1,720,980 research outputs found
International Style?
No full textLos Angeles, California, fine del secondo conflitto mondiale. In questa terra lontana e un po' ai margini dell'establishment culturale si realizza una fatale convergenza di fattori: l'arrivo in massa di una generazione di architetti in fuga dall'Europa nazista; la consegna al mercato edilizio di una serie di materiali, processi e tecnologie senza precedenti per quantità e qualità, provenienti dalle linee di riconversione dell'industria bellica. E l'inizio di una stagione culturale troppo sbrigativamente liquidata come lnternational Style, come la fase ultima della modernità; è una rivoluzione che attraverserà l'architettura, l'arte figurativa, il costume, l'ingegneria, imponendo un nuovo stile di vita.Los Angeles, California, the end of World War II. In this distant land 'on the edge' of the internationale culture, a fatal convergence of factors: the mass arrival of a generation of architects from Europe fleeing Nazi delivery to the housing market a range of materials, processes and technologies for unprecedented quantity and quality, from the lines of defense conversion. And the beginning of a cultural season too hastily dismissed as lnternational Style, as the last phase of modernity, is a revolution that will cross the architecture, the arts, costume, engineering, imposing a new lifestyle
Resilience actions to counteract the effects of climate change and health emergencies in cities: the role of artificial neural networks
No full textBoth the World Health Organization (WHO) with its 2015 "Climate and Health Country Profile Project" and the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) with its 2018 "Health and Climate Change", agree on the emergency generated by the climate change and concerning health problems. The mitigation strategy suggested by the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) against greenhouse gas emissions and their effects on climate change, has not yet yielded the desired results. It is therefore necessary to focus on adaptation strategies, to immediately counter the effects of climate change (CC) on most vulnerable people and environments, by increasing their resilience through local interventions and targeted resilience actions. Coordinated resilience actions are necessary to combat the effects of CC especially in urban areas. Useful tools to manage and optimize resilience actions are artificial neural networks (ANN) in complex and dynamic domains as cities are. The case of ANN applied to a city is presented as an example to increase the climate resilience of health local systems. In the current state of knowledge, ANN prove to be the most advanced and global solution to coordinate and manage a set of resilience actions in urban areas
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 probabilistic validation approach for penalty function design in stochastic model predictive control
Full text linkIn this paper, we consider a stochastic Model Predictive Control able to account for effects of additive stochastic disturbance with unbounded support, and requiring no restrictive assumption on either independence nor Gaussianity. We revisit the rather classical approach based on penalty functions, with the aim of designing a control scheme that meets some given probabilistic specifications. The main difference with previous approaches is that we do not recur to the notion of probabilistic recursive feasibility, and hence we do not consider separately the unfeasible case. In particular, two probabilistic design problems are envisioned. The first randomization problem aims to design offline the constraint set tightening, following an approach inherited from tube-based MPC. For the second probabilistic scheme, a specific probabilistic validation approach is exploited for tuning the penalty parameter, to be selected offline among a finite-family of possible values. The simple algorithm here proposed allows designing a single controller, always guaranteeing feasibility of the online optimization problem. The proposed method is shown to be more computationally tractable than previous schemes. This is due to the fact that the sample complexity for both probabilistic design problems depends on the prediction horizon in a logarithmic way, unlike scenario-based approaches which exhibit linear dependence. The efficacy of the proposed approach is demonstrated with a numerical example
Cooperation of unmanned systems for agricultural applications: A theoretical framework
Full text linkAgriculture 4.0 comprises a set of technologies that combines sensors, information systems, enhanced machinery, and informed management with the objective of optimising production by accounting for variabilities and uncertainties within agricultural systems. Autonomous ground and aerial vehicles can lead to favourable improvements in management by performing in-field tasks in a time-effective way. In particular, greater benefits can be achieved by allowing cooperation and collaborative action among unmanned vehicles, both aerial and ground, to perform in-field operations in precise and time-effective ways. In this work, the preliminary and crucial step of analysing and understanding the technical and methodological challenges concerning the main problems involved is performed. An overview of the agricultural scenarios that can benefit from using collaborative machines and the corresponding cooperative schemes typically adopted in this framework are presented. A collection of kinematic and dynamic models for different categories of autonomous aerial and ground vehicles is provided, which represents a crucial step in understanding the vehicles behaviour when full autonomy is desired. Last, a collection of the state-of-the-art technologies for the autonomous guidance of drones is provided, summarising their peculiar characteristics, and highlighting their advantages and shortcomings with a specific focus on the Agriculture 4.0 framework. A companion paper reports the application of some of these techniques in a complete case study in sloped vineyards, applying the proposed multi-phase collaborative scheme introduced here
COVID-19: Open-data resources for monitoring, modeling, and forecasting the epidemic
Full text linkWe provide an insight into the open-data resources pertinent to the study of the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic and its control. We identify the variables required to analyze fundamental aspects like seasonal behavior, regional mortality rates, and effectiveness of government measures. Open-data resources, along with data-driven methodologies, provide many opportunities to improve the response of the different administrations to the virus. We describe the present limitations and difficulties encountered in most of the open-data resources. To facilitate the access to the main open-data portals and resources, we identify the most relevant institutions, on a global scale, providing Covid-19 information and/or auxiliary variables (demographics, mobility, etc.). We also describe several open resources to access Covid-19 datasets at a country-wide level (i.e., China, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, US, etc.). To facilitate the rapid response to the study of the seasonal behavior of Covid-19, we enumerate the main open resources in terms of weather and climate variables. We also assess the reusability of some representative open-data sources
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
Cooperative Agricultural Operations of Aerial and Ground Unmanned Vehicles
Full text linkPrecision agriculture comprises a set of technologies that combines sensors, information systems, enhanced machinery, and informed management to optimize production by accounting for variability and uncertainties within agricultural systems. Autonomous ground and aerial vehicle can lead to favorable improvements in management by performing in-field tasks in a time-effective way. Greater benefits can be achieved by allowing cooperation and collaborative action among Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs). A multi-phase approach is here proposed, where each unmanned vehicle involved has been conceived and will be designed to implement innovative solutions for automated navigation and infield operations within a complex irregular and unstructured scenario as vineyards in sloped terrains
- …
