy, while K-BACOP2 seems the most robust choice when high redundancy is required, showing smoother and more predictable trends
User Emotion Detection via Taxonomy Management: An Innovative System
Full text linkCatching the attention of a new acquaintance and empathize with her can improve the social skills of a robot. For this reason, we illus-trate here the first step towards a system which can be used by a social robot in order to "break the ice"between a robot and a new acquain-tance. After a training phase, the robot acquires a sub-symbolic coding of the main concepts being expressed in tweets about the IAB Tier-1 categories. Then this knowledge is used to catch the new acquaintance interests, which let arouse in her a joyful sentiment. The analysis process is done alongside a general small talk, and once the process is finished, the robot can propose to talk about something that catches the attention of the user, hopefully letting arise in him a mix of feelings which involve surprise and joy, triggering, therefore, an engagement between the user and the social robot
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