206 research outputs found
Paolo Rosati, “ArchaeoloGIS” a QGIS plugin for archaeological spatial analysis
No full textArchaeoloGIS is a QGIS plugin for very basic archaeological spatial analysis. It was inspired by the accurate studies in geography, methodology and digital humanities made by the author during the years of his participation in the ERC project PAThs. The Archaeological Atlas of the Coptic Literature (https://atlas.paths-erc.eu). The first steps were taken from the studies of the road network named MOvEIT (https://paths-erc.eu/moveit/, Bogdani 2023). The coding phase started in the winter of 2021 and the validation on the practical applications presented below were carried out during the spring of the next year. The plugin is GPL-3.0 licensed and can be freely installed from the official repository (https://github.com/archeorosati/archaeoloGIS). It is developed as a QGIS Processing Toolbox script, it is still in beta version and suggestions and questions from the community are welcomed. At present, it consists of a unique script named Tabula Peutingeriana after the famous imperial Roman map, able to output points at a regular, fixed distance of a Roman mile along a path or network of paths. It can be used to position virtual milestones along an already provided road network, eventually help- ing to find the location of original ones, by counting the Roman miles from a given starting point
Heavy metal accumulation capacity of Axinella damicornis (Esper, 1794) (Porifera, Demospongiae): a tool for bioremediation of polluted seawaters
No full textA wide range of contaminants are continuously introduced into the aquatic environment and among these, heavy metals constitute one of the most dangerous groups because of their persistent nature, toxicity, tendency to accumulate in organisms and more still, they are non-degradable. Marine organisms such as sponges represent target species for the monitoring of heavy metal contamination due their filtering activity. This study aims to evaluate the retention capacity of lead and cadmium by the sponge Axinella damicornis under laboratory conditions. The sponges were exposed for 144 h to seawaters artificially polluted with lead (Pb) and cadmium (Cd) separately and with a mixture of the two metals. The final goal of the experiments was to evaluate the metal uptake in the sponge body and efficiency of the sponge in removing the metals from seawater. In particular, the highest values of metal concentration in the sponges were recorded for Pb: this metal was found to be 6 times and 9 times more concentrated than Cd, respectively in the case of exposure to the single metal and to the combination of both metals. The metal concentrations found, especially for Pb, were much higher in A. damicornis than in other organisms investigated in the sea. Remarkable signs of stress and necrosis were recorded in the specimens when exposed to the combination of Pb and Cd, evidencing a synergistic effect of the metals mixture. This study paves adds knowledge on the contamination effects by heavy metals on the marine organisms and on the contribution from A. damicornis as efficient tool for bioremediation of polluted seawaters
The Monkey Selfie and the concept of authorship: an EU perspective
No full textThe question whether a macaque named Naruto could be regarded as the author of protectable works (self-portrait photographs, ie selfies) has captured popular attention, and been the subject of litigation in the US. Further to the 2016 decision of the US District Court for the Northern District of California that rejected that a monkey could have standing and the subsequent appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the case was settled out of court in 2017.This short contribution discusses whether, generally speaking, copyright can vest in works by non-human authors. It does so from the perspective of international and EU laws, addressing issues such as originality, as well as the concept of ‘authorship’ in relevant legislative texts.It concludes that, while there remain ambiguities regarding who can qualify as an author, arguments can be advanced against consideration of works by non-human authors as protectable by copyright. However, the article also highlights how this issue is likely to resurface with reinvigorated force (and relevance) in light of technological advancement, notably in the context of artificial intelligence
Il contributo della lettura ad una "pedagogia della comprensione". Contribution of reading activities to "a pedagogy of comprehension"
No full textThe numerous initiatives on reading practices darw attention to the educational value it holds, a significance that Comenio and Campanella had already grasped. Reading is a cognitive and emotional act through which the reader explores reality, acquires new knowledge, becomes aware of other thoughts and experiences, and open up to emotions and experiences of which they become a part through pages and texts, capable of bridging between people. In this perspective, one can identify in reading the premises for a pedagogy of understanding that, even as it unites author and reader in ideas and experiences, still generates different perspectives on the world and life
