117,300 research outputs found
PROCESSI DECISIONALI E MOVIMENTI DI PROTESTA TRA SCIENZA E POLITICA. UNA COMPARAZIONE TRA ITALIA E FRANCIA SUL CASO ALTA VELOCITÀ
No full textLa ricerca intende indagare come la strutturazione delle arene decisionali, e nello specifico l’apertura a soggetti portatori di saperi non specialistici, possa influire sulla definizione del problema di policy, nel caso politiche tecno-scientifiche altamente conflittuali come quelle ambientali. A questo scopo si mettono a comparazione due casi relativi ai fenomeni che si rivelano spesso come i più complessi anche fra i conflitti ambientali, vale a dire quelli di pianificazione e localizzazione di grandi infrastrutture particolarmente impattanti sul territorio quali le tratte ferroviarie ad alta velocità. La scelta è ricaduta sui due casi nazionali, italiano e francese, della progettata linea transfrontaliera Torino-Lione, per gli spunti che essi offrono in termini di rapporto fra saperi, repertori d’azione collettiva, struttura delle arene decisionali, e nel tentativo di fornire una prospettiva il più possibile originale e completa su un fenomeno sempre più studiato da diverse angolature, ma su cui non esistono risultati univoci. Molte ricerche tentano infatti di dare una risposta al differente grado di conflittualità riscontrabile sul medesimo progetto dai due lati del confine. In gran parte nel fare ciò adottano spiegazioni di tipo prettamente istituzionale e statico, ponendo di volta in volta in rilievo la maggiore partecipazione concessa ai destinatari o al contrario il maggior decisionismo rintracciabile in Francia, così come la maggiore o minore fiducia verso le istituzioni e la scienza. Obiettivo della tesi è invece di indagare il ruolo che la strutturazione e il funzionamento delle arene decisionali può avere nel determinare la reazione locale, ma attraverso la mediazione operata dalla cognizione sociale. Il che significa indagare non solo se le modalità decisionali possono avere un ruolo nello spiegazione della protesta (o se al contrario quest’ultima sia da addebitare unicamente alla scelta di policy, al di là del modo attraverso cui si è giunti alla scelta), ma anche in che modo ciò avvenga. Vale a dire perché, all’interno dei due casi con processo decisionale omogeneo, alcuni attori decidano di ricorrere a repertori d’azione di tipo conflittuale ed altri no. Si tenta di capire come la strutturazione delle arene (il loro grado di inclusività, l’apertura a forme di conoscenza differenti da quelle tecnico-scientifiche ufficiali, la legittimazione delle istanze locali) si ripercuota sulla definizione del problema, e come questa, a sua volta, da un lato retroagisca sul processo decisionale stesso, costringendo ad un re-framing i policy-makers, e dall’altra funga da stimolo per l’azione collettiva e la scelta delle strategie d’azione (adesione, scientificizzazione, protesta). A tal scopo si analizzano, attraverso le tecniche qualitative e quantitative della political claim analysis, della frame analysis e della protest event analysis, i discorsi prodotti dagli attori coinvolti nella vicenda nei due casi d’indagine.Aim of this work is to investigate how the structure of decision-making arenas, and specifically the opening to subjects with no specialized knowledge, can influence policy problem definition, in the case of highly contested policies involving techno-scientific and environmental issues. In order to do so a comparative analysis is carried out, comparing two cases related to the phenomena that often represent the most complex environmental conflicts, namely those of planning and location of major infrastructure particularly impacting for local life quality, such as high-speed railway lines. The choice fell on the two national cases, Italian and French, of the proposed cross-border line Turin-Lyon, for the cues they offer in terms of relation among different kinds of knowledge, collective action repertoires, structure of decision-making arenas, and in an attempt to provide an as original and complete as possible perspective of a phenomenon widely studied from different viewpoints, but on which no unequivocal result is reached. In fact, many researches are trying to explain the different degrees of conflict found on the same project from both sides of the border. In order to reach this goal they usually adopt strictly institutional and static explanations, underlining from time to time different supposed characteristics of French policy-making (the increased participation granted to the recipients, or on the opposite the greater role of imposition), as well as the greater or lesser confidence towards institutions and science. Aim of the thesis is rather to investigate the role the structuring and functioning of decision-making arenas may have in determining local reaction, but through the mediation made by social cognition. That means not only to investigate