400 research outputs found

    The Public Performance Of Sanctions In Insolvency Cases: The Dark, Humiliating, And Ridiculous Side Of The Law Of Debt In The Italian Experience. A Historical Overview Of Shaming Practices

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    This study provides a diachronic comparative overview of how the law of debt has been applied by certain institutions in Italy. Specifically, it offers historical and comparative insights into the public performance of sanctions for insolvency through shaming and customary practices in Roman Imperial Law, in the Middle Ages, and in later periods. The first part of the essay focuses on the Roman bonorum cessio culo nudo super lapidem and on the medieval customary institution called pietra della vergogna (stone of shame), which originates from the Roman model. The second part of the essay analyzes the social function of the zecca and the pittima Veneziana during the Republic of Venice, and of the practice of lu soldate a castighe (no translation is possible). The author uses a functionalist approach to apply some arguments and concepts from the current context to this historical analysis of ancient institutions that we would now consider ridiculous. The article shows that the customary norms that play a crucial regulatory role in online interactions today can also be applied to the public square in the past. One of these tools is shaming. As is the case in contemporary online settings, in the public square in historic periods, shaming practices were used to enforce the rules of civility in a given community. Such practices can be seen as virtuous when they are intended for use as a tool to pursue positive change in forces entrenched in the culture, and thus to address social wrongs considered outside the reach of the law, or to address human rights abuses

    Localization in urban environments. A hybrid interval-probabilistic method

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    Ensuring safety has become a paramount concern with the increasing autonomy of vehicles and the advent of autonomous driving. One of the most fundamental tasks of increased autonomy is localization, which is essential for safe operation. To quantify safety requirements, the concept of integrity has been introduced in aviation, based on the ability of the system to provide timely and correct alerts when the safe operation of the systems can no longer be guaranteed. Therefore, it is necessary to assess the localization's uncertainty to determine the system's operability. In the literature, probability and set-membership theory are two predominant approaches that provide mathematical tools to assess uncertainty. Probabilistic approaches often provide accurate point-valued results but tend to underestimate the uncertainty. Set-membership approaches reliably estimate the uncertainty but can be overly pessimistic, producing inappropriately large uncertainties and no point-valued results. While underestimating the uncertainty can lead to misleading information and dangerous system failure without warnings, overly pessimistic uncertainty estimates render the system inoperative for practical purposes as warnings are fired more often. This doctoral thesis aims to study the symbiotic relationship between set-membership-based and probabilistic localization approaches and combine them into a unified hybrid localization approach. This approach enables safe operation while not being overly pessimistic regarding the uncertainty estimation. In the scope of this work, a novel Hybrid Probabilistic- and Set-Membership-based Coarse and Refined (HyPaSCoRe) Localization method is introduced. This method localizes a robot in a building map in real-time and considers two types of hybridizations. On the one hand, set-membership approaches are used to robustify and control probabilistic approaches. On the other hand, probabilistic approaches are used to reduce the pessimism of set-membership approaches by augmenting them with further probabilistic constraints. The method consists of three modules - visual odometry, coarse localization, and refined localization. The HyPaSCoRe Localization uses a stereo camera system, a LiDAR sensor, and GNSS data, focusing on localization in urban canyons where GNSS data can be inaccurate. The visual odometry module computes the relative motion of the vehicle. In contrast, the coarse localization module uses set-membership approaches to narrow down the feasible set of poses and provides the set of most likely poses inside the feasible set using a probabilistic approach. The refined localization module further refines the coarse localization result by reducing the pessimism of the uncertainty estimate by incorporating probabilistic constraints into the set-membership approach. The experimental evaluation of the HyPaSCoRe shows that it maintains the integrity of the uncertainty estimation while providing accurate, most likely point-valued solutions in real-time. Introducing this new hybrid localization approach contributes to developing safe and reliable algorithms in the context of autonomous driving

    Towards a new generation of geographical information systems

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    2021-2022, University of Memphis bulletin

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    University of Memphis bulletin containing the graduate catalog for 2021-2022.https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/speccoll-ua-pub-bulletins/1441/thumbnail.jp

    2019-2020, University of Memphis bulletin

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    University of Memphis bulletin containing the graduate catalog for 2019-2020.https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/speccoll-ua-pub-bulletins/1439/thumbnail.jp

    Architecture and Development

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    Ayala Levin charts the settler colonial imagination and practices that undergirded Israeli architectural development aid in Africa

