255 research outputs found
Context-aware pervasive interfaces
No full textThe proliferation of pervasive services requires advanced methods to adapt the service provision to the user's context. The author presents a hybrid statistical and semantic framework for interface selection and adaptation. The approach is to find the best compromise between urgency and privacy requirements, avoiding interference with the user's activities
Remediating Conference Speeches: the Role of Authoriality in Live Twitter Entries
No full textThis paper focuses on new forms of rewriting and remediation that have been introduced within the context of new media and have now become extremely popular. Specifically, it investigates the practice of live-tweeting, i.e. engaging “on Twitter for a continuous period of time with a sequence of focused Tweets”(), which has become increasingly common thanks to the rapid spread of Internet and mobile phone-mediated communication. Significant public speaking events such as, for examples, political speeches, business presentations and conferences are now almost routinely live-tweeted about. In particular, the latter have been attracting more and more “live-tweeterers” as microblogging provides an excellent tool for the diffusion of content: this “enabled backchannel” (Ross et al. 2011) gives all Internet users the possibility of virtually attending academic talks and presentations. One of the reasons underlying the quick growth of conference live-tweeting has to do with the fact that it boosts interaction and allows users to attract public attention as well as gain new followers, which means that this practice can be turned into a tool of academic self-promotion (Ebner / Rheinahart 2009). For this to happen, however, conference tweeterers have to be able to post entries in which their own academic identity emerges and not solely the voice of the speaker whose presentation they are reporting about. As a matter of fact, live-tweeterers do not normally limit themselves to simply reproducing the presentation they are listening to so that it can be broken down into language “chunks” that can fit the tweet format (140 characters), but they also re-write the text of conference speeches and present it to a different, “networked” audience (Boyd et al. 2010). That is why it can therefore be affirmed that the original wording of presentations undergoes a process of reformulation and remediation. In live-tweets the voices of conference speakers and conference live-tweeterers are combined with the result that the concept of authoriality becomes very difficult to define.
As a matter of fact, differently from what happens in a conference presentation where speakers’ authoriality emerges in the speech clearly and unchallenged, in conference live-tweets it is oftentimes hard to establish the participation role of the tweeterer. This study aims at identifying the ways in which the identity and authoriality of conference speakers and live-tweeterers are blended together in tweets. In order to tackle this issue I collected a corpus of about 2,000 tweets posted in the course of eight Applied Linguistics Conferences held in 2012. The collected tweets were investigated with the help of the methodological tools provided by Goffman’s Frame Analysis. As suggested by many studies on Internet genres (cf., among others, Coupland N./Coupland J. 2000; Marcoccia 2004; Garzone 2007; Aarsand 2008) Goffmanian taxonomies can only be applied to Internet- and mobile phone-based communication to a certain degree, so this study also intends to verify whether new, ad hoc categories should replace older ones or if the latter can still be legitimately utilized, as long as they undergo a process of adaptation to the Internet environment.
The Goffmanian concepts of animator, author and principal are applied to conference live-tweets to examine how these roles are performed and what language resources can be associated with them. The second and final part of the study focuses instead on the discursive construction of the textual self of the conference live-tweeterer as well as on those devices that Goffman considers “the interesting and analytically relevant point” of the speaking event and that allow presenters to alter their alignment with the audience (i.e. non-literal meanings, text brackets and parenthetical remarks).
References
Aarsand, André P. 2008. Frame Switches and Identity Performances: Alternating between Online and Offline. Text & Talk. 28 (2), 147-165.
Boyd, Danah / Golder, Scott / Lotan, Gilad. 2010. Tweet Tweet Retweet: Conversational Aspects of Retweeting on Twitter. Proceedings of the 43th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences HICSS-43, IEEE: Kauai, HI. .
Ross, Claire/ Terras, Melissa / Warwick, Claire / Welsh, Anne 2011. Pointless Babble or Enabled Backchannel: Conference Use of Twitter by Digital Humanists. Journal of Documentation. 67(2), 214-237.
Coupland, Nicholas and Coupland, Justine (2000). Relational frames and pronominal address/ reference: The discourse of geriatric medical triads. In Sarangi, Srikant / Coulthard, Malcolm R. (eds.), Discourse and Social Life. Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education, 207–229.
Ebner, Martin / Rheinhart, Wolfgang 2009. Social networking in scientific conferences –Twitter as tool for strengthen a scientificcommunity. .
Garzone, Giuliana. 2007. Genres, Multimodality and the World Wide Web: Theoretical Issues .In Garzone/Poncini/Catenaccio (eds), 15-30.
Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms Of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Marcoccia, Michel 2004. On-line Polylogues: Conversation Structure and Participation Framework in Internet Newsgroups. Journal of Pragmatics. 36(2004), 115-145.
