The virtual museum of Stećci

[ES] Los museos virtuales online parecen consolidarse como excelentes plataformas de difusión del patrimonio cultural, especialmente en países con pocos recursos o con dificultades para asumir la conservacion y difusión de su patrimonio. El museo virtual de los Stecci, desarrollado por la Universidad de Sarajevo (Bosnia-Herzegovina), es un claro ejemplo de cómo las nuevas tecnologías pueden contribuir a valorizar el patrimonio cultural.[EN] The online virtual museums seem to consolidate as excellent platforms for dissemination of cultural heritage, especially in countries with few resources and hard to take conservation and dissemination of their heritage. The Stecci virtual museum, developed by the University of Sarajevo (Bosnia-Herzegovina) is a clear example of how new technologies can contribute to enhancing cultural heritage.“The research leading to these results is partly funded by the EU Community's FP7 ICT under the VMusT.net Project (Grant Agreement 270404). The publication reflects only the author’s views and the Community is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein. Neither the V-MusT.net consortium as a whole, nor a certain participant of the V-MusT.net consortium, warrant that the information contained in this document is capable of use, nor that use of the information is free from risk, and accepts no liability for loss or damage suffered by any person using this information”.López-Menchero Bendicho, VM.; Rizvic, S. (2014). El museo virtual de los misteriosos Stećci. Virtual Archaeology Review. 5(11):109-112. https://doi.org/10.4995/var.2014.4188OJS109112511RIZVIĆ, S., SADŽAK, A., BUZA, E. & CHALMERS, A. (2008): "Virtual reconstruction and digitalization of cultural heritage sites in Bosnia and Herzegovina", en - Преглед НЦД, vol. 12, pp. 82-90.RIZVIĆ, S., SADŽAK, A., AVDAGIC, Z. & CHALMERS, A. (2006): "Maya sun simulation of bosnian gravestone virtual model", en 4th Eurographics Italian Chapter Conference, pp. 171-175.VEMIC, Dejan (2011): Late medieval tombstones (stecci) in the area of Zabljak (Montenegro), MA Thesis in Medieval Studies. Central European University, Budapest

Social Sciences and Cultural Studies

This is a unique and groundbreaking collection of questions and answers coming from higher education institutions on diverse fields and across a wide spectrum of countries and cultures. It creates routes for further innovation, collaboration amidst the Sciences (both Natural and Social) and the Humanities and the private and the public sectors of society. The chapters speak across socio-cultural concerns, education, welfare and artistic sectors under the common desire for direct responses in more effective ways by means of interaction across societal structures

Holding Stories

The Afterlife Creative Memory Retreat by The Other Way Works (research and development) invited audience participants to an online retreat via Zoom. Inspired by the 1998 film After Life by Kore-eda Hirokazu, the work invites participants to focus on what they value in life through an in-depth creative exploration of their own important memories facilitating hope, togetherness and a deeper connection to one’s sense of self. The scenographer was part of the team of artists who devised exercises that were then given to the online audience to help them revisit some of their memories. A playful exercise featuring a red thread was introduced and the participants were encouraged to use it for connecting with each other’s screen spaces. Through the medium of touch and the playful scenographic illusion of the thread extending to other participants’ rooms, this tool was used as a way to create a sense of togetherness among the group. I will unpack the above scenographic action through the lens of 4Es cognition: enactive, ecological, embodied, embedded ‘and some cases extended and affective’ (Ward and Stapleton, 2012), suggesting that human cognition is an on-going collaboration between brain, body and environment. If places are shaped by significant historic moments (Hannah, 2011: 56), they are also shaped by the memories we choose to attach to those moments and a certain materiality related to those moments. By understanding thinking not as an individualistic activity but one that is happening within socio-cultural and material knowledge and inextricably integrated with perception and action I will argue that in the Afterlife Creative Memory Retreat, the tactile scenographic element of the thread enhanced the sense of memory as storytelling between the screens

Bioinspired metaheuristic algorithms for global optimization

This paper presents concise comparison study of newly developed bioinspired algorithms for global optimization problems. Three different metaheuristic techniques, namely Accelerated Particle Swarm Optimization (APSO), Firefly Algorithm (FA), and Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO) are investigated and implemented in Matlab environment. These methods are compared on four unimodal and multimodal nonlinear functions in order to find global optimum values. Computational results indicate that GWO outperforms other intelligent techniques, and that all aforementioned algorithms can be successfully used for optimization of continuous functions

Experimental Evaluation of Growing and Pruning Hyper Basis Function Neural Networks Trained with Extended Information Filter

In this paper we test Extended Information Filter (EIF) for sequential training of Hyper Basis Function Neural Networks with growing and pruning ability (HBF-GP). The HBF neuron allows different scaling of input dimensions to provide better generalization property when dealing with complex nonlinear problems in engineering practice. The main intuition behind HBF is in generalization of Gaussian type of neuron that applies Mahalanobis-like distance as a distance metrics between input training sample and prototype vector. We exploit concept of neuron’s significance and allow growing and pruning of HBF neurons during sequential learning process. From engineer’s perspective, EIF is attractive for training of neural networks because it allows a designer to have scarce initial knowledge of the system/problem. Extensive experimental study shows that HBF neural network trained with EIF achieves same prediction error and compactness of network topology when compared to EKF, but without the need to know initial state uncertainty, which is its main advantage over EKF