1,721,351 research outputs found
Mappa di Comunità della Valle del Simeto
No full textQuesto libro è la storia di una collaborazione tra persone, legate fra loro dall'amore per un luogo, finalizzata alla "pratica" di una idea di sviluppo del territorio diversa da quella che viene loro imposta quotidianamente dalle strutture decisionali consolidate. Il luogo in questione e' una delle aree paesaggisticamente piu' pregiate della Sicilia, la Valle del Simeto, in corrispondenza del versante sud occidentale del vulcano Etna; l'idea di sviluppo che viene rigettata e' quella che, in passato, ha visto il materializzarsi di progetti di costruzione di impianti industriali altamente inquinanti lungo il corso del fiume Simeto; la "pratica" messa in campo dalla cittadinanza attiva simetina (dopo una prima fase di mobilitazione contro tali progetti), e' un progetto di mappatura di comunita'. Che cos'è una mappa di comunità? E' uno strumento consolidato, ma certo non "diffuso", con cui gli abitanti di un territorio "rappresentano", in prima persona ma anche collettivamente, il proprio ambiente di vita. Nella storia narrata, a piu' voci, da questo libro essa e' stata una importante tappa intermendia di un piu' ampio processo di riflessione critica collettiva sulle pratiche dell'abitare (su come cioè la comunità del Simeto usa quotidianamente il territorio), sulle potenzialità inespresse del territorio, sulle opportunità sprecate e, infine, sulle possibilita' future. Essa e' stata una strategia, concepita e implementata da un gruppo misto di ricercatori e cittadini attivi del simeto, per la collettivizzazione di informazioni e saperi altrimenti non disponibili (e sicuramente non producibili da soli "esperti"), capace di dare vita a nuovi processi creativi e a nuove progettualita'. Che sia questa una possibile strada per la democratizzazione delle pratiche di pianificazione o, piu' in generale, per alimentare il significato profondo dei valori sottesi dalla democrazia?
A YOLOv2 convolutional neural network-based Human-Machine Interface for the control of assistive robotic manipulators
Full text linkDuring the last years, the mobility of people with upper limb disabilities and constrained on power wheelchairs is empowered by robotic arms. Nowadays, even though modern manipulators offer a high number of functionalities, some users cannot exploit all those potentialities due to their reduced manual skills, even if capable of driving the wheelchair by means of proper Human-Machine Interface (HMI). Owing to that, this work proposes a low-cost manipulator realizing only simple tasks and controllable by three different graphical HMI. The latter are empowered using a You Only Look Once (YOLO) v2 Convolutional Neural Network that analyzes the video stream generated by a camera placed on the robotic arm end-effector and recognizes the objects with which the user can interact. Such objects are shown to the user in the HMI surrounded by a bounding box. When the user selects one of the recognized objects, the target position information is exploited by an automatic close-feedback algorithm which leads the manipulator to automatically perform the desired task. A test procedure showed that the accuracy in reaching the desired target is 78%. The produced HMIs were appreciated by different user categories, obtaining a mean score of 8.13/10
A high throughput hardware architecture for parallel recursive systematic convolutional encoders
Full text linkDuring the last years, recursive systematic convolutional (RSC) encoders have found application in modern telecommunication systems to reduce the bit error rate (BER). In view of the necessity of increasing the throughput of such applications, several approaches using hardware implementations of RSC encoders were explored. In this paper, we propose a hardware intellectual property (IP) for high throughput RSC encoders. The IP core exploits a methodology based on the ABCD matrices model which permits to increase the number of inputs bits processed in parallel. Through an analysis of the proposed network topology and by exploiting data relative to the implementation on Zynq 7000 xc7z010clg400-1 field programmable gate array (FPGA), an estimation of the dependency of the input data rate and of the source occupation on the parallelism degree is performed. Such analysis, together with the BER curves, provides a description of the principal merit parameters of a RSC encoder
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
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
Simulation framework to train intelligent agents towards an assisted driving power wheelchair for people with disability
No full textSeveral million people with disabilities exploit power wheelchairs for outdoor mobility on both sidewalks and cycling paths. Especially those with upper limb motor impairments have difficulty reacting quickly to obstacles along the way, creating dangerous situations, such as wheelchair crash or rollover. A possible solution could be to equip the power wheelchair with a neural network-based assisted driving system, able to detect, avoid or warn the users of obstacles. Therefore, a virtual environment is required to simulate the system and then test different neural network architectures before mounting the best performing one directly on board. In this work, we present a simulation framework to train multiple artificial intelligent agents in parallel, by means of reinforcement learning algorithms. The agent shall follow the user's will and identify obstacles along the path, taking the control of the power wheelchair when the user is making a dangerous driving choice. The developed framework, adapted from an existing autonomous driving simulator, has been used to train and test multiple intelligent agents simultaneously, thanks to a customised synchronisation and memory management mechanism, reducing the overall training time. Preliminary results highlight the suitability of the adapted framework for multiple agent development in the assisted driving scenario
La prevenzione vaccinale del viaggiatore
No full textIl capitolo descrive le malattie infettive prevenibili tramite vaccinazione per le quali, nei viaggiatori internazionali è indicata la vaccinazione. Per ogni patologia dopo una breve introduzione epidemiologico-clinica, si descrive la vaccinazione disponibile e le raccomandazioni attualmente in uso in Italia
A wider view on possible causes of observed BrO/SO2 – CO2/SO2 correlations – during volcanic degassing variations
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