1,360,486 research outputs found
Mylabrini diversity and host plants in a Saharan oasis ecosystem with an updated checklist of Meloidae from Algeria (Coleoptera)
No full textDeghiche-Diab, Nacima, Bologna, Marco Alberto, Boultif, Meriem, Deghiche, Tesnim, Boukerker, Hassen (2023): Mylabrini diversity and host plants in a Saharan oasis ecosystem with an updated checklist of Meloidae from Algeria (Coleoptera). Fragmenta entomologica (Basel, Switzerland) 55 (1): 21-30, DOI: 10.13133/2284-4880/1473, URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.3c0015
Meriem El Haitami
No full textMeriem El Haitami is a doctoral student at the University of Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah in Fez, Morocco. She has been a Fulbright Scholar for the year 2012-2013 at SUNY Binghamton. Her PhD research addresses the dynamics of female religious authority and activism in contemporary Morocco. She explores how, in present day Morocco, women are establishing themselves in a variety of religious leadership roles ranging from official female preachers (murshidat) and religious scholars (‘alimat), to S..
Completely Automated Public Physical test to tell Computers and Humans Apart: A usability study on mobile devices
No full textA very common approach adopted to fight the increasing sophistication and dangerousness of malware and hacking is to introduce more complex authentication mechanisms. This approach, however, introduces additional cognitive burdens for users and lowers the whole authentication mechanism acceptability to the point of making it unusable. On the contrary, what is really needed to fight the onslaught of automated attacks to users data and privacy is to first tell human and computers apart and then distinguish among humans to guarantee correct authentication. Such an approach is capable of completely thwarting any automated attempt to achieve unwarranted access while it allows keeping simple the mechanism dedicated to recognizing the legitimate user. This kind of approach is behind the concept of Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA), yet CAPTCHA leverages cognitive capabilities, thus the increasing sophistication of computers calls for more and more difficult cognitive tasks that make them either very long to solve or very prone to false negatives. We argue that this problem can be overcome by substituting the cognitive component of CAPTCHA with a different property that programs cannot mimic: the physical nature. In past work we have introduced the Completely Automated Public Physical test to tell Computer and Humans Apart (CAPPCHA) as a way to enhance the PIN authentication method for mobile devices and we have provided a proof of concept implementation. Similarly to CAPTCHA, this mechanism can also be used to prevent automated programs from abusing online services. However, to evaluate the real efficacy of the proposed scheme, an extended empirical assessment of CAPPCHA is required as well as a comparison of CAPPCHA performance with the existing state of the art. To this aim, in this paper we carry out an extensive experimental study on both the performance and the usability of CAPPCHA involving a high number of physical users, and we provide comparisons of CAPPCHA with existing flavors of CAPTCHA
Study of the ribosomal DNA intergenic spacer (IGS) region as a molecular tool for identification of vascular fungi associated with Olive Quick Decline Syndrome in Southern Italy: Phaeoacremonium italicum as a study model
No full textThis research concerns the first study of the ribosomal DNA intergenic spacer (IGS) region as a molecular target for detection and phylogenetic analyses of Phaeoacremonium spp. found associated with olive quick decline syndrome in southern Italy. The study follows a survey carried out during a period of three years (2015-2018), in different olive orchards of Salento (Apulia). Disease symptoms of wilt and dieback, browning and streaking under the bark and wood discoloration were observed. Three Phaeoacremonium species were isolated more frequently than other fungi. These Phaeoacremonium spp. were identified based on their morphological characteristics and by analyses of the β-tubulin and actin genes, namely Phaeoacremonium italicum, Phaeoacremonium scolyti