whether the method of decision may have a role in the explanation of the protest (or if on the contrary protest is to be charged only to the policy choice, beyond the way by which the choice is reached), but also how this happens. That is why, within the two cases with homogeneous decision-making process, some actors decide to use conflictual action repertoires, and others do not. The attempt is to understand how the structuring of the arenas (their inclusiveness degree, openness to forms of knowledge different from the techno-scientific official ones, legitimacy of local instances) influences the problem definition, and how this, in turn, retroacts on the decision-making itself (forcing policy-makers to a reframing) and acts as a stimulus for collective action and choice of action strategies (adhesion, technical reframing or protest). For this purpose the discourses produced by involved actors in the two cases are investigated through qualitative and quantitative techniques of political claims analysis, frame analysis and protest event analysis
Property-Aware Robot Object Manipulation: A Generative Approach
No full textWhen transporting an object, we unconsciously adapt our movement to its properties, for instance by slowing down when the item is fragile. The most relevant features of an object are immediately revealed to a human observer by the way the handling occurs, without any need for verbal description. It would greatly facilitate collaboration to enable humanoid robots to perform movements that convey similar intuitive cues to the observers. In this work, we focus on how to generate robot motion adapted to the hidden properties of the manipulated objects, such as their weight and fragility. We explore the possibility of leveraging Generative Adversarial Networks to synthesize new actions coherent with the properties of the object. The use of a generative approach allows us to create new and consistent motion patterns. Besides, the informative content of the actions is preserved. Our results show that Generative Adversarial Nets can be a powerful tool for the generation of novel and meaningful transportation actions, which result effectively modulated as a function of the object weight and the carefulness required in its handling
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe 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
Expressing and Inferring Action Carefulness in Human-to-Robot Handovers
No full textImplicit communication plays such a crucial role during social exchanges that it must be considered for a good experience in human-robot interaction. This work addresses implicit communication associated with the detection of physical properties, transport, and manipulation of objects. We propose an ecological approach to infer object characteristics from subtle modulations of the natural kinematics occurring during human object manipulation. Similarly, we take inspiration from human strategies to shape robot movements to be communicative of the object properties while pursuing the action goals. In a realistic HRI scenario, participants handed over cups - filled with water or empty - to a robotic manipulator that sorted them. We implemented an online classifier to differentiate careful/not careful human movements, associated with the cups' content. We compared our proposed "expressive" controller, which modulates the movements according to the cup filling, against a neutral motion controller. Results show that human kinematics is adjusted during the task, as a function of the cup content, even in reach-to-grasp motion. Moreover, the carefulness during the handover of full cups can be reliably inferred online, well before action completion. Finally, although questionnaires did not reveal explicit preferences from participants, the expressive robot condition improved task efficiency
What if a Social Robot Excluded You? Using a Conversational Game to Study Social Exclusion in Teen-robot Mixed Groups
No full textSquare Dancing with the Stars to Enhance Dynamic Hirschman Linkages?
No full textIn this Presidential Address, the author takes the reader on a reconnaissance of his life and time as a regional scientist. He points out scenery he found scintillating along the way, hoping that some may pick up the banner and chew on a few of the ideas for a while. He suggests a revisit to Albert O. Hirschman’s notion of key sectors and more empirical analysis related to Marcus Berliant’s and Masahisa Fujita’s notion of knowledge creation and transfer.Presidential Address, San Antonio, Texas, March 29, 2014 (53rd Meetings of the Southern Regional Science Association
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
No full textWe 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
Rate, risk factors and outcomes of nosocomial infections (NIs) among paediatric patients
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