Active SLAM for autonomous underwater exploration

Exploration of a complex underwater environment without an a priori map is beyond the state of the art for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Despite several efforts regarding simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) and view planning, there is no exploration framework, tailored to underwater vehicles, that faces exploration combining mapping, active localization, and view planning in a unified way. We propose an exploration framework, based on an active SLAM strategy, that combines three main elements: a view planner, an iterative closest point algorithm (ICP)-based pose-graph SLAM algorithm, and an action selection mechanism that makes use of the joint map and state entropy reduction. To demonstrate the benefits of the active SLAM strategy, several tests were conducted with the Girona 500 AUV, both in simulation and in the real world. The article shows how the proposed framework makes it possible to plan exploratory trajectories that keep the vehicle’s uncertainty bounded; thus, creating more consistent maps.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Systems Theory in Special Education

In this review I looked at 22 articles that explored two of the primary interventional perspectives used when addressing the needs of exceptional students. A number of the articles elucidate the present prevalence of student based practices in U.S. schools, administration, and legislation. The body of the literature surveys how family centered interventions can be, and are used, to better serve students by integrating the needs and concerns of the family, as well as those of the student. The review was concluded with a discussion of the importance of finding a balance between the current legislative trend which emphasizes a student's needs based on an annual standards driven success model, versus a model which emphasizes the development of the whole child at home, and in the school, during all educational and developmental stages

Improving reading: a handbook for improving reading in key stages 3 and 4 (National Strategies: secondary)

"This handbook explores what it means to be a reader and some core challenges and skills that need to be addressed in the teaching of reading. The handbook outlines a route to improvement that can be followed to ensure that all pupils make expected levels of progress so that they can become skilled and independent readers. Detailed guidance is provided for each stage of the improvement process: gathering and analysing information; writing the improvement plan; evaluating planning, approaches to teaching and learning and the assessment of reading. Subject leaders can decide which stages of the process their department is confident with and which areas need to be developed further. Each section provides relevant resources and tools to guide and support this work." - National Strategies website

Rural Development: an Analytical Approach at Different Territorial Levels

The purpose of this work is to contribute with some reflections to the debate that has flourished in recent years around two issues: rural development and systemic reading of the territorial articulation of agricultural development. In the numerous investigations conducted in Italy and elsewhere, the analytical approach adopted (institutional level and investigation units, choice of indicators and of the analytical instruments) has profound repercussions on rural policies, according to its wider or narrower formulation. After a brief reflection on the approaches to rural development, highlighting the contradictions of institutional intervention, the study proposes a critical description of some results of the Italian investigations. The aim is to contribute to the definition of an analytical approach for evaluating the dynamics in progress in the agricultural and rural development at different decisional levels (EU, national, regional). The proposed instruments satisfy some requirements: the repeatability of the investigation at different times and in a variety of contexts, the flexibility for the adaptability to the mosaic of situations in the rural world, the applicability at different territorial levels.Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Networks Within Cities and Among Cities: A Paradigm for Urban Development and Governance