and Phaeoacremonium minimum. Pm. italicum was the predominant Phaeoacremonium species isolated from olive wood discoloration and was used as a study model to explore originally, the ribosomal DNA intergenic spacer (IGS) region in these fungi. Pm. italicum isolates were subjected to PCR amplification of the intergenic spacer (IGS) region followed by cloning and sequencing. A structural analysis of the IGS sequences of Pm. italicum was performed but also for Pm. scolyti and Pm. minimum. The IGS region showed polymorphisms among Pm. italicum isolates and four categories of repeat elements of 12-15 nucleotides, organized in distinct patterns, were detected within a variable IGS region. A PCR-based assay, to provide a specific detection of Pm. italicum group was developed by designing a specific PCR primer on the basis of the nucleotide sequence variability of the rDNA intergenic spacer among Phaeoacremonium species. The primer pair specificity was checked and confirmed using 10 isolates of Pm. italicum isolates and other 14 non-target Phaeoacremonium spp. The PCR detection limit was up to 1 pg/μL. To understand whether the intergenic spacer (IGS) region could be used to improve phylogenetic resolution, within and among Phaeoacremonium species, this region was amplified from a collection of Phaeoacremonium spp. isolates, including the representative Pm. italicum, Pm. scolyti and Pm. minimum isolates collected from the field. Maximum parsimony analyses were performed on IGS, β-tubulin and actin gene dataset separately as β-tubulin and actin gene are considered as targeted markers for this genus. Multigenic analyses combining IGS-β-tubulin-actin sequences was also performed. The IGS region was informative and produced a phylogeny with essentialy the same topology of β-tubulin, actin and combined β-tubulin-actin trees in terms of species-level clades, however, they revealed conflicts related to the grouping of isolates within Pm. italicum, Pm scolyti and Pm. minimum clades. Specifically, IGS tree showed a clear division of Pm. italicum group into distinct subclades. Combined IGS-β-tubulin-actin phylogeny showed similar results as those obtained in the single IGS phylogeny, and the latter was actually consistent with the IGS structural organization of representative Pm. italicum isolates. The present study indicates that analysis of IGS sequences revealed inter- and intraspecific variation and proved a suitable molecular tool for detection and phylogenetic analyses, within and among Phaeoacremonium species
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
TOWARD ELASTIC PARTITIONING OF MULTI-TENANT COMPUTING SYSTEMS AT THE EDGE
No full textFog computing is gaining momentum to extend Cloud resources in close proximity to data sources, end users or both. Among the explored Fog deployment models, the Public Fog offers compute and memory resources for open use to IoT service providers, and is emerging as a fundamental component for an Edge-Fog-Cloud complete compute continuum along which IoT services can be flexibly instantiated. The multi-tenant nature of public Fog nodes represents a major design and management challenge at the intersection of different yet related research disciplines, ranging from dynamic mapping of manycore architectures to resource management for Cloud and Fog resources, and from computing acceleration to software virtualization.
The fundamental challenge is to efficiently share the limited pool of Fog resources among multiple consolidated IoT services sharing the same hardware platform. This thesis revolves around the key intuition that multi-tenancy could be reconciled with limited resource capacity through an elastic provisioning of Fog resources. As a result, the thesis proposes a holistic support for elastic Fog computing, following a bottom-up methodology. The support is fundamentally rooted in the capability of the on-chip interconnection network (network-on-chip, NoC) to spatially and temporally isolate communication flows originated by different IoT services.
The isolation in space enables to partition the Fog node architecture into spatially-isolated execution environments that provide enhanced security with respect to software-only isolation, and the strictest notion of service composability.