Engineering Design Guidance for Detached Breakwaters as Shoreline Stabilization Structures
No full textThis report summarizes and presents design knowledge for both the functional and structural design of detached breakwaters for shoreline stabilization. Functional design of break:waters in the United States relies on a significant amount of engineering judgement, data from a few existing breakwater projects for comparison, and an understanding of basic coastal processes. The design process is an iterative one. Design guidance used to predict beach response to breakwaters is also presented in Dally and Pope (1986), Pope and Dean (1986), Rosati (1990), and Engineer Manual 1110-2- 1617. Guidance on the use of low-crested rubble-mound breakwaters for wetland development purposes is limited, and has been mostly based on experience from a few prototype sites. Ongoing research at WES under the Wetlands Research Program is further investigating and evaluating the use of breakwaters for these purposes.KWP-collectio
Digital Paratext. Editorialization and the very death of the author
No full textInternational audienceAs shown by different scholars, the idea of “author” is not absolute or necessary. On the contrary, it came to life as an answer to the very practical needs of an emerging print technology in search of an economic model of its own. In this context, and according to the criticism of the notion of “author” made during the 1960–70s (in particular by Barthes and Foucault), it would only be natural to consider the idea of the author being dead as a global claim accepted by all scholars. Yet this is not the case, because, as Rose suggests, the idea of “author” and the derived notion of copyright are still too important in our culture to be abandoned. But why such an attachment to the idea of “author”? The hypothesis on which this chapter is based is that the theory of the death of the author—developed in texts such as What is an Author? by Michel Foucault and The Death of the Author by Roland Barthes—did not provide the conditions for a shift towards a world without authors because of its inherent lack of concrete editorial practices different from the existing ones. In recent years, the birth and diffusion of the Web have allowed the concrete development of a different way of interpreting the authorial function, thanks to new editorial practices—which will be named “editorialization devices” in this chapter. Thus, what was inconceivable for Rose in 1993 is possible today because of the emergence of digital technology—and in particular, the Web
Digital Paratext : Editorialization and the Very Death of the Author
No full textCollection : Advances in human and social aspects of technologyAs shown by different scholars, the idea of “author” is not absolute or necessary. On the contrary, it came to life as an answer to the very practical needs of an emerging print technology in search of an economic model of its own. In this context, and according to the criticism of the notion of “author” made during the 1960–70s (in particular by Barthes and Foucault), it would only be natural to consider the idea of the author being dead as a global claim accepted by all scholars. Yet this is not the case, because, as Rose suggests, the idea of “author” and the derived notion of copyright are still too important in our culture to be abandoned. But why such an attachment to the idea of “author”? The hypothesis on which this chapter is based is that the theory of the death of the author—developed in texts such as What is an Author? by Michel Foucault and The Death of the Author by Roland Barthes—did not provide the conditions for a shift towards a world without authors because of its inherent lack of concrete editorial practices different from the existing ones. In recent years, the birth and diffusion of the Web have allowed the concrete development of a different way of interpreting the authorial function, thanks to new editorial practices—which will be named “editorialization devices” in this chapter. Thus, what was inconceivable for Rose in 1993 is possible today because of the emergence of digital technology—and in particular, the Web
Deep Learning based Decision Support Systems for Quality Control task in Industry 4.0
No full textNel contesto dell'Industria 4.0, la crescente quantità di dati e nuovi metodi di Machine Learning (ML) e Deep Learning (DL) hanno posto le basi per aiutare l'operatore umano a rilevare i problemi di produzione e a classificare la qualità del prodotto finale. Queste soluzioni, implementate in sistemi di supporto alle decisioni (DSS), offrono grandi opportunità per automatizzare complessivamente il processo di controllo qualità.
Gli obiettivi e i contributi di questa tesi riflettono le attività di ricerca svolte sui temi: i) Controllo Qualità Predittivo (PQC), con l'obiettivo di progettare e implementare un DSS per la previsione della qualità di lavorazione e delle situazioni di anomalia durante la lavorazione di un utensile; ii) Controllo Qualità Estetico (AQC), con l'obiettivo di progettare e implementare un DSS per la valutazione delle proprietà estetiche del materiale per un prodotto finito.