    \u27Play the Book Again\u27: Towards a Systems Approach to Game Adaptation

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    Situated at the interstices of game studies, adaptation scholarship, and literary theory, this dissertation puts forth a theoretical framework for effectively analyzing literary game adaptations (that is, playable digital or analog systems that are based upon a work or works of literature) as expressive intertextual systems which facilitate aesthetic experiences. By integrating contemporary game studies with filmic adaptation studies and literary theory, I argue that game adaptations allow us to see how games, adaptations, and indeed all texts can be productively conceived of as Barthesian networks of meaning: collections of interacting formal, narrative, intertextual, and contextual elements from which a user\u27s experience arises. Doing so destabilizes the primacy of concepts that are so often used to justify hierarchical relationships between high art and popular culture, opening up new interpretations of texts which do not lend themselves to analysis via traditional literary or cinematic methodologies. Thinking of adaptations in terms of the systemized relationships between texts, intertexts, and the user rather than as merely derivative copies of a single original also redefines the classically hierarchical relationship between adaptations and their sources that has plagued adaptation studies discourse from its inception. Through my readings of a variety of digital and analog games based on William Shakespeare\u27s Hamlet (Ryan North\u27s gamebook To Be or Not to Be), J.R.R. Tolkien\u27s The Hobbit (Beam Software\u27s Hobbit text-adventure), Jane Austen\u27s Pride and Prejudice (Storybrewers\u27 tabletop roleplaying game Good Society), and Henry David Thoreau\u27s Walden (Tracy Fullerton\u27s contemplative digital walking simulator Walden, a game), I illustrate how thinking of texts as systems affords interpretatively productive play, encouraging users to reinterpret, revise, and remix culture to their own ends

    Proceedings of the 2019 Joint Workshop of Fraunhofer IOSB and Institute for Anthropomatics, Vision and Fusion Laboratory

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    In 2019 again, the annual joint workshop of the Fraunhofer IOSB and the Vision and Fusion Laboratory of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology took place. The doctoral students of both institutions presented extensive reports on the status of their research and discussed topics ranging from computer vision and optical metrology to network security, usage control and machine learning. The results and ideas presented at the workshop are collected in this book in the form of technical reports

    The Process of Video Game Localisation : Case Study of Metro Exodus

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    The requirements for diverse media projects increase every day, following technological progress. One of the main points is the adaptation of video games for various target cultures. A video game is a highly constructed cultural artefact containing audiovisual components, specific mechanics, narrative elements, and several other important features. Correspondingly, these projects are exposed to adaptation for further distribution and use in the target market. Consequently, exploring such a multi-faceted operation as localisation has a significant impact on general comprehen sion of its structure and applicability. Moreover, the investigation emphasises the value of the proper transfer of diverse forms of culture-related realities. This thesis investigates a video game as a product of adaptation, therefore diving into the technological procedure of localisation. In order to discover and unfold the stages and peculiari ties of applying localisation, this study provides different assumptions, ideas and templates on how people can understand the process of localisation and what phases it can imply. Moreover, it is essential to perform the complexity and contestability of changing the game elements. Metro Exodus was examined with a qualitative investigation, which was utilised from the perspective of formal analysis. The analysis reveals the superiority of textual alterations compared to other types of modifica tions. Consequently, the main difficulties associated with the transfer of cultural-specific aspects from the original (Russian) to target (English) version of the game were identified as well as suit able approaches to their solution based on the derived cases, which illustrated both interesting and debatable translation solutions. The selected game is significant for this study because it possesses a simultaneous process of development and adaptation procedures. In addition, the absence of a distinct localisation unit, which commonly aims at adapting a project according to the requirements of a particular target market was identified as a critical and unique feature of Metro Exodus. The investigation of such localisation alternative caused enhanced attention to wards characters’ cues and other game-related texts

    The Watlington Hoard

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    The Watlington Hoard was discovered in southern Oxfordshire in 2015 by a metal-detectorist, and acquired by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford in 2017. A nationally-important find of coinage and metalwork, and the first major Viking-Age hoard from the county, it dates from the late 870s, a fundamental and tumultuous period in Britain’s history. The contents of the hoard include a highly significant collection of over 200 silver pennies, mostly of Alfred the Great, king of Wessex, and Ceolwulf II, king of Mercia, transforming our understanding of the coinage in this period, and 23 silver and gold pieces of contemporary metalwork much of which was derived from Scandinavia. Presenting the complete publication of the objects and coins in the Watlington Hoard – including an important re-assessment of the coinage of the late 870s – the authors discuss its wider implications for our understanding of hoarding in late 9th-century southern Britain, interactions between the kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia, and the movements of the Viking Great Army after the Battle of Edington in 878. The book also relates another side to the hoard’s story, beginning with its discovery and excavation, charting its path through the conservation work and acquisition by the Ashmolean Museum to the public outreach projects which ran alongside the scholarly research into the hoard
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