“Live Tweeting Best Practices”, Twitter, <https://dev.twitter.com/media/live-tweeting
A simple and efficient Solid-Phase Microextraction – Gas Chromatography – Mass Spectrometry method for the determination of fragrance materials at ultra-trace levels in water samples using multi-walled carbon nanotubes as innovative coating
No full textThe occurrence of emerging contaminants is becoming of increasing importance to assess the impact of anthropogenic activities onto the environment. The present study reports for the first time the development and validation of an efficient method for the simultaneous determination of fragrance materials in water samples based on the use of a novel multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs)-based solid-phase microextraction coating. Helical MWCNTs were selected as adsorbent material due to their outstanding extraction performance. The multicriteria method of desirability functions allowed the optimization of the experimental conditions in terms of extraction time and extraction temperature. Validation proved the reliability of the method for the determination of the analytes at ultra-trace levels, obtaining detection limits in the 0.2–13 ng/L range, good precision, with relative standard deviations lower than 20% and recovery rates in the 80 ± 12%–111 ± 11%. Superior enrichment factors compared to commercial fibers were also calculated. Finally, applicability to real sample analysis was demonstrated
La metabolomica applicata allo studio sul tartaro di Alessandro Farnese e Maria D’Aviz
No full textThe analysis of dental calculus is a promising tool for providing evi dence for the lifestyle of ancient people. Although dental calculus is com posed mainly by inorganic constituents, embedded organic materials
deriving from different sources can be detected, including dietary and
dietary debris deriving from accidental ingestion. Being able to provide
a comprehensive fingerprinting of the investigated samples, mass spec trometry-based omics strategies are particularly challenging because of
their sensitivity, high-throughput and discriminating power.
High resolution mass spectrometry coupled to ultra-high-performance
liquid chromatography was used to study the dental calculus metabo lome of both Duke Alessandro Farnese and Duchess Maria D’Aviz al lowing the identification of more than 200 metabolites able to suggest
a different life-style between the Duke and his wife. The application of
Principal Component Analysis made it possible to discriminate data sets belonging to the dental calculus samples of the Duke and Duchess
Sphingosine-1-phosphate is released by cerebellar astrocytes in response to bFGF and induces astrocyte proliferation through Gi-protein-coupled receptors
No full textThe mitogenic role of sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) and its involvement in basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF)-induced proliferation were examined in primary cultures of cerebellar astrocytes. Exposure to bFGF resulted in a rapid increase of extracellular S1P formation, bFGF inducing astrocytes to release S1P, but not sphingosine kinase, in the extracellular milieu. The SK inhibitor N,N-dimethylsphingosine inhibited S1P release as well as bFGF-induced growth stimulation. S1P application in quiescent astrocytes caused a dose-dependent increase in DNA synthesis. This gliotrophic effect was induced by a brief exposure to low nanomolar S1P, mimicked by the S1P receptor agonist dihydro-S1P, and inhibited by pertussis toxin (PTX), an inactivator of G(i)/G(o)-proteins. S1P also induced activation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase that was inhibited again by PTX. Moreover, the S1P lyase inhibitor 4-deoxypyridoxine induced the cellular accumulation of S1P but did not affect DNA synthesis. These results support the view that S1P exerted a mitogenic effect on cerebellar astrocytes extracellularly, most likely through cell surface S1P receptors. In agreement, mRNAs for S1P1, S1P2, and S1P3 receptors are expressed in cerebellar astrocytes (Anelli et al., 2005. J Neurochem 92:1204-1215). Ceramide, a negative regulator of astrocyte proliferation and down-regulated by bFGF (Riboni et al., 2002. Cerebellum 1:129-135), efficiently inhibited S1P-induced proliferation. The S1P action appears to be part of an autocrine/ paracrine cascade stimulated by bFGF and, together with ceramide down-regulation, essential for astrocytes to respond to bFGF. The results suggest that S1P and bFGF/S1P may play an important role in physiopathological glial proliferation, such as brain development, reactive gliosis and brain tumor formation
Demonstration of a sensor-based app for self-monitoring of medicine intake
No full textAccurate adherence to prescribed medications is essential for the effectiveness of therapies, but several studies show that when patients are responsible for treatment administration, poor adherence is prevalent. Existing apps to support self-administration of drugs may interfere with the normal routine of patients by providing unnecessary reminders. More sophisticated solutions, including the use of smart packaging and ingestible sensors, are currently restricted to patients involved in a few clinical studies. In this paper, we demonstrate a novel app to support self-administration of drugs without interfering with the patient's routines. The system relies on cheap wireless sensors attached to medicine boxes to detect medicine intake. The app uses machine learning to detect intake events, and active learning to improve recognition based on the user's feedback. In the demonstration, we show a working prototype of the system, which includes a Web dashboard for physicians to monitor the rate of intakes. Copyright is held by the author/owner(s)
Preserving Privacy in LBS against Attacks based on Concurrent Requests
No full textThis paper considers privacy threats involved in the use of location-based services (LBS) that have never been successfully addressed before. Previous work has mostly focused on anonymization techniques based on generalizing the user location contained in a given LBS request. We show that the presence of multiple concur-
rent requests, and the distribution of different service parameters in the requests can significantly affect the level of privacy obtained by anonymization techniques.
We provide a formal model of attacks in the above scenario, we propose defense techniques and we show their effectiveness by experimental evaluation
When mistranslation means misgendering: Identity representation in conference interpreting from English into Italian
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