«The Greatest Merit of a Writer». Popular Literature, Youth Literature and Pedagogics in Italy in the Second Half of Nineteenth Century

AbstractThe history of Italian popular literature during the second half of nineteenth century is studded with events which are not solely referable to aesthetics and the creative process, being instead integrated in a mission aimed at a social intent, with the full awareness of the authors. Still, their literary value is undeniable. Most notably, such works were made to order, with the primary purpose of requesting donations for charities. Emilio De Marchi, a famous writer from Lombardy, was involved in the development of social pedagogics literature, and his contribution to such genre wasn’t self-satisfied, or vapid. Literary works, according to the authors’ inspiration and their purposes, became an effective tool to cast in the collective imagination good values and shared teachings, making the most of the powerful tools of the thriving publishing industry

Proprioceptive Robot Collision Detection through Gaussian Process Regression

This paper proposes a proprioceptive collision detection algorithm based on Gaussian Regression. Compared to sensor-based collision detection and other proprioceptive algorithms, the proposed approach has minimal sensing requirements, since only the currents and the joint configurations are needed. The algorithm extends the standard Gaussian Process models adopted in learning the robot inverse dynamics, using a more rich set of input locations and an ad-hoc kernel structure to model the complex and non-linear behaviors due to frictions in quasi-static configurations. Tests performed on a Universal Robots UR10 show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm to detect when a collision has occurred.Comment: Published at ACC 201

Robot kinematic structure classification from time series of visual data

In this paper we present a novel algorithm to solve the robot kinematic structure identification problem. Given a time series of data, typically obtained processing a set of visual observations, the proposed approach identifies the ordered sequence of links associated to the kinematic chain, the joint type interconnecting each couple of consecutive links, and the input signal influencing the relative motion. Compared to the state of the art, the proposed algorithm has reduced computational costs, and is able to identify also the joints' type sequence

Camillo Boito, le muse sorelle e la settima arte

Camillo Boito partecipò in pieno alla stagione della Scapigliatura e celebrò l’unità delle arti non meno del fratello Arrigo, di Carlo Dossi, di Emilio Praga e di altri noti autori coevi. Se Boito non dimentica di attribuire il titolo di «poeta» ai pittori Telemaco Signorini e Tranquillo Cremona, il suo tentativo di trovare una convergenza unitaria fra le arti si innerva nella sua professione di architetto e di protagonista del neomedievalismo lombardo. Una non comune raffinatezza contraddistingueva la prosa di Boito sia in veste critica e didattica sia in veste letteraria, come si può ben vedere sia nei suoi scritti tecnici sia, naturalmente, nelle Storielle vane e soprattutto in Senso. Quarant’anni dopo la morte di Camillo Boito sarebbe stato Luchino Visconti a misurarsi con l’adattamento cinematografico della novella e proprio come lo scrittore, anche il regista avrebbe scelto un linguaggio ricchissimo di citazioni e di richiami ad una rinnovata sintesi tra le arti.Camillo Boito was actively involved in the vague of the Scapigliatura and he celebrated the communion of hamanistic art sas his brother Arrigo, Carlo Dossi, Emilio Praga and other coeval writers also did. Boito conferred the role of «poet» to painters Telemaco Signorini and Tranquillo Cremona, but his goal to find a convergence between arts is especially well-established in his own professional work sas architect and protagonist of the Lombard Neo-Medievalism, Boito’s prose is refined and graceful both in critical anddidactic form as well as in literature. It can be easily seen in his scientific papers and, of course, in ‘Storielle vane’ and in ‘Senso’ above all. Forty years after Boito’s death, Luchino Visconti shoot the screen adaption of ‘Senso’, and as well as the writer, he selected a cinematographic language rich in quotations and references to a renewed synthesis of the arts

Kernel-based methods for Volterra series identification

Volterra series approximate a broad range of nonlinear systems. Their identification is challenging due to the curse of dimensionality: the number of model parameters grows exponentially with the complexity of the input-output response. This fact limits the applicability of such models and has stimulated recently much research on regularized solutions. Along this line, we propose two new strategies that use kernel-based methods. First, we introduce the multiplicative polynomial kernel (MPK). Compared to the standard polynomial kernel, the MPK is equipped with a richer set of hyperparameters, increasing flexibility in selecting the monomials that really influence the system output. Second, we introduce the smooth exponentially decaying multiplicative polynomial kernel (SEDMPK), that is a regularized version of MPK which requires less hyperparameters, allowing to handle also high-order Volterra series. Numerical results show the effectiveness of the two approaches. (C) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Implications of Upcoding on Medicare Fraud

The complexity of and quantity of funds involved in Medicare reimbursements have led to a significant increase in the number of Medicare fraud. A particular kind of Medicare fraud, upcoding, has contributed to excessive and avoidable health care spending. Upcoding has been an illegal tactic that some providers have used to increase their Medicare reimbursement for specific medical conditions. This is accomplished by coding a provided service as a more expensive service than what was performed. With the proliferation of upcoding, there has been an unprecedented $12.5 billion in fraudulent Medicare charges. While solving the problem of upcoding will not eliminate the multiple contributing factors to this enormous healthcare expenditure, it would be a start

A Black-Box Physics-Informed Estimator based on Gaussian Process Regression for Robot Inverse Dynamics Identification

In this paper, we propose a black-box model based on Gaussian process regression for the identification of the inverse dynamics of robotic manipulators. The proposed model relies on a novel multidimensional kernel, called \textit{Lagrangian Inspired Polynomial} (\kernelInitials{}) kernel. The \kernelInitials{} kernel is based on two main ideas. First, instead of directly modeling the inverse dynamics components, we model as GPs the kinetic and potential energy of the system. The GP prior on the inverse dynamics components is derived from those on the energies by applying the properties of GPs under linear operators. Second, as regards the energy prior definition, we prove a polynomial structure of the kinetic and potential energy, and we derive a polynomial kernel that encodes this property. As a consequence, the proposed model allows also to estimate the kinetic and potential energy without requiring any label on these quantities. Results on simulation and on two real robotic manipulators, namely a 7 DOF Franka Emika Panda and a 6 DOF MELFA RV4FL, show that the proposed model outperforms state-of-the-art black-box estimators based both on Gaussian Processes and Neural Networks in terms of accuracy, generality and data efficiency. The experiments on the MELFA robot also demonstrate that our approach achieves performance comparable to fine-tuned model-based estimators, despite requiring less prior information

Implications of upcoding on Medicare

The complexity of and amount of funds involved in Medicare has led to a significant increase in the incidence of Medicare fraud. A type of Medicare fraud, upcoding, has contributed to excessive and unnecessary health care spending. Upcoding has been an illegal strategy that some providers have used to increase their Medicare reimbursement for certain conditions. This is accomplished by coding a provided service as a more expensive service than what was actually performed. With the proliferation of upcoding, there has been an astonishing $12.5 billion in fraudulent Medicare charges since 2007. The fraudulent strategy of upcoding to increase Medicare reimbursement for organizational financial gain has been a common occurrence and has resulted in substantial Medicare overpayments. While solving the problem of upcoding will not eliminate the myriad contributing factors to this enormous healthcare expenditure, it certainly would be a start