At this level, the thesis proposes pLBDR, a lightweight routing mechanism that prevents functional and non-functional interference of intra-partition communication flows with one another. Above all, it combines low complexity with fast dynamic reconfigurability of the partitioning pattern, thus delivering a NoC-supported elastic partitioning in space that is out-of-reach for current NoC technology. In space-multiplexed parallel computing architectures, some communications unavoidably break the spatial locality, especially those associated with memory controller and system configuration traffic. For these flows, this thesis provides efficient time-multiplexing while meeting the distinctive requirements of an elastic Fog environment: low-latency communication scheduling in time, and runtime reconfigurability of the number of time slots. This new set of requirements make the proposed time-multiplexed NoC a unique design point in the open literature. In compliance with its bottom-up approach, the thesis finally tackles the resource management challenge to master the elasticity properties of the underlying compute and memory partitions. In line with mainstream approaches to resource management for manycore systems, the thesis assumes a hierarchical framework where virtual resource reassignments are dynamically changed into the actual reallocation of physical resources. At this level, the shape, size and location of space partitions have to be adjusted in a non-overlapping way to fulfil the variations. The thesis proposes an Integer Linear Programming shape-based model that strives to deliver prioritized latency guarantees to IoT services while perturbing the system state the least possible. The modest running times enable the deployment of the proposed Partition Manager for online use, in combination with a "prior provisioning prompt allocation" scheme for resource utilization in Fog computing. Overall, this thesis is a highly interdisciplinary piece of work that provides an integrated hardware/software support for elastic Fog computing, and paves the way for a dynamically-orchestrated Edge-Fog-Cloud continuum serving as a seamless hosting environment for the next generation of smart IoT services
Variations on the Author
No full text“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
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
ANALISI DEL CONTESTO VENETO RIGUARDO LE EMISSIONI DI GAS CLIMALTERANTI E DI AMMONIACA DAL COMPARTO AGRICOLO-ZOOTECNICO
No full textL’interesse riguardo alla riduzione delle emissioni di gas a effetto serra e di ammoniaca prodotte
dalle attività agricole e zootecniche è diventato sempre più insistente negli ultimi anni, soprattutto
grazie alla incrementata consapevolezza dei diversi portatori di interesse, dall’agricoltore al
legislatore. Regolamenti comunitari (the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE)
- Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution – Protocollo di Gothenburg; Direttiva NEC
(National Emissions Ceilings) 2001/81/CE; Direttiva 2004/107/CE; Direttiva 2008/1/CE (IPPC);
Direttiva 2008/50/CE e Direttiva 2010/75/UE); nazionali (D. Lgs n. 152/2006; D. Lgs n.155/2010) e
regionali (DGR n. 2811/2013 “Accordo di programma per l’adozione coordinata e congiunta di
misure di risanamento della qualità dell’aria nel Bacino Padano”; DGR n. 2872/2012
“Aggiornamento del Piano di Tutela e risanamento dell’Atmosfera) hanno sottolineato
l’importanza di intraprendere misure di mitigazione per ridurre l’impatto ambientale
dell’agricoltura e della zootecnia e migliorare la qualità dell’aria. Attraverso i vari inventari sia
Nazionali (ISPRA) che Regionali (ARPAV-INEMAR) delle emissioni di metano, protossido di azoto ed
ammoniaca, è stato possibile verificare l’andamento delle varie fonti emissive e quindi di
prevedere interventi mirati al loro abbattimento. L’ampia letteratura scientifica che ha trattato e
continua a trattare l’argomento, ha focalizzato la ricerca su varie tecniche di riduzione, che vanno
dagli interventi gestionali, a quelli di tipo strutturale anche attraverso l’adozione delle Migliori
Tecniche fin’ora Disponibili (MTD). L’efficienza di utilizzo delle risorse e la massimizzazione della
penetrazione delle misure mitigatorie, testate anche attraverso approcci modellistici complessi,
hanno permesso, quando la sostenibilità economica lo permetteva, di abbattere
significativamente le emissioni di gas serra e di ammoniaca in atmosfera, portando ulteriori
benefici in termine di sostenibilità economica e sociale. Piani di sostegno non solo economico ma
anche attraverso la consulenza, la formazione e la cooperazione fra diversi stakeholders dovranno
trovare applicazione anche a livello della singola azienda, al fine di permettere una migliore
gestione ed una produzione competitiva con particolare riguardo alla sostenibilità ambiental
TruthSeekers Chain: Leveraging Invisible CAPPCHA, SSI and Blockchain to Combat Disinformation on Social Media
No full textDisinformation has become a worrisome phenomenon at a global scale, spreading rapidly thanks to the growth of social media and frequently causing serious harm. For instance, it can perplex and manipulate users, fuel scepticism on crucial issues such as climate change, jeopardize a variety of human rights, such as the right to free and fair elections, the right to health, to non-discrimination, etc.Among the most used tools and techniques to spread disinformation are social bots, deep-fakes, and impersonation of authoritative media, people, or governments through false social media accounts. To deal with these issues, in this paper, we suggest TruthSeekers Chain, a platform which add a layer on top of the existing social media networks where I) the feed is augmented with new functionalities and reliable information retrieved from a blockchain II) a bot screening mechanism is used to allow only human generated content and engagement to be posted, III) the platform is open to integration of 3rd-party content verification tools helping the user to identify the manipulated or tampered content and IV) a self sovereign identity model is used to ensure accountability and to contribute building a reliable portable reputation system
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