Networks and networking have become fashionable concepts and terms in regional science, and in particular in regional and urban geography in the last decade: we speak about network firms, network society, network economy but also network cities, city-networks, reti urbane, reseaux de villes. Only catch-words for somebody; a true new scientific paradigm according to others. Our opinion is that in fact we are confronted with a new paradigm in spatial sciences, under some precise conditions: - that its exact meaning is thoroughly defined, - that its theoretical economic rationale is justified, - that the novelty of its empirical content is clearly pointed out, with respect to more traditional spatial facts and processes that can easily be interpreted through existing spatial paradigms. The relevant theoretical building block on which the network concept or paradigm may be constructed are: - a new view of the economy as a system or web of links between individuals, firms and institutions, where links depend on experience and evolve through learning processes; the existing endowment of knowledge and other production factors is put into value through a relational capability addressed towards the exchange and collection of information, building reputation and trust, creating synergies, cutting down uncertainty, boosting learning processes; - the acknowledgement of cooperation as a new organisational and behavioural form, intermediate between hierarchy (internal development and merging of external activities through direct control) and market resort; cooperation networks among firms collaborating with each other on technological advances and innovation projects were the earlier phenomena that were abundantly explored in the past. In a spatial perspective, two phenomena in particular are worth exploring today through the network concept: - networking as cooperation among individuals, firms and institutions taking place inside the cities concerning collective action, public/private partnerships on large urban projects and the supply of public goods, and giving rise to new forms of urban governance; - networking as inter-urban cooperation, assuming the cities as economic actors, competing but also cooperating in the global arena where locations of internationally mobile factors (professionals, corporations, institutions) are decided and negotiated. The paper is organised in the following way: - a major section is devoted to the interpretation of the micro-economic efficiency of local networking (local urban networks), in terms of the usual criteria of optimal allocation of resources and collective welfare, viewing the network as an organisational alternative between market failure and state failure; - a transition section deals with the interpretation of cities, a collective actor at best, as individual/unitary economic actors, given the case for collective action among interest groups, the possibility of defining in broad terms a function of collective preference referring to non-mobile local actors, the engagement of public and private actors in processes of strategic planning and definition of shared visions for the future of the city vis-a-vis mobile actors; - another main section interprets competition and cooperation among cities (inter-city-networks) underlining advantages, risks and conditions for maximising overall comprehensive well-being. JEL classification: D70, H77, R58

Summarisation and visualisation of e-Health data repositories

At the centre of the Clinical e-Science Framework (CLEF) project is a repository of well organised, detailed clinical histories, encoded as data that will be available for use in clinical care and in-silico medical experiments. We describe a system that we have developed as part of the CLEF project, to perform the task of generating a diverse range of textual and graphical summaries of a patient’s clinical history from a data-encoded model, a chronicle, representing the record of the patient’s medical history. Although the focus of our current work is on cancer patients, the approach we describe is generalisable to a wide range of medical areas

Information and communication technology solutions for outdoor navigation in dementia

INTRODUCTION: Information and communication technology (ICT) is potentially mature enough to empower outdoor and social activities in dementia. However, actual ICT-based devices have limited functionality and impact, mainly limited to safety. What is an ideal operational framework to enhance this field to support outdoor and social activities? METHODS: Review of literature and cross-disciplinary expert discussion. RESULTS: A situation-aware ICT requires a flexible fine-tuning by stakeholders of system usability and complexity of function, and of user safety and autonomy. It should operate by artificial intelligence/machine learning and should reflect harmonized stakeholder values, social context, and user residual cognitive functions. ICT services should be proposed at the prodromal stage of dementia and should be carefully validated within the life space of users in terms of quality of life, social activities, and costs. DISCUSSION: The operational framework has the potential to produce ICT and services with high clinical impact but requires substantial investment

Towards a quasi-Lamarckian theory of institutional change.

The paper emphasises two flaws in mainstream economics: the failure to understand human behaviour and the belittling of transaction costs. By stressing the role of knowledge, institutions and path dependence, new institutional economics has provided a powerful answer to these shortcomings. Nevertheless, a number of questions remain open. In particular, path dependence is far from being a continuous process. Its dynamics and its irregularities are by and large unexplained. Hence, a strong need for a convincing evolutionary theory of environmental change. This paper does not deny the validity of the Darwinian view applied to the theory of the firm and of competition in a free-market economy. It is however maintained that the natural-selection process that characterises the Darwinian approach is ill suited to describe economic evolutionary processes. It is shown that a combination of functional analysis and natural selection may indeed be a better solution, for it solves some of the puzzles raised by the public choice school without violating the fundamental tenets of the neo-institutional approach. Still, although this combined view may well explain why the institutional features are retained by the system, it does not clarify why they are introduced in the first place. A third possibility is thus put forward in the second part of the paper, where a new evolutionary theory is suggested. Within this framework, agents are assumed to behave according to their preferences within the existing rules of the game. At the same time, new ideas and sometimes new ideologies may influence their behavioural patterns. The combination between needs and ideologies generates environmental change, especially if so-called "ideological entrepreneurs" are able to transform latent and shared beliefs into an institutional project and enforce it.