Nel primo tema, l'autore presenta un DSS composto da raccolta dati, estrazione delle features, modello predittivo, archiviazione cloud e interfaccia di analisi dati.
Il DSS si basa su una strategia di estrazione delle features e su un modello di ML alimentato da topic raccolti ai livelli inferiori e superiori del sistema di produzione, consentendo l'acquisizione di dati annotati di alta qualità. I risultati sperimentali hanno dimostrato come l'approccio proposto rappresenti il miglior compromesso tra prestazioni predittive, costo computazionale e interpretabilità.
Nel secondo tema, l'autore propone nuove metodologie DL ordinali per migliorare le prestazioni di classificazione della qualità estetica dei calci di fucile in legno, affrontando diverse sfide quali la mitigazione dei bias, la minimizzazione dell'errore tra classi distanti, il rumore nel processo di annotazione e lo sfruttamento dei vincoli ordinali e gerarchici delle classi. Gli approcci proposti sono stati valutati su un dataset reale e confrontati con altri metodi DL allo stato dell'arte, dimostrandone l'efficacia.In the context of Industry 4.0, the increasing amount of data in combination with novel disruptive Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) methodologies lied the foundation for helping the human operator to detect production issues as well as classify the quality of the final product. These solutions, embedded into Decision Support Systems (DSSs), offer great opportunities to automatize the overall quality control process.
The objectives and the contributions of this thesis reflect the research activities performed on the topics of: i) Predictive Quality Control (PQC), with the aim to design a DSS for predicting the processing quality and anomaly situations during the machining of a tool; ii) Aesthetic Quality Control (AQC), with the aim to design a DSS for evaluating the aesthetic properties of the material for a manufactured product.
In the first topic, the author presents a DSS comprised of data collection, feature extraction, ML model, cloud storage, and data analysis interface. This approach is based on a feature extraction strategy and a ML model powered by specific topics collected on the lower and upper levels of the production system, allowing the acquisition of high-quality labeled data. The experimental results demonstrated how the proposed approach is the best trade-off between predictive performance, computation effort, and interpretability.
In the second topic, the author proposes the application of novel ordinal DL methodologies to improve the classification performance in assessing the aesthetic quality of wooden stocks while addressing typical challenges, i.e. the bias mitigation, the error minimization between distant classes, the noise in labeling process and the exploitation of ordinal and hierarchical constraints of the categories. The proposed methods are evaluated on a real-world dataset and compared with other state of the art DL models. For each challenge, the experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of each proposed approach
ASO Author Reflections: Indocyanine Green Fluorescence to Optimize Lymphadenectomy in Gastric Cancer Surgery: Recommendations to Improve Radicality in D2 Lymphadenectomy
No full textAvalanching of the dune face: field observations and equilibrium theory
No full textA field experiment to study dune erosion was conducted on the Sand Engine near Kijkduin, the Netherlands, from November 7th 2021 to January 7th 2022. Two artificial unvegetated dunes were constructed near the high water line, and experienced significant erosion through avalanching during three storms. This paper aims to identify what drives dune erosion through avalanching by using the collected data and equilibrium theory. Results suggest that the cumulative volume eroded through avalanching during a single high water is positively correlated with the profile mismatch between the pre-storm profile and a ‘storm equilibrium profile’, described by a 2/3rd power law, an empirical coefficient A, and the total water level. This mismatch is quantified by calculating the area integral of the profile that is acquired when the upper 35 m of the pre-storm profile is subtracted from the upper 35 m of the equilibrium profile. Avalanching commences when this mismatch becomes larger than approximately 0, after which 1 m3/m of sediment erodes from the dune face for every 3 m3/m mismatch. In addition, during one event avalanching occurred even though the elevation of the total water level did not exceed the initial elevation of the dune toe. This implies that a total water level that exceeds the initial elevation of the dune toe is not a requisite for avalanching and a collision regime to occur, which contradicts conventional definitions of dune erosion regimes. These results have implications on risk assessment of storm conditions on dune erosion.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Coastal EngineeringEnvironmental Fluid Mechanic
- …
